To mourn without measure is folly, and not to mourn at all is insensibility. The best temper is betwixt piety and reason; to be sensible, but neither transported nor cast down. He that can put a stop to his tears and pleasures when he will is safe. It is an equal infelicity to be either too soft or too hard: we are overcome by the one, and put to struggle with the other. There is a certain intemperance in that sorrow that passes the rules of modesty; and yet great piety is, in many cases, a dispensation to good manners. The loss of a son or of a friend, cuts a man to the heart, and there is no opposing the first violence of his passion; but when a man comes once to deliver himself wholly up to lamentations, he is to understand, that though some tears deserve compassion, others are yet ridiculous. A grief that is fresh finds pity and comfort, but when it is inveterate it is laughed at, for it is either counterfeit or foolish. Beside that, to weep excessively for the dead is an affront to the living. The most justifiable cause of mourning is to see good men come to ill ends, and virtue oppressed by the iniquity of Fortune. But in this case, too, they either suffer resolutely, and yield us delight in their courage and example, or meanly, and so give us the less trouble for the loss. He that dies cheerfully, dries up my tears; and he that dies whiningly, does not deserve them. I would bear the death of friends and children with the same constancy that I would expect my own, and no more lament the one than fear the other. He that bethinks himself, how often friends have been parted, will find more time lost among the living, than upon the dead; and the most desperate mourners are they that cared least for their friends when they were living; for they think to redeem their credits, for want of kindness to the living, by extravagant ravings after the dead.