Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 1.pdf/214

72 ''and love which was paid you, not only in the Province where you live, but generally by all who had the happiness to know you, was a wise Exchange for the Honours of the Court: A place of forgetfulness, at the best, for well deservers. Tis necessary for the polishing of Manners, to have breath'd that Air, but tis infectious even to the best Morals to live always in it. Tis a dangerous Commerce, where an honest Man is sure at the first of being Cheated; and he recovers not his Losses, but by learning to Cheat others. The undermining Smile becomes at length habitual; and the drift of his plausible Conversation, is only to flatter one, that he may betray another. Yet tis good to have been a looker on, without venturing to play; that a Man may know false Dice another time, though he never means to use them. I commend not him who never knew a Court, but him who forsakes it because he knows it. A young Man deserves no praise, who out of melancholy Zeal leaves the World before he has well try'd it, and runs headlong into Religion. He who carries a Maidenhead into a Cloyster, is sometimes apt to lose it there, and to repent of his Repentance. He only is like to endure Austerities, who has already found the inconvenience of Pleasures. For almost every Man will be making''