my death, that it will be just and natural, and that henceforward I cannot herein either require or hope from Destiny any other but unlawful favour.  Men make themselves believe that we formerly had longer lives as well as greater stature.  But they deceive themselves; and Solon, who was of those elder times, limits the duration of life to threescore and ten years.  I, who have so much and so universally adored that “The mean is best,” of the passed time, and who have concluded the most moderate measures to be the most perfect, shall I pretend to an immeasurable and prodigious old age?  Whatever happens contrary to the course of nature may be troublesome; but what comes according to her should always be pleasant: 

     “Omnia, quae secundum naturam fiunt, sunt habenda in bonis.”

     ["All things that are done according to nature
     are to be accounted good.”—­Cicero, De Senect., c. 19.]

And so, says Plato, the death which is occasioned by wounds and diseases is violent; but that which comes upon us, old age conducting us to it, is of all others the most easy, and in some sort delicious: 

          “Vitam adolescentibus vis aufert, senibus maturitas.”

     ["Young men are taken away by violence, old men by maturity.” 
     —­Cicero, ubi sup.]

Death mixes and confounds itself throughout with life; decay anticipates its hour, and shoulders itself even into the course of our advance.  I have portraits of myself taken at five-and-twenty and five-and-thirty years of age.  I compare them with that lately drawn:  how many times is it no longer me; how much more is my present image unlike the former, than unlike my dying one?  It is too much to abuse nature, to make her trot so far that she must be forced to leave us, and abandon our conduct, our eyes, teeth, legs, and all the rest to the mercy of a foreign and haggard countenance, and to resign us into the hands of art, being weary of following us herself.

I am not excessively fond either of salads or fruits, except melons.  My father hated all sorts of sauces; I love them all.  Eating too much hurts me; but, as to the quality of what I eat, I do not yet certainly know that any sort of meat disagrees with me; neither have I observed that either full moon or decrease, autumn or spring, have any influence upon me.  We have in us motions that are inconstant and unknown; for example, I found radishes first grateful to my stomach, since that nauseous, and now again grateful.  In several other things, I find my stomach and appetite vary after the same manner; I have changed again and again from white wine to claret, from claret to white wine.

I am a great lover of fish, and consequently make my fasts feasts and feasts fasts; and I believe what some people say, that it is more easy of digestion than flesh.  As I make a conscience of eating flesh upon fish-days, so does my taste make a conscience of mixing fish and flesh; the difference betwixt them seems to me too remote.