II OF PROCRASTINATION[94]
Reading edition
I am glad that you approve and applaud my design of withdrawing myself from all tumult and business of the world, and consecrating the little rest of my time to those studies to which nature had so motherly inclined me, and from which fortune, like a step-mother, has so long detained me. But, nevertheless, you say (which but is ærugo mera, a rust which spoils the good metal it grows upon)—but you say you would advise me not to precipitate that resolution, but to stay a while longer with patience and complaisance, till I had gotten such an estate as might accord me—according to the saying of that person, whom you and I love very much, and would believe as soon as another man—cum dignitate otium. This were excellent advice to Joshua, who could bid the sun stay too. But there's no fooling with life, when it is once turned beyond forty: the seeking for a fortune then is but a desperate after-game; 'tis a hundred to one if a man fling two sixes, and recover all; especially if his hand be no luckier than mine.
There is some help for all the defects of fortune; for if a man can not attain to the length of his wishes, he may have his remedy by cutting of them shorter. Epicurus writes a letter to Idomeneus—who was then a very powerful, wealthy, and, it seems, a bountiful person—to recommend to him, who had made so many rich, one Pythocles, a friend of his, whom he desired might be made a rich man too; "but I entreat you that you would not do it just the same way as you have done to many less deserving persons; but in the most gentlemanly manner of obliging him, which is, not to add anything to his estate, but to take something from his desires."
The sum of this is, that for the certain hopes of some conveniences, we ought not to defer the execution of a work that is necessary; especially when the use of those things which we would stay for may otherwise be supplied, but the loss of time never recovered; nay, farther yet, tho we were sure to obtain all that we had a mind to, tho we were sure of getting never so much by continuing the game, yet when the light of life is so near going out, and ought to be so precious, le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle, the play is not worth the expense of the candle; after having been long tossed in a tempest, if our masts be standing, and we have still sail and tackling enough to carry us to our port, it is no matter for the want of streamers and topgallants.