fo they have their revenge of Nature. (Eays, 1625, xliv.)

DELAYS.

Fortune is like the market; where many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall. (Essays, 1625, xxi.)

OF GREAT PLACE AND DIGNITIES.

Certainly great perfons had need to borrow other men's opinions, to think themselves happy; for if they judge by their own feeling, they cannot find it; but if they think with themselves what other men think of them, and that other men would fain be as they are, then they are happy as it were by report; when perhaps they find the contrary within. For they are the firft that find their own guilt, though they be the last that find their own faults. (Elays, 1625, xi.)

DISPATCH.

Affected dispatch is one of the most dangerous things to bufinefs that can be. It is like that which the phyficians call predigeftion; or hafty digeftion; which is fure to fill the body full of crudities and fecret feeds of difeafes. Therefore measure not dispatch by the times of fitting, but by the advancement of the bufinefs. (Eays, 1625, xxv.)

QUEEN ELIZABETH OF ENGLAND, WHEN DEAD.

Her Death.

Outward conditions were not wanting a tall ftature, a graceful shape, a countenance in the highest degree majeftic and yet fweet, a moft happy and healthy conftitution; to which this alfo must be added, that retaining her health and vigour to the end, and having experienced neither the viciffitudes of Fortune nor the ills of old age, fhe obtained at laft by an eafy and gentle death that euthanafia which Auguftus

Cæfar was wont fo earnestly to pray for, and which is noted in the cafe of that excellent emperor, Antoninus Pius, whofe death wore the appearance of a fweet and placid fleep. So likewise in the laft illness of Elizabeth there was nothing miserable, nothing terrible, nothing revolting to human nature. She was not tormented either with defire of life, or impatience of fickness, or pangs of pain: none of the fymptoms were frightful and loathfome, but all of that kind which showed rather the frailty than the corruption and dishonour of nature. For a few days before her death, by reason of the exceeding drynefs of her body, wafted as it was with the cares of government and never rcfreshed with wine or a more generous diet, fhe was ftruck with paralyfis; and yet the retained her powers of speech (a thing not ufual in this difeafe) and of mind and of motion, only somewhat flower and duller. And this ftate of her body lafted only a few days, as if it were less like the laft act of life than the first step to death. For to continue long alone with the faculties impaired is a miserable thing, but to have the

fenfe a little laid asleep and fo pass quickly to death is a placid and merciful period and clofe of life. (From the Latin of The Fortunate Memory of Queen Elizabeth. See earlier quotations while she was still living, pp. 30-42.)

'Scandal about Queen Elizabeth' put to Silence.

As for that which fome have given out, that she could not endure the thought of mortality, and was impatient of all allufion either to old age or death, this is utterly untrue. For very often, many years before her death, she would pleasantly call herfelf an old woman, and would talk of the kind of epitaph she would like to have upon her tomb, faying that she had no fancy for glory and splendid titles, but would rather have a line or two of memorial, recording in few words only her name, her virginity, the time of her reign, the reformation of religion, and the prefervation of fame. It is true that in the flower of her years, while fhe was yet able to bear children, being questioned about declaring a fucceffor, fhe replied

that she would not have her windingfheet spread before her eyes while fhe was alive; and yet not many years before her death, being in a thoughtful mood, meditating probably upon her mortality, and being interrupted by one of her familiars with a complaint that many great offices in the Commonwealth were too long vacant, fhe rose up and said in some displeasure it was clear that her office would not be vacant for an inftant. (Ibid.)

"THIS ENGLAND' (1606-7).

For GREATNESS I think a man may speak, and foberly, and without hearsay, that this Kingdom of England, having Scotland united, Ireland reduced, the fea provinces of the Low Countries contracted, and shipping maintained, is one of the greatest monarchies, in forces truly esteemed, that hath been in the world. For certainly the kingdoms here on earth have a refemblance with the Kingdom of Heaven, which our Saviour compareth, not to any great kernel or nut, but to a very small grain, yet fuch