l battles, and particularly that in which he fell. This Gantlett
was a game-cock, upon whose head the knight in his youth had won five
hundred pounds, and lost two thousand. This naturally set the major upon
the account of Edge Hill fight, and ended in a duel of Jack Ogle's.

Old Reptile was extremely attentive to all that was said, though it was
the same he had heard every night for these twenty years, and upon all
occasions, winked upon his nephew to mind what passed.

This may suffice to give the world a taste of our innocent conversation,
which we spun out till about ten of the clock, when my maid[86] came
with a lantern to light me home. I could not but reflect with myself as
I was going out upon the talkative humour of old men, and the little
figure which that part of life makes in one who cannot employ this
natural propensity in discourses which would make him venerable. I must
own, it makes me very melancholy in company, when I hear a young man
begin a story; and have often observed, that one of a quarter of an hour
long in a man of five and twenty, gathers circumstances every time he
tells it, till it grows into a long Canterbury tale of two hours by that
time he is three-score.

The only way of avoiding such a trifling and frivolous old age, is, to
lay up in our way to it such stores of knowledge and observation as may
make us useful and agreeable in our declining years. The mind of man in
a long life will become a magazine of wisdom or folly, and will
consequently discharge itself in something impertinent or improving. For
which reason, as there is nothing more ridiculous than an old trifling
story-teller, so there is nothing more venerable than one who has turned
his experience to the entertainment and advantage of mankind.

In short, we who are in the last stage of life, and are apt to indulge
ourselves in talk, ought to consider, if what we speak be worth being
heard, and endeavour to make our discourse like that of Nestor, which
Homer compares to the flowing of honey for its sweetness.[87]

I am afraid I shall be thought guilty of this excess I am speaking of,
when I cannot conclude without observing, that Milton certainly thought
of this passage in Homer, when in his description of an eloquent spirit,
he says, "His tongue dropped manna."[88]

[Footnote 79: Paths.]

[Footnote 80: The Trumpet stood about half-way up Shire Lane, between
Temple Bar and Carey Street, at the widest and best part of the