him down to a better mind, and turn his heart to more of goodness
and consideration!

If the delays are on his side, I tremble for the lady; and, if on hers,
(as he tells my niece Charlotte,) I could wish she were apprized that
delays are dangerous. Excellent as she is, she ought not to depend on
her merits with such a changeable fellow, and such a profest marriage-
hater, as he has been. Desert and reward, I can assure her, seldom keep
company together.

But let him remember, that vengeance though it comes with leaden feet,
strikes with iron hands. If he behaves ill in this case, he may find it
so. What a pity it is, that a man of his talents and learning should be
so vile a rake! Alas! alas! Une poignee de bonne vie vaut mieux que
plein muy de clergee; a handful of good life is better than a whole
bushel of learning.

You may throw in, too, as a friend, that, should he provoke me, it may
not be too late for me to marry. My old friend Wycherly did so, when he
was older than I am, on purpose to plague his nephew: and, in spite of
this gout, I might have a child or two still. I have not been without
some thoughts that way, when he has angered me more than ordinary: but
these thoughts have gone off again hitherto, upon my considering, that
the children of very young and very old men (though I am not so very old
neither) last not long; and that old men, when they marry young women,
are said to make much of death: Yet who knows but that matrimony might be
good against the gouty humours I am troubled with?

No man is every thing--you, Mr. Belford, are a learned man. I am a peer.
And do you (as you best know how) inculcate upon him the force of these
wise sayings which follow, as well as those which went before; but yet so
indiscreetly, as that he may not know that you borrow your darts from my
quiver. These be they--Happy is the man who knows his follies in his
youth. He that lives well, lives long. Again, He that lives ill one
year, will sorrow for it seven. And again, as the Spaniards have it--Who
lives well, sees afar off! Far off indeed; for he sees into eternity, as
a man may say. Then that other fine saying, He who perishes in needless
dangers, is the Devil's martyr. Another proverb I picked up at Madrid,
when I accompanied Lord Lexington in his embassy to Spain, which might
teach my nephew more mercy and compassion than is in his nature I doubt
to shew; which is this, That he who pities another, re