14.  The French poet has shadowed this story in an allegory, of which he seems to have taken the hint from the fable of the three goddesses appearing to Paris, or rather from the vision of Hercules, recorded by Xenophon, where Pleasure and Virtue are represented as real persons making their court to the hero with all their several charms and allurements.

15. Health, Wealth, Victory and Honor are introduced successively in their proper emblems and characters, each of them spreading her temptations, and recommending herself to the young monarch’s choice. Wisdom enters last, and so captivates him with her appearance, that he gives himself up to her.  Upon which she informs him, that those who appeared before her were nothing but her equipage, and that since he had placed his heart upon Wisdom, Health, Wealth, Victory and Honor should always wait an her as her handmaids.

Directions how to spend our Time.

1.  We all of us complain of the shortness of time, saith Seneca, and yet have much more than we know what to do with.  Our lives, says he, are spent either in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do; we are always complaining our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.  That noble philosopher has described our inconsistency with ourselves in this particular, by all those various turns of expression and thought which are peculiar to his writings.

2.  I often consider mankind as wholly inconsistent with itself in a point that bears some affinity to the former.  Though we seem grieved at the shortness of life in general, we are wishing every period of it at an end.  The minor longs to be at age, then to be a man of business, then to make up an estate, then to arrive at honors, then to retire.  Thus, although the whole of life is allowed by every one to be short, the several divisions of it appear to be long and tedious.

3.  We are for lengthening our span in general, but would fain contract the parts of which it is composed.  The usurer would be very well satisfied to have all the time annihilated that lies between the present moment and next quarter day.  The politician would be contented to loose three years of his life, could he place things in the posture which he fancies they will stand in after such a revolution of time.

4.  The lover would be glad to strike out of his existence all the moments that are to pass away before the happy meeting.  Thus, as far as our time runs, we should be very glad in most parts of our lives, that it ran much faster than it does.  Several hours of the day hang upon our hands, nay, we wish away whole years; and travel through time as through a country filled with many wild and empty wastes which we would fain hurry over, that we may arrive at those several little settlements or imaginary points of rest, which are dispersed up and down in it.