rb, _Soon ripe, soon
rotten?_ And farther, who would keep company or have any thing to do
with such an old blade, as, after the wear and harrowing of so many
years should yet continue of as clear a head and sound a judgment as
he had at any time been in his middle-age; and therefore it is great
kindness of me that old men grow fools, since it is hereby only that
they are freed from such vexations as would torment them if they were
more wise: they can drink briskly, bear up stoutly, and lightly pass
over such infirmities, as a far stronger constitution could scarce
master. Sometime, with the old fellow in Plautus, they are brought back
to their horn-book again, to learn to spell their fortune in love.

[Illustration: 075]

Most wretched would they needs be if they had but wit enough to be
sensible of their hard condition; but by my assistance, they carry
off all well, and to their respective friends approve themselves good,
sociable, jolly companions. Thus Homer makes aged Nestor famed for
a smooth oily-tongued orator, while the delivery of Achilles was but
rough, harsh, and hesitant; and the same poet elsewhere tells us of old
men that sate on the walls, and spake with a great deal of flourish and
elegance. And in this point indeed they surpass and outgo children, who
are pretty forward in a softly, innocent prattle, but otherwise are too
much tongue-tied, and want the other's most acceptable embellishment of
a perpetual talkativeness. Add to this, that old men love to be playing
with children, and children delight as much in them, to verify the
proverb, that _Birds of a feather flock together_. And indeed what
difference can be discerned between them, but that the one is more
furrowed with wrinkles, and has seen a little more of the world than
the other? For otherwise their whitish hair, their want of teeth,
their smallness of stature, their milk diet, their bald crowns, their
prattling, their playing, their short memory, their heedlessness, and
all their other endowments, exactly agree; and the more they advance
in years, the nearer they come back to their cradle, till like children
indeed, at last they depart the world, without any remorse at the loss
of life, or sense of the pangs of death.

[Illustration: 079]

And now let any one compare the excellency of my metamorphosing power
to that which Ovid attributes to the gods; their strange feats in some
drunken passions we will omit for their credit sake, and insta