For my own part,I am esteemed among them,because they see I am something respected by others;though at the same time I understand by their behaviour,that I am considered by them as a man of a great deal of learning,but no knowledge of the world;insomuch,that the Major sometimes,in the height of his military pride,calls me the philosopher;and Sir Jeoffery,no longer ago than last night,upon a dispute what day of the month it was then in Holland,pulled his pipe out of his mouth,and cried,"What does the Scholar say to it?"Our club meets precisely at six o'clock in the evening;but I did not come last night till half an hour after seven,by which means I escaped the battle of Naseby,which the Major usually begins at about three-quarters after six.I found also,that my good friend the Bencher had already spent three of his distichs;and only waiting an opportunity to hear a sermon spoken of that he might introduce the couplet where "a stick"rhymes to "ecclesiastic."At my entrance into the room,they were naming a red petticoat and a cloak,by which I found that the Bencher had been diverting them with a story of Jack Ogle.
I had no sooner taken my seat,but Sir Jeoffery,to show his good will towards me,gave me a pipe of his own tobacco,and stirred up the fire.I look upon it as a point of morality,to be obliged by those who endeavour to oblige me;and therefore,in requital for his kindness,and to set the conversation a-going,I took the best occasion I could to put him upon telling us the story of old Gantlett,which he always does with very particular concern.He traced up his descent on both sides for several generations,describing his diet and manner of life,with his several battles,and particularly that in which he fell.This Gantlett was a game-cock,upon whose head the knight,in his youth,had won five hundred pounds,and lost two thousand.This naturally set the Major upon the account of Edge-hill fight,and ended in a duel of Jack Ogle's.
Old Reptile was extremely attentive to all that was said,though it was the same he had heard every night for these twenty years,and upon all occasions winked upon his nephew to mind what passed.
This may suffice to give the world a taste of our innocent conversation,which we spun out till about ten of the clock,when my maid came with a lantern to light me home.I could not but reflect with myself,as I was going out,upon the talkative humour of old men,and the little figure which that part of life makes in one who cannot employ this natural propensity in discourses which would make him venerable.I must own,it makes me very melancholy in company,when I hear a young man begin a story;and have often observed,that one of a quarter of an hour long in a man of five-and-twenty,gathers circumstances every time he tells it,till it grows into a long Canterbury tale of two hours by that time he is three-score.
The only way of avoiding such a trifling and frivolous old age is to lay up in our way to it such stores of knowledge and observation as may make us useful and agreeable in our declining years.The mind of man in a long life will become a magazine of wisdom or folly,and will consequently discharge itself in something impertinent or improving.For which reason,as there is nothing more ridiculous than an old trifling story-teller,so there is nothing more venerable than one who has turned his experience to the entertainment and advantage of mankind.
In short,we,who are in the last stage of life,and are apt to indulge ourselves in talk,ought to consider if what we speak be worth being heard,and endeavour to make our discourse like that of Nestor,which Homer compares to the flowing of honey for its sweetness.
I am afraid I shall be thought guilty of this excess I am speaking of,when I cannot conclude without observing that Milton certainly thought of this passage in Homer,when,in his deion of an eloquent spirit,he says--"His tongue dropped manna."