which are incited by them without choice or reflection. But reasonable creatures correct these incentives, and improve them into elegant motives of friendship and society. It is chiefly from this homely foundation, that we are under the necessity of seeking for the agreeable companion, and the honourable mistress. By this cultivation of art and reason, our wants are made pleasures, and the gratification of our desires, under proper restrictions, a work no way below our noblest faculties. The wisest man may maintain his character, and yet consider in what manner he shall best entertain his friend, or divert his mistress: nay, it is so far from being a derogation to him, that he can in no other instances show so true a taste of his life or his fortune. What concerns one of the above-mentioned appetites, as it is elevated into love, I shall have abundant occasion to discourse of before I have provided for the numberless crowd of damsels I have proposed to take care of. The subject therefore of the present paper shall be that part of society which owes its beginning to the common necessity of hunger. When this is considered as the support of our being, we may take in under the same head thirst also; otherwise when we are pursuing the glutton, the drunkard may make his escape. The true choice of our diet, and our companions at it, seems to consist in that which contributes most to cheerfulness and refreshment: and these certainly are best consulted by simplicity in the food, and sincerity in the company. By this rule are in the first place excluded from pretence to happiness all meals of state and ceremony, which are performed in dumb show and greedy sullenness. At the boards of the great, they say, you shall have a number attending with as good habits and countenances as the guests, which only circumstance must destroy the whole pleasure of the repast: for if such attendants are introduced for the dignity of their appearance, modest minds are shocked by considering them as spectators, or else look upon them as equals, for whose servitude they are in a kind of suffering. It may be here added, that the sumptuous sideboard to an ingenuous eye has often more the air of an altar than a table. The next absurd way of enjoying ourselves at meals, is, where the bottle is plied without being called for, where humour takes place of appetite, and the good company are too dull or too merry to know any enjoyment in their senses.
Though this part of time is absolutely necessary to sustain life, it must be also considered, that life itself is to the endless being of man but what a meal is to this life, not valuable for itself, but for the purpose of it. If there be any truth in this, the expense of many hours this way is somewhat unaccountable; and placing much thought either in too great sumptuousness and elegance in this matter, or wallowing in noise and riot at it, are both, though not equally, unaccountable. I have often considered these different people with very great attention, and always speak of them with the distinction of the eaters and the swallowers. The eaters sacrifice all their senses and understanding to this appetite: the swallowers hurry themselves out of both, without pleasing this or any other appetite at all. The latter are improved brutes, the former degenerated men. I have sometimes thought it would not be improper to add to my dead and living men, persons in an intermediate state of humanity, under the appellation of dozers. The dozers are a sect, who, instead of keeping their appetites in subjection, live in subjection to them; nay, they are so truly slaves to them, that they keep at too great a distance ever to come into their presence. Within my own acquaintance, I know those that I daresay have forgot that they ever were hungry, and are no less utter strangers to thirst and weariness, who are beholden to sauces for their food, and to their food for their weariness.
I have often wondered, considering the excellent and choice spirits that we have among our divines, that they do not think of putting vicious habits into a more contemptible and unlovely figure than they do at present. So many men of wit and spirit as there are in sacred orders, have it in their power to make the fashion of their side. The leaders in human society are more effectually prevailed upon this way than can easily be imagined. I have more than one in my thoughts at this time capable of doing this against all the opposition of the most witty, as well as the most voluptuous. There may possibly be more acceptable subjects, but sure there are none more useful. It is visible, that though men's fortunes, circumstances, and pleasures give them prepossessions too strong to regard any mention either of punishments or rewards, they will listen to what makes them inconsiderable or mean in the imaginations of others, and by degrees in their own.
It is certain such topics are to be touched upon in the light we mean, only by men of the most consummate prudence, as well as excellent wit: for these discourses are to be made, if made to run into example, before such as have their thoughts more intent upon the propriety than the reason of the discourse. What indeed leads me into this way of thinking, is, that the last thing I read was a sermon of the learned Dr. South,32 upon the Ways of Pleasantness. This admirable discourse was made at court, where the preacher was too wise a man not to believe; the greatest argument, in that place, against the pleasures then in vogue, must be, that they lost greater pleasures by prosecuting the course they were in. The charming discourse has in it whatever wit and wisdom can put together. This gentleman has a talent of making all his faculties bear to the great end of his hallowed profession. Happy genius! he is the better man for being a wit. The best way to praise this author is to quote him; and, I think, I may defy any man to say a greater thing of him, or his ability, than that there are no paragraphs in the whole discourse I speak of below these which follow.
After having recommended the satisfaction of the mind, and the pleasure of conscience, he proceeds:
"An ennobling property of it is, that it is such a pleasure as never satiates or wearies; for it properly affects the spirit, and a spirit feels no weariness, as being privileged from the causes of it. But can the epicure say so of any of the pleasures he so much dotes upon? Do they not expire while they satisfy, and after a few minutes' refreshment determine in loathing and unquietness? How short is the interval between a pleasure and a burden! How undiscernible the transition from one to the other! Pleasure dwells no longer upon the appetite than the necessities of nature, which are quickly and easily provided for; and then all that follows is a load and an oppression. Every morsel to a satisfied hunger is only a new labour to a tired digestion. Every draught to him that has quenched his thirst is but a further quenching of nature, and a provision for rheum and diseases, a drowning of the quickness and activity of the spirits.
"He that prolongs his meals, and sacrifices his time, as well as his other conveniences, to his luxury, how quickly does he outsit his pleasure! And then, how is all the following time bestowed upon ceremony and surfeit! Till at length, after a long fatigue of eating, and drinking, and babbling, he concludes the great work of dining genteelly, and so makes a shift to rise from table, that he may lie down upon his bed; where, after he has slept himself into some use of himself, by much ado he staggers to his table again, and there acts over the same brutish scene: so that he passes his whole life in a dozed condition, between sleeping and waking, with a kind of drowsiness and confusion upon his senses, which, what pleasure it can be, is hard to conceive. All that is of it dwells upon the tip of his tongue, and within the compass of his palate. A worthy prize for a man to purchase with the loss of his time, his reason, and himself!"
No. 206. [Steele.
From Tuesday, Aug. 1, to Thursday, Aug. 3, 1710
Metiri se quemque suo modulo ac pede verum est.
The general purposes of men in the conduct of their lives (I mean with relation to this life only), end in gaining either the affection or the esteem of those with whom they converse. Esteem makes a man powerful in business, and affection desirable in conversation; which is certainly the reason that very agreeable men fail of their point in the world, and those who are by no means such arrive at it with much ease. If it be visible in a man's carriage that he has a strong passion to please, no one is much at a loss how to keep measures with him, because there is always a balance in people's hands to make up with him, by giving him what he still wants in exchange for what you think fit to deny him. Such a person asks with diffidence, and ever leaves room for denial by that softness of his complexion. At the same time he himself is capable of denying nothing, even what he is not able to perform. The other sort of
See Nos. 61 and 211. In the
