it is then which yet nothing is more unpleasing No man is more miserable then hee thinks himself and griefe no lesse then other things is upheld by opinion We deserve therefore to be oppress'd with griefe if we will not suppresse it The lowing dam her lost calfe to lament Is heard yet her dumbe griefe's in one day spent Nor the swift Mare through woods and fields to run Tossing her main is seen by next daies sun Though of her foal bereav'd When the wild Bear Rob'd of her whelps goes ranging every where Through pathlesse desarts oft comes back again And her forsaken den sees oft in vain Her griefe and rage with the first night is gone About her empty nest a bird make moan I have beheld and oft her young brood call Yet to her wonted flights again soon fall Only man huggs his woe his sorrow he Provokes by favouring our selves wretched we By thinking make yet griefe not all men finds Alike nor equall sway holds in our minds In them who know least it takes up most room The barbarous Queen with a stupendious Tomb Fondly to honour her dead spouse contrives Whilest of her selfe a maim'd part she survives Not so those Nations by right reason taught Whose hearts with truth are and Religion fraught Women their bosomes beat with their weak armes And with their fists give sorrow fresh alarms Mothers their bare breasts tear in showres their eies Dissolve they tremble with astonisht cries Griefe is more staid in men this difference The sex makes take at Nature no offence Who under the same law all people keeps Then length of Time dries up the eye that weeps Nature yeelds not to Time If longer day Can make a quiet mind scorn thou delay A wise man's his owne Time shall griefe be quell'd Against my will and I to joy compell'd Among those reasons which disswade from lamenting for the dead this is even a chiefe that wee must forbeare a griefe which is in vaine which may adde us to them cannot bring back them to us Let that sorrow cease which if it cease not nothing availes Wee shall sooner want teares then matter for teares which this Universe continually suggests and whereas therefore nothing ought to be more precious nor are they rashly to be shed of which there is so much use on the contrary we are of nothing so prodigall and indeed when wee have least cause Many are the evills which surprize a man unawares But then the death of him and his nothing is more certain We must not weep for that done which that it would come to passe we were not ignorant of What do the so frequent sounds of passing bels signifie but that no body is Natures favourite Others mischances daily admonish us that they are common and yet when so many funeralls passe before our eyes when we follow so many to buriall we dare begin hopes of long life as if priviledg'd from that aeternall law and not plac'd in the same slippery condition with the whole world And hence it is that these stroakes more hurt us because they are lesse foreseen Why cease we not then to complaine of the iniquity of fate who know well enough that some are daily stricken but that all are aim'd at If as wee ought we did often think on what we alwaies see the force of present evils would be abated whilest wee consider future What marvaile is it that he is dead whom so many have gone before and all shall follow I could here bring in many examples of them and indeed of great personages who have lost their Children but in this empire of fortune it would bee a much harder taske to find out a House or Family not remarkable for some affliction or that hath stood entire and unshaken to the end I find also that the Ancients have used this kind of consolation that wee go the way of all the world and of the Nature of things That nothing is aeternall That all things are born on this condition that whatsoever had a beginning must have an ending and that one family cannot without impotent arrogancy thinke to escape from that ruine which the whole world expects That whatsoever we call miracles even most famous Cities which yet are longer liv'd then men have perished This indeed is something not to bee willing to challenge privately to himselfe a griefe whose cause is publique and to submit his sorrow to common mortality but we have far greater comforts given us in the Souls immortality which we attaine by an assured faith He is not taken away from us but taken againe by God whom he had granted us during his owne pleasure and did but lend him Your son had one whose he was more then yours God gave you him to bring up not a free-hold in him Restore what was committed to your trust you know how the bargaine was there was a condition that when it seem'd good unto him you should surrender him nor were you to have the use of him untill you were satisfied but during his divine determination A good Housholder hath that money alwaies ready for the payment of which no certain day was set What debtor is so ingratefull as to raile on his creditor and take it ill he may have no longer use of what was lent upon courtesie and on no other condition then that it should at length returne whence it came Which I say also least your griefe find this starting hole that he is not at a more mature age demanded of you He requires him not too soon who might have not given him at all and if we look upon him you mourn for it skils not how long he liv'd but how well Now of that matter we are witnesses Hee must needs have liv'd well who dies so He must needs die well who liv'd so We all count others yeares whereas we should take thankfully what are given us and not looke upon those which appertaine not to us Hee might have liv'd longer No he could not This was his old age Onely so many yeeres he had More hee receiv'd not Why complaine wee It is our fault who are never content with time past and reckon but upon the present that is a moment It is all one at this day to have liv'd your yeeres about fifty and his of eighteen If we regard the swiftnesse of time no man lives long if the misery none but lives too long That this life is a pilgrimage even the Philosophers have taught Let us gratulate him who hath been shew'd a shorter way to his journies end In Thrace by the sea shoar a creature lives * * A•istot Animal l 5. c. 19. Old History such information gives And hath these wonders put in her Records Which on its birth day dies Nature affords But one daies life which with the morning light Begins the day-star chasing away Night And when the Sun hath halfe-way Westward gone The Beast of middle age is but old grown When Day as yet not fully gives Night place Thus short the course is thus ends the swift race Now could what in the morning dies have spoke It might complaine lifes thred was too soon broke That which at midday death shall overtake Would grudgingly crosse o're the Stygian Lake But what in th' evening dies more
HVGO GROTIVS HIS Consolatory ORATION TO HIS FATHER Translated out of the Latine Verse and Prose With EPITAPHS c. By F G. LONDON Printed by W. H. and are to be sold by Iohn Hardesty at the Black-spred-Eagle in Duck-lane To His Honoured Friend and Kinsman ARTHUR HERRIS Of Lincolnes Inne Esq Sir THe happinesse that Iacob had to find Ioseph againe and in so glorious a condition may not unfitly be fancied a Type of having our decea•ed children restored to us at the Resurrection Every good Christian Parent •herefore may be comforted with this hope to which I here adde a Consolatory Discourse made in his younger yeares by •he even then learned Grotius I am sorry I have so seasonable and sad occasion •f applying it to your selfe who have •…tely lost a beloved and only Daughter Your Dudley Herris had in her life-time some acquaintance with my Sophompaneas and a desire to have seen Him in Publique But her chast and pious soule whose Lamp was so well trimm'd with oyle of Spirituall Graces is gone to mee• the Heavenly Bridegroom and the door are now shut against any mixture o• Earthly Cogitations Neverthelesse ma•… her Name and Memory if these my papers have a Genius live here in Them and thus at least may she still dwe•… with Your affectionate Cousin Servant Francis Goldsmit• HVGO GROTIVS HIS Consolatory Oration to his Father Upon the death of his Brother FRANCIS A Youth's sad obsequies our Colledge Hall In mourning pompe thy solemn funerall I saw O Brother I thee this last one Office I could of blood love have done I and a child chiefe-mourners were but he A child and therein happy did not see The fiery feaverraging in each veine And frantick fits of thy distemper'd brain Nor when he did thy breathless limbs and cold And thy so much chang'd eyes and face behold Wept he nor did perceive his Brother gone Nor when the bell rung out and sadly on The biere thy corps were laid did he forgoe •childs praerogative griefe not to know But when thy body was put in the ground And from our eyes quite hid O then he found A loss so manifest from his young yeeres His Brother to be seen no more drew teares Nor did about the grave the company There standing round their teares and sighs deny When a childs cheeks were wet the force was such It did even strangers hearts with pitty touch At this funerall I say I with our little William was chiefe mourner And who then I had better right For if in mourning we weigh the losse of friendship my parents degree of inequality my sisters sex my brothers tender age kept them at a greater distance from the deceased But I joyn'd unto him in an equall familiarity of kindred how little wanted I of being a twin with him The same studies too gave occasion of mutuall offices And hee might even in this respect bee no lesse deare unto me then in that he was a brother I say thus least when I comfort you you may think a sound man gives counsell to a sick You have one a partner with you in sorrow yea who contends in mourning and ye• is bold not only to comfort himselfe but to communicate unto others the experiment of that which hee hath found to be good against his own griefe First therefore let me see whether I ought not to fear least I may rub wound too fresh and as yet not clos'd up with a scarre whilest I run to apply over-hasty remedies I suppose not For I speake both unto a man and a father whom the very custome of our Country forbids to prolong hi• mourning beyond the buriall Surely parents have no• so great cause as the common people thinke to grieve as not to grieve and even in this that they have begotten Children finde comfort It was much but it came from nature of him who said I knew I had begot a mortall Wee deceive our selves if wee doe not daily thinke that they shall not alwaies be who without us had never been See how great the perversness of mans disposition is To lacke children is not grievous but to those who have had them And yet Bachelors are no lesse childlesse then others but they mourne not Why then should wee not lose without teares what without teares wee could have wanted Many are the pleas for vice and not only covetousness and ambition and luxury come under this name but also excessive and unreasonable griefe I could have wish'd he had surviv'd me according to the course of Nature I grieve that having had proofe of his piety I might no longer use and enjoy it I have lost him whose helpe might have bin both to the service of his Countrey and comfort of my selfe These are the words of them that favour their own misery this is witty calamity Apples downfall and the surviving Tree Doth her dead fruit but with a dry bark see Nor is unhappy call'd that she lives then False arguments of griefe please wretched men Whose eyes in teares at his sons death shall swim He weeps because his son weepes not for him You have lost a good sonne It is better then to have had an ill You have lost your paines in his education I may object unto you a recompence of joy which you tooke in his towardnesse But this also is now gone and it troubles you If you be wise account it gaine that you have had it rather then dammage that you have lost it You are sure of the fruit of a past good this can neither be taken away nor cease at any time and is onely beyond the envy of fate It is not the part of the same man to grieve that it hath not befalne him long yet not to rejoyce that it hath happen'd at all See therefore how much happier you are then those who never had a sonne and yet they mourne not But if wee account children goods and certainely they are the chiefest it is better not to have had them long then never For even when they are taken from us the remembrance of them remaines still a great delight to a gratefull minde You see then parents have very little cause to grieve if wee weigh griefe not according to the vulgar opinion but right reason Besides that the majesty of a parents authority and that sacred dominion of nature unbecommingly stoopes so low as to bewaile him dead of whose life your selfe were the author and to submit your passions to him whose passions you are commanded to rule over Have a care you do nothing misbeseeming the high dignity of a parents name in which God and Nature have plac'd you and yet upon her wee list to lay the fault of our impatiency neither is any defence so ready even of womanish lamentation as that it proceeds from Nature But we are guilty of manifest calumny in imputing our crime to her We all give way to griefe yea most of us enforce it so pleasing
willingnesse Perhaps might shew and its old age confesse Not that twelve houres so great a number are But that our selves with others we compare The Raven give her no more yeers then man Would cry her Ell was shortned to a Span. We never pleas'd at home are looking on Our neighbour were none happy wretched none Will think himselfe It would great wisdome be What others have as not our own to see Who knowes from what evill that provident Parent hath withdrawne your sonne How quite contrary to the hopes which they had rais'd hath the disposition of many been perverted how many vices are abroad at this day what corruptions Although God forbid I should make this augury of him yet we may bee glad that he is not onely past danger but beyond fear Hee had his almost daily tormentor the Collicke which not content alwaies to torture would at length have kil'd him If he had gone with the army what hazards had he been liable to A wise saying was that of Syrus What may happen to one man may happen to every one Imagine before your eyes maym'd men and buried already in a part of them the butchery of Chirurgions who picke the bones of the living all which who would not abhor worse then death But let us suppose the least Yet he had dyed far from the sight of his most deare mother We should neither have heard of his sicknesse nor of his death wee could not have prepar'd our hearts for the losse nor have bin a helpe or a comfort to him We should have doubted still with what minde he took his death which I suppose to bee a chiefe matter These are the evills which our first thoughts suggest to us But we are sottishly ignorant if not yet taught even by our own example how many and much more grievous those evils be which come upon us so much as dreaming on them Many Father many discommodities is he delivered from by a timely death and if from no other certainly from old age See this also how many comforts his very death may afford you He died in a slippery age and not of a sudden but slow disease so that for a long while hee might perceive himselfe to die Which you perhaps may think a part of his misery I of his felicity Especially whereas the pain was not extreme For so it comes to passe that not only the body it selfe is tam'd but also by how much it decayes so much the soul improves there follows a loathing of life and a desire of eternall happinesse Would to God you indeed had seen him and heard with how great a fortitude he did challenge death The despairing of that health which we wish'd him made him to be assur'd of a better I will say more God hath call'd him to himselfe not without a miracle Hee was taken with a frenzy and the contagion of his sick bodie had also infected his minde Yet as often as hee was admonish'd of death salvation God as if this only concern'd him hee so answer'd as that in every word hee shew'd a good understanding But of the things of this present life he was nothing at all sensible O unhappy we if good health had in this case surpriz'd him Yet once there did appeare I know not what hope thereof which as you confesse doth the more trouble you Surely God made made an experiment in him whether so indeed he would still be out of love with life But the pious youth submitted himselfe wholy to his will being prepar'd on either side How great a benefit is it that God hath called us to be witnesse the•eof that we saw him blaming the delay of death and with an unconquered breast proclaming as it were this very Verse I've liv'd and run the race which God me gave But death it selfe you will say is grievous and that of the Antients not altogether true That it is naturall and therefore not painefull First whatsoever it is it is now past Hee seeks for sorrow where it is not who grieves that his have bin miserable Nothing is more agreeable unto Nature then to rejoyce at the end of evill But what What if to die be indeed no evill And this hath been believ'd even by the Philosophers We Christians go further and dare with Paul to say I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ This is the onely gate to eternall life This is that over which He the first fruits of the dead hath triumphed we therefore hear the Apostle to contemn his sting For our healths sake wee take poyson in potions and what soever else is loathsome to nature what should we not undergo to enjoy a perpetuall and unchangeable health Valiantly then valiantly let us endure both death and the losse of our friends Christians have no colour for mourning unlesse that wee mourne for our selves who have lost yea rather who have but sent them before us And how foule and mis-becomming is this very sorrow Who is he that is so much a selfe-seeker and so envious of his friends happinesse as to call back them who are blessed to take part with him in misery If you would do any thing for your sons sake if there be any respect to bee had to his ghost do what you think hee would have you doe if hee hath any care at all of humane affaires Surely hee would take it ill you should bee afflicted for his sake who being plac'd above the mockeries of fortune looks down from aloft on the businesse of mortals Him wondring at his glorious house of Rest Heaven holds for ever no more now opprest With publique nor with private sorrow he From hopes and fears from sin and pain is free Who fil'd with true light smiles at mists below And that but empty names of things we know And thus much indeed I have said in generall There are also very many other reasons you may suggest unto your selfe in private See Sulpitius writing to Tully Thinke in what manner hitherto fortune hath dealt with us that those things are taken away from us which ought unto men to be no less dear then children Adde but this one evil and how can griefe bee raised higher or what mind exercis'd in these calamities ought not to grow insensible and to esteem more lightly of all things So many miseries are lost if we Are not by suffering hardned nor to be Wretched yet learn Hence also comes reliefe 'Tis good to have been familiar with griefe An Epitaph ON Mrs DUDLEY HERRIS WHose Mind was than her face more fair Though both were good her Fathers heir And for which men should choose a wife Of a devout and harmelesse life A Virgin hath us left in woe The Lamb where-ever he shall go To follow let us then no more Say she is lost but gone before