Mary & litterbury

many active and neceffary employments, and fince the want of health will render us incapable of them, I cannot help thinking, that the care of our health may be numbered among the duties of indifpenfable obligation. A found conftitution of body is a bleffing of heaven; and not to bestow the utmost vigilance in preferving a pearl of fo ineftinable a price, is a contempt of the gift, an infult on the giver, and an impious ingratitude.

It is commonly faid, that he who wants the advice of phyficians in the regulation of his ufual diet, after the age of thirty, wants alfo understanding; a defect which no phyfician can fupply. It is indeed certain, that, at the age of thirty, a fufficient degree of experience of what may be agreeable or difagreeable to the conftitution may have been collected. But, alas! few of us are willing to do all that we are able; few of us are fo attentive, in the first portion of life, to the animal œconomy, as to remark with accuracy the causes of thofe flight indifpofitions which are occafioned by accidental excess in the gay and thoughtless hours of convivial enjoyment. We fubmit to them, however they may undermine the conftitution, from friendly and benevolent motives. We are apt to think, that it would be too felfish to refufe to partake of the enjoyments of others merely to preferve our own health. The midnight affembly and the luxurious banquet are lefs fought for their own fakes, than from good nature and a focial difpofition. But, perhaps, if we confidered that we are not taking care of ourselves merely on our own account, but for others, for our parents and our children, for our friends and for the public, we should not deem a fcrupulous regard to health, though it may lead us to avoid the feaft and the revel, either ungenerous or unfocial. It would appear in the light of a very ferious duty, derived from an obedience to the will of heaven, and from the regard we owe to our neighbour; and we should be obliged to confefs, that the nominal pleasures of excess ought always to give place to real duty.

A fcrupulous regard to health is, indeed, a duty incumbent on all; but, perhaps, more particularly

to

to be attended by the learned and ingenious, as they are of all the moft fubject to indifpofition. A delicate frame is very often affociated with a strong intellect; and a life of ftudy, though a life of labour, is not adapted, like that of the manual labourer, to give elafticity to the nerves, or vigour to the animal functions. But exceflive eating, added to exceffive study, muft wear the machine much more than the fubftance of which it is conftituted can long endure. If it is not foon broken in pieces, its wheels will be clogged, its fprings broken, and the whole rendered useless and burthenfome. It is recorded of Mr. Pope, that he was an immoderate eater,, that he kept a filver faucepan to drefs dainties for himfelf in the intervals of his meals, and that he died of a faucepan of lampreys.

Whatever part of the system of human affairs we examine, one truth appears to pervade the whole complicated mass, which is, that there can be neither wisdom nor happiness, nor even enjoyment of the fubordinate kinds, independently of moderation. In the most refined and elevated part of our conduct and pursuits, the fame truth is no lefs vifible, than in the lower occupations of common life. Sweet are the pleafures of contemplation, delightful the exercife of the mind in reading and reflection; but no pleasure, however pure, must be invariably purfued, till we are removed into the world of fpirits, and are enabled to enjoy intellectual pleafures unalloyed and uninterrupted.

No. CII. ON THE

PRESENT

STATE OF

CONVERSATION.

TH

HERE is, perhaps, no method of improving the mind more efficacious, and certainly none more agreeable, than a mutual interchange of fentiments in an elegant and animated converfation with the ferious, the judicious, the learned, and the communicative. Light and heat are elicited by the collifion of minds. Truths which appeared dull in the folitude of the study,

are

are no fooner agitated in converfation, than they affect the mind with the livelieft impreffions. And it is one circumftance which, in a peculiar manner, recommends the mode of improvement by mutual difcourfe, that the focial affections are no lefs powerfully exerted and exercised, than the powers of reafon. By the difplay of both, the heart and the understanding are at once improved.

Such would be the defcription of him who should derive his ideas on the fubject from a chofen few, or from his books. But let him confider converfation as it really appears in the living world, independently of theoretical and fpeculative refinement, and I fear, that, inftead of finding it always attended with improvement, it will often appear to him a fertile fource of corruption and degeneracy.

A young man who has juft left his school, full of the ideas which the poets, philofophers, and hiftorians of antiquity fupply, will probably bid adieu to them all at the fame time that he takes leave of his master; unless, indeed, his own choice fhould lead him to cultivate an acquaintance with them in private. Suppofe him to pafs from the fchool to an univerfity. There, if he has fpirit, he will of course feek the company, and imitate the manners, of those who poffefs a like fpirit, and who are alfo celebrated as men of fashion. The converfation will therefore turn upon the fubject of horfes, dogs, drinking, dreffing, debauchery, cajolling the old gentleman at home out of his money, to be fpent in thefe laudable purposes, or running in debt with credulous and unfortunate tradefmen. Such will be the fublime contemplations, and the philofophical topics of difcourfe in the famed academic groves on the banks of the Cam and the Ifis, and in the fchools of fcience and theology. Even doctors, profeffors, tutors and lecturers, induftrioufly avoid all topics connected with the fpecies of learning and fcience which they profess, and moft agreeably condefcend to expatiate, in the common and combination room, on dogs, horfes, and all the refined amufements of Granta and Rhedycina. Not but that there are a few who take a pleasure in converfing on letters; but they are folitary mortals, and themselves

themselves are ftigmatized, in the cant language of the place, with the name of Quizzes, and their conversation, with that of an infufferable Bore.

If our ingenuous youth fhould be tranfplanted from the nursery of a school into the army, he will find the converfation, in almost every respect, fimilar to that of the univerfity. There will, indeed, be this difference, that as letters are not the particular business of a military life, they will fometimes be the topic of converfation among military men; whereas, in the university, they are entirely laid afide, left they fhould fubject the academic to the imputation of pedantry; an imputation deemed infinitely more difgraceful, than that of genteel ignorance and fashionable debauchery.

Should he be introduced into the fociety of nobles and legiflators, he will ftill find dogs and horfes, with all their concomitant fports and amufements, the favourite topic of difcourfe. Literature would be voted dulnefs; morality, preaching; philofophy, nonfenfe; and religion, hypocrify. His Plato and his Tully will avail him little at the Cockpit, at a horfe-race, at a gaming-table, in the ftud, and the dog-kennel. Such places are the ufual reforts of the fpirited and fashionable part of very great men; of thofe, whom the young, allured by the brilliancy of their career, would be most likely to follow.

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Let him proceed in his enquiry after this refined and elegant converfation, and frequent, according to the ufual intercourfe of neighbourhood, the houses of the rich, the refpectable, and fashionable, in private life. They fhall be perfons of fenfe and virtue, and yet nothing fhall pafs in their converfation from which any of the boafted advantages of it shall be perceived. For what, indeed, are the methods of paffing time, among perfons of the beft repute and genteeleft condition, while they think it indifpenfably neceffary to move in the vortex of fashion? Nothing grave, nothing abftrufe, nothing fpeculative; no moral maxim or critical remark, would be admitted in a polite circle of polite vifitors. There is evidently an uneafiness, a filence, an awkwardness, a vacuity, till cards are introduced. It is not a harsh delineation of modern manners to affert, that

that in general, and even among those who certainly have a right to efteem, there appears to be no tafte for any thing that deferves the name of refined and ingenious converfation. The time of a vifit is for the most part spent in repeating the doubtful news of the day; in mere chat without confequence or connection; in eating, drinking, and crowning the whole with whist and quadrille. All this may be very innocent and pleafant as a relaxation; and the only point I maintain is, that the fpecies of conversation from which improvement is to be derived, is not often found in the present fyftem of vifiting and converfing.

I know not whether our youth, were he to feek the fociety of men in the profeffions, would be certain of finding that fort of converfe, from which, philofophers inform us, fo much moral and intellectual improvement is received. It is, I think, remarked by fome one who went into the company of the clergy at one of their feafts, in hopes of finding among them, that elegance and philofophical fpirit of converfe which he had in vain fought among others, that nothing was talked of with any apparent animation, but the flavour of the venison, the fine relifh of the hams, the richness of the pye-cruft, and the excellence of the claret. These, indeed, caufed the moft cordial congratulations; and thefe, interrupted only by the conjectures on the next vacancies in livings, ftalls, and mitres, conftituted the whole of the difcourfe in a fympofium confifting of the inftructors of mankind. If fuch be the cafe, we are not to wonder that the fublimer fort of converfation is rarely to be found in the common ranks, who are often too deficient in education to be able to interchange their fentiments with any confiderable advantage to the mind or the morals.

It is faid, that a celebrated wit had fought the company of Addifon with uncommon folicitude, and with a hope of being delighted with that fine humour which is fo confpicuous in his writings; but that Addifon did not talk, though he paid it off in drinking, which he did fo intemperately, that nature was obliged to throw off her load; upon which circumftance the vifitor, on his departure, remarked, that no good thing had come

out