+ Hector's fame outlasting above two lives of Methuselah
before that famous prince was extant.
futurity, are naturally constituted unto thoughts of the
next world, and cannot excusably decline the considera-
tion of that duration, which maketh pyramids pillars
of snow, and all that's past a moment.
Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and
the mortal right-lined circle* must conclude and shut
up all. There is no antidote against the opium of time,
which temporally considereth all things: our fathers
find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell
us how we may be buried in our survivors. Grave-
stones tell truth scarce forty years. Generations pass
while some trees stand, and old families last not three
oaks. To be read by bare inscriptions like many in
Gruter, to hope for eternity by enigmatical epithets or
first letters of our names, to be studied by antiquaries,
who we were, and have new names given us like many
of the mummies, are cold consolations unto the students
of perpetuity, even by everlasting languages.
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