In the time of _Charles_ the ninth French king, I being at the Spaw
waters, there lay a Marshall of Fraunce called _Monsieur de Sipier_, to
vse those waters for his health, but when the Phisitions had all giuen him
vp, and that there was no hope of life in him, came from the king to him a
letters patents of six thousand crownes yearely pension during his life
with many comfortable wordes: the man was not so much past remembraunce,
but he could say to the messenger _trop tard_, _trop tard_, it should haue
come before, for in deede it had bene promised long and came not till now
that he could not fare the better by it.

And it became king _Antiochus_, better to bestow the faire Lady
_Stratonica_ his wife vpon his sonne _Demetrius_, who lay sicke for her
loue and would else haue perished, as the Physitions cunningly discouered
by the beating of his pulse, then it could become _Demetrius_ to be
inamored with his fathers wife, or to enioy her of his guilt, because the
fathers act was led by discretion and of a fatherly compassion, not
grutching to depart from his deerest possession to saue his childes life,
where as the sonne in his appetite had no reason to lead him to loue
vnlawfully, for whom it had rather bene decent to die, then to haue
violated his fathers bed with safetie of his life.

No more would it be seemely for an aged man to play the wanton like a
child, for it stands not with the conueniency of nature, yet when king
_Agesilaus_ hauing a great sort of little children, was one day disposed
to solace himself among them in a gallery where they plaied, and tooke a
little hobby horse of wood and bestrid it to keepe them in play, one of
his friends seemed to mislike his lightnes, o good friend quoth
_Agesilaus_, rebuke me not for this fault till thou haue children of thine
owne, shewing in deede that it came not of vanitie but of a fatherly
affection, ioying in the sport and company of his little children, in
which respect and as that place and time serued, it was dispenceable in
him & not indecent.

And in the choise of a man's delights & maner of his life, there is a
decencie, and so we say th'old man generally is no fit companion for the
young man, nor the rich for the poore, nor the wise for the foolish. Yet
in some respects and by discretion it may be otherwise, as when the old
man hath the gouernment of the young, the wise teaches the foolish, the
rich is wayted on by the poore for their reliefe, in which rega