I scaped pirates by being shipwrecked; was the
wreck a benefit therefore? No; the doing of courtesies aright is
the mixing of the respects for his own sake and for mine. He that
doeth them merely for his own sake is like one that feeds his cattle
to sell them; he hath his horse well dressed for Smithfield.
Valor rerum.--The price of many things is far above what they are
bought and sold for. Life and health, which are both inestimable,
we have of the physician; as learning and knowledge, the true
tillage of the mind, from our schoolmasters. But the fees of the
one or the salary of the other never answer the value of what we
received, but served to gratify their labours.
Memoria.--Memory, of all the powers of the mind, is the most
delicate and frail; it is the first of our faculties that age
invades. Seneca, the father, the rhetorician, confesseth of himself
he had a miraculous one, not only to receive but to hold. I myself
could, in my youth, have repeated all that ever I had made, and so
continued till I was past forty; since, it is much decayed in me.
Yet I can repeat whole books that I have read, and poems of some
selected friends which I have liked to charge my memory with.
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