Enquire after any one who hath been at Fez; and learne what
you can of the present state of that place, which hath been so famous
in the description of Leo and others. The mercifull providence of God
go with you. _Impellant animae lintea Thraciae_.
TO HIS SON EDWARD
_Centenarians_
15 _Dec_. [1679.]
DEARE SONNE,
Some thinck that great age superannuates persons from the vse of
physicall meanes, or that at a hundred yeares of age 'tis either a
folly or a shame to vse meanes to liue longer, and yet I haue knowne
many send to mee for their seuerall troubles at a hundred yeares of
age, and this day a poore woeman being a hundred and three yeares
and a weeke old sent to mee to giue her some ease of the colick. The
_macrobii_ and long liuers which I haue knowne heere haue been of
the meaner and poorer sort of people. Tho. Parrot was butt a meane or
rather poore man. Your brother Thomas gaue two pence a weeke to John
More, a scauenger, who dyed in the hundred and second yeare of his
life; and 'twas taken the more notice of that the father of Sir John
Shawe, who marryed my Lady Killmorey, and liueth in London, I say that
his father, who had been a vintner, liued a hundred and two yeares, or
neere it, and dyed about a yeere agoe. God send us to number our dayes
and fitt ourselves for a better world.
JOHN MILTON
1608-1674
TO A CAMBRIDGE FRIEND
_The choice of a profession_
[1631-2.]
SIR,
Besides that in sundry other respects I must acknowledge me to profit
by you whenever we meet, you are often to me, and were yesterday
especially, as a good watchman to admonish that the hours of the night
pass on (for so I call my life, as yet obscure and unserviceable to
mankind), and that the day with me is at hand, wherein Christ commands
all to labour, while there is light.
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