y amid their gay and
sprightly humour?

"Possint ut juvenes visere fervidi.
Multo non sine risu,
Dilapsam in cineres facem."

["As the fervid youths may behold, not without laughter, a burning
torch worn to ashes."--Horace, Od., iv. 13, 21.]

They have strength and reason on their side; let us give way; we have
nothing to do there: and these blossoms of springing beauty suffer not
themselves to be handled by such benumbed hands nor dealt with by mere
material means, for, as the old philosopher answered one who jeered him
because he could not gain the favour of a young girl he made love to:
"Friend, the hook will not stick in such soft cheese." It is a commerce
that requires relation and correspondence: the other pleasures we receive
may be acknowledged by recompenses of another nature, but this is not to
be paid but with the same kind of coin. In earnest, in this sport, the
pleasure I give more tickles my imagination than that they give me; now,
he has nothing of generosity in him who can receive pleasure where he
confers none--it must needs be a mean soul that will owe all, and can be
content to maintain relations with persons to whom he is a continual
charge; there is no beauty, grace, nor privacy so exquisite that a
gentleman ought to desire at this rate. If they can only be kind to us
out of pity, I had much rather die than live upon charity. I would have
right to ask, in the style wherein I heard them beg in Italy: "Fate ben
per voi,"--["Do good for yourself."]--or after the manner that Cyrus
exhorted his soldiers, "Who loves himself let him follow me."--"Consort
yourself," some one will say to me, "with women of your own condition,
whom like fortune will render more easy to your desire." O ridiculous
and insipid composition!

"Nolo
Barbam vellere mortuo leoni."

["I would not pluck the beard from a dead lion."--Martial]

Xenophon lays it for an objection and an accusation against Menon, that
he never made love to any but old women. For my part, I take more
pleasure in but seeing the just and sweet mixture of two young beauties,
or only in meditating on it in my fancy, than myself in acting second in
a pitiful and imperfect conjunction;

[Which Cotton renders, "Than to be myself an actor in the second
with a deformed creature."]

I leave that fantastic appe