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The Praise of Folly 21 world with them, that they might the more pleasantly passe-over the toil of Education, and as it were flatter the care and diligence of their Nurses. And then for Youth, which is in such reputation everywhere, how do all men favour it, study to advance it and lend it their helping hand? And whence, I pray, all this Grace ? Whence but from me ? by whose kindness, as it understands as little as may be, it is also for that reason the higher priviledged from exceptions; and I am mistaken if, when it is grown up and by experience and discipline brought to savour something like Man, if in the same instant that beauty does not fade, it’s liveliness decay, it’s pleasantness grow flat, and it’s briskness fail. And by how much the further it runs from me, by so much the less it lives, till it comes to !the burthen of Old age, not onely hateful to others, but to it self also. Which also were altogether insupportable did not I pitty it’s condition, in being present with it, and, as the Poets’-gods were wont to assist such as were dying with some pleasant Metamorphwsis, help their decrepitness as much as 1 molesta senectus,
