OF OBSCURITY.
Nam neque divitibus contingunt gaudia solis,
Nec vixit male, qui natus moriensque fefellit.
God made not pleasures only for the rich,
Nor have those men without their share too lived,
Who both in life and death the world deceived.
This seems a strange sentence thus literally translated, and looks
as if it were in vindication of the men of business (for who else
can deceive the world?) whereas it is in commendation of those who
live and die so obscurely, that the world takes no notice of them.
This Horace calls deceiving the world, and in another place uses the
same phrase.
Secretum iter et fallentis semita vitae.
The secret tracks of the deceiving life.
It is very elegant in Latin, but our English word will hardly bear
up to that sense, and therefore Mr. Broome translates it very well:
Or from a life, led as it were by stealth.
Yet we say in our language, a thing deceives our sight, when it
passes before us unperceived, and we may say well enough out of the
same author:
Sometimes with sleep, sometimes with wine we strive
The cares of life and troubles to deceive.
But that is not to deceive the world, but to deceive ourselves, as
Quintilian says, Vitam fallere, To draw on still, and amuse, and
deceive our life, till it be advanced insensibly to the fatal
period, and fall into that pit which Nature hath prepared for it.
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