The academie of eloquence containing a compleat English rhetorique, exemplified with common-places and formes digested into an easie and methodical way to speak and write fluently according to the mode of the present times : together with letters both amorous and moral upon emergent occasions / by Tho. Blount, Gent.

Youth.

I Have throughly sifted the disposition of youth, wherein I have found more bran then meale, more dough then leven, more rage then reason. Eup.

Wine, Love, Play, Rashness were the Chariot which drew his youth to downfall.

—Constrained to obey the transport of youth∣full fancies.

Let me call to mind all the violent pleasures of my heady youth: let me sum up their extent, ac∣cording to those deceitfull measures I then rated happiness by: let me in my fancy chew over a∣gain the excessive good I then fondly imagined in them: And to all this let me add as much more joy and felicity, as, in my weak thoughts I am able to fadom, or but aim at; and then let me say, (and with rigorous truth I shall say it) all this ex∣cess of bliss will be resumed, will be enjoyed to the full in one indivisible moment, of that bliss, which a well passed life in this world, shall bring me to in the next. Sir K.D. in his Treatise of Bodies.

— So as vvhosoever he be, to vvhom Fortune hath been a servant, and the time a friend, let him but take the account of his memory (for wee have no other keeper of our pleasures past) and truly examine vvhat it hath reserved either of beauty or youth, or fore gone delights; vvhat it hath sa∣ved, that it might last, of his dearest affection, or

of vvhat-ever else the amorous spring-time gave his thoughts of contentment, then unvaluable; and he shall find that all the Art, which his elder years have, can draw no other vapours out of these dissolutions, then heavy, secret, and sad sighs.

He shal find nothing remaining but those sorrows vvhich grow up after our fast-springing youth, overtake it, vvhen it is at a stand, and overtop it utterly, vvhen it begins to wither, &c. S. Walt. Rawl. in Preface.

The harvest of his sins yeelded him now more increase of vvoes, then the lusts of his youth affor∣ded him pleasures.