Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

the flood, as I take it to be deduced from that permission, or ordinance rather, given to Noah and his descendants,) I hold them in perfect contempt. Hay for horses. I remember a pretty apologue, which Mandeville tells very much to this purpose in his Fable of the Bees :-He brings in a lion arguing with a merchant, who had ventured to expostulate with this king of beasts upon his violent methods of feeding. The lion thus retorts :-" Savage I am; but no creature can be called cruel but what either by malice or insensibility extin guishes his natural pity. The lion was born without compassion; we follow the instinct of our nature; the gods have appointed us to live upon the waste and spoil of other animals, and as long as we can meet with dead ones, we never hunt after the living; 'tis only man, mischievous man, that can make death a sport. Nature taught your stomach to crave nothing but vegetables. (Under favour of the lion, if he meant to assert this universally of mankind, it is not true. However, what he says presently is very sensible.) Your violent fondness to change, and greater eagerness after novelties, have prompted you to the destruction of animals without justice or necessity. The lion has a ferment within him, that consumes the toughest skin and hardest bones, as well as the flesh of all animals without exception. Your squeamish stomach, in which the digestive heat is weak and inconsiderable, won't so much as admit of the most tender parts of them, unless above half the concoction has been performed by artificial fire beforehand; and yet what animal have you spared, to satisfy the caprices of a languid appetite? Languid Î say; for what is man's hunger if compared with the lion's? Yours, when it is at the worst, makes you faint; mine makes me mad: oft have I tried with roots and herbs to allay the violence of it, but in vain; nothing but large quantities of flesh can any ways appease it." Allowing for the lion's not having a prophetic instinct to take in every lusus naturæ that was possible of the human appetite, he was, generally speaking, in the right; and the merchant was so impressed with his argument that, we are told, he replied not, but fainted away. Oh, Mr. Reflector, that I were not obliged to add, that the creature who thus argues was but a type of me! Miserable man! I am that lion. "Oft have I tried with roots and herbs to allay that violence, but in vain; nothing but—”

I

Those tales which are renewed as often as the editors of papers want to fill up a space in their unfeeling columns, of great eaters-people that devour whole geese and legs of mutton for wagers, are sometimes attempted to be drawn to a parallel with my case This wilful confounding of motives

and circumstances, which make all the difference of moral or immoral in actions, just suits the sort of talent which some of my acquaintances pride themselves upon. Wagers !—I thank Heaven, I was never mercenary, nor could consent to prostitute a gift (though but a left-handed one) of Nature, to the enlarging of my worldly substance; prudent as the necessities which that fatal gift have involved me in might have made such a prostitution to appear in the eyes of an indelicate world.

Rather let me say, that to the satisfaction of that talent which was given me, I have been content to sacrifice no common expectations; for such I had from an old lady, a near relation of our family, in whose good graces I had the fortune to stand, till one fatal evening You have seen, Mr. Reflector, if you have ever passed your time much in country towns, the kind of suppers which elderly ladies in those places have lying in petto in an adjoining parlour, next to that where they are entertaining their periodically-invited coevals with cards and muffins. The cloth is usually spread some half hour before the final rubber is decided, whence they adjourn to sup upon what may emphatically be called nothing. A sliver of ham, purposely contrived to be transparent, to show the china dish through it, neighbouring a slip of invisible brawn, which abuts upon something they call a tartlet, as that is bravely supported by an atom of marmalade, flanked in its turn by a grain of potted beef, with a power of such dishlings, minims of hospitality, spread in defiance of human nature, or rather with an utter ignorance of what it demands. Being engaged at one of these card-parties, I was obliged to go a little before supper-time, (as they facetiously called the point of time in which they are taking these shadowy refections,) and the old lady, with a sort of fear shining through the smile of courteous hospitality that beamed in her countenance, begged me to step into the next room and take something before I went out in the cold-a proposal which lay not in my nature to deny. Indignant at the airy prospect I saw before me, I set to, and in a thrice despatched the whole meal intended for eleven persons, fish, flesh, fowl, pastry-to the sprigs of garnishing parsley, and the last fearful custard that quaked upon the board. I need not describe the consternation, when in due time the dowagers adjourned from their cards. Where was the supper? and the servants' answer, Mr.

had eat it all.

That freak, however, jested me out of a good three hundred pounds a year, which I afterward was informed for a cer tainty the old lady meant to leave me, I mention it not in illustration of the unhappy faculty which I am possessed of; for any unluckly wag of a schoolboy, with a tolerable appetite,

[ocr errors]

could have done as much without feeling any hurt after it— only that you may judge whether I am a man likely to set my talents to sale, or to require the pitiful stimulus of a wager.

I have read in Pliny, or in some author of that stamp, of a reptile in Africa, whose venom is of that hot, destructive quality, that wheresoever it fastens its tooth, the whole substance of the animal that has been bitten in a few seconds is reduced to dust, crumbles away, and absolutely disappears : it is called from this quality the annihilator. Why am I forced to seek, in all the most prodigious and portentous facts of Natural History, for creatures typical of myself. I am that snake, that annihilator: "wherever I fasten, in a few seconds-"

Oh happy sick men, that are groaning under the want of that very thing, the excess of which is my torment! Oh fortunate, too fortunate, if you knew your happiness, invalids! What would I not give to exchange this fierce concoctive and digestive heat-this rabid fury which vexes me, which tears and torments me- -for your quiet, mortified, hermit-like, subdued, and sanctified stomachs--your cool, chastened inclinations, and coy desires for food!

To what unhappy figuration of the parts intestine I owe this unnatural craving, I must leave to the anatomists and the phy sicians to determine: they, like the rest of the world, have doubtless their eye upon me; and as I have been cut up alive by the sarcasms of my friends, so I shudder when I conternplate the probability that this animal frame, when its restless appetites shall have ceased their importunity, may be cut up also (horrible suggestion!) to determine in what system of solids or fluids this original sin of my constitution lay lurking. What work will they make with their acids and alkalines, their serums and coagulums, effervescences, viscious matter, bile, chyle, and acrimonious juices, to explain that cause which Nature, who willed the effect to punish me for my sins, may no less have determined to keep in the dark from them, to punish them for their presumption.

You may ask, Mr. Reflector, to what purpose is my appeal to you: what can you do for me? Alas! I know too well that my case is out of the reach of advice-out of the reach of consolation. But it is some relief to the wounded heart to impart its tale of misery; and some of my acquaintance, who may read my case in your pages under a borrowed name, may be induced to give it a more humane consideration than I could ever yet obtain from them under my own. Make them, if possible, to reflect, that an original peculiarity of constitution is no crime; that not that which goes into the mouth

desecrates a man, but that which
comes out of it-such as
sarcasm, bitter jests, mocks, and taunts, and ill-natured ob-
servations; and let them consider, if there be such things
(which we have all heard of) as pious treachery, innocent
adultery, &c., whether there may not be also such a thing as
innocent gluttony.

I shall only subscribe myself
Your afflicted servant,

EDAL

CURIOUS FRAGMENTS,

EXTRACTED FROM A COMMONPLACE BOOK, WHICH BELONGED TO ROBERT BURTON, THE FAMOUS AUTHOR OF THE ANATOMY OF

MELANCHOLY.

EXTRACT I.

I, DEMOCRITUS, Junior, have put my finishing pen to a tractate De Melancholia, this day, December 5, 1620. First, I blesse the Trinity, which hath given me health to prosecute my worthlesse studies thus far, and make supplication, with a Laus Deo, if in any case these my poor labours may be found instrumental to weede out black melancholy, carking cares, harte-grief, from the mind of man. Sed hoc magis volo quam

expecto.

I turn now to my book, i nunc liber, goe forth, my brave Anatumy, child of my brain-sweat, and yee, candidi lectores, lo! here I give him up to you, even do with him what you please, my masters. Some, I suppose, will applaud, commend, cry him up, (these are my friends,) hee is a flos rarus, forsooth, a none-such, a phoenix, (concerning whom see Plinius and Mandeville, though Fienus de monstris doubteth at large of such a bird, whom Montaltus confuting argueth to have been a man male scrupulositatis, of a weak and cowardlie faith: Christopherus a Vega is with him in this). Others, again, will blame, hiss, reprehende in many things, cry down altogether my collections, for crude, inept, putid, post canum scripta, Coryate could write better upon a full meal, verbose, inerudite, and not sufficiently abounding in authorities, dogmata, sentences of learneder writers which have been before me, when as that first-named sort clean otherwise judge of my labours to bee nothing else but a messe of opinions, a vortex attracting indiscriminate, gold, pearls. hay, straw, wood, excrement, an exchange, tavern, marte, for foreigners to congregate, Danes, Swedes, Hollanders, Lombards, so many strange faces, dresses, salutations, languages, all which Wolfius behelde with great content upon the Venetian Rialto, as he describes diffusedly in his book the world's Epitome, which Sannazar so beprais

38

« НазадПродовжити »