"What have we got here ?-why, this is good eating! Your own I suppose-or is it in waiting?" "Why, whose should it be?" cried I with a flounce— "I get these things often;" but that was a bounce: "Some lords, my acquaintance, that settle the nation, Are pleas'd to be kind; but I hate ostentation."
"If that be the case then," cried he, very gay, "I'm glad I have taken this house in my way. To-morrow you take a poor dinner with me; No words-I insist on't-precisely at three: We'll have Johnson, and Burke; all the wits will be there;
My acquaintance is slight, or I'd ask my Lord Clare. And, now that I think on't, as I am a sinner,
We wanted this venison to make out the dinner! What say you-a pasty, it shall and it must, And my wife, little Kitty, is famous for crust. Here, porter-this venison with me to Mile-end; No stirring, I beg, my dear friend, my dear friend!" Thus snatching his hat, he brush'd off like the wind, And the porter and eatables follow'd behind.
Left alone to reflect, having emptied my shelf, And "nobody with me at sea but myself;" Though I could not help thinking my gentleman hasty,
Yet Johnson, and Burke, and a good venison pasty, Were things that I never dislik'd in my life, Though clogg'd with a coxcomb, and Kitty his wife. So next day in due splendour to make my approach, I drove to his door in my own hackney coach.
When come to the place where we all were to dine A chair-lumber'd closet just twelve feet by nine,) My friend bade me welcome, but struck me quite dumb,
With tidings that Johnson and Burke would not come;
For "I knew it," he cried, "both eternally fail, The one with his speeches, and th' other with Thrale;
But no matter, I'll warrant we'll make up the party, With two full as clever, and ten times as hearty. The one is a Scotsman, the other a Jew, They're both of them merry, and authors like you; The one writes the Snarler, the other the Scourge; Some think he writes Cinna-he owns to Panurge." While thus he described them by trade and by name, They enter'd, and dinner was serv'd as they came. At the top a fried liver, and bacon were seen, At the bottom was tripe, in a swinging tureen; At the sides there was spinage and pudding made hot;
m the middle a place where the pasty-was not. Now, my lord, as for tripe it's my utter aversion, And your bacon I hate like a Turk or a PersianSo there I sat stuck, like a horse in a pound, While the bacon and liver went merrily round: But what vex'd me most, was that d-m'd Scottish rogue,
With his long-winded speeches, his smiles, and his brogue.
Arad, "madam," quoth he, "may this bit be my poison,
A prettier dinner I never set eyes on; Pray a slice of your liver, though may I be curst, But I've eat of your tripe, till I'm ready to burst." "The tripe," quoth the Jew, with his chocolate cheek,
"I could dine on this tripe seven days in the week: I like these here dinners so pretty and small; But your friend there, the doctor, eats nothing at all." "O-Oh!" quoth my friend, " he'll come on in a trice,
He's keeping a corner for something that's nice: There's a pasty"-"A pasty!" repeated the Jew; "I don't care, if I keep a corner for't too." "What the de'il, mon, a pasty!" re-echo'd the Scot; Though splitting, I'll still keep a corner for that." "We'll all keep a corner," the lady cried out; "We'll all keep a corner," was echo'd about. While thus we resolv'd, and the pasty delay'd, With looks that quite petrified, enter'd the maid: A visage so sad, and so pale with affright, Wak'd Priam in drawing his curtains by night. But we quickly found out, for who could mistake her?
That she came with some terrible news from the baker:
And so it fell out, for that negligent sloven Had shut out the pasty on shutting his oven. Sad Philomel thus-but let similes drop- And now that I think on't, the story may stop. To be plain, my good lord, it's but labour misplac'd, To send such good verses to one of your taste; You've got an odd something-a kind of discern- ing-
A relish a taste-sicken'd over by learning; At least, it's your temper, as very well known, That you think very slightly of all that's your own: So, perhaps, in your habits of thinking amiss, You may make a mistake, and think slightly of this.
Of old, when Scarron his companions invited, Each guest brought his dish, and the feast was united.
If our landlord supplies us with beef and with fish, Let each guest bring himself, and he brings the best dish.
Our Dean shall be venison, just fresh from the plains; Our Burke shall be tongue, with a garnish of brains; Our Will shall be wild fowl, of excellent flavour, And Dick with his pepper shall heighten their sa
Our Cumberland's sweetbread its place shall obtain; And Douglas is pudding, substantial and plain: Our Garrick's a sallad; for in him we see Oil, vinegar, sugar, and saltness agree: To make out the dinner, full certain I am, That Ridge is anchovy, and Reynolds is lamb; That Hickey's a capon, and, by the same rule, Magnanimous Goldsmith a gooseberry fool. At a dinner so various, at such a repast,
THE ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH.
Daughter of Pæon, queen of every joy, Hygeia; whose indulgent smile sustains The various race luxuriant nature pours, And on th' immortal essences bestows Immortal youth; auspicious, O descend! Thou cheerful guardian of the rolling year, Whether thou wanton'st on the western gale, Or shak'st the rigid pinions of the north, Diffusest life and vigour through the tracts Of air, through earth, and ocean's deep domain.When through the blue serenity of heaven Thy power approaches, all the wasteful host Of pain and sickness, squalid and deform'd, Confounded sink into the lothesome gloom, Where in deep Erebus involv'd the fiends Grow more profane. Whatever shapes of death, Shook from the hideous chambers of the globe, Swarm through the shudd'ring air: whatever plagues
Or meagre famine breeds, or with slow wings Rise from the putrid watery element, The damp waste forest, motionless and rank, That smothers earth and all the breathless winds, Or the vile carnage of th' inhuman field: Whatever baneful breathes the rotten south; Whatever ills th' extremes or sudden change Of cold and hot, or moist and dry produce; They fly thy pure effulgence: they and all The secret poisons of avenging heaven, And all the pale tribes halting in the train Of vice and heedless pleasure; or if aught The comet's glare amid the burning sky, Mournful eclipse, or planets ill-combin'd, Portend disastrous to the vital world; Thy salutary power averts their rage, Averts the general bane: and but for thee Nature would sicken, nature soon would die. Without thy cheerful active energy No rapture swells the breast, no poet sings, No more the maids of Helicon delight. Come then with me, O goddess heavenly gay! Begin the song; and let it sweetly flow, And let it wisely teach thy wholesome laws: "How best the fickle fabric to support Of mortal man; in healthful body how A healthful mind the longest to maintain." "Tis hard, in such a strife of rules, to choose The best, and those of most extensive use;
Harder in clear and animated song Dry philosophic precepts to convey. Yet with thy aid the secret wilds I trace Of nature, and with daring steps proceed Through paths the Muses never trod before.
Nor should I wander doubtful of my way, Had I the lights of that sagacious mind Which taught to check the pestilential fire, And quell the deadly Python of the Nile. O thou belov'd by all the graceful arts, Thou long the fav'rite of the healing powers, Indulge, O Mead ! a well-design'd essay, Howe'er imperfect; and permit that I My little knowledge with my country share, Till you the rich Asclepian stores unlock, And with new graces dignify the theme.
Ye who amid this feverish world would wear A body free of pain, of cares a mind, Fly the rank city, shun its turbid air; Breathe not the chaos of eternal smoke And volatile corruption, from the dead, The dying, sick'ning, end the living world Exhal'd, to sully heaven's transparent dome With dim mortality. It is not air
That from a thousand lungs reeks back to thine, Sated with exhalations rank and fell, The spoil of dunghills, and the putrid thaw 'Of nature; when from shape and texture she Relapses into fighting elements:
It is not air, but floats a nauseous mass Of all obscene, corrupt, offensive things. Much moisture hurts; but here a sordid bath, With oily rancour fraught, relaxes more The solid frame than simple moisture can. Besides, immur'd in many a sullen bay That never felt the freshness of the breeze, This slumb'ring deep remains, and ranker grows With sickly rest: and (though the lungs abhor To drink the dun fuliginous abyss) Did not the acid vigour of the mine, Roll'd from so many thund'ring chimnies, tame The putrid steams that overswarm the sky; This caustic venom would perhaps corrode Those tender cells that draw the vital air, In vain with all their unctuous rills bedew'd; Or by the drunken venous tubes, that yawn In countless pores o'er all the pervious skin Imbib'd, would poison the balsamic blood, And rouse the heart to every fever's rage. While yet you breathe, away; the rural wilds Invite; the mountains call you, and the vales, The woods, the streams, and each ambrosial breeze
That fans the ever undulating sky;
A kindly sky! whose fost'ring power regales Man, beast, and all the vegetable reign.
Find then some woodland scene where nature smiles Benign, where all her honest children thrive. To us there wants not many a happy seat! Look round the smiling land, such numbers rise We hardly fix, bewilder'd in our choice; See where enthron'd in adamantine state, Proud of her bards, imperial Windsor sits; There choose thy seat, in some aspiring grove Fast by the slowly-winding Thames; or where Broader she laves fair Richmond's green retreats, (Richmond that sees an hundred villas rise Rural or gay.) O! from the summer's rage, O! wrap me in the friendly gloom that hides Umbrageous Ham!-But, if the busy town Attract thee still to toil for power or gold, Sweetly thou mayst thy vacant hours possess In Hampstead, courted by the western wind; Or Greenwich, waving o'er the winding flood; Or lose the world amid the sylvan wilds Of Dulwich, yet by barbarous arts unspoil'd. Green rise the Kentish hills in cheerful air; But on the marshy plains that Lincoln spreads Build not, nor rest too long thy wand'ring feet. For on a rustic throne of dewy turf, With baneful fogs her aching temples bound, Quartana there presides; a meagre fiend Begot by Eurus, when his brutal force Compress'd the slothful naiad of the fens. From such a mixture sprung, this fitful pest With fev'rish blasts subdues the sick'ning land: Cold tremors come, with mighty love of rest, Convulsive yawnings, lassitude, and pains That sting the burden'd brows, fatigue the loins, And rack the joints and every torpid limb; Then parching heat succeeds, till copious sweats O'erflow: a short relief from former ills. Beneath repeated shocks the wretches pine; The vigour sinks, the habit melts away; The cheerful, pure, and animated bloom Dies from the face, with squalid atrophy Devour'd, in sallow melancholy clad. And oft the sorceress, in her sated wrath, Resigns them to the furies of her train; The bloated hydrops; and the yellow fiend, Ting'd with her own accumulated gall.
In quest of sites, avoid the mournful plain Where osiers thrive, and trees that love the lake; Where many lazy muddy rivers flow: Nor, for the wealth that all the Indies roll, Fix near the marshy margin of the main: For from the humid soil and wat❜ry reign Eternal vapours rise; the spungy air For ever weeps: or, turgid with the weight Of waters, pours a sounding deluge down. Skies such as these let every mortal shun Who dreads the dropsy, palsy, or the gout, Tertian, corrosive scurvy, or moist catarrh : Or any other injury that grows From raw-spun fibres idle and unstrung,
Skin ill-perspiring, and the purple flood In languid eddies loitering into phlegm.
Yet not alone from humid skies we pine; For air may be too dry. The subtle heaven, That winnows into dust the blasted downs, Bare and extended wide without a stream, Too fast imbibes th' attenuated lymph, Which, by the surface, from the blood exhales. The lungs grow rigid, and with toil essay Their flexible vibrations; or, inflam'd, Their tender ever-moving structure thaws. Spoil'd of its limpid vehicle, the blood A mass of lees remains, a drossy tide That slow as Lethe wanders through the veins: Unactive in the services of life, Unfit to lead its pitchy current through The secret mazy channels of the brain. The melancholic fiend (that worst despair Of physic) hence the rust-complexion'd man Pursues, whose blood is dry, whose fibres gain Too stretch'd a tone: and hence in climes adust So sudden tumults seize the trembling nerves, And burning fevers glow with double rage.
Fly, if you can, these violent extremes Of air: the wholesome is nor moist nor dry. But as the power of choosing is deny'd To half mankind, a further task ensues; How best to mitigate these fell extremes, How breathe, unhurt, the withering element, Or hazy atmosphere: though custom moulds To ev'ry clime the soft Promethean clay; And he who first the fogs of Essex breath'd (So kind his native air) may in the fens Of Essex from inveterate ills revive, At pure Montpelier or Bermuda caught. But if the raw and oozy heaven offend, Correct the soil, and dry the sources up Of watery exhalation: wide and deep Conduct your trenches through the quaking bog; Solicitous, with all your winding arts, Betray th' unwilling lake into the stream; And weed the forest, and invoke the winds To break the toils where strangled vapours lie; Or through the thickets send the crackling flames. Meantime, at home, with cheerful fires dispel The humid air: and let your table smoke With solid roast or bak'd; or what the herds Of tamer breed supply; or what the wilds Yield to the toilsome pleasures of the chase. Generous your wine, the boast of rip'ning years; But frugal be your cups: the languid frame, Vapid and sunk from yesterday's debauch, Shrinks from the cold embrace of watery heavens. But neither these, nor all Apollo's arts, Disarm the dangers of the drooping sky, Unless with exercise and manly toil
You brace your nerves, and spur the lagging blood. The fatt'ning clime let all the sons of ease Avoid; if indolence would wish to live, Go, yawn and loiter out the long slow year In fairer skies. If droughty regions parch The skin and lungs, and bake the thickening blood;
Deep in the waving forest choose your seat, Where fuming trees refresh the thirsty air; And wake the fountains from their secret beds, And into lakes dilate the rapid stream.
Here spread your gardens wide; and let the cool, The moist relaxing vegetable store, Prevail in each repast: your food supplied
By bleeding life, be gently wasted down, By soft decoction, and a mellowing heat, To liquid balm; or, if the solid mass You choose, tormented in the boiling wave; That through the thirsty channels of the blood A smooth diluted chyle may ever flow. The fragrant dairy, from its cool recess, Its nectar, acid or benign, will pour,
To drown your thirst; or let the mantling bowl Of keen Sherbet the fickle taste relieve: For with the viscous blood the simple stream Will hardly mingle; and fermented cups Oft dissipate more moisture than they give. Yet when pale seasons rise, or winter rolls His horrors o'er the world, thou mayst indulge In feasts more genial, and impatient broach The mellow cask. Then, too, the scourging air Provokes to keener toils than sultry droughts Allow. But rarely we such skies blaspheme. Steep'd in continual rains, or with raw fogs Bedew'd, our seasons droop; incumbent still A ponderous heaven o'erwhelms the sinking soul. Lab'ring with storms, in heapy mountains rise Th' imbattled clouds, as if the Stygian shades Had left the dungeon of eternal night, Till black with thunder all the south descends. Scarce in a showerless day the heavens indulge Our melting clime; except the baleful east Withers the tender spring, and sourly checks The fancy of the year. Our fathers talk Of summers, balmy airs, and skies serene. Good heaven! for what unexpiated crimes This dismal change! The brooding elements Do they, your powerful ministers of wrath, Prepare some fierce exterminating plague? Or is it fix'd in the decrees above, That lofty Albion melt into the main ! Indulgent nature, O dissolve this gloom! Bind in eternal adamant the winds
That drown or wither: give the genial west To breathe, and in its turn, the sprightly north: And may once more the circling seasons rule The year; nor mix in every monstrous day.
Meantime, the moist malignity to shun
Of burden'd skies; mark where the dry champaign Swells into cheerful hills; where marjoram And thyme, the love of bees, perfume the air; And where the cynorrhodon with the rose For fragrance vies; for in the thirsty soil Most fragrant breathe the aromatic tribes. There bid thy roofs, high on the basking steep, Ascend, there light thy hospitable fires: And let them see the winter morn arise, The summer evening blushing in the west: While with umbrageous oaks the ridge behind
O'erhung, defends you from the blust'ring north, And bleak affliction of the peevish east. O! when the growling winds contend, and all The sounding forest fluctuates in the storm; To sink in warm repose, and hear the din Howl o'er the steady battlements, delights Above the luxury of vulgar sleep.
The murmuring rivulet, and the hoarser strain Of waters rushing o'er the slippery rocks, Will nightly lull you to ambrosial rest. To please the fancy is no trifling good, Where health is studied; for whatever moves The mind with calm delight, promotes the just And natural movements of the harmonious frame. Besides the sportive brook for ever shakes The trembling air; that floats from hill to hill, From vale to mountain, with incessant change Of purest element, refreshing still Your airy seat, and uninfected gods.
Chiefly for this I praise the man who builds High on the breezy ridge, whose lofty sides Th' ethereal deep with endless billows chafes. His purer mansion nor contagious years Shall reach, nor deadly putrid airs annoy.
But may no fogs, from lake or fenny plain, Involve my hill! And wheresoe'er you build; Whether on sun-burnt Epsom, or the plains Wash'd by the silent Lee; in Chelsea low, Or high Blackheath, with wint'ry winds assail'd; Dry be your house: but airy more than warm. Else every breath of ruder wind will strike Your tender body through with rapid pains; Fierce coughs will teaze you, hoarseness bind your voice,
Or moist Gravedo load your aching brows. These to defy, and all the fates that dwell In cloister'd air, tainted with steaming life, Let lofty ceilings grace your ample rooms; And still at azure noontide may your dome At every window drink the liquid sky. Need we the sunny situation here, And theatres open to the south commend- Here, where the morning's misty breath infests More than the torrid noon? how sickly grow, How pale the plants in those ill-fated vales, That, circled round with the gigantic heap Of mountains, never felt, nor ever hope
To feel the genial vigour of the sun! While on the neighbouring hill the rose inflames The verdant spring; in virgin beauty blows The tender lily, languishingly sweet; O'er every hedge the wanton woodbine roves, And autumn ripens in the summer's ray. Nor less the warmer living tribes demand The fost'ring sun: whose energy divine Dwells not in mortal fire; whose gen'rous heat Glows through the mass of grosser elements, And kindles into life the pond'rous spheres. Cheer'd by thy kind invigorating warmth, We court thy beams, great majesty of day! If not the soul, the regent of this world, First-born of Heaven, and only less than God!
Enough of air. A desert subject now, Rougher and wilder, rises to my sight. A barren waste, where not a garland grows To bind the Muse's brow; not ev'n a proud Stupendous solitude frowns o'er the heath, To rouse a noble horror in the soul: But rugged paths fatigue, and error leads Through endless labyrinths the devious feet. Farewell, ethereal fields! the humbler arts Of life; the table, and the homely gods, Demand my song. Elysian gales, adieu!
The blood, the fountain whence the spirits flow, The generous stream that waters every part, And motion, vigour, and warm life conveys To every particle that moves or lives; This vital fluid, through unnumber'd tubes Pour'd by the heart, and to the heart again Refunded; scourg'd for ever round and round; Enrag'd with heat and toil, at last forgets Its balmy nature; virulent and thin It grows; and now, but that a thousand gates Are open to its flight, it would destroy The parts it cherish'd and repair'd before. Besides, the flexible and tender tubes Melt in the mildest most nectareous tide, That ripening nature rolls; as in the stream Its.crumbling banks; but what the vital force Of plastic fluids hourly batters down, That very force those plastic particles Rebuild: so mutable the state of man. For this the watchful appetite was giv'n, Daily with fresh materials to repair This unavoidable expense of life, This necessary waste of flesh and blood. Hence the concoctive powers, with various art, Subdue the cruder aliments to chyle; The chyle to blood; the foamy purple tide To liquors, which through finer arteries To different parts their winding course pursue; To try new changes, and new forms put on, Or for the public, or some private use.
Nothing so foreign, but th' athletic hind Can labour into blood. The hungry meal Alone he fears, or aliments too thin; By violent powers too easily subdu'd, Too soon expell'd. His daily labour thaws, To friendly chyle, the most rebellious mass That salt can harden, or the smoke of years; Nor does his gorge the luscious bacon rue, Nor that which Cestria sends, tenacious paste Of solid milk. But ye of softer clay, Infirm and delicate! and ye, who waste With pale and bloated sloth the tedious day! Avoid the stubborn aliment, avoid The full repast; and let sagacious age Grow wiser, lesson'd by the dropping teeth. Half subtilized to chyle, the liquid food Readiest obeys th' assimilating pow'rs; And soon the tender vegetable mass
Relents; and soon the young of those that tread The stedfast earth, or cleave the green abyss, Or pathless sky. And if the steer must fall, In youth and sanguine vigour let him die; Nor stay till rigid age, or heavy ails, Absolve him ill-requited from the yoke. Some with high forage, and luxuriant ease, Indulge the veteran ox; but wiser thou, From the bald mountain or the barren downs, Expect the flocks by frugal nature fed;
A race of purer blood, with exercise Refin'd, and scanty fare: for, old or young, The stall'd are never healthy; nor the cramm'd: Not all the culinary arts can tame
To wholesome food the abominable growth Of rest and gluttony; the prudent taste Rejects like bane such lothesome lusciousness. The languid stomach curses even the pure Delicious fat, and all the race of oil: For more the oily aliments relax
Its feeble tone; and with the eager lymph, Fond to incorporate with all it meets, Coyly they mix, and shun with slippery wiles The woo'd embrace. Th' irresoluble oil, So gentle late and blandishing, in floods Of rancid bile o'erflows: what tumults hence, What horrors rise, were nauseous to relate. Choose leaner viands, ye whose jovial make Too fast the gummy nutriment imbibes: Choose sober meals; and rouse to active life Your cumbrous clay; nor on th' enfeebling down, Irresolute, protract the morning hours.
But let the man whose bones are thinly clad, With cheerful ease and succulent repast, Improve his habit if he can; for each Extreme departs from perfect sanity.
I could relate what table this demands, Or that complexion; what the various powers Of various foods: but fifty years would roll, And fifty more, before the tale were done. Besides, there often lurks some nameless, strange, Peculiar thing; nor on the skin display'd,
Felt in the pulse, nor in the habit seen; Which finds a poison in the food that most
The temp'rature affects. There are, whose blood Impetuous rages through the turgid veins, Who better bear the fiery fruits of Ind Than the moist melon, or pale cucumber. Of chilly nature others fly the board Supply'd with slaughter, and the vernal powers For cooler, kinder, sustenance implore. Some even the generous nutriment detest, Which, in the shell, the sleeping embryo rears. Some, more unhappy still, repent the gifts Of Pales; soft, delicious, and benign: The balmy quintessence of every flower, And every grateful herb that decks the spring; The fost'ring dew of tender sprouting life; The best refection of declining age; The kind restorative of those who lie
Half dead and panting, from the doubtful strife Of nature struggling in the grasp of death.
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