how to obey you. Be courteous of gesture and affable unto all men; with diversity of reverence according to the dignity of the person. There is nothing that winneth so much, with so little cost.
Use moderate diet: so as, after your meal, you may find your wit fresher, and not duller; and your body more lively, and not more heavy. Seldom drink wine: and yet sometimes do; lest being enforced to drink upon the sudden, you should find yourself inflamed.
Use exercise of body, but such as is without peril of your bones or joints. It will increase your force, and enlarge your breath. Delight to be cleanly as well in all parts of your body, as in your garments. It shall make you grateful in each company: and otherwise loathsome.
Give yourself to be merry: for you degenerate from your father, if you find not yourself most able in wit and body to do anything, when you be most merry. But let your mirth be ever void of all scurrility and biting words to any man: for a wound given by a word is oftentimes harder to be cured than that which is given with the sword.
Be you rather a hearer and bearer away of other men's talk, than a beginner or procurer of speech: otherwise you shall be accounted to delight to hear yourself speak.
Be modest in each assembly, and rather be rebuked of light fellows for maiden-like shamefastness; than of your sad [sober] friends, for pert boldness. Think upon every word that you will speak, before you utter it: and remember how Nature hath rampered [walled] up, as it were, the tongue with teeth, lips, yea, and hair without the lips; and all, betokening reins or bridles for the loose use of that member.
Above all things, tell no untruth. No, not in trifles. The custom-of it is nought: and let it not satisfy you that, for a time, the hearers take it for a truth: yet after it will be known as it is, to your shame. For there cannot be a greater reproach to a Gentleman, than to be accounted a liar.
Study and endeavour yourself to be virtuously occupied: so shall you make such an habit of well doing in you; as you shall not know how to do evil, though you would.
Remember, my son! the noble blood you are descended of by your mother's side: and think that only by virtuous life and good action you may be an ornament to that illustrious family; otherwise, through vice and sloth, you may be
