Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

for if I know my own heart, I was never except for its long sitting. Those vivacious, selfish,-never possessed a luxury which I long-continued meals of the latter Romans, did not hasten to communicate to others; indeed, I justly envy; but the kind of fare but my food, alas! was none; it was an which the Curii and Dentati put up with, I indispensable necessary; I could as soon could be content with. Dentatus I have have spared the blood in my veins, as have been called, among other unsavoury jests. parted that with my companions. Doublemeal is another name which my Well, no one stage of suffering lasts for acquaintance have palmed upon me, for an ever we should grow reconciled to it at innocent piece of policy which I put in length, I suppose, if it did. The miseries of practice for some time without being found my school-days had their end; I was once out; which was going the round of my more restored to the paternal dwelling. The friends, beginning with the most primitive affectionate solicitude of my parents was feeders among them, who take their dinner directed to the good-natured purpose of about one o'clock, and so successively dropconcealing, even from myself, the infirmity ping in upon the next and the next, till by which haunted me. I was continually told the time I got among my more fashionable that I was growing, and the appetite I dis- intimates, whose hour was six or seven, I played was humanely represented as being have nearly made up the body of a just and nothing more than a symptom and an effect complete meal (as I reckon it), without of that. I used even to be complimented taking more than one dinner (as they account upon it. But this temporary fiction could of dinners) at one person's house. Since I not endure above a year or two. I ceased to have been found out, I endeavour to make grow, but, alas! I did not cease my demands up by a damper, as I call it, at home, before for alimentary sustenance. I go out. But alas! with me, increase of appetite truly grows by what it feeds on. What is peculiarly offensive to me at those dinner-parties is, the senseless custom of cheese, and the dessert afterwards. I have a rational antipathy to the former; and for fruit, and those other vain vegetable substitutes for meat (meat, the only legitimate aliment for human creatures since 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

Those times are long since past, and with them have ceased to exist the fond concealment-the indulgent blindness-the delicate overlooking the compassionate fiction. I and my infirmity are left exposed and bare to the broad, unwinking eye of the world, which nothing can elude. My meals are scanned, my mouthfuls weighed in a balance; that which appetite demands is set down to the account of gluttony,-a sin which my whole soul abhors-nay, which Nature herself has put it out of my power to commit. I am constitutionally disenabled from that vice; for how can he be guilty of excess who never can get enough? Let them cease, then, to watch my plate; and leave off their ungracious comparisons of it to the seven baskets of fragments, and the supernaturally-methods of feeding. The Lion thus retorts: replenished cup of old Baucis: and be thankful that their more phlegmatic stomachs, not their virtue, have saved them from the like reproaches. I do not see that any of them desist from eating till the holy rage of hunger, as some one calls it, is supplied. Alas! I am doomed to stop short of that continence.

"Savage I am; but no creature can be called cruel but what either by malice or insensibility extinguishes 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 What am I to do? I am by disposition after the living; 'tis only man, mischievous inclined to conviviality and the social meal. man, that can make death a sport. Nature I am no gourmand: I require no dainties: I taught your stomach to crave nothing but should despise the board of Heliogabalus, vegetables.-(Under favour of the Lion, if he

meant to assert this universally of mankind, Rather let me say, that to the satisfaction it is not true. However, what he says of that talent which was given me, I have presently is very sensible.)-Your violent been content to sacrifice no common expectfondness to change, and greater eagerness ations; for such I had from an old lady, a after novelties, have prompted you to the near relation of our family, in whose good destruction of animals without justice or graces I had the fortune to stand, till one necessity. The Lion has a ferment within fatal evening - You have seen, Mr. him, that consumes the toughest skin and Reflector, if you have ever passed your time hardest bones, as well as the flesh of all much in country towns, the kind of suppers animals, without exception. Your squeamish which elderly ladies in those places have stomach, in which the digestive heat is weak lying in petto in an adjoining parlour, next and inconsiderable, won't so much as admit to that where they are entertaining their of the most tender parts of them, unless periodically-invited coevals with cards and above half the concoction has been performed muffins. The cloth is usually spread some by artificial fire beforehand; and yet what half-hour before the final rubber is decided, animal have you spared, to satisfy the whence they adjourn to sup upon what may caprices of a languid appetite? Languid, I emphatically be called nothing;—a sliver of say; for what is man's hunger if compared ham, purposely contrived to be transparent with the Lion's? Yours, when it is at the to show the china-dish through it, neighworst, makes you faint; mine makes me bouring a slip of invisible brawn, which mad: oft have I tried with roots and herbs abuts upon something they call a tartlet, as to allay the violence of it, but in vain; that is bravely supported by an atom of nothing but large quantities of flesh can any marmalade, flanked in its turn by a grain of ways appease it."-Allowing for the Lion potted beef, with a power of such dishlings, not having a prophetic instinct to take in minims of hospitality, spread in defiance of every lusus naturæ that was possible of the human nature, or rather with an utter human appetite, he was, generally speaking, ignorance of what it demands. Being engaged in the right; and the Merchant was so at one of these card-parties, I was obliged to impressed with his argument that, we are go a little before supper time (as they facetold, he replied not, but fainted away. O, tiously called the point of time in which Mr. Reflector, that I were not obliged to they are taking these shadowy refections), add, that the creature who thus argues was and the old lady, with a sort of fear shining but a type of me! Miserable man! I am through the smile of courteous hospitality that Lion! "Oft have I tried with roots that beamed in her countenance, begged me and herbs to allay that violence, but in vain; to step into the next room and take somenothing but thing 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 trice 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.

[ocr errors]

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 acquaintance 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.

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

could have done as much without feeling shall have ceased their importunity, may be

any hurt after it,-only that you may judge whether I am a man likely to set my talent 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.”

O happy sick men, that are groaning under the want of that very thing, the excess of which is my torment ! O 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 physicians 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 contemplate the probability that this animal frame, when its restless appetites

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, viscous 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 observations; 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,

EDAX.

CURIOUS FRAGMENTS,

EXTRACTED FROM A COMMON-PLACE 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.

with great content upon the Venetian Rialto, as he describes diffusedly in his book the World's Epitome, which Sannazar so bepraiseth, e contra our Polydore can see nothing in it; they call me singular, a pedant, fantastic, words of reproach in this age, which is all too neoterick and light for my humour.

Hear you his case.

One cometh to me sighing, complaining. He expected universal remedies in my Anatomy; so many cures as there are distemperatures among men. I have not put his affection in my cases. I turn now to my book, i nunc liber, goe My fine Sir is a lover, an inamorata, a Pyraforth, my brave Anatomy, child of my brain- mus, a Romeo; he walks seven years dissweat, and yee, candidi lectores, lo! here I consolate, moping, because he cannot enjoy give him up to you, even do with him what his miss, insanus amor is his melancholy, you please, my masters. Some, I suppose, the man is mad; delirat, he dotes; all this will applaud, commend, cry him up (these while his Glycera is rude, spiteful, not to be are my friends), hee is a flos rarus, forsooth, entreated, churlish, spits at him, yet exceeda none-such, a Phoenix, (concerning whom ing fair, gentle eyes (which is a beauty), hair see Plinius and Mandeville, though Fienus de lustrous and smiling, the trope is none of Monstris doubteth at large of such a bird, mine, Eneas Sylvius hath crines ridentes— whom Montaltus confuting argueth to have in conclusion she is wedded to his rival, a been a man mala scrupulositatis, of a weak boore, a Corydon, a rustic, omnino ignarus, he and cowardlie faith: Christopherus a Vega is can scarce construe Corderius, yet haughty, with him in this). Others again will blame, fantastic, opiniâtre. The lover travels, goes hiss, reprehende in many things, cry down into foreign parts, peregrinates, amoris ergo, altogether my collections, for crude, inept, sees manners, customs, not English, converses putid, post cœnam scripta, Coryate could write with pilgrims, lying travellers, monks, herbetter upon a full meal, verbose, inerudite, mits, those cattle, pedlars, travelling gentry, and not sufficiently abounding in authorities, Egyptians, natural wonders, unicorns (though dogmata, sentences of learneder writers which Aldobrandus will have them to be figments), have been before me, when as that first- satyrs, semi-viri, apes, monkeys, baboons, named sort clean otherwise judge of my curiosities artificial, pyramides, Virgilius his labours to bee nothing else but a messe of tombe, relicks, bones, which are nothing but opinions, a vortex attracting indiscriminate, ivory as Melancthon judges, though Cornugold, pearls, hay, straw, wood, excrement, an tus leaneth to think them bones of dogs, exchange, tavern, marte, for foreigners to cats, (why not men ?) which subtill priests congregate, Danes, Swedes, Hollanders, Lom-vouch to have been saints, martyrs, heu bards, so many strange faces, dresses, saluta- Pietas! By that time he has ended his tions, languages, all which Wolfius behelde course, fugit hora, seven other years are

and wild parsley, good in such cases, though Avicenna preferreth some sorts of wild fowl, teals, widgeons, beccaficos, which men in Sussex eat. He flies out in a passion, ho! ho; and falls to calling me names, dizzard, ass, lunatic, moper, Bedlamite, Pseudo-Democritus. I smile in his face, bidding him be patient, tranquil, to no purpose, he still rages: I think this man must fetch his remedies from Utopia, Fairy Land, Islands in the Moone, &c.

EXTRACT II.

Much disputacyons of fierce wits amongst themselves, in logomachies, subtile controversies, many dry blows given on either side, contentions of learned men, or such as would be so thought, as Bodinus de Periodis saith of such an one, arrident amici ridet mundus, in English, this man his cronies they cocker him up, they flatter him, he would fayne appear somebody, meanwhile the world thinks him no better than a dizzard, a ninny, a sophist.

**

expired, gone by, time is he should return, he taketh ship for Britaine, much desired of his friends, favebant venti, Neptune is curteis, after some weekes at sea he landeth, rides post to town, greets his family, kinsmen, compotores, those jokers his friends that were wont to tipple with him at alehouses; these wonder now to see the change, quantum mutatus, the man is quite another thing, he is disenthralled, manumitted, he wonders what so bewitched him, he can now both see, hear, smell, handle, converse with his mistress, single by reason of the death of his rival, a widow having children, grown willing, prompt, amorous, showing no such great dislike to second nuptials, he might have her for asking, no such thing, his mind is changed, he loathes his former meat, had liever eat ratsbane, aconite, his humour is to die a bachelour; marke the conclusion. In this humour of celibate seven other years are consumed in idleness, sloth, world's pleasures, which fatigate, satiate, induce wearinesse, vapours, tædium vitæ: When upon a day, behold a wonder, redit Amor, the man is as sick as ever, he is commenced lover Philosophy running mad, madness upon the old stock, walks with his hand philosophizing, much idle-learned inquiries, thrust in his bosom for negligence, moping what truth is? and no issue, fruit, of all he leans his head, face yellow, beard flowing these noises, only huge books are written, and incomposite, eyes sunken, anhelus, breath and who is the wiser? * * * * * Men sitwheezy and asthmatical, by reason of over-much ting in the Doctor's chair, we marvel how sighing: society he abhors, solitude is but a they got there, being homines intellectûs pulhell, what shall he doe? all this while his verulenti as Trincauellius notes; they care mistresse is forward, coming, amantissima, not so they may raise a dust to smother the ready to jump at once into his mouth, her he eyes of their oppugners; homines parvulishateth, feels disgust when she is but men- simi, as Lemnius, whom Alcuin herein taxeth tioned, thinks her ugly, old, a painted Jesa- of a crude Latinism; dwarfs, minims, the beel, Alecto, Megara, and Tisiphone all at least little men, these spend their time, once, a Corinthian Lais, a strumpet, only not and it is odds but they lose their time and handsome; that which he affecteth so much, wits too into the bargain, chasing of nimble that which drives him mad, distracted, phre- and retiring Truth: Her they prosecute, her netic, beside himself, is no beauty which still they worship, libant, they make libalives, nothing in rerum naturâ (so he might tions, spilling the wine, as those old Romans entertain a hope of a cure), but something in their sacrificials, Cerealia, May-games: which is not, can never be, a certain fantastic Truth is the game all these hunt after, to opinion or notional image of his mistresse, the extreme perturbacyon and drying up of that which she was, and that which hee thought her to be, in former times, how beautiful! torments him, frets him, follows him, makes him that he wishes to die.

This Caprichio, Sir Humourous, hee cometh to me to be cured. I counsel marriage with his mistresse, according to Hippocrates his method, together with milk-diet, herbs, aloes,

*

*

the moistures, humidum radicale exsiccant, as
Galen, in his counsels to one of these wear-
wits, brain-moppers, spunges, saith. * *
and for all this nunquam metam attingunt,
and how should they they bowle awry,
shooting beside the marke; whereas it should
appear, that Truth absolute on this planet of
ours is scarcely to be found, but in her stede

« AnteriorContinuar »