No. 47. TUESDAY, AUGUST 28, 1750.
_Quamquam his solatiis acquiescam, debilitor et frangor eadem
illa humanitate quæ me, ut hoc ipsum permitterem, induxit. Non
ideo tamen velim durior fieri: nec ignoro alios hujusmodi casus
nihil amplius vocare quam damnum; eoque sibi magnos homines
et sapientes videri. Qui an magni sapientesque sint, nescio;
homines non sunt. Hominis est enim affici dolore, sentire:
resistere tamen, et solatia admittere._
PLIN. Epist. viii. 16.
These proceedings have afforded me some comfort in my distress;
notwithstanding which, I am still dispirited and unhinged
by the same motives of humanity that induced me to grant such
indulgences. However, I by no means wish to become less susceptible
of tenderness. I know these kind of misfortunes would be estimated
by other persons only as common losses, and from such sensations
they would conceive themselves great and wise men. I shall not
determine either their greatness or their wisdom; but I am certain
they have no humanity. It is the part of a man to be affected with
grief; to feel sorrow, at the same time that he is to resist it,
and to admit of comfort.
Earl of ORRERY.
Of the passions with which the mind of man is agitated, it may be
observed, that they naturally hasten towards their own extinction, by
inciting and quickening the attainment of their objects. Thus fear urges
our flight, and desire animates our progress; and if there are some which
perhaps may be indulged till they outgrow the good appropriated to their
satisfaction, as it is frequently observed of avarice and ambition, yet
their immediate tendency is to some means of happiness really existing,
and generally within the prospect. The miser always imagines that
there is a certain sum that will fill his heart to the brim; and every
ambitious man, like king Pyrrhus, has an acquisition in his thoughts that
is to terminate his labours, after which he shall pass the rest of his
life in ease or gaiety, in repose or devotion.
Sorrow is perhaps the only affection of the breast that can be expected
from this general remark, and it therefore deserves the particular
attention of those who have assumed the arduous province of preserving
the balance of the mental constitution. The other passions are diseases
indeed, but they necessarily direct us to their proper cure. A man at
once feels the pain and knows the medicine, to which he is carried with
greater haste as the evil which requires it is more excruciating,
and cures himself by unerring instinct, as the wounded stags of Crete
are related by Ælian to have recourse to vulnerary herbs. But for
sorrow there is no remedy provided by nature; it is often occasioned by
accidents irreparable, and dwells upon objects that have lost or changed
their existence; it required what it cannot hope, that the laws of the
universe should be repealed; that the dead should return, or the past
should be recalled.
Sorrow is not that regret for negligence or errour which may animate us to
future care or activity, or that repentance of crimes for which, however
irrevocable, our Creator has promised to accept it as an atonement; the
pain which arises from these causes has very salutary effects, and is
every hour extenuating itself by the reparation of those miscarriages
that produce it. Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our
desires are fixed upon the past, without looking forward to the future,
an incessant wish that something were otherwise than it has been, a
tormenting and harassing want of some enjoyment or possession which
we have lost, and which no endeavours can possibly regain. Into such
anguish many have sunk upon some sudden diminution of their fortune,
an unexpected blast of their reputation, or the loss of children or of
friends. They have suffered all sensibility of pleasure to be destroyed
by a single blow, have given up for ever the hopes of substituting any
other object in the room of that which they lament, resigned their lives
to gloom and despondency, and worn themselves out in unavailing misery.
Yet so much is this passion the natural consequence of tenderness and
endearment, that, however painful and however useless, it is justly
reproachful not to feel it on some occasions; and so widely and
constantly has it always prevailed, that the laws of some nations, and
the customs of others, have limited a time for the external appearances
of grief caused by the dissolution of close alliances, and the breach of
domestick union.
It seems determined by the general suffrage of mankind, that sorrow
is to a certain point laudable, as the offspring of love, or at least
pardonable, as the effect of weakness; but that it ought not to be
suffered to increase by indulgence, but must give way, after a stated
time, to social duties, and the common avocations of life. It is at
first unavoidable, and therefore must be allowed, whether with or without
our choice; it may afterwards be admitted as a decent and affectionate
testimony of kindness and esteem; something will be extorted by nature,
and something may be given to the world. But all beyond the bursts of
passion, or the forms of solemnity, is not only useless, but culpable;
for we have no right to sacrifice, to the vain longings of affection,
that time which Providence allows us for the task of our station.
Yet it too often happens that sorrow, thus lawfully entering, gains such
a firm possession of the mind, that it is not afterwards to be ejected;
the mournful ideas, first violently impressed and afterwards willingly
received, so much engross the attention, as to predominate in every
thought, to darken gaiety, and perplex ratiocination. An habitual sadness
seizes upon the soul, and the faculties are chained to a single object,
which can never be contemplated but with hopeless uneasiness.
From this state of dejection it is very difficult to rise to cheerfulness
and alacrity; and therefore many who have laid down rules of intellectual
health, think preservatives easier than remedies, and teach us not to
trust ourselves with favourite enjoyments, not to indulge the luxury of
fondness, but to keep our minds always suspended in such indifference,
that we may change the objects about us without emotion.
An exact compliance with this rule might, perhaps, contribute to
tranquillity, but surely it would never produce happiness. He that
regards none so much as to be afraid of losing them, must live for ever
without the gentle pleasures of sympathy and confidence; he must feel no
melting fondness, no warmth of benevolence, nor any of those honest joys
which nature annexes to the power of pleasing. And as no man can justly
claim more tenderness than he pays, he must forfeit his share in that
officious and watchful kindness which love only can dictate, and those
lenient endearments by which love only can soften life. He may justly
be overlooked and neglected by such as have more warmth in their heart;
for who would be the friend of him, whom, with whatever assiduity he may
be courted, and with whatever services obliged, his principles will not
suffer to make equal returns, and who, when you have exhausted all the
instances of good-will, can only be prevailed on not to be an enemy?
An attempt to preserve life in a state of neutrality and indifference, is
unreasonable and vain. If by excluding joy we could shut out grief, the
scheme would deserve very serious attention; but since, however we may
debar ourselves from happiness, misery will find its way at many inlets,
and the assaults of pain will force our regard, though we may withhold it
from the invitations of pleasure, we may surely endeavour to raise life
above the middle point of apathy at one time, since it will necessarily
sink below it at another.
But though it cannot be reasonable not to gain happiness for fear of
losing it, yet it must be confessed, that in proportion to the pleasure
of possession, will be for some time our sorrow for the loss; it is
therefore the province of the moralist to enquire 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 sooth it into tranquillity, by
making it acquainted with miseries more dreadful and afflictive, and
diverting to the calamities of others the regards 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.
_----Si tempore reddi_
_Pax animo tranquilla potest, tu sperne morari:_
_Qui sapiet, sibi tempus erit.----_
GROTIUS, Consol. ad Patrem.
'Tis long ere time can mitigate your grief;
To wisdom fly, she quickly brings relief.
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, SEPTEMBER 1, 1750.
_Non est vivere, sed valere, vita._
MART. Lib. vi. Ep, 70. 15.
For life is not to live, but to be well.
ELPHINSTON.
Among the innumerable follies, by which we lay up in our youth repentance
and remorse for the succeeding part of our lives, there is scarce any
against which warnings are of less efficacy, than the neglect of health.
When the springs of motion are yet elastick, when the heart bounds with
vigour, and the eye sparkles with spirit, it is with difficulty that we
are taught to conceive the imbecility that every hour is bringing upon
us, or to 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.
To the arguments which have been used against complaints under the
miseries of life, the philosophers have, I think, forgot to add the
incredulity of those to whom we recount our sufferings. 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 pre-supposes
sympathy, and a little attention will shew 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 impatience.
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 very 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
publick; 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 distempered
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 langour, 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 distinctions which set one man so much above another are
very little perceived in the gloom of a sick chamber, where it will be
vain to expect entertainment from the gay, or instruction from the wise;
where all human glory is obliterated, the wit is clouded, the reasoner
perplexed, and the hero subdued; where the highest and brightest of
mortal beings finds nothing left him but the consciousness of innocence.
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 heightening 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 lingering disease, can read it without
feeling the images dance in his heart, and adding from his own experience
new vigour to the wish, and from his own imagination new colours to
the picture. The particular occasion of this little composition 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:
Ὑγιεια πρεσβιστα Μακαρων,
Μετα σου ναιοιμι
Το λειπομενον βιοτας·
Συ δε μοι προφρων συνοικος ειης.
Ει γαρ τις η πλουτου χαρις η τεκεων,
Τας ευδαιμονος τ' ανθρωποις
Βασιληιδος αρχας, η ποθων,
Ους κρυφιοις Αφροδιτης αρκυσιν θηρευομεν,
Η ει τις αλλα θεοθεν ανθρωποις τερψις,
Η πονων αμπνοα πεφανται·
Μετα σειο, μακαιρα, Ὑγιεια,
Τεθηλε παντα, και λαμπει χαριτων εαρ·
Σεθεν δε χωρις, ουδεις ευδαιμων πελει.
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
desire which we endeavour to chase into the toils of love; whatever
delight, or whatever solace 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.
Health is equally neglected, and with equal impropriety, by the votaries
of business and the followers of pleasure. Some men ruin the fabrick
of their bodies by incessant revels, and others by intemperate studies;
some batter it by excess, and others sap it by inactivity. To the noisy
route of bacchanalian rioters, it will be to little purpose that advice
is offered, though it requires no great abilities to prove, that he loses
pleasure who loses health; their clamours are too loud for the whispers
of caution, and they run the course of life with too much precipitance
to stop at the call of wisdom. Nor perhaps will they that are busied in
adding thousands to thousands, pay much regard to him that shall direct
them to hasten 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 resuscitate the powers of digestion. Poverty is, indeed, an evil from
which we naturally fly; but let us not run from one enemy to another,
nor take shelter in the arms of sickness.
_----Projecere animam! quàm vellent æthere in alto_
_Nunc et pauperiem, et duros tolerare labores!_
For healthful indigence in vain they pray,
In quest of wealth who throw their lives away.
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
endeavour 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.
No. 49. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1750.
_Non omnis moriar; multaque pars mei_
_Vitabit Libitinam, usque ego posterâ_
_Crescum lande recens._
HOR. Lib. iii. Ode xxx. 6.
Whole Horace shall not die; his songs shall save
The greatest portion from the greedy grave
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.
The next call that rouses us from a state of inactivity, is that of our
passions; we quickly begin to be sensible of hope and fear, love and
hatred, desire and aversion; these arising from the power of comparison
and reflection, extend their range wider, as our reason strengthens, and
our knowledge enlarges. At first we have no thought of pain, but when
we actually feel it; we afterwards begin to fear it, yet not before it
approaches us very nearly; but by degrees we discover it at a greater
distance, and find it lurking in remote consequences. Our terrour in
time improves into caution, and we learn to look round with vigilance
and solicitude, to stop all the avenues at 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 soon supplied,
the fear of their return is easily precluded, and something more is
necessary to relieve the long intervals of inactivity, and to give
those faculties, which cannot lie wholly quiescent, some particular
direction. For this reason, new desires and artificial passions are by
degrees produced; and, from having wishes only in consequence of our
wants, we begin to feel wants in consequence of our wishes; we persuade
ourselves 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 these 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 wildly 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.
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 enlarged and elevated
minds. That the desire of being praised by posterity implies a resolution
to deserve their praises, and that the folly charged upon it, is only a
noble and disinterested generosity, which is not felt, and therefore not
understood, by those who have been always accustomed to refer every thing
to themselves, and whose selfishness has contracted their understandings.
That the soul of man, formed for eternal life, naturally springs forward
beyond the limits of corporeal existence, and rejoices to consider
herself as co-operating with future ages, and as co-extended with endless
duration. That the reproach urged with so much petulance, the reproach
of labouring for what cannot be enjoyed, is founded on an opinion which
may with great 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 regulation 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 recompence
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 penegyrick 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, drunk
many a flaggon, and uttered many a reproach_.
Πολλα φαγων, και πολλα πιων, και πολλα κακ' ειπων
Ανθρωπους, κειμαι Τιμοκρεων Ρὁδιος.
The true satisfaction which is to be drawn from the consciousness that we
shall share the attention of future times, must arise from the hope, that
with our name, our virtues will be propagated; and that those whom we
cannot benefit in our lives, may receive instruction from our examples,
and incitement from our renown.
No. 50. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1750.
_Credebant hoc grande nefas, et morte piandum,_
_Si juvenis vetulo non assurrexerat, atque_
_Barbato cuicunque puer, licet ipse videret_
_Plura domi fraga, et majores glandis acervos._
JUV. Sat. xiii. 54.
And had not men the hoary head rever'd,
And boys paid rev'rence when a man appear'd,
Both must have died, though richer skins they wore,
And saw more heaps of acorns in their store
CREECH.
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 disbelieving 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 shewn; 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.
It has been always the practice of those who are desirous to believe
themselves made venerable by length of time, to censure the new comers
into life, for want of respect to grey hairs and sage experience, for
heady confidence in their own understandings, for hasty conclusions
upon partial views, for disregard of counsels, which their fathers and
grandsires are ready to afford them, and a rebellious impatience of that
subordination 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 ignorance.
Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the
petulance and insolence of the rising generation. He recounts the
decency and regularity of former times, and celebrates 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 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 enquire, 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 enquiries 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 instructors of
ignorance, and who yet retain in 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, and 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 may, therefore, very reasonably be suspected that the old draw upon
themselves the greatest part of those insults which they so much lament,
and that age is rarely despised but when it is contemptible. If men
imagine that excess of debauchery can be made reverend by time, that
knowledge is the consequence of long life, however idly or thoughtlessly
employed, that priority of birth will supply the want of steadiness 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 themselves under guides who have
lost their way?
There are, indeed, many truths which time necessarily and certainly
teaches, and which might, by those who have learned them from experience,
be communicated to their successors at 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 fell 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.
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 themselves up to the duties
of declining years; and contentedly resign to youth its levity, its
pleasures, its frolicks, and its fopperies. It is a hopeless endeavour
to unite the contrarieties of spring and winter; it is unjust to claim
the privileges of age, and retain the playthings of childhood. The young
always form magnificent ideas of the wisdom and gravity of men, whom they
consider as placed at a distance from them in the ranks of existence, and
naturally look on those whom they find trifling with long beards, with
contempt and indignation, like that which women feel at the effeminacy
of men. If dotards will contend with boys in those performances in
which boys must always excel them; if they will dress crippled limbs
in embroidery, endeavour at gaiety with faultering voices, and darken
assemblies of pleasure with the ghastliness of disease, they may well
expect those who find their diversions obstructed will hoot them away;
and that if they descend to competition with youth, they must bear the
insolence of successful rivals.
_Lusisti satis, edisti satis atque bibisti:_
_Tempus abire tibi est._
You've had your share of mirth, of meat and drink;
'Tis time to quit the scene--'tis time to think.
ELPHINSTON.
Another vice of age, by which the rising generation may be alienated
from it, is severity and 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.
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 forsake him;
and in age forbear to animadvert with rigour on faults which experience
only can correct.
No. 51. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1750.
_----Stultus labor est ineptiarum._
MART. Lib. ii. Ep. lxxxvi. 10.
How foolish is the toil of trifling cares!
ELPHINSTON.