It is an argument of a loose and ungoverned mind to be affected with the promiscuous approbation of the generality of mankind; and a man of virtue should be too delicate for so coarse an appetite of fame. Men of honor should endeavor only to please the worthy, and the man of merit should desire to be tried only by his peers. I thought it a noble sentiment which I heard yesterday uttered in conversation: "I know," said a gentleman, a way to be greater than any man. If he has worth in him, I can rejoice in his superiority to me; and that satisfaction is a greater act of the soul in me, than any in him which can possibly appear to me.") This thought could proceed but from a candid and generous spirit; and the approbation of such minds is what may be esteemed true praise for with the common race of men there is nothing commendable but what they themselves may hope to be partakers of, and arrive at; but the motive truly glorious is, when the mind is set rather to do things laudable, than to purchase reputation. Where there is that sincerity as the foundation of a good name, the kind opinion of virtuous men will be an unsought, but a necessary consequence. The Lacedæmonians, though a plain people, and no pretenders to politeness, had a certain delicacy in their sense of glory, and sacrificed to the Muses when they entered upon any great enterprise. They would have the commemoration of their actions transmitted by the purest and most untainted memorialists. The din which attends victories and public triumphs, is by far less eligible than the recital of the actions of great men by honest and wise historians. It is a frivolous pleasure to be the admiration of gaping crowds; but to have the approbation of a good man in the cool reflections of his closet, is a gratification worthy a heroic spirit. The applause of the crowd makes the head giddy, but the attestation of a reasonable man makes the heart glad. / What makes the love of popular or general praise still more ridiculous, is that it is usually given for circumstances which are foreign to the persons admired. Thus they are the ordinary attendants on power and riches, which may be taken out of one man's hands, and put into another's. The application only, and not the possession, makes those outward things honorable. The vulgar and men of sense agree in admiring men for having what they themselves would rather be possessed of; the wise man applauds him whom he thinks most virtuous, the rest of the world, him who is most wealthy. Such When a man is in this way of thinking, I do not know what can occur to one more monstrous, than to see persons of ingenuity address their services and performances to men no way addicted to liberal arts. In these cases, the praise on one hand, and the patronage on the other, are equally the objects of ridicule. Dedications to ignorant men are as absurd as any of the speeches of Bullfinch in the Droll. an address one is apt to translate into other words; and when the different parties are thoroughly considered, the panegyric generally implies no more than if the author should say to the patron; "My very good lord, you and I can never understand one another; therefore I humbly desire we may be intimate friends for the future." The rich may as well ask to borrow of the poor, as the man of virtue and merit hope for addition to his character from any but such as himself. He that commends another engages so much of his own reputation as he gives to that person commended; and he that has nothing laudable in himself is not of ability to be such a surety. The wise Phocion was so sensible how dangerous it was to be touched with what the multitude approved, that upon a general acclamation made when he was making an oration, he turned to an intelligent friend who stood near him, and asked in a surprised manner, "What slip have I made?” I shall conclude this paper with a billet which has fallen into my hands, and was written to a lady from a gentleman whom she had highly commended. The author of it had formerly been her lover. When all possibility of commerce between them on the subject of love was cut off, she spoke so handsomely of him, as to give occasion to this letter. "MADAM, "I should be insensible, to a stupidity, if I could forbear making my acknowledgments for your late mention of me with so much applause. It is, I think, your fate to give me new sentiments: as you formerly inspired me with the true sense of love, so do you now with the true sense of glory. As desire had the least part in the passion I heretofore professed toward you, so has vanity no share in the glory to which you have now raised me. Innocence, knowledge, beauty, virtue, sincerity, and discretion, are the constant ornaments of her who has said this of me. Fame is a babbler, but I have arrived at the highest glory in this world, the commendation of the most deserving person in it.”—T. No. 195.] SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1711. Fools not to know that half exceeds the whole. THERE is a story in the Arabian Nights Tales of a king who had long languished under an ill habit of body, and had taken abundance of remedies to no purpose. At length, says the fable, a physician cured him by the following method; he took a hollow ball of wood, and filled it with several drugs; after which he closed it up so artificially that nothing appeared. He likewise took a mall, and after having hollowed the handle, and that part which strikes the ball, he inclosed in them several drugs after the same manner as in the ball itself. He then ordered the Sultan, who was his patient, to exercise himself early in the morning with these rightly prepared instruments, till such time as he should sweat; when, as the story goes, the virtue of the medicaments perspiring through the wood had so good an influence on the Sultan's constitution, that they cured him of an indisposition which all the compositions he had taken inwardly had not been able to remove. This eastern allegory is finely contrived to show us how beneficial bodily labor is to health, and that exercise is the most effectual physic. I have described in my hundred and fifteenth paper, from the general structure and mechanism of a human body, how absolutely necessary exercise is for its preservation. I shall in this place recommend another great preservative of health, which in many cases produces the same effects as exercise, and may, in some measure, supply its place, where opportunities of exercise are wanting. The preservative I am speaking of is temperance, which has those particular advantages above all other means of health, that it may be practiced by all ranks and conditions, at any season, or in any place. It is a kind of regimen into which every man may put himself, without interruption to business, expense of money, or loss of time. If exercise throws off all superfluities, temperance prevents them; if exercise clears the vessels, temperance neither satiates nor overstrains them ; if exercise raises proper ferments in the humors, and promotes the circulation of the blood, temperance gives nature her full play, and enables her to exert herself in all her force and vigor; if exercise dissipates a growing distemper, temperance starves it. Physic for the most part is nothing else but the substitute of exercise or temperance. Medicines are indeed absolutely necessary in acute distempers, that cannot wait the slow operations of these two great instruments of health; but did men live in an habitual course of exercise and temperance, there could be but little occasion for them. Accordingly we find that those parts of the world are the most healthy, where they subsist by the chase; and that men lived longest when their lives were employed in hunting, and when they had little food beside what they caught. Blistering, cupping, bleeding, are seldom of use but to the idle and intemperate; as all those inward applications which are so much in practice among us, are for the most part nothing else but expedients to make luxury consistent with health. The apothecary is perpetually employed in countermining the cook and the vintner. (It is said of Diogenes, that meeting a young man who was going to a feast, he took him up in the street and carried him to his own friends, as one who was running into imminent danger, had not he prevented him.* What would that philosopher have said, had he been present at the gluttony of a modern meal? would not he have thought the master of a family mad, and have begged his servants to tie down his hands, had he seen him devour a fowl, fish, and flesh; swallow oil and vinegar, wines and spices; throw down salads of twenty different herbs, sauces of a hundred ingredi * Diog. Laert., Vitæ Philosoph., lib. vi, cap. 2, n. 6. |