Beneficia.—­Nothing is a courtesy unless it be meant us; and that friendly and lovingly.  We owe no thanks to rivers, that they carry our boats; or winds, that they be favouring and fill our sails; or meats, that they be nourishing.  For these are what they are necessarily.  Horses carry us, trees shade us, but they know it not.  It is true, some men may receive a courtesy and not know it; but never any man received it from him that knew it not.  Many men have been cured of diseases by accidents; but they were not remedies.  I myself have known one helped of an ague by falling into a water; another whipped out of a fever; but no man would ever use these for medicines.  It is the mind, and not the event, that distinguisheth the courtesy from wrong.  My adversary may offend the judge with his pride and impertinences, and I win my cause; but he meant it not to me as a courtesy.  I scaped pirates by being shipwrecked; was the wreck a benefit therefore?  No; the doing of courtesies aright is the mixing of the respects for his own sake and for mine.  He that doeth them merely for his own sake is like one that feeds his cattle to sell them; he hath his horse well dressed for Smithfield.

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 go into council for every word, must needs fix somewhat, and make it their own at last, though but through their own vexation.