Cato major, or, The book of old age first written by M.T. Cicero ; and now excellently Englished by William Austin of Lincolns Inne, Esquire ; with annotations upon the names of the men and places.

CHAP. XXIV.

BUt if you please, let us see a little of our later times; no man shall per∣swade me Scipio, that either your two grandfathers Paulus and Afri∣canus, or the Uncle of Africanus, or many other excellent men whom it is not now necessary to name; would have indeavoured so much in great affaires, unlesse they had known that in their poste∣rity their memory should live to∣gether with their praise. Do you

thinke (that after the manner of old men, I may boast something of my selfe) that I would have ta∣ken such paines in the City, and in the Campe, if I should have end∣ed my fame together with my life? Were it not better to lead a quiet and peaceable old age, without labour and contention? but I know not by what meanes, the soule lifting it selfe up doth so behold the memory that shall be left to posterity, as if it should then live when it had once died. Which unlesse it were so, that memory remained, and the soule were immortal, scarce would any excellent minde indevour to get renown and glory. But suppose that every wise man dieth with a good soule, and every foole with a bad: doth it not seem to you, that that soule which knoweth more, and is of deeper understand∣ing,

doth see that it shall go to a better place then that soule whose intellect is more dull and mortall? Truely I am verry desi∣rous, to fee your fathers whom I love so well, and I not onely wish to see them whom I have known, but also them of whom I have heard and read; therefore from the place whether I am going, shall no man withhold me, nor from thence as a ball strike mee back; and if any god would grant me to be now a child in my cradle againe, and to be young, I would refuse it. Neither would I, ha∣ving runne my full course, be called back again. For what profit hath life, or rather what trouble? but say it have some commodity, yet when it hath a fulnesse and satiety, it ought to have an end. I will not deplore my life forespent, as ma∣ny

learned men have done; nei∣ther do I repent that I have lived, because I have so lived that I think I was not borne in vaine; and I depart out of this life, as from an Inne, not as from a continuall ha∣bitation; for nature hath given us a place to rest in, not to dwell in. O happy shall that day be, when I shall come into the company and counsell of those men, of whom I spake before, and not onely to them, but to my deare sonne Ca∣to, then whom no man was better, or more excellent in piety, whose body was by me interred, which thought to dye before him; but his soule not forgetting me, but continually beholding me, is gone thither, where he perceived that I should come; whose death I did the better beare (not that I take it very patiently) but I comforted

my selfe with this hope, that I should not live long after him. And in these things Scipio (for you say that you and Loelius were wont to marvell at it) is mine age light, and not onely not trouble∣some, but also pleasant. But if I do erre that the soules of men bee immortall, I do erre willingly, neither will I while I live be wrest∣ed from mine opinion wherein I am delighted; but if when I am dead (as some small Philosophers say,) I shall feel nothing, I fear not least the dead Philosophers should laugh at this my error. But if we were not immortall, yet it were to be wished that a man die in his due time; for of nature as of all things else, there is an end. But old age is the last act of our life as of a play, of which there ought to be an end, especially when there

is satiety and fulnesse of time joy∣ned with it. Thus much I had to say concerning old age, which I wish you may obtain, that those things which you have heard me speak of, you might know by experience.