Of the different faces shown by the same objects,
as they are viewed on opposite sides, and of the
different inclinations which they must constantly raise
in him that contemplates them, a more striking example
cannot easily be found than two Greek epigrammatists
will afford us in their accounts of
human life, which I shall lay before the reader in
English prose.
Posidippus, a comick poet, utters this complaint:
"Through which of the paths of life is it eligible to
pass? In public assemblies are debates and troublesome
affairs: domestick privacies are haunted with
anxieties; in the country is labour; on the sea is
terrour: in a foreign land, he that has money must
live in fear, he that wants it must pine in distress:
are you married? you are troubled with suspicions;
are you single? you languish in solitude; children
occasion toil, and a childless life is a state of
destitution: the time of youth is a time of folly, and
gray hairs are loaded with infirmity. This choice
only, therefore, can be made, either never to receive
being, or immediately to lose it[o]."
[o] "Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,
"Count o'er thy days from anguish free,
"And know, whatever thou hast been,
" 'Tis something better not to be.
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