(SCENE 6.)

Enter Seneca with two of his friends.

Seneca. What meanes your mourning, this ungrateful sorrow? Where are your precepts of Philosophie, Where our prepared resolution So many yeeres fore-studied against danger? To whom is Neroes cruelty unknowne, Or what remained after mothers blood But his instructors death? Leave, leave these teares; Death from me nothing takes but what's a burthen, A clog to that free sparke of Heavenly fire. But that in Seneca the which you lov'd, Which you admir'd, doth and shall still remaine, Secure of death, untouched of the grave.

1 Friend. Weele not belie our teares; we waile not thee, It is our selves and our owne losse we grieve: To thee what losse in such a change can bee? Vertue is paid her due by death alone. To our owne losses do we give these teares, That loose thy love, thy boundlesse knowledge loose, Loose the unpatternd sample of thy vertue, Loose whatsoev'r may praise or sorrow move. In all these losses yet of this we glory, That 'tis thy happinesse that makes us sorry.

2 Friend. If there be any place for Ghosts of good men, If (as we have bin long taught) great mens soules Consume not with their bodies, thou shalt see (Looking from out the dwellings of the ayre) True duties to thy memorie perform'd; Not in the outward pompe of funerall, But in remembrance of thy deeds and words, The oft recalling of thy many vertues. The Tombe that shall th'eternall relickes keepe Of Seneca shall be his hearers hearts.

Seneca. Be not afraid, my soule; goe cheerefully To thy owne Heaven, from whence it first let downe. Thou loathly[82] this imprisoning flesh putst on; Now, lifted up, thou ravisht shalt behold The truth of things at which we wonder here, And foolishly doe wrangle on beneath; And like a God shalt walk the spacious ayre, And see what even to conceit's deni'd. Great soule oth' world, that through the parts defus'd Of this vast All, guid'st what thou dost informe; You blessed mindes that from the [S]pheares you move, Looke on mens actions not with idle eyes, And Gods we goe to, aid me in this strife And combat of my flesh that, ending, I May still shew Seneca and my selfe die.

[Exeunt.