What am I doing, my lords! I have introduced so grave a character, that I am afraid the same Appius may suddenly turn to the other side, and, with his censorial severity, begin to school Caelius. But I shall speak of that presently, and in such a manner, my lords, that I hope to vindicate the morals of Marcus Caelius to the severest inquisitors. But you, madam, for now I speak to you not in a borrowed, but my own character, if you dream of proving your actions, your words, your forgeries, your machinations, your arguments, there is a necessity of your accounting for, and laying forth, all this excessive intimacy, this excessive friendship, this excessive familiarity. While our accusers talk so freely of intrigues, amours, adulteries, the Baiae, the banquets, collations, songs, concerts, and pleasure-boats, they at the same time own, that they have their instructions from you. But since you were so blindly, so wilfully, so unaccountably obstinate, as to be brought into the forum, and before this court, you must either disown and disprove all they have advanced, or confess there is no credit to be given either to your accusation, or to your evidence.

But if you would have me accost you in a more polite manner, I will treat you thus; I will remove that grim, that almost savage old fellow; I will pitch upon one of these gentlemen present; your younger brother rather than any, who is quite a master in this kind of politeness; who has a mighty liking for you, and, from a strange natural fearfulness, and haunted, I suppose, by some phantoms in the dark, lay every night with you, like a little master, as he is, with his elder sister. Suppose then that he thus accosts you; “Why, my sister, in this flurry? Why in this distraction of mind? Why shriek out, and make so much ado about a trifle? You have gazed upon your handsome young neighbour; his delicate complexion, his graceful shape, his face and eyes have smitten you. You wish to see him often; sometimes a woman of quality appears in the same gardens; all your riches cannot fix in your arms the young gentleman, though not yet emancipated from an old griping father. He spurns, he rejects, he undervalues your presents. Go somewhere else. You have gardens near the Tiber; and have taken care to fit up an apartment near to where all our young gentlemen bathe; from thence you may read their proposals. Why do you teaze one who loathes you?”

Let me now, Caelius, address you in your turn, and here will I personate the authority and gravity of a father. But in what character of a father am I to act? In that of the passionate unrelenting sire in Caecilius:

——Now all my soul is in a blaze,

And my heart labours with its swelling passion.

Or, shall I assume that other character?

O wretch! O reprobate!