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And it should seem, also, that Fortune sometimes lies in wait to surprise the last hour of our lives, to show the power she has, in a moment, to overthrow what she was so many years in building, making us cry out with Laberius: "Nimirum hac die Una plus vixi mihi, quam vivendum fuit."
Ego bis tricenis actis annis sine nota, Eques Romanus e lare egressus meo, Domum revertormimus ni mirum hoc die Uno plus vixi mihi quam vivendum fuit. * Porro, Quirites, libertatem perdimus." In these noble lines we see the native eloquence of a free spirit. But the poet's wrathful muse roused itself in vain.
But, mon cher, we are falling upon very gloomy topics. Laissez-moi tranquille in my illusions, if illusions they be. Ah, you cannot conceive what a new life opens to the man who, like myself, has passed the dawn of his youth in privation and fear, when he suddenly acquires competence and hope. If it lasts only a year, it will be something to say 'Vixi."
I was for some time a consistent Barbizonian; ET EGO IN ARCADIA VIXI, it was a pleasant season; and that noiseless hamlet lying close among the borders of the wood is for me, as for so many others, a green spot in memory. The great Millet was just dead, the green shutters of his modest house were closed; his daughters were in mourning.
How true are these words when applied to himself! and how much I thank him that it was so! All my childhood is a golden age to me. I have no recollection of bad weather. Except one or two storms where grandeur had impressed itself on my mind, the whole time seems steeped in sunshine. "Et ego in Arcadia vixi" would be no empty boast upon my grave.
The longest of my designs is not of above a year's extent; I think of nothing now but ending; rid myself of all new hopes and enterprises; take my last leave of every place I depart from, and every day dispossess myself of what I have. "Olim jam nec perit quicquam mihi, nec acquiritur.... plus superest viatici quam viae." Seneca, Ep., 77. "Vixi, et, quem dederat cursum fortuna, peregi."
The old gables fronting upon Holborn pleased his fancy; he liked to pass under the time-worn archway, and so, at a step, estrange himself from commercial tumult, to be in the midst of modern life, yet breathe an atmosphere of ancient repose. He belonged to an informal club of young men who called themselves, facetiously, the Hodiernals. Vixi hodie!
De Quincey's humorous account of the lecturer's shiftless untidy life at the Courier office, and even the Rabelaisian quip which Charles Lamb throws at it in the above-quoted letter to Manning, are sufficient indications of his state at this time. "Oh, Charles," he writes to Lamb, early in February, just before the course of lectures was to begin, "I am very, very ill. Vixi."
"Vixi puellis nuper idoneus, Et militavi non sine gloria; Nunc arma defunctumque bello Barbiton hic paries habebit." "I've lived about the covert side, I've ridden straight, and ridden fast; Now breeches, boots, and scarlet pride Are but mementoes of the past."
There is a limit one finds it by experience, Beetle beyond which it is never safe to pursue private vendettas, because don't move sooner or later one comes into collision with the higher authority, who has studied the animal. Et ego McTurk, please in Arcadia vixi. There's a certain flagrant injustice about this that ought to appeal to your temperament. And that's all!