"
One man says,--
"The world's a popular disease, that reigns
Within the froward heart and frantic brains
Of poor distempered mortals."
Another, that
"all the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players."
The world is a strange place for a playhouse to stand within it.
Old Drayton thought that a man that lived here, and would be a
poet, for instance, should have in him certain "brave,
translunary things," and a "fine madness" should possess his
brain. Certainly it were as well, that he might be up to the
occasion. That is a superfluous wonder, which Dr. Johnson
expresses at the assertion of Sir Thomas Browne that "his life
has been a miracle of thirty years, which to relate, were not
history but a piece of poetry, and would sound like a fable." The
wonder is, rather, that all men do not assert as much. That
would be a rare praise, if it were true, which was addressed to
Francis Beaumont,--"Spectators sate part in your tragedies."
Think what a mean and wretched place this world is; that half the
time we have to light a lamp that we may see to live in it.
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