But is it not great impudence to offer our imperfections and
imbecilities, where we desire to please and leave a good opinion and
esteem of ourselves? For the little that I am able to do now:

"Ad unum
Mollis opus."

["Fit but for once."--Horace, Epod., xii. 15.]

I would not trouble a woman, that I am to reverence and fear:

"Fuge suspicari,
Cujus undenum trepidavit aetas
Claudere lustrum."

["Fear not him whose eleventh lustrum is closed."
--Horace, Od., ii. 4, 12, limits it to the eighth.]

Nature should satisfy herself in having rendered this age miserable,
without rendering it ridiculous too. I hate to see it, for one poor inch
of pitiful vigour which comes upon it but thrice a week, to strut and set
itself out with as much eagerness as if it could do mighty feats; a true
flame of flax; and laugh to see it so boil and bubble and then in a
moment so congealed and extinguished. This appetite ought to appertain
only to the flower of beautiful youth: trust not to its seconding that
indefatigable, full, constant, magnanimous ardour you think in you, for
it will certainly leave you in a pretty corner; but rather transfer it to
some tender, bashful, and ignorant boy, who yet trembles at the rod, and
blushes: