steal away from myself:

"Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes."

["Of the fleeting years each steals something from me."
--Horace, Ep., ii. 2.]

Agility and address I never had, and yet am the son of a very active and
sprightly father, who continued to be so to an extreme old age. I have
scarce known any man of his condition, his equal in all bodily exercises,
as I have seldom met with any who have not excelled me, except in
running, at which I was pretty good. In music or singing, for which I
have a very unfit voice, or to play on any sort of instrument, they could
never teach me anything. In dancing, tennis, or wrestling, I could never
arrive to more than an ordinary pitch; in swimming, fencing, vaulting,
and leaping, to none at all. My hands are so clumsy that I cannot even
write so as to read it myself, so that I had rather do what I have
scribbled over again, than take upon me the trouble to make it out. I do
not read much better than I write, and feel that I weary my auditors
otherwise (I am) not a bad clerk. I cannot decently fold up a letter,
nor could ever make a pen, or carve at table worth a pin, nor saddle a
horse, nor carry a hawk and fly her, nor hunt the dogs, nor lure a hawk,
nor speak to a horse. In fine, my bodily qualities are very well suited
to those of my soul; there is nothing sprightly, only a full and firm
vigour: I am patient enough of labour and pains, but it is only when I go
voluntary to work, and only so long as my own desire prompts me to it:

"Molliter austerum studio fallente laborem."

["Study softly beguiling severe labour."
--Horace, Sat., ii. 2, 12.]

otherwise, if I am not allured with some pleasure, or have other guide
than my own pure and free inclination, I am good for nothing: for I am of
a humour that, life and health excepted, there is nothing for which I
will bite my nails, and that I will purchase at the price of torment of
mind and constraint:

"Tanti mihi non sit opaci
Omnis arena Tagi, quodque in mare volvitur aurum."

["I would not buy rich Tagus sands so dear, nor all the gold that
lies in the sea."--Juvenal, Sat., iii. 54.]

Extremely idle, extremely given up to my own inclination both by nature
and art, I would as willingly lend a man my blood as my pains. I have a
soul free and entirely its own, and accustomed to guide itself after its
o