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. It
was wont to be faithful to me; but shaken with age now, and sloth,
which weakens the strongest abilities, it may perform somewhat, but
cannot promise much. By exercise it is to be made better and
serviceable. Whatsoever I pawned with it while I was young and a
boy, it offers me readily, and without stops; but what I trust to it
now, or have done of later years, it lays up more negligently, and
oftentimes loses; so that I receive mine own (though frequently
called for) as if it were new and borrowed. Nor do I always find
presently from it what I seek; but while I am doing another thing,
that I laboured for will come; and what I sought with trouble will
offer itself when I am quiet. Now, in some men I have found it as
happy as Nature, who, whatsoever they read or pen, they can say
without book presently, as if they did then write in their mind.
And it is more a wonder in such as have a swift style, for their
memories are commonly slowest; such as torture their writings, and