I am a Gascon, and there is no vice wherein I have less skill. I hate it somewhat more by complexion than I accuse it by discourse. [15] I do not so much as desire another man’s goods. And although my countrymen be indeed somewhat more taxed with this fault than other provinces of France, yet have we seen of late days and that sundry times men well born and of good parentage in other parts of France in the hands of justice, and lawfully convicted of many most horrible robberies. I am of opinion that in regard of these debauches and lewd actions fathers may, in some sort, be blamed, and that it is only long of [16] them.
And if any shall answer me, as did once a gentleman of good worth and understanding, that he thriftily endeavoured to hoard up riches to no other purpose nor to have any use and commodity of them than to be honoured, respected, and suingly sought [17] unto by his friends and kinsfolk and that, age having bereaved him of all other forces, it was the only remedy he had left to maintain himself in authority with his household and keep him from falling into contempt and disdain of all the world. And truly according to Aristotle, not only old age but each imbecility is the promoter and motive of covetousness. That is something, but it is a remedy for an evil whereof the birth should have been hindered and breeding avoided.
That father may truly be said miserable that holdeth the affection of his children tied unto him by no other means than by the need they have of his help or want of his assistance, if that may be termed affection. A man should yield himself respectable by virtue and sufficiency, and amiable by his goodness and gentleness of manners. The very cinders of so rich a matter have their value; so have the bones and relics of honourable men whom we hold in respect and reverence. No age can be so crazed and drooping in a man that hath lived honourably but must needs prove venerable, and especially unto his children, whose minds ought so to be directed by the parents that reason and wisdom, not necessity and need nor rudeness and compulsion, may make them know and perform their duty.
——et errat longe, mea quidem sententia,
Qui imperium credat esse gravius aut stabilius,
Vi quod fit, quam illud quod amicitia adjungitur.
In mine opinion he doth much mistake,
Who, that command more grave, more firm doth take,
Which force doth get, than that which friendships make. [18]
I utterly condemn all manner of violence in the education of a young spirit, brought up to honour and liberty. There is a kind of slavishness in churlish rigour and servility in compulsion; and I hold that that which cannot be compassed by reason, wisdom, and discretion, can never be attained by force and constraint. So was I brought up: they tell me that in all my youth I never felt rod but twice, and that very lightly. And what education I have had myself, the same have I given my children. But such is my ill hap that they die all very young; yet hath Leonora, my only daughter, escaped this misfortune and attained to the age of six years and somewhat more; for the conduct of whose youth and punishment of her childish faults (the indulgence of her mother applying itself very mildly unto it) was never other means used but gentle words. And were my desire frustrate, [19] there are diverse other causes to take hold of without reproving my discipline, [20] which I know to be just and natural. I would also have been much more religious in that towards male children, not born to serve as women and of a freer condition. I should have loved to have stored their mind with ingenuity and liberty. I have seen no other effects in rods but to make children’s minds more remiss or more maliciously headstrong.
Desire we to be loved of our children? Will we remove all occasions from them to wish our death? (although no occasion of so horrible and unnatural wishes can either be just or excusable) nullum scelus rationem habet, no ill deed hath a good reason. [21]
Let us reasonably accommodate their life with such things as are in our power. And therefore should not we marry so young that our age do in a manner confound itself with theirs. For this inconvenience doth unavoidably cast us into many difficulties and encumbrances. This I speak chiefly unto nobility, which is of an idle disposition or loitering condition and which (as we say) liveth only by her lands or rents. For else, where life standeth upon gain, plurality, and company of children is an easeful furtherance of husbandry. They are as many new implements to thrive and instruments to grow rich.
I was married at thirty years of age and commend the opinion of thirty-five, which is said to be Aristotle’s. Plato would have no man married before thirty and hath good reason to scoff at them that will defer it till after fifty-five and then marry; and condemneth their breed [22] as unworthy of life and sustenance. Thales appointed the best limits, who by his mother being instantly urged to marry whilst he was young, answered that it was not yet time; and when he came to be old, he said it was no more time. A man must refuse opportunity to every importunate action.
The ancient Gauls deemed it a shameful reproach to have the acquaintance of a woman before the age of twenty years, and did especially recommend unto men that sought to be trained up in wars the careful preservation of their maidenhead until they were of good years, forsomuch as by losing it in youth, courages are thereby much weakened and greatly impaired, and by coupling with women diverted from all virtuous action.
Ma hor congiunto a giovinetta sposa,
Lieto homai de’ figli, era invilito
Ne gli afetti di padre et di marito.
But now conjoyn’d to a fresh-springing spouse,
Joy’d in his children, he was thought-abased,
In passions twixt a sire and husband placed. [23]
Muleasses, King of Thunes, [24] he whom the Emperor Charles the Fifth restored unto his own state again, was wont to upbraid his father’s memory for so dissolutely-frequenting of women, terming him a sloven, effeminate, and a lustful engenderer of children. The Greek story doth note Iccus the Tarentine, Crisso, Astyllus, Diopompus, and others, who to keep their bodies tough and strong for the service of the Olympic courses, wrestlings, and such bodily exercises they did, as long as they were possessed with that care, heedfully abstain from all venerian [25] acts and touching of women. In a certain country of the Spanish Indies, no man was suffered to take a wife before he were thirty years old, and women might marry at ten years of age.
There is no reason, neither is it convenient, that a gentleman of five and thirty years should give place to his son that is but twenty. For then is the father as seemly and may as well appear and set himself forward, in all manner of voyages of wars as well by land as sea, and do his prince as good service, in court or elsewhere, as his son. He hath need of all his parts and ought truly to impart them, but so that be forget not himself for others. And to such may justly that answer serve which fathers have commonly in their mouths: I will not put off my clothes before I be ready to go to bed.
But a father over-burdened with years and crazed through sickness and, by reason of weakness and want of health barred from the common society of men, doth both wrong himself and injure his [26] idly and to no use to hoard up and keep close a great heap of riches and deal of pelf. He is in state good enough if he be wise to have a desire to put off his clothes to go to bed—I will not say to his shirt, but to a good warm night gown. As for other pomp and trash whereof he hath no longer use or need, he ought willingly to distribute and bestow them amongst those to whom by natural degree they ought to belong. It is reason he should have the use and bequeath the fruition of them, since nature doth also deprive him of them; otherwise without doubt there is both envy and malice stirring.
The worthiest action that ever the Emperour Charles the Fifth performed was this: in imitation of some ancients of his quality, that he had the discretion to know that reason commanded us to strip or shift ourselves when our clothes trouble and are too heavy for us, and that it is high time to go to bed when our legs fail us. He resigned his means, his greatness, and kingdom to his son at what time he found his former undaunted resolution to decay and force to conduct his affairs to droop in himself, together with the glory
he had thereby acquired.
Solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne
Peccet ad extremum ridentus, et ilia ducat.
If you be wise, the horse grown-old betimes cast-off,
Lest he at last fall lame, falter, and breed a skoffe. [27]
This fault for a man not to be able to know himself betimes [28] and not to feel the impuissance and extreme alteration that age doth naturally bring both to the body and the mind (which in my opinion is equal if the mind hath but one half), hath lost the reputation of the most part of the great men in the world. I have in my days both seen and familiarly known some men of great authority, whom a man might easily discern to be strangely fallen from that ancient sufficiency, which I know by the reputation they had thereby attained unto in their best years. I could willingly for their honor’s sake have wished them at home about their own business, discharged from all negotiations of the commonwealth and employments of war that were no longer fit for them.
I have sometimes been familiar in a gentleman’s house, who was both an old man and a widower yet lusty of his age. This man had many daughters marriageable and a son grown to man’s state and ready to appear in the world; a thing that drew on and was the cause of great charges and many visitations, wherein he took but little pleasure, not only for the continual care he had to save, but more by reason of his age he had betaken himself to a manner of life far different from ours. I chanced one day to tell him somewhat boldly (as my custom is) that it would better beseem him to give us [29] place and resign his chief house to his son (for he had no other manor-house conveniently well furnished), and quietly retire himself to some farm of his where no man might trouble him or disturb his rest, since he could not otherwise avoid our importunity, seeing the condition of his children; who afterward followed my counsel and found great ease by it.
It is not to be said that they have anything given them [30] by such a way of obligation which a man may not recall again. I, that am ready to play such a part, would give over unto them the full possession of my house and enjoying of my goods, but with liberty and limited condition, as if they should give me occasion, I might repent myself of my gift and revoke my deed. I would leave the use and fruition of all unto them, the rather because it were no longer fit for me to wield the same. And touching the disposing of all matters in gross, I would reserve what I pleased unto myself. Having ever judged that it must be a great contentment to an aged father, himself to direct his children in the government of his household affairs and to be able, whilst himself liveth, to check and control their demeanors, storing them with instruction and advised counsel according to the experience he hath had of them, and himself to address the ancient honour and order of his house in the hands of his successours, and that way warrant himself of the hope he may conceive of their future conduct and or success.
And to this effect I would not shun their company. I would not be far from them, but as much as the condition of my age would permit, enjoy and be a partner of their sports, mirths, and feasts. If I did not continually live amongst them (as I could not well without offending their meetings and hindering their recreation, by reason of the peevish forwardness of my age and the trouble of my infirmities, and also without forcing their rules and resisting the form of life I should then follow), I would at least live near them in some corner of my house, not the best and fairest in show but the most easeful and commodious. And not as some years since I saw a dean of S. Hillarie of Poitiers, reduced by reason and the incommodity of his melancholy to such a continual solitariness that when I entered into his chamber he had never removed one step out of it in two and twenty years before; yet had all his faculties free and easy, only a rheume [31] excepted that fell into his stomach. Scarce once a week would he suffer anybody to come and see him. He would ever be shut up in his chamber all alone, where no man should come, except a boy, who once a day brought him meat and who might not tarry there, but as soon as he was in must go out again. All his exercise was sometimes to walk up and down his chamber, and now and then read on some book (for he had some understanding of letters); but obstinately resolved to live and die in that course, as he did shortly after.
I would endeavour by a kind of civil demeanour and mild conversation to breed and settle in my children a true-hearty loving friendship and unfained good will towards me, a thing easily obtained amongst well-born minds. For if they prove or be such surly-furious beasts or given to churlish disobedience, as our age bringeth forth thousands, they must as beasts be hated, as churls neglected, and as degenerate [32] avoided.
I hate this custom to forbid children to call their fathers “father” and to teach them another strange name, as of more reverence; as if nature had not sufficiently provided for our authority. We call God Almighty by the name of father and disdain our children should call us so. I have reformed this fault in mine own household. It is also folly and injustice to deprive children, especially being of competent age, of their fathers’ familiarity and ever to show them a surly, austere, grim, and disdainful countenance, hoping thereby to keep them in awful fear and duteous obedience. For it is a very unprofitable proceeding and which maketh fathers irksome unto children, and which is worse, ridiculous. They have youth and strength in their hands, and consequently the breath and favour of the world, and do with mockery and contempt receive these churlish, fierce, and tyrannical countenances from a man that hath no lusty blood left him, neither in his heart nor in his veins—mere bugbears and scarecrows, to scare birds withal. If it lay in my power to make myself feared, I had rather make myself beloved. [33]
There are so many sorts of defects in age and so much impuissance, [34] it is so subject to contempt, that the best purchase it can make is the good will, love, and affection of others. Commandment and fear are no longer her weapons. I have known one whose youth had been very imperious and rough, but when he came to man’s age, although he live in as good plight and health as may be, yet he chaseth, he scoldeth, he brawleth, he fighteth, he sweareth and biteth, as the most boisterous and tempestuous master of France. He frets and consumes himself with carke [35] and care and vigilancy (all which is but a juggling and ground for his familiar to play upon and cozen him the more) as for his goods, his garners, his cellars, his coffers, yea, his purse. Whilst himself keeps the keys of them close in his bosom and under his boulster [36] as charily as he doth his eyes, other enjoy and command the better part of them. Whilst he pleaseth and flattereth himself with the niggardly sparing of his table, all goeth to wrack and is lavishly wasted in diverse corners of his house—in play, in riotous spending, and in soothingly entertaining the accounts or tales of his vain chasing, foresight, and providing. Every man watcheth and keepeth sentinel against him. If any silly or heedless servant do by fortune apply himself unto it, he is presently made to suspect him, [37] a quality on which age doth immediately bite of itself. How many times hath he vaunted and, applauding himself, told me of the strict orders of his house, of his good husbandry, of the awe he kept his household in, and of the exact obedience and regardful reverence he received of all his family, and how clear-sighted he was in his own business:
Ille solus nescit omnia.
Of all things none but he,
Most ignorant must be. [38]
I know no man that could produce more parts, both natural and artificial, fit to preserve his mastery and to maintain his absoluteness than he doth; yet is he clean fallen from them like a child. Therefore have I made choice of him amongst many such conditions that I know, as most exemplary.
It were a matter beseeming a scholastical [39] question whether it be better so or otherwise. In his presence all things give place unto him. [40] This vain course is ever left unto his authority that he is never gainsaid. He is had in awe, he is feared, he is believed, he is respected his belly-full. Doth he discharge any boy or servant? He presently trusseth up his pack, then he is gone. But whither? Only out of his sight, not out of his house. The steps of age are so slow, the senses so troubled, the mi
nd so distracted, that he shall live and do his office a whole year in one same house and never be perceived. And when fit time or occasion serveth, letters are produced from far places, humbly suing and pitifully complaining, with promises to do better and to amend, by which he is brought into favour and office again. Doth the master make any bargain or dispatch that pleaseth not, it is immediately smothered and suppressed soon after forging causes and devising colourable excuses, to excuse the want of execution or answer. No foreign letters being first presented unto him, he seeth but such as are fit for his knowledge. If peradventure they come into his hands, as he that trusteth some one of his men to read them unto him, he will presently devise what he thinketh good, whereby they often invent that such a one seemeth to ask him forgiveness that wrongeth him by his letter. To conclude, he never looks into his own business but by a disposed, designed, and as much as may be pleasing image, so contrived by such as are about him, because they will not stir up his choler, move his impatience, and exasperate his frowardness. [41] I have seen under different forms many long and constant, and of like effect, economies.