Scene IV
Clitipho alone.
What partial judges of all sons are fathers!
Who ask gray wisdom from our greener years,
And think our minds should bear no touch of youth;
Governing by their passions, now kill’d in them,
And not by those that formerly rebell’d.
If ever I’ve a son, I promise him
He shall find me an easy father; fit
To know, and apt to pardon his offenses!
Not such as mine, who, speaking of another,
Shows how he’d act in such a case himself:
Yet when he takes a cup or two too much,
Oh, what mad pranks he tells me of his own:
But warns me now “to draw from others’ faults
A profitable lesson for myself.”
Cunning old gentleman! he little knows,
He pours his proverbs in a deaf man’s ear.
The words of Bacchis, Give me, Bring me, now
Have greater weight with me: to whose commands,
Alas! I’ve nothing to reply withal;
Nor is there man more wretched than myself.
For Clinia here (though he, I must confess,
Has cares enough) has got a mistress, modest,
Well-bred, and stranger to all harlot arts:
Mine is a self-will’d, wanton, haughty madam,
Gay, and extravagant; and let her ask
Whate’er she will, she must not be denied;
Since poverty I durst not make my plea.
This is a plague I have but newly found,
Nor is my father yet appris’d of it.