Sociable Letters 229 



summer, when summer came, you would wish for 

 autumn, and in the autumn you would wish for 

 winter, a cold wish ; nay every day, every hour, every 

 minute, you thought tedious and long. Indeed time 

 runs so fast upon youth, as it doth oppress youth, 

 which makes youth desire to cast it by; and though 

 the motion of time is swift, yet the desire of youth is 

 swifter, and the motions of thoughts are so far beyond 

 the motions of time, as the motion of time is beyond 

 the motion of Nature's architecture; so as youth, 

 through its sharp, greedy, hungry appetite, devours 

 time, like as a cormorant doth fish. For as he never 

 stayes to chew, but swallows down whole fishes, so 

 youth swallows, as it were, whole dayes, weeks, 

 months, years, untill they surfeit with practice, or are 

 fully satisfied with experience. The same reason 

 makes youth weary of every place or company, for 

 they are not satisfied, because they have not had 

 enough variety of knowledge. They know not the 

 right use of time, the unprofitable use of vanity, the 

 restless motions of variety, nor know they the deceits, 

 abuses, and treacheries of their own kind, as man- 

 kind, neither do they know their own natures and 

 dispositions ; they know not what to choose, nor what 

 to leave, what to seek, nor what to shun; neither 

 have they felt the heavy burdens of cares, nor oppres- 

 sions of sorrows for losses and crosses ; they have not 

 been pinched with necessity, nor pained with long 

 sicknesses, nor stung with remorse; they have not 

 been terrified with bloody wars, nor forsaken of natural 

 friends, nor betrayed by feigned friendships; they 

 have not been robbed of all their maintenance, nor 

 been banished their countrey. Thus being tenderly 

 young, they are oppresst with the quick repetitions 

 of time, and their senses being sharp, and their 



