Page:Essays - Abraham Cowley (1886).djvu/52

 letters, instead of being wearied with the length of any day, we shall only complain of the shortness of our whole life.
 * O vita, stulto longa, sapienti brevis!

O life, long to the fool, short to the wise! The First Minister of State has not so much business in public as a wise man has in private; if the one have little leisure to be alone, the other has less leisure to be in company; the one has but part of the affairs of one nation, the other all the works of God and nature under his consideration. There is no saying shocks me so much as that which I hear very often, "That a man does not know how to pass his time." It would have been but ill spoken by Methusalem in the nine hundred and sixty-ninth year of his life, so far it is from us, who have not time enough to attain to the utmost perfection of any part of any science, to have cause to complain that we are forced to be idle for want of work. But this you will say is work only for the learned, others are not capable either of the