* "Cum mors venerit, in medio Tibure Sardinia est." + In the king's forests they set the figure of a broad arrow upon trees that are to be cut down. # Bellonius de Avibus.
the eyelids. With what strife and pains we came into the world we know not; but 'tis commonly no easy matter to get out of it: yet if it could be made out, that such who have easy nativities have commonly hard deaths, and contrarily; his departure was so easy, that we might justly suspect his birth was of another nature, and that some Juno sat cross-legged at his nativity.
Besides his soft death, the incurable state of his disease might somewhat extenuate your sorrow, who know that monsters but seldom happen, miracles more rarely in physick.* Angelus Victorius gives a serious account of a consumptive, hectical, phthisical woman, who was suddenly cured by the intercession of Ignatius. We read not of any in Scripture who in this case applied unto our Saviour, though some may be contained in that large expression, that he went about Galilee healing all manner of sickness and all manner of diseases.+ Amulets, spells, sigils, and incantations, practised in other diseases, are seldom pretended in this; and we find no sigil in the Archidoxis of Paracelsus to cure an extreme consumption or marasmus, which, if other diseases fail, will put a period unto long livers, and at last makes dust of all. And therefore the Stoics could not but think that the fiery principle would wear out all the rest, and at last make an end of the world, which notwithstanding without such a lingering period the Creator may effect at his pleasure: and to make an end of all things on earth, and our planetical system of the world, he need but put out the sun.
I was not so curious to entitle the stars unto any concern of his death, yet could not but take notice that
* "Monstra contingunt in medicina." Hippoc.--"Strange and rare escapes there happen sometimes in physick." + Matt. iv. 23.
he died when the moon was in motion from the meri- dian; at which time an old Italian long ago would per- suade me that the greatest part of men died: but herein I confess I could never satisfy my curiosity; although from the time of tides in places upon or near the sea, there may be considerable deductions; and Pliny* hath an odd and remarkable passage concerning the death of men and animals upon the recess or ebb of the sea. However, certain it is, he died in the dead and deep part of the night, when Nox might be most apprehen- sibly said to be the daughter of Chaos, the mother of sleep and death, according to old genealogy; and so went out of this world about that hour when our blessed Saviour entered it, and about what time many conceive he will return again unto it. Cardan<3> hath a peculiar and no hard observation from a man's hand to know whether he was born in the day or night, which I con- fess holdeth in my own. And Scaliger<4> to that purpose hath another from the tip of the ear:+ most men are begotten in the night, animals in the day; but whether more persons have been born in the night or day, were a curiosity undecidable, though more have perished by violent deaths in the day; yet in natural dissolutions both times may hold an indifferency, at least but con- tingent inequality. The whole course of time runs out in the nativity and death of things; which whether they happen by succession or coincidence, are best com- puted by the natural, not artificial day.
* "Aristoteles nullum animal nisi aestu recedente expirare affirmat; observatum id multum in Gallico Oceano et duntaxat in homine compertum," lib. 2, cap. 101.
+ "Auris pars pendula lobus dicitur, non omnibus ea pars, est auribus; non enim iis qui noctu sunt, sed qui interdiu, maxima ex parte."--Com. in Aristot. de Animal. lib. 1.
(Editor：bird)