Centuria epistolarum Anglo-Latinarum ex tritissimis classicis authoribus, viz. Cicerone, Plinio & Textore, selectarum : quibus imitandis ludi-discipuli stylum epistolis familiarem facilius assequantur / a Carolo Hoolo ... = A century of epistles, English and Latine : selected out of the most used school-authors, viz. Tullie, Plinie and Textor ... / by Charles Hool ...

Epist. 20.

1. I Love you more (my most sweet Cornelius) than any man can suppose; and I pray not so often for any thing, as

that fortune may always do as you would have her, and that you may have all things according to your own hearts desire: and if I kn••w you wanted my help, I would fit my self to serve your occasions, so far as my conscience would give me leave.

2. Yet when I remember that gray-headed and decrepit father of yours, whom you forsook most basely, not without blame, and many men's privie scoff, I cannot forbear but be angry with your ingratitude, or (that I may say more truly) with your undu∣tifulnesse.

3. For what ought to be said to be more inhuman, than if a son hardly look upon his father shaking for age, and troubled with diseases; much lesse if he do not help him: forasmuch as this very thing is hateful to brutes that want reason, and small living creatures.

4. The Storks nourish their dams in their old age again, as they did them.

5. The Dor-mice maintain their sires, disabled with old age, with notable dutifulness.

6. But why do I praefer these testimonies before domestick ex∣amples; and such as we have in our own houses?

7. The very dogs oft-times defend them that brought them up with their own death; of whom for all that they get nothing but a poor alms, to wit, little scraps of bread, and that made of barley too.

8. And yet you are not troubled, that your nature seemeth worse than brutes.

9. Who would not curse this? who could forbear invective speeches?

10. Your father languisheth daily; he is troubled with a dis∣ease every hour, and is (as they say) more aguish than the very goats: neither for all this do you offer to help him being ready to die.

11. O strange! how is honesty now banished! how are good manners gone to wrack, when children now do not pitty their parents!

12. Tell me in good earnest, if now you have wherewithall to feast it daintily, if you have plenty of all things, to whom is it fit for you to be thankfull for these things, but your father, to whom, whether are you beholding for your life or not?

13. You impudent fellow, do you not think what men talk of you in every town? what a fault it is imputed to you, when you go with a sleek and pamper'd skin, and well-fed body, with your belly standing out, whilst your father is half-dead?

14. Hortensius the Orator bewailed a dead Lamprey many days together, going in mourning; and will not you pitty your dying father?

15. O bad times! O wretched age! But whether I will or no I must hold my tongue.

16. For my grief of mind doth not suffer me to say any more.

17. It onely remaineth, that you wax wiser, or else take it not ill that I forbear to love you. Farewel.