Others, seemingly the
most prosperous, have not been ashamed to vent their complaints
in the most melancholy strains. Let us attend to the great, the
fortunate emperor, C/HARLES\ V, when, tired with human grandeur,
he resigned all his extensive dominions into the hands of his
son. In the last harangue which he made on that memorable
occasion, he publicly avowed, that the greatest prosperities
which he had ever enjoyed, had been mixed with so many
adversities, that he might truly say he had never enjoyed any
satisfaction or contentment. But did the retired life, in which
he sought for shelter, afford him any greater happiness? If we
may credit his son's account, his repentance commenced the very
day of his resignation.
C/ICERO\'s fortune, from small beginnings, rose to the
greatest lustre and renown; yet what pathetic complaints of the
ills of life do his familiar letters, as well as philosophical
discourses, contain? And suitably to his own experience, he
introduces C/ATO\, the great, the fortunate C/ATO\, protesting in
his old age, that had he a new life in his offer, he would reject
the present.
Ask yourself, ask any of your acquaintance, whether they
would live over again the last ten or twenty years of their life.
No! but the next twenty, they say, will be better:
And from the dregs of life, hope to receive
What the first sprightly running could not give.26
Thus at last they find (such is the greatness of human
misery, it reconciles even contradictions), that they complain at
once of the shortness of life, and of its vanity and sorrow.
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