of a few; ’tis because I know how to make a better choice.
Besides, ’tis to be consider’d, that if we change, we do it amongst people that change as well as our selves : men of equal infirmities, or at least subject to the very same. Therefore I shall not be at all asham’d to search in their presence some relief against the weakness of Age; nor shall I be afraid to supply by art, what begins to fail me by nature. A nicer precaution against the injury of time, a more careful management of a health that daily becomes more feeble, cannot scandalize any man of sense, and we ought not to trouble our selves with those that are not so.
To say the truth, that which displeases in old people, is not too affected a care of their own preservation. We should easily forgive them every thing that relates to themselves, if they had but the same consideration for others. But the Authority they affirm, is full of injustice and indiscretion; for they preposterously thwart the inclinations even of those that bear the most with their infirmities. Their long course of life, it seems, has untaught them how to converse with mankind; for they shew nothing but a spirit of Moroseness, Austerity, and Contradiction, to those very persons from whom they exact affability, docility, and obedience. All that they themselves do, they imagine to be virtuous; and place among vices every thing that lies out of their power. And as they are constrain’d to follow Nature where she is tiresom and offensive, they would have others oppose what is sweet and agreeable in her.
There is no part of our life wherein we ought to study our own Humour with more application than in old age; for it is never so difficult to be discover’d as then. An impetuous young fellow has a hundred returns, when he is dissatisfied with
