Sir Charles. 'Tis not that I am yet old enough to justify myself in an idle retreat, but I have got I think a sort of surfeit on me, that lessens much the force of female charms.
Lord Love. Have you then been so glutted with their favours?
Sir Charles. Not with their favours, but with their service; it is unmerciful. I once thought myself a tolerable time-killer; I drank, I play'd, I intrigu'd, and yet I had hours enough for reasonable uses; but he that will list himself a lady's man of mettle now, she'll work him so at cards and dice, she won't afford him time enough to play with her at any thing else, though she herself should have a tolerable good mind to it.
Lord Love. And so the disorderly lives they lead, incline you to a reform of your own.
Sir Charles. 'Tis true; for bad examples (if they are but bad enough) give us as useful reflections as good ones do.
Lord Love. 'Tis pity any thing that's bad, shou'd come from women.
Sir Charles. 'Tis so, indeed, and there was a happy time, when both you and I thought there never could.
Lord Love. Our early first conceptions of them, I well remember, were that they never could be vicious, nor never could be old.
Sir Charles. We thought so then; the beauteous form we saw them cast in, seem'd design'd a habitation for no vice, nor no decay; all I had conceiv'd of angels, I conceiv'd of them; true, tender, gentle, modest, generous, constant, I thought was writ in every feature; and in my devotions, Heaven, how did I adore thee, that blessings like them should be the portion of such poor inferior creatures as I took myself and all men else (compared with them) to be!—but where's that adoration now?