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If we would resolve on any certain course by reason, we should pitch upon the best, but nobody has thought on't: "Quod petit, spernit; repetit, quod nuper omisit; AEstuat, et vitae disconvenit ordine toto." He fluctuates, and is inconsistent in the whole order of life." Horace, Ep., i.
Crest, on a wreath, Or and Azure, a dragon's head erased Or, vomiting fire. On a label under the arms these mottos: "Dux vitae ratio." Sir Richard Fanshawe was buried with much pomp; and a full account of the ceremony occurs in his funeral certificate in the College of Arms.
In a chapter of the book he tells how, crowned with laurel, lest lightning might strike him, he had sat, as Tiberius, in a garden at Capri, reading the shameful books of Elephantis, while dwarfs and peacocks strutted round him and the flute-player mocked the swinger of the censer; and, as Caligula, had caroused with the green-shirted jockeys in their stables, and supped in an ivory manger with a jewel-frontleted horse; and, as Domitian, had wandered through a corridor lined with marble mirrors, looking round with haggard eyes for the reflection of the dagger that was to end his days, and sick with that ennui, that taedium vitae, that comes on those to whom life denies nothing; and had peered through a clear emerald at the red shambles of the Circus, and then, in a litter of pearl and purple drawn by silver-shod mules, been carried through the Street of Pomegranates to a House of Gold, and heard men cry on Nero Caesar as he passed by; and, as Elagabalus, had painted his face with colors, and plied the distaff among the women, and brought the Moon from Carthage, and given her in mystic marriage to the Sun.
In December he lay down, and, after a long and painful illness, breathed his last at five o'clock in the afternoon of January 14, 1874. In his CURRICULUM VITAE he wrote these words: 'As I look back upon my life I call indeed say with the Holy Scriptures that it has been "labour and sorrow."
Up by break of day, and then to my vials a while, and so to Sir W. Warren's by agreement, and after talking and eating something with him, he and I down by water to Woolwich, and there I did several businesses, and had good discourse, and thence walked to Greenwich; in my way a little boy overtook us with a fine cupp turned out of Lignum Vitae, which the poor child confessed was made in the King's yard by his father, a turner there, and that he do often do it, and that I might have one, and God knows what, which I shall examine.
Its adherents appear to have imbibed their notions from the Arabians, and claimed the possession of the philosopher's stone, the art of transmuting metals, and the elixir vitae. But that for which they principally excited public attention, was their creed respecting certain elementary beings, which to grosser eyes are invisible, but were familiarly known to the initiated.
Against this tedium vitae, however, I am fortunately mounted on a hobby, which, indeed, I should have better managed some thirty or forty years ago; but whose easy amble is still sufficient to give exercise and amusement to an octogenary rider. This is the establishment of a University."
Who so integer vitae scelerisque purus, it was asked, as Mr Pontifex of Battersby? Who so fit to be consulted if any difficulty about parish management should arise? Who such a happy mixture of the sincere uninquiring Christian and of the man of the world? For so people actually called him. They said he was such an admirable man of business.
The first has led many to imagine that they might find means to avoid death, or, failing in this, that they might, nevertheless, so prolong existence as to reckon it by centuries instead of units. From this sprang the search, so long continued and still pursued, for the elixir vitae, or water of life, which has led thousands to pretend to it and millions to believe in it.
This story opens on a glorious day about the middle of July; and Weymouth, with its charming bay, was looking its very best. A gentle southerly breeze was blowing; the air was clear just warm enough to render a dip in the sea the quintessence of luxury and so laden with ozone and the wholesome scent of the sea that to breathe it was like imbibing a draught of elixir vitae.
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