ferings. But if the purpose of lamentation be to excite pity, it is surely superfluous for age and weakness to tell their plaintive stories; for pity presupposes sympathy, and a little attention will show them, that those who do not feel pain, seldom think that it is felt; and a short recollection will inform almost every man, that he is only repaid the insult which he has given, since he may remember how often he has mocked infirmity, laughed at its cautions, and censured its im patience. fessed, that in proportion to the pleasure of pos- | credulity of those to whom we recount our suf session, will be for some time our sorrow for the loss; it is therefore the province of the moralist to inquire whether such pains may not quickly give way to mitigation. Some have thought that the most certain way to clear the heart from its embarrassment is to drag it by force into scenes of merriment. Others imagine, that such a transition is too violent, and recommend rather to soothe it into tranquillity, by making it acquainted with miseries more dreadful and afflictive, and diverting to the calamities of others the regard which we are inclined to fix too closely upon our own misfortunes. It may be doubted whether either of those remedies will be sufficiently powerful. The efficacy of mirth it is not always easy to try, and the indulgence of melancholy may be suspected to be one of those medicines, which will destroy, if it happens not to cure. The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment. It is commonly observed, that among soldiers and seamen, though there is much kindness, there is little grief; they see their friend fall without any of that lamentation which is indulged in security and idleness, because they have no leisure to spare from the care of themselves; and whoever shall keep his thoughts equally busy, will find himself equally unaffected with irretrievable losses. Time is observed generally to wear out sorrow, and its effects might doubtless be accelerated by quickening the succession, and enlarging the variety of objects. 'Tis long ere time can mitigate your grief; To wisdom fly, she quickly brings relief. GROTIUS. F. LEWIS. Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion. No. 48.] SATURDAY, SEPT. 1, 1750. Non est vivere, sed valere, vita. For life is not to live, but to be well. MART. The valetudinarian race have made the care of health ridiculous by suffering it to prevail over all other considerations, as the miser has brought frugality into contempt, by permitting the love of money not to share, but to engross, his mind: they both err alike, by confounding the means with the end; they grasp at health only to be well, as at money only to be rich; and forget that every terrestrial advantage is chiefly valuable as it furnishes abilities for the exercise of virtue. Health is indeed so necessary to all the duties, as well as pleasures, of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly; and he that for a short gratification brings weakness and diseases upon himself, and for the pleasure of a few years passed in the tumults of diversion and clamours of merriment, condemns the maturer and more experienced part of his life to the chamber and the couch, may be justly reproached, not only as a spendthrift of his own happiness, but as a robber of the public; as a wretch that has voluntarily disqualified himself for the business of his station, and refused that part which Providence assigns him in the general task of human nature. There are perhaps very few conditions more to be pitied than that of an active and elevated mind, labouring under the weight of a distem pered body. The time of such a man is always spent in forming schemes, which a change of wind hinders him from executing, his powers fume away in projects and in hope, and the day of action never arrives. He lies down delighted with the thoughts of to-morrow, pleases his ambition with the fame he shall acquire, or his benevolence with the good he shall confer. But in the night the skies are overcast, the temper of the air is changed, he wakes in languor, impatience and distraction, and has no longer any wish but for ease, nor any attention but to misery. It may be said that disease generally begins that equality which death completes; the AMONG the innumerable follies, by which we lay distinctions which set one man so much above up in our youth repentance and remorse for the another are very little perceived in the gloom of succeeding part of our lives, there is scarce any a sick chamber, where it will be vain to expect against which warnings are of less efficacy than entertainment from the gay, or instruction from the neglect of health. When the springs of mo- the wise; where all human glory is obliterated, tion are yet elastic, when the heart bounds with the wit is clouded, the reasoner perplexed, and vigour, and the eye sparkles with spirit, it is with the hero subdued; where the highest and brightdifficulty that we are taught to conceive the im-est of mortal beings finds nothing left him but the becility that every hour is bringing upon us, or to consciousness of innocence. imagine that the nerves which are now braced with so much strength, and the limbs which play with so much activity, will lose all their power under the gripe of time, relax with numbness, and totter with debility. ELPHINSTON. To the arguments which have been used against complaints under the miseries of life, the philosophers have, I think, forgot to add the in There is among the fragments of the Greek poets a short hymn to Health, in which her power of exalting the happiness of life, of height. ening the gifts of fortune, and adding enjoyment to possession, is inculcated with so much force and beauty, that no one, who has ever languished under the discomforts and infirmities of a linger ing disease, can read it without feeling the ima ges dance in his heart, and adding from his own | suscitate the powers of digestion. Poverty is, experience new vigour to the wish, and from his indeed, an evil from which we naturally fly; but own imagination new colours to the picture. let us not run from one enemy to another, nor The particular occasion of this little composition take shelter in the arms of sickness. is not known, but it is probable that the author had been sick, and in the first raptures of returning vigour addressed Health in the following manner: Υγίεια πρεσβίστα Μακάρων, Μετὰ σοῦ ναίοιμι Τὸ λειπόμενον βιοτᾶς Σὺ δέ μοι πρόφρων σύνοικος εἴηι. Βασιληίδος ἀρχῆς, ἤ πόθων, Ούς κρυφίοις Αφροδίτης ἄρκυσιν θηρεύομεν, Μετὰ σεῖο, μάκαιρα Υγίεια, Σέθεν δὲ χωρὶς, οὐδεὶς, εὐδαίμων πέλει Projecere animam! quam vellent athere in alto For healthful indigence in vain they pray, VIRG. Those who lose their health in an irregular and impetuous pursuit of literary accomplishments are yet less to be excused; for they ought to know that the body is not forced beyond its strength, but with the loss of more vigour than is proportionate to the effect produced. Whoever takes up life beforehand, by depriving himself of rest and refreshment, must not only pay back the hours, but pay them back with usury; and for the gain of a few months but half enjoyed must give up years to the listlessness of languor, and the implacability of pain. They whose endea your is mental excellence, will learn, perhaps too late, how much it is endangered by diseases of the body, and find that knowledge may easily be lost in the starts of melancholy, the flights of impatience, and the peevishness of decrepitude. Health, most venerable of the powers of heaven! with thee may the remaining part of my life be passed, nor do thou refuse to bless me with thy residence. For whatever there is of beauty or of pleasure in wealth, in descendants, or in sovereign command, the highest summit of human enjoyment, or in those objects of human desire which we endeavour to chase into the toils of love; whatever delight, or whatever so- No. 49.] TUESDAY, SEPT. 4, 1750. lace is granted by the celestials, to soften our fatigues, in thy presence, thou parent of happiness, all those joys spread out and flourish; in thy presence blooms the spring of pleasure, and without thee no man is happy." Such is the power of health, that without its co-operation every other comfort is torpid and lifeless, as the powers of vegetation without the sun. And yet this bliss is commonly thrown away in thoughtless negligence, or in foolish experiments on our own strength; we let it perish without remembering its value, or waste it to show how much we have to spare; it is sometimes given up to the management of levity and chance, and sometimes sold for the applause of jollity and debauchery. Non omnis moriar, multaque pars mei HOR. Whole Horace shall not die; his songs shall save CREECH. THE first motives of human actions are those appetites which Providence has given to man in common with the rest of the inhabitants of the earth. Immediately after our birth, thirst and hunger incline us to the breast, which we draw by instinct, like other young creatures, and when we are satisfied, we express our uneasiness by importunate and incessant cries, till we have obtained a place or posture proper for repose. Health is equally neglected, and with equal impropriety, by the votaries of business and the The next call that rouses us from a state of infollowers of pleasure. Some men ruin the fabric activity, is that of our passions; we quickly beof their bodies by incessant revels, and others by gin to be sensible of hope and fear, love and haintemperate studies; some batter it by excess, tred, desire and aversion; these arising from the and others sap it by inactivity. To the noisy power of comparison and reflection, extend their rout of bacchanalian rioters, it will be to little range wider, as our reason strengthens, and our purpose that advice is offered, though it requires knowledge enlarges. At first we have no thought no great abilities to prove, that he loses pleasure of pain, but when we actually feel it; we afterwho loses health; their clamours are too loud forwards begin to fear it, yet not before it approaches the whispers of caution, and they run the course us very nearly: but by degrees we discover it at of life with too much precipitance to stop at the a greater distance, and find it lurking in remote call of wisdom. Nor perhaps will they that are consequences. Our terror in time improves into busied in adding thousands to thousands, pay caution, and we learn to look round with vigilmuch regard to him that shall direct them to has-ance and solicitude, to stop all the avenues at ten more slowly to their wishes. Yet since lovers of money are generally cool, deliberate and thoughtful, they might surely consider, that the greater good ought not to be sacrificed to the less. Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured; but thousands and millions, are of small avail to alleviate the protracted tortures of the gout, to repair the broken organs of sense, or re which misery can enter, and to perform or endure many things in themselves toilsome and unpleasing, because we know by reason or by experience, that our labour will be overbalanced by the reward, that it will either procure some positive good, or avert some evil greater than itself. But as the soul advances to a fuller exercise of its powers, the animal appetites and the passions immediately arising from them, are not sufficient to find it employment; the wants of nature are tomed to refer every thing to themselves, and soon supplied, the fear of their return is easily whose selfishness has contracted their underprecluded, and something more is necessary to re-standings. That the soul of man, formed for lieve the long intervals of inactivity, and to give eternal life, naturally springs forward beyond the those faculues, which cannot lie wholly quies- limits of corporeal existence, and rejoices to concent, some particular direction. For this reason, sider herself as co-operating with future ages, new desires and artificial passions are by degrees and as co-extended with endless duration. That produced; and, from having wishes only in con- the reproach urged with so much petulance, the sequence of our wants, we begin to feel wants in reproach of labouring for what cannot be enjoyed, consequence of our wishes; we persuade our-is founded on an opinion which may with great selves to set a value upon things which are of no use, but because we have agreed to value them; things which can neither satisfy hunger nor mitigate pain, nor secure us from any real calamity, and which therefore, we find of no esteem among those nations, whose artless and barbarous manners keep them always anxious for the necessaries of life. This is the original of avarice, vanity, ambition, and generally of all those desires which arise from the comparison of our condition with that of others. He that thinks himself poor because his neighbour is richer; he that, like Cæsar, would rather be the first man of a village, than the second in the capital of the world, has apparently kindled in himself desires which he never received from nature, and acts upon principles established only by the authority of custom. Of those adscititious passions, some, as avarice and envy, are universally condemned: some, as friendship and curiosity, generally praised; but there are others about which the suffrages of the wise are divided, and of which it is doubted, whether they tend most to promote the happiness or increase the miseries of mankind. Of this ambiguous and disputable kind is the love of fame, a desire of filling the minds of others with admiration, and of being celebrated by generations to come with praises which we shall not hear. This ardour has been considered by some, as nothing better than splendid madness, as a flame kindled by pride, and fanned by folly; for what, say they, can be more remote from wisdom, than to direct all our actions by the hope of that which is not to exist till we ourselves are in the grave? To pant after that which can never be possessed, and of which the value thus widely put upon it, arises from this particular condition, that, during life, it is not to be obtained? To gain the favour, and hear the applauses of our contemporaries, is indeed equally desirable with any other prerogative of superiority, because fame may be of use to smooth the paths of life, to terrify opposition, and fortify tranquillity; but to what end shall we be the darlings of mankind, when we can no longer receive any benefits from their favour? It is more reasonable to wish for reputation, while it may yet be enjoyed, as Anacreon calls upon his companions to give him for present use the wine and garlands which they purpose to bestow upon his tomb. probability be doubted; for since we suppose the powers of the soul to be enlarged by its separation, why should we conclude that its knowledge of sublunary transactions is contracted or extinguished. Upon an attentive and impartial review of the argument, it will appear that the love of fame is to be regulated rather than extinguished; and that men should be taught not to be wholly careless about their memory, but to endeavour that they may be remembered chiefly for their virtues, since no other reputation will be able to transmit any pleasure beyond the grave. It is evident that fame, considered merely as the immortality of a name, is not less likely to be the reward of bad actions than of good; he therefore has no certain principle for the regula tion of his conduct, whose single aim is not to be forgotten. And history will inform us, that this blind and undistinguishing appetite of renown has always been uncertain in its effects, and directed by accident or opportunity, indifferently to the benefit or devastation of the world. When Themistocles complained that the trophies of Miltiades hindered him from sleep, he was animated by them to perform the same services in the same cause. But Cæsar, when he wept at the sight of Alexander's picture, having no honest opportunities of action, let his ambition break out to the ruin of his country. If, therefore, the love of fame is so far indulged by the mind as to become independent and predominant, it is dangerous and irregular; but it may be usefully employed as an inferior and secondary motive, and will serve sometimes to revive our activity, when we begin to languish and lose sight of that more certain, more valuable, and more durable reward, which ought always to be our first hope and our last. But it must be strongly impressed upon our minds that virtue is not to be pursued as one of the means to fame, but fame to be accepted as the only recompense which mortals can bestow on virtue; to be accepted with complacence, but not sought with eagerness. Simply to be remembered is no advantage; it is a privilege which satire as well as panegyric can confer, and is not more enjoyed by Titus or Constantine, than by Timocreon of Rhodes, of whom we only know from his epitaph, that he had eaten many a meal, drank many a flagon, and uttered many a reproach. Πολλὰ φαγὼν, καὶ πολλὰ πιῶν, καὶ πολλὰ κακ ̓ εἴπων ̓Ανθρώπους, κείμαι Τιμοκρέων ὑΡόδιος. The advocates for the love of fame allege in its vindication, that it is a passion natural and universal; a flame lighted by Heaven, and always burning with greatest vigour in the most en- The true satisfaction which is to be drawn from larged and elevated minds. That the desire of the consciousness that we shall share the attenbeing praised by posterity implies a resolution to tion of future times, must arise from the hope, deserve their praises, and that the folly charged that with our name, our virtues will be propagatupon it, is only a noble and disinterested gene-ed; and that those whom we cannot benefit in rosity, which is not felt, and therefore not un- our lives, may receive instruction from our exderstood, by those who have been always accus- amples, and incitement from our renown. No. 50.] SATURday, Sept. 8, 1750. Credebant hoc grande nefas, et morte piandum, JUV. And had not men the hoary head revered, CREECH. has acquired a right to repine at the distributions of nature? Or, why does he imagine that exemptions should be granted him from the general condition of man? We find ourselves excited rather to captiousness than pity, and instead of being in haste to soothe his complaints by sympathy and tenderness, we inquire, whether the pain be proportionate to the lamentation; and whether, supposing the affliction real, it is not the effect of vice and folly, rather than calamity. The querulousness and indignation which is observed so often to disfigure the last scene of life, naturally leads us to inquiries like these. For surely it will be thought at the first view of things, that if age be thus contemned and ridiculed, insulted and neglected, the crime must at least be equal on either part. They who have had opportunities of establishing their authority over minds ductile and unresisting, they who have been the protectors of helplessness, and the I HAVE always thought it the business of those who turn their speculations upon the living world, to commend the virtues as well as to expose the faults of their contemporaries, and to confute a false as well as to support a just accusation; not only because it is peculiarly the business of a monitor to keep his own reputation untainted, lest those who can once charge him with partiality, should indulge themselves afterwards in disbe-instructors of ignorance, and who yet retain in lieving him at pleasure; but because he may find real crimes sufficient to give full employment to caution or repentance, without distracting the mind by needless scruples and vain solicitudes. There are certain fixed and stated reproaches that one part of mankind has in all ages thrown upon another, which are regularly transmitted through continued successions, and which he that has once suffered them is certain to use with the same undistinguishing vehemence, when he has changed his station, and gained the prescriptive right of inflicting on others what he had formerly endured himself. To these hereditary imputations, of which no man sees the justice, till it becomes his interest to see it, very little regard is to be shown; since it does not appear that they are produced by ratiocination or inquiry, but received implicitly, or caught by a kind of instantaneous contagion and supported rather by willingness to credit, than ability to prove them. their own hands the power of wealth, and the dignity of command, must defeat their influence by their own misconduct, and make use of all these advantages with very little skill, if they cannot secure to themselves an appearance of respect, and ward off open mockery, and declared contempt. The general story of mankind will evince, that lawful and settled authority is very seldom resisted when it is well employed. Gross corruption, or evident imbecility is necessary to the suppression of that reverence with which the majority of mankind look upon their governors; on those whom they see surrounded by splendour, and fortified by power. For though men are drawn by their passions into forgetfulness of invisible rewards and punishments, yet they are easily kept obedient to those who have temporal dominion in their hands, till their veneration is dissipated by such wickedness and folly as can neither be defended nor concealed. It has been always the practice of those who It may, therefore, very reasonably be suspectare desirous to believe themselves made venera-ed that the old draw upon themselves the greatble by length of time, to censure the new comers est part of those insults which they so much into life, for want of respect to gray hairs and lament, and that age is rarely despised but when sage experience, for heady confidence in their it is contemptible. If men imagine that excess own understandings, for hasty conclusions upon of debauchery can be made reverend by time, partial views, for disregard of counsels, which that knowledge is the consequence of long life, their fathers and grandsires are ready to afford however idly and thoughtlessly employed, that them, and a rebellious impatience of that subor-priority of birth will supply the want of steadi dination to which youth is condemned by nature, as necessary to its security from evils into which it would be otherwise precipitated, by the rashness of passion, and the blindness of igno rance. ness or honesty, can it raise much wonder that their hopes are disappointed, and that they see their posterity rather willing to trust their own eyes in their progress into life, than enlist them selves under guides who have lost their way? Every old man complains of the growing de- There are, indeed, many truths which time pravity of the world, of the petulance and inso- necessarily and certainly teaches, and which lence of the rising generation. He recounts the might, by those who have learned them from exdecency and regularity of former times, and cele-perience, be communicated to their successors at brates the discipline and sobriety of the age in which his youth was passed; a happy age, which is now no more to be expected, since confusion has broken in upon the world and thrown down all the boundaries of civility and reverence. It is not sufficiently considered how much he assumes who dares to claim the privilege of complaining; for as every man has, in his own opinion, a full share of the miseries of life, he is inclined to consider all clamorous uneasiness as a proof of impatience rather than of affliction, and to ask, What merit has this man to show, by which he a cheaper rate; but dictates, though liberally enough bestowed, are generally without effect, the teacher gains few proselytes by instruction which his own behaviour contradicts; and young men miss the benefit of counsel, because they are not very ready to believe that those who fall below them in practice, can much excel them in theory. Thus the progress of knowledge is retarded, the world is kept long in the same state and every new race is to gain the prudence of their predecessors by committing and redressing the same miscarriages. account of my entertainment in this sober seasor of universal retreat, and to describe to you the employments of those who look with contempt on the pleasures and diversions of polite life, and employ all their powers of censure and invective upon the uselessness, vanity, and folly, of dress, visits, and conversation. To secure to the old that influence which they are willing to claim, and which might so much contribute to the improvement of the arts of life, it is absolutely necessary that they give them selves up to the duties of declining years; and contentedly resign to youth its levity, its pleasures, its frolics, and its fopperies. It is a hopeless endeavour to unite the contrarieties of spring When a tiresome and vexatious journey of and winter; it is unjust to claim the privileges of four days had brought me to the house, where age, and retain the playthings of childhood. The invitation, regularly sent for seven years togeyoung always form magnificent ideas of the wis-ther, had at last induced me to pass the summer, dom and gravity of men, whom they consider as I was surprised, after the civilities of my first replaced at a distance from them in the ranks of ex- ception, to find, instead of the leisure and tranistence, and naturally look on those whom they quillity, which a rural life always promises, and, ⚫ find trifling with long beards with contempt and if well conducted, might always afford, a confusindignation, like that which women feel at the ed wildness of care, and a tumultuous hurry of effeminacy of men. If dotards will contend with diligence, by which every face was clouded, and boys in those performances in which boys must every motion agitated. The old lady, who was always excel them; if they will dress crippled my father's relation, was, indeed, very full of the limbs in embroidery, endeavour at gayety with happiness which she received from my visit, and faltering voices, and darken assemblies of plea- according to the forms of obsolete breeding, in sure with the ghastliness of disease, they may sisted that I should recompense the long delay well expect those who find their diversions ob- of my company with a promise not to leave her till structed will hoot them away; and that if they winter. But, amidst all her kindness and caressdescend to competition, with youth, they must es, she very frequently turned her head aside, and hear the insolence of successful rivals. whispered, with anxious earnestness, some order to her daughters, which never failed to send them out with unpolite precipitation. Sometimes her impatience would not suffer her to stay behind, she begged my pardon, she must leave me for a moment; she went, and returned and sat down again, but was again disturbed by some new care, dismissed her daughters with the same tre Another vice of age, by which the rising gene-pidation, and followed them with the same coun ration may be alienated from it, is severity and tenance of business and solicitude. censoriousness, that gives no allowance to the failings of early life, that expects artfulness from childhood and constancy from youth, that is peremptory in every command, and inexorable to every failure. There are many who live merely to hinder happiness, and whose descendants can only tell of long life, that it produces suspicion, malignity, peevishness, and persecution: and yet even these tyrants can talk of the ingratitude of the age, curse their heirs for impatience, and wonder that young men cannot take pleasure in their father's company. Lusisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti: You've had your share of mirth, of meat and drink; ELPHINSTON. He that would pass the latter part of life with honour and decency, must, when he is young, consider that he shall one day be old; and remember, when he is old, that he has once been young. In youth he must lay up knowledge for his support, when his powers of acting shall for sake him; and in age forbear to animadvert with rigour on faults which experience only can correct. However I was alarmed at this show of eager ness and disturbance, and however my curiosity was excited by such busy preparations as naturally promised some great event, I was yet too much a stranger to gratify myself with inquiries, but finding none of the family in mourning, pleased myself with imagining that I should rather see a wedding than a funeral. I At last we sat down to supper, when I was informed that one of the young ladies, after whom thought myself obliged to inquire, was under a necessity of attending some affair that could not be neglected: soon afterward my relation began to talk of the regularity of her family, and the inconvenience of London hours; and at last let me know that they had purposed that night to go to bed sooner than was usual, because they were to rise early in the morning to make cheesecakes. This hint sent me to my chamber, to which I was accompanied by all the ladies, who begged me to excuse some large sieves of leaves and flowers that covered two-thirds of the floor, for they intended to distil them when they were dry, and they had no other room that so conveniently received the rising sun. The scent of the plants hindered me from rest, and therefore I rose early in the morning with a resolution to explore my new habitation. I stole unperceived by my busy cousins into the garden, where I found nothing either more great or ele gant, than in the same number of acres cultivated for the market. Of the gardener I soon learned that his lady was the greatest manager in that part of the country, and that I was come hither at the time in which I might learn to make more pickles and conserves, than could be seen at any other house a hundred miles round. |