I cannot but think the old gentleman was in some measure justly served for walking in masquerade; I mean, appearing in a dress so much beneath his quality and estate.

X

No. 151. THURSDAY, AUGUST 23, 1711.

Maximas virtutes jacere omnes necesse est, voluptate dominante.

TULL. DE FIN.

Where pleasure prevails, all the greatest virtues will lose their

power.

I KNOW no one character that gives reason a greater shock, at the same time that it presents a good ridiculous image to the imagination, than that of a man of wit and pleasure about the town. This description of a man of fashion, spoken by some with a mixture of scorn and ridicule, by others with great gravity as a laudable distinction, is in every body's mouth that spends any time in conversation. My friend Will Honeycomb has this expression very frequently; and I never could understand by the story which follows, upon his mention of such a one, but that his man of wit and pleasure was either a drunkard, too old for wenching, or a young lewd fellow with some liveliness, who would converse with you, receive kind offices of you, and at the same time debauch your sister, or lie with your wife. According to his description, a man of wit, when he could have wenches for crowns a-piece which he liked quite as well, would be so extravagant as to bribe servants, make false friendships, fight relations: I say, according

labour, industry, and virtue, their decays make them but appear the more venerable, and the imperfections of their bodies are beheld as a misfortune to human society that their make is so little durable.

But to return more directly to my man of wit and pleasure. In all orders of men, wherever this is the chief character, the person who wears it is a negligent friend, father, and husband, and entails poverty on his unhappy descendants. Mortgages, diseases, and settlements, are the legacies a man of wit and pleasure leaves to his family. All the poor rogues that make such lamentable speeches after every sessions at Tyburn, were, in their way, men of wit and pleasure before they fell into the adventures which brought them thither.

Irresolution and procrastination in all a man's affairs, are the natural effects of being addicted to pleasure. Dishonour to the gentleman and bankruptcy to the trader, are the portion of either whose chief purpose of life is delight. The chief cause that this pursuit has been in all ages received with so much quarter from the soberer part of mankind, has been that some men of great talents have sacrificed themselves to it. The shining qualities of such people have given a beauty to whatever they were engaged in, and a mixture of wit has recommended madness. For let any man who knows what it is to have passed much time in a series of jollity, mirth, wit, or humorous entertainments, look back at what he was all that while a doing, and he will find that he has been at one instant a sharp to some man he is sorry to have offended, impertinent to some one it was cruelty to treat with such freedom, ungracefully noisy at such a time, unskilfully open at such a time, unmercifully calumnious at such a time; and, from the whole course of his applauded satisfactions, unable in the end to recollect any circumstance which can add to the enjoy

ment of his own mind alone, or which he would put his character upon with other men. Thus it is with those who are best made for becoming pleasures: but how monstrous is it in the generality of mankind who pretend this way, without genius or inclination towards it? The scene then is wild to an extravagance: this is, as if fools should mimic madmen. Pleasure of this kind is the intemperate meals and loud jollities of the common rate of country gentlemen, whose practice and way of enjoyment is to put an end as fast as they can to that little particle of reason they have when they are sober. These men of wit and pleasure despatch their senses as fast as possible, by drinking till they cannot taste, smoking till they cannot see, and roaring till they cannot hear.

T

No. 152. FRIDAY, AUGUST 24, 1711.

Οἵη περ φύλλων γενεὴ, τοιήδε καὶ ἀνδρῶν.

HOM. IL. Z. 146. Like leaves on trees the race of man is found.

POPE.

THERE is no sort of people whose conversation is so pleasant as that of military men, who derive their courage and magnanimity from thought and reflection. The many adventures which attend their way of life makes their conversation so full of incidents, and gives them so frank an air in speaking of what they have been witnesses of, that no company can be more amiable, than that of men of sense who are soldiers. There is a certain irregular way in their narrations or discourse, which has something more

warm and pleasing than we meet with among men who are used to adjust and methodine their thoughts.

I was this evening walking in the fields with my friend Captain Sentry; and I could not, from the many relations which I drew him into of what passed when he was in the service, forbear expressing my wonder, that the fear of death,' which we, the rest of mankind, arm ourselves against with so much contemplation, reason, and philosophy, should appear so little in camps, that common men march into open breaches, meet opposite battalions, not only without reluctance, but with alacrity. My friend answered what I said in the following manner: What you wonder at may very naturally be the subject of admiration to all who are not conversant in camps; but when a man has spent some time in that way of life, he observes a certain mechanic courage which the ordinary race of men become masters of from acting always in a crowd. They see indeed many drop, but then they see many more alive; they observe themselves escape very narrowly, and they do not know why they should not again. Besides which general way of foose thinking, they usually spend the other part of their time in pleasures upon which their minds are so entirely bent, that short labours or dangers are but a cheap purchase of jollity, triumph, victory, fresh quarters, new scenes, and uncommon advenzures. Such are the thoughts of the executive part of an army, and indeed of the gross of mankind in al; but none of these men of mechanical courage

any great figure in the profession of Those who are formed in command are here reasoned themselves, out of a consideragreater good than longed, or ders, into such a ner of that being so we make it their first Tot i se do te le esigned: and since # ir pui, d' vetri acsuas and ser

vice of mankind, they can put it to habitual hazard. The event of our design, say they, as it relates to others, is uncertain; but as it relates to ourselves, it must be prosperous, while we are in the pursuit of our duty, and within the terms upon which Providence has insured our happiness, whether we die or live. All that Nature has prescribed must be good; and as death is natural to us, it is absurdity to fear it. Fear loses its purpose when we are sure it cannot preserve us, and we should draw resolution to meet it from the impossibility to escape it. Without a resignation to the necessity of dying, there can be no capacity in man to attempt any thing that is glorious: but when they have once attained to that perfection, the pleasures of a life spent in martial adventures are as great as any of which the human mind is capable. The force of reason gives a certain beauty, mixed with the conscience of well-doing and thirst of glory, to all which before was terrible and ghastly to the imagination. Add to this, that the fellowship of danger, the common good of mankind, the general cause, and the manifest virtue you may observe in so many men, who made no figure till that day, are so many incentives to destroy the little consideration of their own persons. Such are the heroic part of soldiers who are qualified for leaders. As to the rest whom I before spoke of, I know not how it is, but they arrive at a certain habit of being void of thought, insomuch that on occasion of the most imminent danger, they are still in the same indifference. Nay, I remember an instance of a gay Frenchman*, who was led on in battle by a superior officer, whose conduct it was his custom to speak of always

* The Frenchman here alluded to was the Chevalier de Flourilles, a lieutenant-general under the Prince of Condé, at the battle of Senelf, in 1674.