Yet do we seek only the
things whereby we may perish, and bring them forth, when God and
Nature hath buried them. We covet superfluous things, when it were
more honour for us if we would contemn necessary. What need hath
Nature of silver dishes, multitudes of waiters, delicate pages,
perfumed napkins? She requires meat only, and hunger is not
ambitious. Can we think no wealth enough but such a state for which
a man may be brought into a premunire, begged, proscribed, or
poisoned? O! if a man could restrain the fury of his gullet and
groin, and think how many fires, how many kitchens, cooks, pastures,
and ploughed lands; what orchards, stews, ponds and parks, coops and
garners, he could spare; what velvets, tissues, embroideries, laces,
he could lack; and then how short and uncertain his life is; he were
in a better way to happiness than to live the emperor of these
delights, and be the dictator of fashions; but we make ourselves
slaves to our pleasures, and we serve fame and ambition, which is an
equal slavery. Have not I seen the pomp of a whole kingdom, and
what a foreign king could bring hither? Also to make himself gazed
and wondered at--laid forth, as it were, to the show--and vanish all
away in a day? And shall that which could not fill the expectation
of few hours, entertain and take up our whole lives, when even it
appeared as superfluous to the possessors as to me that was a
spectator? The bravery was shown, it was not possessed; while it
boasted itself it perished.
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