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The Praise of Folly 23 for this reason it is that Old-age dotes ; and that it does so, it is beholding to me. Yet, not withstanding, is this dotard exempt from all those cares that distract a Wise man; he is not the less pot-Companion, nor is he sensible of that burden of life, which the more manly Age finds enough to do to stand upright under ’t. And sometimes too, like Plautus’s Old-man, he returns to his three Letters, A.M.O., the most unhappy of all things living, if he rightly understood what he did in °t. And yet, so much do I befriend him, that I make him well receiv’d of his friends, and no unpleasant Companion ; for as much as, according to Homer, 1! Nestor’s discourse was pleasanter than Honey, whereas Achilles’s was both bitter and malicious; and that of Old-men, as he has it in another place, florid. In which respect, also, they have this advantage of children, in that they want the onely pleasure of t’ others life, we’ll suppose it pratling. Adde to this that old men are more eagerly delighted with children, and they, again, with Old-men. 2“ Like to like ’, quoth the Divel 1 Melle dulcior fluit oratio. 2 porov yet Beds ws TOY Spoor.
