Nature has also, on the other side, helped me to some of hers:  as not to be able to endure more than two full meals in one day, without overcharging my stomach, nor a total abstinence from one of those meals without filling myself with wind, drying up my mouth, and dulling my appetite; the finding great inconvenience from overmuch evening air; for of late years, in night marches, which often happen to be all night long, after five or six hours my stomach begins to be queasy, with a violent pain in my head, so that I always vomit before the day can break.  When the others go to breakfast, I go to sleep; and when I rise, I am as brisk and gay as before.  I had always been told that the night dew never rises but in the beginning of the night; but for some years past, long and familiar intercourse with a lord, possessed with the opinion that the night dew is more sharp and dangerous about the declining of the sun, an hour or two before it sets, which he carefully avoids, and despises that of the night, he almost impressed upon me, not so much his reasoning as his experiences.  What, shall mere doubt and inquiry strike our imagination, so as to change us?  Such as absolutely and on a sudden give way to these propensions, draw total destruction upon themselves.  I am sorry for several gentlemen who, through the folly of their physicians, have in their youth and health wholly shut themselves up:  it were better to endure a cough, than, by disuse, for ever to lose the commerce of common life in things of so great utility.  Malignant science, to interdict us the most pleasant hours of the day!  Let us keep our possession to the last; for the most part, a man hardens himself by being obstinate, and corrects his constitution, as Caesar did the falling sickness, by dint of contempt.  A man should addict himself to the best rules, but not enslave himself to them, except to such, if there be any such, where obligation and servitude are of profit.

Both kings and philosophers go to stool, and ladies too; public lives are bound to ceremony; mine, that is obscure and private, enjoys all natural dispensation; soldier and Gascon are also qualities a little subject to indiscretion; wherefore I shall say of this act of relieving nature, that it is desirable to refer it to certain prescribed and nocturnal hours, and compel one’s self to this by custom, as I have done; but not to subject one’s self, as I have done in my declining years, to a particular convenience of place and seat for that purpose, and make it troublesome by long sitting; and yet, in the fouler offices, is it not in some measure excusable to require more care and cleanliness?

          “Naturt homo mundum et elegans animal est.”

     ["Man is by nature a clean and delicate creature.”—­Seneca, Ep., 92.]

Of all the actions of nature, I am the most impatient of being interrupted in that.  I have seen many soldiers troubled with the unruliness of their bellies; whereas mine and I never fail of our punctual assignation, which is at leaping out of bed, if some indispensable business or sickness does not molest us.