imself a liberty to retract; I, who am now arrived to the age wherein
such things are fit to be done, would resign to them the enjoyment of my
house and goods, but with a power of revocation if they should give me
cause to alter my mind; I would leave to them the use, that being no
longer convenient for me; and, of the general authority and power over
all, would reserve as much as--I thought good to myself; having always
held that it must needs be a great satisfaction to an aged father himself
to put his children into the way of governing his affairs, and to have
power during his own life to control their behaviour, supplying them with
instruction and advice from his own experience, and himself to transfer
the ancient honour and order of his house into the hands of those who are
to succeed him, and by that means to satisfy himself as to the hopes he
may conceive of their future conduct. And in order to this I would not
avoid their company; I would observe them near at hand, and partake,
according to the condition of my age, of their feasts and jollities.
If I did not live absolutely amongst them, which I could not do without
annoying them and their friends, by reason of the morosity of my age and
the restlessness of my infirmities, and without violating also the rules
and order of living I should then have set down to myself, I would, at
least, live near them in some retired part of my house, not the best in
show, but the most commodious. Nor as I saw some years ago, a dean of
St. Hilary of Poitiers given up to such a solitude, that at the time I
came into his chamber it had been two and twenty years that he had not
stepped one foot out of it, and yet had all his motions free and easy,
and was in good health, saving a cold that fell upon his lungs; he would,
hardly once in a week, suffer any one to come in to see him; he always
kept himself shut up in his chamber alone, except that a servant brought
him, once a day, something to eat, and did then but just come in and go
out again. His employment was to walk up and down, and read some book,
for he was a bit of a scholar; but, as to the rest, obstinately bent to
die in this retirement, as he soon after did. I would endeavour by
pleasant conversation to create in my children a warm and unfeigned
friendship and good-will towards me, which in well-descended natures is
not hard to do; for if they be furious brutes, of which this age of ours
produces thousands, we are then to