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 employments or the
divertisements that arise from letters. I know they are not, and
therefore cannot much recommend solitude to a man totally
illiterate. But if any man be so unlearned as to want entertainment
of the little intervals of accidental solitude, which frequently
occur in almost all conditions (except the very meanest of the
people, who have business enough in the necessary provisions for
life), it is truly a great shame both to his parents and himself;
for a very small portion of any ingenious art will stop up all those
gaps of our time, either music, or painting, or designing, or
chemistry, or history, or gardening, or twenty other things, will do
it usefully and pleasantly; and if he happen to set his affections
upon poetry (which I do not advise him too immoderately) that will
overdo it; no wood will be thick enough to hide him from the
importunities of company or business, which would abstract him from
his beloved.
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