Though the
uncertainty of the end of this world hath confounded
all human predictions; yet they who shall live to see
the sun and moon darkened, and the stars to fall from
heaven, will hardly be deceived in the advent of the
last day; and therefore strange it is, that the common
fallacy of consumptive persons who feel not themselves
dying, and therefore still hope to live, should also reach
their friends in perfect health and judgment;--that you
should be so little acquainted with Plautus's sick com-
plexion, or that almost an Hippocratical face should
not alarum you to higher fears, or rather despair, of
his continuation in such an emaciated state, wherein
medical predictions fail not, as sometimes in acute dis-
eases, and wherein 'tis as dangerous to be sentenced by
a physician as a judge.
Upon my first visit I was bold to tell them who had
not let fall all hopes of his recovery, that in my sad
opinion he was not like to behold a grasshopper,<1> much
less to pluck another fig; and in no long time after
seemed to discover that odd mortal symptom in him
not mentioned by Hippocrates, that is, to lose his own
face, and look like some of his near relations; for he
maintained not his proper countenance, but looked like
his uncle, the lines of whose face lay deep and invisible
in his healthful visage before: for as from our begin-
ning we run through variety of looks, before we come
to consistent and settled faces; so before our end, by
sick and languishing alterations, we put on new visages:
and in our retreat to earth, may fall upon such looks
which from community of seminal originals were before
latent in us.
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