'tis gone in endless pilgrimage
From hence, and never to return, I doubt,
Till revolution wheel those times about."
One man says, -
"The world's a popular disease, that reigns
Within the froward heart and frantic brains
Of poor distempered mortals."
Another, that
"all the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players."
The world is a strange place for a playhouse to stand within it.
Old Drayton thought that a man that lived here, and would be a
poet, for instance, should have in him certain "brave,
translunary things," and a "fine madness" should possess his
brain. Certainly it were as well, that he might be up to the
occasion. That is a superfluous wonder, which Dr. Johnson
expresses at the assertion of Sir Thomas Browne that "his life
has been a miracle of thirty years, which to relate, were not
history but a piece of poetry, and would sound like a fable." The
wonder is, rather, that all men do not assert as much. That
would be a rare praise, if it were true, which was addressed to
Francis Beaumont, - "Spectators sate part in your tragedies."
Think what a mean and wretched place this world is; that half the
time we have to light a lamp that we may see to live in it. This
is half our life. Who would undertake the enterprise if it were
all? And, pray, what more has day to offer? A lamp that burns
more clear, a purer oil, say winter-strained, that so we may
pursue our idleness with less obstruction.
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