properly and
naturally in its season, but in the age next to childhood,

"Quem si puellarum insereres choro,
Mille sagaces falleret hospites,
Discrimen obscurum, solutis
Crinibus ambiguoque vultu:"

["Whom if thou shouldst place in a company of girls, it would
require a thousand experts to distinguish him, with his loose locks
and ambiguous countenance."--Horace, Od., ii. 5, 21.]

nor beauty neither; for whereas Homer extends it so far as to the budding
of the beard, Plato himself has remarked this as rare: and the reason why
the sophist Bion so pleasantly called the first appearing hairs of
adolescence 'Aristogitons' and 'Harmodiuses'--[Plutarch, On Love, c.34.]--
is sufficiently known. I find it in virility already in some sort a
little out of date, though not so much as in old age;

"Importunus enim transvolat aridas
Quercus."

["For it uncivilly passes over withered oaks."
--Horace, Od., iv. 13, 9.]

and Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, like a woman, very far extends the
advantage of women, ordaining that it is time, at thirty years old, to
convert the title of fair into that of good. The shorter authority we
give to love over our lives, 'tis so much the better for us. Do but
observe his port; 'tis a beardless boy. Who knows not how, in his school
they proceed contrary to all order; study, exercise, and usage are their
ways for insufficiency there novices rule:

"Amor ordinem nescit."

["Love ignores rules." (Or:) "Love knows no rule."
--St. Jerome, Letter to Chyomatius.]

Doubtless his conduct is much more graceful when mixed with inadvertency
and trouble; miscarriages and ill successes give him point and grace;
provided it be sharp and eager, 'tis no great matter whether it be
prudent or no: do but observe how he goes reeling, tripping, and playing:
you put him in the stocks when you guide him by art and wisdom; and he is
restrained of his divine liberty when put into those hairy and callous
clutches.

As to the rest, I often hear the women set out this intelligence as
entirely spiritual, and disdain to put the interest the senses there have
into consideration; everything there serves; but I can say that I have
often seen that we have excused the weakness of their understandings in
favour of the