I Know no one Character that gives Reason a greater Shock, at the same
Time that it presents a good ridiculous Image to the Imagination, than
that of a Man of Wit and Pleasure about the Town. This Description of a
Man of Fashion, spoken by some with a Mixture of Scorn and Ridicule, by
others with great Gravity as a laudable Distinction, is in every Body's
Mouth that spends any Time in Conversation. My Friend WILL. HONEYCOMB
has this Expression very frequently; and I never could understand by the
Story which follows, upon his Mention of such a one, but that his Man of
Wit and Pleasure was either a Drunkard too old for Wenching, or a young
lewd Fellow with some Liveliness, who would converse with you, receive
kind Offices of you, and at the same time debauch your Sister, or lie
with your Wife. According to his Description, a Man of Wit, when he
could have Wenches for Crowns apiece which he liked quite as well, would
be so extravagant as to bribe Servants, make false Friendships, fight
Relations: I say, according to him, plain and simple Vice was too little
for a Man of Wit and Pleasure; but he would leave an easy and accessible
Wickedness, to come at the same thing with only the Addition of certain
Falshood and possible Murder. WILL, thinks the Town grown very dull, in
that we do not hear so much as we used to do of these Coxcombs, whom
(without observing it) he describes as the most infamous Rogues in
Nature, with relation to Friendship, Love, or Conversation.
When Pleasure is made the chief Pursuit of Life, it will necessarily
follow that such Monsters as these will arise from a constant
Application to such Blandishments as naturally root out the Force of
Reason and Reflection, and substitute in their Place a general
Impatience of Thought, and a constant Pruiriency of inordinate Desire.
Pleasure, when it is a Man's chief Purpose, disappoints it self; and the
constant Application to it palls the Faculty of enjoying it, tho' it
leaves the Sense of our Inability for that we wish, with a Disrelish of
every thing else. Thus the intermediate Seasons of the Man of Pleasure
are more heavy than one would impose upon the vilest Criminal. Take him
when he is awaked too soon after a Debauch, or disappointed in following
a worthless Woman without Truth, and there is no Man living whose Being
is such a Weight or Vexation as his is. He is an utter Stranger to the
pleasing Reflections in the Evening of a well-spent Day, or the Gladness
of Heart or Quickness of Spirit in the Morning after profound Sleep or
indolent Slumbers. He is not to be at Ease any longer than he can keep
Reason and good Sense without his Curtains; otherwise he will be haunted
with the Reflection, that he could not believe such a one the Woman that
upon Trial he found her. What has he got by his Conquest, but to think
meanly of her for whom a Day or two before he had the highest Honour?
and of himself for, perhaps, wronging the Man whom of all Men living he
himself would least willingly have injured?
Pleasure seizes the whole Man who addicts himself to it, and will not
give him Leisure for any good Office in Life which contradicts the
Gaiety of the present Hour. You may indeed observe in People of Pleasure
a certain Complacency and Absence of all Severity, which the Habit of a
loose unconcerned Life gives them; but tell the Man of Pleasure your
secret Wants, Cares, or Sorrows, and you will find he has given up the
Delicacy of his Passions to the Cravings of his Appetites. He little
knows the perfect Joy he loses, for the disappointing Gratifications
which he pursues. He looks at Pleasure as she approaches, and comes to
him with the Recommendation of warm Wishes, gay Looks, and graceful
Motion; but he does not observe how she leaves his Presence with
Disorder, Impotence, down-cast Shame, and conscious Imperfection. She
makes our Youth inglorious, our Age shameful.
WILL. HONEYCOMB gives us twenty Intimations in an Evening of several
Hags whose Bloom was given up to his Arms; and would raise a Value to
himself for having had, as the Phrase is, very good Women. WILL.'S good
Women are the Comfort of his Heart, and support him, I warrant, by the
Memory of past Interviews with Persons of their Condition. No, there is
not in the World an Occasion wherein Vice makes so phantastical a
Figure, as at the Meeting of two old People who have been Partners in
unwarrantable Pleasure. To tell a toothless old Lady that she once had a
good Set, or a defunct Wencher that he once was the admired Thing of the
Town, are Satires instead of Applauses; but on the other Side, consider
the old Age of those who have passed their Days in Labour, Industry, and
Virtue, their Decays make them but appear the more venerable, and the
Imperfections of their Bodies are beheld as a Misfortune to humane
Society that their Make is so little durable.
But to return more directly to my Man of Wit and Pleasure. In all Orders
of Men, wherever this is the chief Character, the Person who wears it is
a negligent Friend, Father, and Husband, and entails Poverty on his
unhappy Descendants. Mortgages Diseases, and Settlements are the
Legacies a Man of Wit and Pleasure leaves to his Family. All the poor
Rogues that make such lamentable Speeches after every Sessions at
_Tyburn_, were, in their Way, Men of Wit and Pleasure, before they fell
into the Adventures which brought them thither.
Irresolution and Procrastination in all a Man's Affairs, are the natural
Effects of being addicted to Pleasure: Dishonour to the Gentleman and
Bankruptcy to the Trader, are the Portion of either whose chief Purpose
of Life is Delight. The chief Cause that this Pursuit has been in all
Ages received with so much Quarter from the soberer Part of Mankind, has
been that some Men of great Talents have sacrificed themselves to it:
The shining Qualities of such People have given a Beauty to whatever
they were engaged in, and a Mixture of Wit has recommended Madness. For
let any Man who knows what it is to have passed much Time in a Series of
Jollity, Mirth, Wit, or humourous Entertainments, look back at what he
was all that while a doing, and he will find that he has been at one
Instant sharp to some Man he is sorry to have offended, impertinent to
some one it was Cruelty to treat with such Freedom, ungracefully noisy
at such a Time, unskilfully open at such a Time, unmercifully calumnious
at such a Time; and from the whole Course of his applauded
Satisfactions, unable in the end to recollect any Circumstance which can
add to the Enjoyment of his own Mind alone, or which he would put his
Character upon with other Men. Thus it is with those who are best made
for becoming Pleasures; but how monstrous is it in the generality of
Mankind who pretend this Way, without Genius or Inclination towards it?
The Scene then is wild to an Extravagance: this is as if Fools should
mimick Madmen. Pleasure of this Kind is the intemperate Meals and loud
Jollities of the common Rate of Country Gentlemen, whose Practice and
Way of Enjoyment is to put an End as fast as they can to that little
Particle of Reason they have when they are sober: These Men of Wit and
Pleasure dispatch their Senses as fast as possible by drinking till they
cannot taste, smoaking till they cannot see, and roaring till they
cannot hear.