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 a-piece 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 falsehood and possible murder. Will thinks the town grown very dull, in that we do not hear so much as we used to do of those coxcombs, whom, (without observing it,) he describes as the most infamous rogues in nature, with relation to friendship, love, or conversation. apparel. He was no sooner seated than he | liveliness, who would converse with you, called for a dish of tea; but as several gentlemen in the room wanted other things, the boys of the house did not think themselves at leisure to mind him. I could observe the old fellow was very uneasy at the affront, and at his being obliged to repeat his commands several times to no purpose; until at last one of the lads presented him with some stale tea in a broken dish, accompanied with a plate of brown sugar; which so raised his indignation, that after several obliging appellations of dog and rascal, he asked him aloud before the whole company, Why he must be used with less respect than that fop there?' pointing to a well-dressed young gentleman who was drinking tea at the opposite table. The boy of the house replied with a good deal of pertness, that his master had two sorts of customers, and that the gentleman at the other table had given him many a sixpence for wiping his shoes. By this time the young Templar, who found his honour concerned in the dispute, and that the eyes of the whole coffee-house were upon him, had thrown aside a paper he had in his hand, and was coming towards us, while we at the table made what haste we could to get away from the impending quarrel, but were all of us surprised to see him as he approached nearer to put on an air of deference and respect. To whom the old man said, 'Hark you, sirrah, will pay off your extravagant bills once more, but will take effectual care for the future, that your prodigality shall not spirit up a parcel of rascals to insult your father. Though I by no means approve either the impudence of the servants or the extravagance of the son, I cannot but think the old gentleman was in some measure justly served for walking in masquerade, I mean appearing in a dress so much beneath his quality and estate. X. Where pleasure prevails, all the greatest virtues will lose their power. 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 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 pruriency of inordinate desire. Pleasure, when it is a man's chief purpose, disappoints itself; and the constant application to it palls the faculty of enjoying it, though 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 wellspent 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 that he has given up the delicacy of his passions to the cravings of his appetite. 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, downcast shame, and conscious imperfection. She makes our youth inglorious, our age shameful. 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 Will Honeycomb gives us twenty intima- way, without genius or inclination towards tions in an evening of several hags whose it! The scene then is wild to an extravabloom was given up to his arms; and would gance: this is, as if fools should mimic madraise a value to himself for having had, as men. Pleasure of this kind is the intemthe phrase is, 'very good women. Will's perate meals and loud jollities of the comgood women are the comfort of his heart, mon rate of country gentlemen, whose and support him, I warrant, by the memory practice and way of enjoyment is to put an of past interviews with persons of their con- end as fast as they can to that little particle dition. No, there is not in the world an of reason they have when they are sober. occasion wherein vice makes so fantastical These men of wit and pleasure despatch a figure, as at the meeting of two old people their senses as fast as possible by drinking who have been partners in unwarrantable until they cannot taste, smoking until they pleasure. To tell a toothless old lady cannot see, and roaring until they cannot that she once had a good set, or a defunct hear. wencher that he once was the admired thing of the town, are satire instead of applauses; but on the other side, consider the No. 152.] Friday, August 24, 1711. 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 human 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 humorous 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 of fended, impertinent to some one it was cruelty to treat with such freedom, ungracefully noisy at such a time, unskilfully open at Οι η περ φύλλων γενεη, τοιηδε και ανδρων. T. Hom. Il. vi. 146. Like leaves on trees the race of man is found. Pope. THERE is no sort of people whose conversation is so pleasant as that of military men, who derive their courage and magnanimity from thought and reflection. The many adventures which attend their way of life, makes their conversation so full of incidents, and gives them so frank an air in speaking of what they have been witnesses of, that no company can be more amiable than that of men of sense who are soldiers. There is a certain irregular way in their narrations or discourse, which has something more warm and pleasing than we meet among men who are used to adjust and methodise their thoughts. I was this evening walking in the fields with my friend Captain Sentry, and I could not, from the many relations which I drew him into, of what passed when he was in the service, forbear expressing my wonder, that the fear of death,' which we, the rest of mankind, arm ourselves against with so much contemplation, reason, and philosophy, should appear so little in camps, that common men march into open breaches, meet opposite battalions, not only without reluctance but with alacrity. My friend answered what I said in the following manner: What you wonder at may very naturally be the subject of admiration to all who are not conversant in camps; but when a man has spent some time in that way of life, he observes a certain mechanic courage which the ordinary race of men become masters of from acting always in a crowd. They see, indeed, many drop, but then they see many more alive; they observe themselves escape very narrowly, and they do not know why they should not again. Besides which general way of loose thinking, they usually spend the other part of their time in pleasures upon which their minds are so entirely bent, that short labours or dangers are but a cheap purchase of jollity, triumph, victory, fresh quarters, new scenes, and uncommon adventures. Such are the thoughts of the executive part of an army, and indeed of the gross of mankind in general; but none of these men of mechanical courage have ever made any great figure in the profession of arms. Those who are formed for command, are such as have reasoned themselves out of a consideration of greater good than length of days, into such a negligence of their being, as to make it their first position, that it is one day to be resigned; and since it is, in the prosecution of worthy actions and service of mankind, they can put it to habitual hazard. The event of our designs, say they, as it relates to others, is uncertain; but as it relates to ourselves it must be prosperous, while we are in the pursuit of our duty, and within the terms upon which Providence has insured our happiness, whether we die or live. All that nature has prescribed must be good; and as death is natural to us, it is absurdity to fear it. Fear loses its purpose when we are sure it cannot preserve us, and we should draw resolution to meet it from the impossibility to escape it. Without a resignation to the necessity of dying, there can be no capacity in man to attempt any thing that is glorious: but when they have once attained to that perfection, the pleasures of a life spent in martial adventures are as great as any of which the human mind is capable. The force of reason gives a certain beauty, mixed with the conscience of well-doing and thirst of glory, to all which before was terrible and ghastly to the imagination. Add to this, that the fellowship of danger, the common good of mankind, the general cause, and the manifest virtue you may observe in so many men, who made no figure until that day, are so many incentives to destroy the little consideration of their own persons. Such are the heroic part of soldiers who are qualified for leaders. As to the rest, whom I before spoke of, I know not how it is, but they arrive at a certain habit of being void of thought, insomuch that on occasion of the most imminent danger they are still in the same indifference. Nay, I remember an instance of a gay Frenchman,* who was led on in battle by a superior officer, (whose conduct it was his custom to speak of always with contempt and raillery,) and in the beginning of the action received a wound he was sensible was mortal; his reflection on this occasion was, "I wish I could live another hour, to see how this blundering coxcomb will get clear of this business." *The Chevalier de Flourilles, a lieutenant general un der the Prince of Conde, at the battle of Senelf, in 1674. in the same squadron of a troop of horse, He very gravely replied, "Ay, he had a mad horse." This short epitaph from such a familiar, without more words, gave me, at that time under twenty, a very moderate opinion of the friendship of companions. Thus is affection and every other motive of life in the generality rooted out by the present busy scene about them: they lament no man whose capacity can be supplied by another; and where men converse without delicacy, the next man you meet will serve as well as he_whom you have lived with half your life. To such the devastation of countries, the misery of inhabitants, the cries of the pillaged, and the silent sorrow of the great unfortunate, are ordinary objects; their minds are bent upon the little gratifications of their own senses and appetites, forgetful of compassion, insensible of glory; avoiding only shame; their whole hearts taken up with the trivial hope of meeting and being merry. These are the people who make up the gross of the soldiery. But the fine gentleman in that band of men is such a one as I have now in my eye, who is foremost in all danger to which he is ordered. His officers are his friends and companions, as they are men of honour and gentlemen; the private men his brethren, as they are of his species. He is beloved of all that behold him. They wish him in danger as he views their ranks, that they may have occasion to save him at their own hazard. Mutual love is the order of the files where he commands; every man afraid for himself and his neighbour, not lest their commander should punish them, but lest he should be offended. Such is his regiment who knows mankind, and feels their distresses so far as to prevent them, Just in distributing what is their due, he would think himself below their tailor to wear a snip of their clothes in lace upon his own; and below the most rapacious agent, should he enjoy a farthing above his own pay. Go on, brave man, immortal glory is thy fortune, and immortal happi ness thy reward.' happi No. 153.] Saturday, August 25, 1711. Habet natura ut aliarum omnium rerum sic vivendi modum; senectus autem peractio ætatis est tanquam fabulæ. Cujus defatigationem fugere debeinus, præserTull. de Senect. tim adjuncta satietate. Life, as well as all other things, hath its bounds as signed by nature; and its conclusion, like the last act of a play, is old age; the fatigue of which we ought to shun, especially when our appetites are fully satisfied. Or all the impertinent wishes which we hear expressed in conversation, there is not one more unworthy a gentleman or a man of liberal education, than that of wishing one's self younger. I have observed this wish is usually made upon sight of some object which gives the idea of a past action, that it is no dishonour to us that we cannot now repeat: or else on what was in itself shameful when we performed it. It is a certain sign of a foolish or a dissolute mind if we want our youth again only for the strength of bones and sinews which we once were masters of. It is (as my author has it) as absurd in an old man to wish for the strength of a youth, as it would be in a young man to wish for the strength of a bull or a horse. These wishes are both equally out of nature, which should direct in all things that are not contradictory to justice, law, and reason. But though every old man has been young, and every young one hopes to be old, there seems to be a most unnatural misunderstanding between those two stages of life. This unhappy want of commerce arises from the insolent arrogance or exultation in youth, and the irrational despondence or self-pity in age. A young man whose passion and ambition is to be good and wise, and an old one who has no inclination to be lewd or debauched, are quite unconcerned in this speculation; but the cocking young fellow who treads upon the toes of his elders, and the old fool who envies the saucy pride he sees him in, are the objects of our present contempt and derision. Contempt and derision are harsh words; but in what manner can one give advice to a youth in the pursuit and possession of sensual pleasures, or afford pity to an old man in the impotence and desire of enjoying them? When young men in public places betray in their deportment an abandoned resignation to their appetites, they give to sober minds a prospect of a despicable age, which, if not interrupted by death in the midst of their follies, must certainly come. When an old man bewails the loss of such gratifications which are passed, he discovers a monstrous inclination to that which it is not in the course of Providence to recall. The state of an old man, who is dissatisfied merely for his being such, is the most out of all measures of reason and good sense of any being we have any account of, from the highest angel to the lowest worm. How miserable is the contemplation to consider a libidinous old man (while all created beings, besides himself and devils, are following the order of Providence) fretting at the course of things, and being almost the sole malcontent in the creation. But let us a little reflect upon what he has lost by the number of years. The passions which he had in youth are not to be obeyed as they were then, but reason is more powerful now, without the disturbance of them. An old gentleman, the other day, in discourse with a friend of his (reflecting upon some adventures they had in youth together) cried out, Oh, Jack, those were happy days!'-That is true,' replied his friend, but methinks we go about our business more quietly than we did then.' One would think it should be no small satisfaction to have gone so far in our journey that the heat of the day is over with us. When life itself is a fever, as it is in licentious youth, the pleasures of it are no other than the dreams of a man in that distemper; and it is as absurd to wish the return of that season of life, as for a man in health to be sorry for the loss of gilded palaces, fairy walks, and flowery pastures, with which he remembers he was entertained in the troubled slumbers of a fit of sickness. As to all the rational and worthy pleasures of our being, the conscience of a good fame, the contemplation of another life, the respect and commerce of honest men, our capacities for such enjoyments are enlarged by years. While health endures, the latter part of life, in the eye of reason, is certainly the more eligible. The memory of a well-spent youth gives a peaceable, unmixed, and elegant pleasure to the mind; and to such who are so unfortunate as not to be able to look back on youth with satisfaction, they may give themselves no little consolation that they are under no temptation to repeat their follies, and that they at present despise them. It was prettily said, He that would be long an old man, must begin early to be one. It is too late to resign a thing after a man is robbed of it; therefore it is necessary that before the arrival of age we bid adieu to the pursuits of youth, ctherwise sensual habits will live in our imaginations, when our limbs cannot be subservient to them. The poor fellow who lost his arm last siege, will tell you he feels the fingers that are buried in Flanders ache every cold morning at Chelsea. The fond humour of appearing in the gay and fashionable world, and being applauded for trivial excellences, is what makes youth have age in contempt, and makes age resign with so ill a grace the qualifications of youth, but this in both sexes is inverting all things, and turning the natural course of our minds, which should build their approbations and dislike upon what nature and reason dictate, into chimera and confusion. Age in a virtuous person, of either sex, carries in it an authority which makes it preferable to all the pleasures of youth. If to be saluted, attended, and consulted with deference, are instances of pleasure, they are such as never fail a virtuous old age. I trary character, who never thought in his life, rallied me one day upon it, and said he believed I was still a virgin.' There was a young lady of virtue present, and I was not displeased to favour the insinuation; but it had a quite contrary effect from what I expected. I was ever after treated with great coldness both by that lady and all the rest of my acquaintance. In a very little time I never came into a room but I could hear a whisper, 'Here comes the maid.' A girl of humcur would on some occasion say, Why, how do you know more than any of us?' An expression of that kind was generally followed by a lcud laugh. In a word, for no other fault in the world than that they really thought me as innocent as themselves, I became of no consequence among them, and was received always upon the foot of a jest. This made so strong an impression upon me, that I resolved to be as agreeable as the best of the men who laughed at me: but I observed it was nonsense for me to be impudent at first among those who knew me. My character for modesty was so notorious wherever I had hitherto appeared, that I resolved to show my new face in new quarters of the world. My first step I chose with judgment; for I went to Astrop, and came down among a crowd of academics, at one dash, the impudentest fellow they had ever seen in their lives. Flushed with this success, I made love and was happy. Upon this conquest I thought it would be unlike a gentleman to stay long with my mistress, and crossed the country to Bury.† I could give you a very good account of myself at that place also. these two ended my first summer of gallantry. The winter following, you would wonder at it, but I relapsed into modesty upon coming among people of figure in Londen, yet not so much but that the ladies who had formerly laughed at me, said, 'Bless us! how wonderfully that gentleman 'MR. SPECTATOR,-You are frequent in is improved!' Some familiarities about the the mention of matters which concern the playhouses towards the end of the ensuing feminine world, and take upon you to be winter, made me conceive new hopes of very severe against men upon all those oc- adventures. And instead of returning the casions: but all this while I am afraid you next summer to Astrop or Bury, I thought have been very little conversant with wo-myself qualified to go to Epsom, and folmen, or you would know the generality of them are not so angry as you imagine at the general vices among us. I am apt to believe (begging your pardon) that you are still what I myself was once, a queer modest fellow; and therefore, for your information, shall give you a short account of myself, and the reasons why I was forced to wench, drink, play, and do every thing which are necessary to the character of a man of wit and pleasure, to be well with the ladies. T. No. 154.] Monday, August 27, 1711. Tate. 'You are to know then that I was bred a gentleman, and had the finishing part of my education under a man of great probity, wit, and learning, in one of our universities. I will not deny but this made my behaviour and mien bear in it a figure of thought rather than action; and a man of a quite con At lowed a young woman, whose relations were jealous of my place in her favour, to Scarborough. I carried my point, and in my third year aspired to go to Tunbridge, and in the autumn of the same year made my appearance at Bath. I was now got into the way of talk proper for ladies, and was run into a vast acquaintance among them, which I always improved to the best advantage. In all this course of time, and some years following, I found a sober modest man was always looked upon by both sexes as a precise unfashioned fellow of no life or spirit. It was ordinary for a man who had been drunk in good company, or passed a * Astrop Wells in Oxfordshire. † Bury-fair. A place of fashionable resort. |