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THE SECOND BOOKE 417
My health is blith and lustie, though well-stroken in
age, seldome troubled with diseases: Such I was, for
I am now engaged in the approaches of age, having
long since past over forty yeares.
minutatim vires et robur adultum
Frangit, et in pattern pejorem liquitur cetas. 1
By little and a little age breakes strength,
To worse and worse declining melts at length.
What hereafter I shall be will be but half a being.
I shall be no more my selfe. I daily escape, and still
eteale my selfe from my selfe :
Singula de nobis anni prcedantur euntes. 9
Yeares as they passe away,
Of all our things make prey.
Of addressing, dexteritie, and disposition, I never
had any, yet am I the son of a well disposed father,
and of so blithe and merry a disposition, that it continued
with him even to his extreamest age. He
seldome found any man of his condition, and that
could match him in all exercises of the body; as I
have found few that have not out-gone me, except it
were in running, wherein I was of the middle sort.
As for musicke, were it either in voice, which I have
most harsh, and very unapt, or in instruments, I
could never be taught any part of it. As for dancing,
playing at tennis, or wrestling, I could never attaine
to any indifferent sufficiencie, but none at all in swimming,
in fencing, in vaulting, or in leaping. My
hands are so stiffe and nummie, that I can hardly
write for my selfe, so that what I have once scribled,
I had rather frame it a new than take the paines to
correct it; and I reade but little better. 1 perceive
how the auditorie censureth me; otherwise I am no
bad clarke. I cannot very wel close up a letter, nor
could 1 ever make a pen. 1 was never good carver at
the table. 1 could never make readie nor arme a
1 LUCR, 1. ii. 1140. ² HOR. 1. ii. Epist, ii. 55.
II. 2 E