Axiochus

lament the miseries of man's life. I will now only, in place of many, recite the witness of one who is most worthy of memory, which saith thus:

How wretched a thread of life have the gods spun,
To mortal men that in this race of life do run.

Of all that in the earth are ordained by nature,
Than man, is not to be found
a more wretched creature.

But of Amphiaraus a legendary Greek seer, what saith the poet?

Him loved highest Jupiter and Apollo dear,
yet could he not reach to his eldest year.

What thinkest thou of him

that taught the child to cry:
When first the Sun's bright day,
he seeth with tender eye.

But I will let them pass, lest contrary to my promise, I seem to discourse at large, and that in the alleging of foreign witnesses. What trade of life, I pray you, is there, or what occupation, of which you shall not find many that complain and greatly mislike their present affairs? Let us overrun the companies of artificers and craftsmen, who continually labour from night to night, and yet are hardly able to find the necessaries to live, bewailing their bare estate and filling their night-watchings with