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The Praise of Folly 25 give up themselves to be govern’d by me, they should never know what it were to be old, but solace themselves with a perpetual youth. Do but observe our grim Philosophers that are perpetually beating their brains on knotty Subjects, and for the most part you’ll find ’em grown old before they are scarce young. And whence is it, but that their continual and restless thoughts insensibly prey upon their spirits, and dry up their Radical Moisture? Whereas, on the contrary, my fat fools are as plump and round as a Westphalian Hogg, and never sensible of old age, unless perhaps, as sometimes it rarely happens, they come to be infected with Wisdom ; so hard a thing it is for a man to be happy in all things. And to this purpose is that no small testimony of the Proverb, that sayes, ‘ Folly is the onely thing that keeps Youth at a stay, and Old age afar off ;’ as it is verifi’d in the Brabanders, of whom there goes this common saying, “That Age, which is wont to render other Men wiser, makes them the greater Fools.’ And yet there is scarce any Nation of a more jocund converse, or that is less sensible of the misery of Old age, than they are. And to these, as in
