FIRST EPISTLE OF PASTOR GRIBIUS 95 
Yet ’tis our duty to submit to the wise dispensations of 
God, Whom we wrongfully defraud of His rights unless 
we humbly suffer each one of ours to live and die according 
to His will. 
The notion possessed our good old man that he lay 
a-dying of a distemper of his diaphragm, though in fact 
‘twas of his lungs; and their gradual obstruction, turning 
slowly into a suppuration, reached such a pitch that he 
cast up purulent sputa and died when the lung had 
festered, on the sixth day after he took to his bed.’ So 
at least say our Physicians, who are highly skilled in 
such matters: for my part, I know nought of diseases; a 
cobbler should stick to his lasts.’ 
A little cabinet, furnished with some most select 
glasses (commonly called Mcxpocxoma*), to be given after 
his death to the Royal Society, will be sent to you within 
six or seven weeks by his daughter, as she hath informed 
me. 
Amongst us he has left a reputation truly good, and 
enshrined in the Temple of Memory, by virtue of his 
indefatigable inquiries into Nature. To you, most noble 
Sir, who hold an honorable office, and one worthy of 
your deserts, I wish many a long year of life, that for the 
mortal may escape nor avoid” (translation of Lang, Leaf, and Myers). The 
last word of the quotation is given wrongly by Gribius: it should be 
imanrvéat. (Cf. Ilias ed. Doederlein, Lips.-Lond. 1863.) 
’ Ag the foregoing lines constitute the only known record of the cause of 
L.’s death, the reader will doubtless desire to see the original words. The 
MS. says: Bonwm senem tenwit opinio se moriturum diaphragmatis vitio, 
sed pulmonum fuit, eorumque lenta obstructio sensim in suppurationem 
vergens, adeo ut phlegmata purulenta ejecerit, et suppurato pulmone obierit, 
seato postquam decubuit die. It is clear that L. died of broncho-pneumonia: 
and there is much evidence (largely unpublished) in his later letters to show 
that he had suffered for many years from chronic bronchitis. 
= ne sutor ultra crepidas MS. This familiar proverb occurs in several 
forms, and according to Pliny originated in a saying of the painter Apelles. 
Pliny’s version is © e supra crepidam sutor judicaret”’ (Hist. Nat. XXXV, 
[10]36. Fol. Genevae [1582] p. 629). 
* = Microscopes. To write the word thus in Greek—even at that date— 
was a ridiculous bit of pedantry. 
