THE
PLEASURES
OF
IMAGINATION.
A POEM, IN THREE BOOKS.
By Dr. Akenside.
TO WHICH IS ADDED
THE
ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH.
A POEM, IN THREE BOOKS.
By Dr. Armstrong.
ODIORNE'S EDITION.
PRINTED AT EXETER.
M, DCC, XCIV.



THE
DESIGN.
THERE are certain powers in human na-
ture which seem to hold a middle place between
the organs of bodily sense and the faculties of moral
perception. They have been called by a very ge-
neral name, The POWER OF IMAGINATION.
Like to the external senses, they relate to matter
and motion; and at the same time, give the mind
ideas analogous to those of moral approbation and
dislike. As they are the inlets of some of the most
exquisite pleasures we are acquainted with, men of
warm and sensible tempers have sought means to re-
cal the delightful perceptions they afford, indepen-
dent of the objects which originally produced them.
This gave rise to the imitative or designing arts;
some of which, like painting and sculpture, directly
copy the external appearances which were admired
in nature; others, like music and poetry, bring
them back to remembrance by signs universally
established and understood.
But these arts, as they grew more correct and de-
liberate, were naturally led to extend their imita-
tion beyond the peculiar objects of the imaginative
powers; especially poetry, which making use of
language as the instrument by which it imitates, is
consequently become an unlimited representative of
every species and mode of being. Yet as their pri-
mary intention was only to express the objects of
imagination, and as they still abound chiefly in ideas
of that class, they of course retain their original
character, and all the different pleasures they excite,
are termed in general, PLEASURES OF IMAGI-
NATION.
The

iv DESIGN.
The design of the following poem is to give a
view of these, in their largest acceptation of the
term; so that whatever, our imagination feels from
the agreeable appearances of nature, and all the vari-
ous entertainment we meet with either in poetry, paint-
ing, music, or any of the elegant arts, might he deduci-
ote from one or other of those principles in the consti-
tution of the human mind which are here established
and explained.
In executing this general plan, it was necessary
first of all to distinguish the imagination from our
other faculties, and then to characterize those ori-
ginal forms or properties of being about which it is
conversant, and which are by nature adapted to it,
as light is to the eyes, or truth to the understand-
ing. These properties Mr. Addison had reduced
to the three general classes of greatness, novelty,
and beauty; and into these we may analyse every
object, however complex, which, properly speak-
ing, is delightful to the imagination. But such an
object may also include many other sources of plea-
sure; and its beauty, or novelty, or grandeur, will
make a stronger impression by reason of this concur-
rence. Besides this, the imitative arts, especially
poetry, owe much of their effect to a similar exhi-
bition of properties quite foreign to the imagina-
tion; in so much that in every line of the most ap-
plauded poems, we meet with either ideas drawn
from the external senses, or truths discovered to the
understanding, or illustrations of contrivance and
final causes, or above all the rest, with circumstances
proper to awaken and engage the passions. It was
therefore necessary to enumerate and exemplify
these different species of pleasure; especially that
from the passions, which as it is supreme in the no-
blest works of human genius, so being in some par-
ticulars not a little surprizing, gave an opportunity
to

DESIGN. v 
to enliven the didactic turn of the poem, by intro-
ducing a piece of machinery to account for the ap-
pearance.
After these parts of the subject which hold chief-
ly of admiration, or naturally warm and interest the
mind, a pleasure of a very different nature, that
from ridicule, came next to be considered. As this
is the foundation of the comic manner in all the
arts, and has been but very imperfectly treated by
moral writers, it was thought proper to give it a
particular illustration, and to distinguish the general
sources from which the ridicule of characters is de-
rived. Here too a change of stile became necessary;
such a one as might vet be confident, if possible,
with the general taste of composition in the serious
parts of the subject; nor is it an easy task to give
any tolerable force to images of this kind, without
running either into the gigantic expressions of the
mock-heroic, or the familiar and pointed raillery of
professed satire; neither of which would have been
proper here.
The materials of all imitation being thus laid
open, nothing now remained but to illustrate some
particular pleasures which arise either from the re-
lations of different objects one to another, or from
the nature of imitation itself. Of the first kind is
that various and complicated resemblance existing
between several parts of the material and immateri-
al worlds, which is the foundation of metaphor and
wit. As it seems in a great measure to depend on
the early associations of our ideas, and as this habit
of associating is the source of many pleasures and
pains in life, and on that account bears a great share
in the influence of poetry and the other arts, it is
therefore mentioned here, and its effects described.
Then follows a general account of the production
of these elegant arts, and the secondary pleasure, as
it is called, arising from the resemblance of their
A2 imitations 

vi DESIGN.
imitations to the original appearances of nature.
After which, the design is doled with some reflec-
tions on the general conduct of the powers of ima-
gination, and on their natural and moral usefulness
in life.
Concerning the manner or turn of composition
which prevails in this piece, little can be said with
propriety by the author. He had two models; that
antient and simple one of the first Grecian poets
as it is refined by Virgil in the Georgics, and the
familiar epistolary way of Horace. This latter has
several advantages. It admits of a greater variety
of stile; it more readily engages the generality of
readers, as partaking more of the air of conversation;
and especially with the assistance of rhyme, leads to
a closer and more concise expression. Add to this
the example of the most perfect of modern poets,
who has so happily applied, this manner, to the no-
blest parts of philosophy, that the public taste is in
a great measure formed to it alone. Yet, after all,
the subject before us tending almost constantly to
admiration and enthusiasm, seemed rather to demand
a more open, pathetic, and figured stile. This too
appeared more natural, as the author's aim was not
so much to give formal precepts, or enter into the
way of direct argumentation, as, by exhibiting the
most engaging prospects of nature, to enlarge and
harmonize the imagination, and by that mean insen-
sibly dispose the minds of men to the same dignity
of taste in religion, morals, and civil life. It is on
this account that he is so careful to point out the
benevolent intention of the author of nature in eve-
ry principle of the human constitution here infilled
on, and also to unite the moral excellencies of life
in the same point of view with the meer external
objects of good taste; thus recommending them in
common to our natural propensity for admiring
what is beautiful and lovely. The same views have
also


DESIGN. vii 
also led him to introduce some sentiments which
may perhaps be looked upon as not quite direct to
the subject; but since they bear an obvious relation
to it the authority of Virgil, the faultless model of
didactic poetry, will best support him in this particu-
lar. For the sentiments themselves he makes no
apology. 

ARGUMENT.
THE subject proposed. Difficulty of treating it poet-
ically. The Ideas of the divine Mind, the Origin of
every quality pleasing to the Imagination. The
natural variety of Constitution in the minds of men,
with its final cause. The Idea of a fine Imagination
and the state of the Mind in the enjoyment of those
pleasures which it affords. All the primary Pleasures
of imagination result from the perception of greatness,
or wonderfulness, or beauty in objects. The pleasure
from greatness, with its final cause. Pleasure from
novelty or wonderfulness, with its final cause. Plea-
sure from beauty, with its final cause. The connection
of Beauty, with Truth and Good, applied to the con-
duct of life. Invitation to the Study of moral Phi-
losophy. The different degrees of Beauty in different
species of objects. Colour. Shape. Natural con-
cretes. Vegetables. Animals. The Mind. The sub-
lime, the fair, the wonderful of the mind. The con-
nection of the Imagination and the moral Faculty
Conclusion. 

THE
PLEASURES
OF
IMAGINATION.
BOOK FIRST.
WITH what attractive charms this goodly frame
Of nature touches the consenting hearts
Of mortal men; and what the pleasing stores
Which beauteous imitation thence derives
To deck the poet's, or the painter's toil;
My verse unfolds. Attend, ye gentle powers
Of musical delight! and while I sing
Your gifts, your honours, dance around my strain.
Thou, smiling queen of every tuneful, breast,
Indulgent FANCY! from the fruitful banks
Of Avon, whence thy rosy fingers cull
Fresh flowers and dews to sprinkle on the turf
Where SHAKESPEAR lies, be present; and with thee
Let Fiction come, upon her vagrant wings
Wasting ten thousand colours through the air,
And, by the glances of her magic eye,
Combining each in endless, fairy forms,
Her wild creation. Goddess of the lyre
Which rules the accents of the moving sphere,
Wilt thou, eternal Harmony! descend,
And
Of musical &c.] The word musical is here taken
in its original and most extensive import; compre-
hending as well the pleasures we receive from the
beauty or magnificence of natural objects, as those
which arise from poetry, painting, music, or any
other of the elegant imaginative arts. In which
sense it has been already used in our language by,
writers of unquestionable authority.

10 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book I.
And join this festive train? for with thee comes
The guide, the guardian of their lovely sports,
Majestic Truth; and where truth deigns to come,
Her sister Liberty will not be far.
Be present all ye Genii who conduct
The wand'ring footsteps of the youthful bard,
New to your springs and shades; who touch his car
With finer sounds; who heighten to his eye
The bloom of nature, and before him turn
The gayest, happiest attitudes of things.
Oft have the laws of each poetic strain
The critic verse employ'd; yet still unsung
Lay this prime subject, though importing most
A poet's name; for fruitless is the attempt
By dull obedience and the curb of rules,
For creeping toil to climb the hard ascent
Of high Parnassus. Nature's kindling breath
Must fire the chosen genius; nature's hand
Must point the path, and imp his eagle wings
Exulting o'er the painful steep to soar
High as the summit; there to breath at large
Ætherial air; with bards and sages old,
Immortal sons of praise. These flattering scenes
To this neglected labour court my song;
Yet not unconscious what a doubtful talk
To paint the finest features of the mind,
And
Yet not unconscious.] Lucret. 1.2. v. 921
Nee me animi sallit quam sint obscura, fed acri
Percussit thyrso laudis spes magna meum cor,
Et simul incussit suavem mi in pectus amorem
Musarum; quo nunc instinctus mente vigenti
Avia Pieridum peragro loca, nullius ante
Trita solo; juvat integros accedere sonteis,
Atque haurire; juvatque novos discerpere flores
insignem meo capiti petere aide coronam,
Unde prius nulli velarint tempora Musæ.

Book I. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 11 
And to most subtle and mysterious things
Give colour, strength and motion. But the love
Of nature and the muses bids explore,
Thro' secret paths erewhile untrod by man,
The fair poetic region, to detect
Untasted springs, to drink inspiring draughts
And shade my temples with unfading flowers
Cull'd from the laureate vale's profound recess,
Where never poet gain'd a wreath before.
From heaven my strains begin; from heaven de-
The flame of genius to the human breast, [scends
And love and beauty, and poetic joy
And inspiration. Ere the radiant sun
Sprung from the east, or 'mid the vault of night
The moon suspended her serener lamp;
Ere mountains, woods, or streams adorn’d the globe;
Or wisdom taught the sons of men her lore;
Then liv'd the eternal ONE; then deep retir'd
In his unfathom'd essence, view'd at large
The uncreated images of things;
The radiant sun, the moon's nocturnal lamp,
The mountains, woods and streams, the rolling globe,
And wisdom's form celestial. From the first
Of days, on them his love divine he fix'd,
His admiration; till in time compleat,
What he admir'd and lov'd, his vital smile
Unfolded into being. Hence the breath
Of life informing each organic frame,
Hence the green earth, and wild resounding waves;
Hence light and shade alternate; warmth and cold;
And clear autumnal skies and vernal showers,
And all the fair variety of things.
But not alike to every mortal eye
Is this great scene unveil'd. For since the claims
Of social life, to different labours urge
The active powers of man; with wise intent
The

12 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book I. 
The hand of nature on peculiar minds
Imprints a diff’rent byass, and to each
Decrees its province in the common toil.
To some she taught the fabric of the sphere,
The changeful moon, the circuit of the stars,
The golden zones of heaven; to some she gave
To weigh the moment of eternal things,
Of time and space, and fate's unbroken chain,
And will's quick impulse; others by the hand
She led o'er vales and mountains, to explore
What healing virtue swells the tender veins
Of herbs and flowers; or what the beams of morn
Draw forth, distilling from the clifted rind
In balmy tears. But some, to higher hopes
Were destin'd; some within a finer mould
She wrought, and temper'd with a purer flame.
To these the fire omnipotent unfolds
The world's harmonious volume, there to read
The transcript of himself. On every part
They trace the bright impressions of his hand;
In earth, or air, the meadows purple stores,
The moon's  mild radiance, or the virgin's form
Blooming with rosy smiles, they see portray'd
That uncreated beauty, which delights
The mind supreme. They also feel her charms;
Enamour'd, they partake the eternal joy.
As Memnon's marble harp, renown'd of old
By fabling Nilus, to the quivering touch
Of Titan's rays, with each repulsive string
Consenting,
As Memnon's marble harp.] The statue of Mem-
non, so famous in antiquity, flood in the temple of
Serapis at Thebes, one of the great cities of old
Egypt. It was a very hard, iron-like stone, and
according to Juvenal, held in its hand a lyre, which
being

Book I. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 13 
Consenting, sounded thro' the warbling air
Unbidden strains; even so did nature's hand
To certain species of external things,
Attune the finer organs of the mind;
So the glad impulse of congenial powers,
Or of sweet sound, or fair proportion'd form,
The grace of motion, or the bloom of light,
Thrills through imagination's tender frame,
From nerve to nerve; all naked and alive
They catch the spreading rays; till now the soul
At length discloses every tuneful spring,
To that harmonious movement from without,
Responsive. Then the inexpressive strain
Diffuses its inchantment; fancy dreams
Of sacred fountains and Elysian groves,
Anal vales of bliss; the intellectual power
Bends from his awful throne a wond'ring ear,
And smiles; the passions gently sooth'd away,
Sink to divine repose, and love and joy
Alone are waking; love and joy, serene
As airs that fan the summer. O, attend,
Who'er thou art whom these delights can touch,
Whole candid bosom the refining love
Of nature warms, O listen to my long;
And I will guide thee to her fav'rite walks,
And teach thy solitude her voice to hear,
And point her loveliest features to thy view.
Know then, whate'er of nature's pregnant stores,
Whate'er of mimic art's reflected forms
With love and admiration thus inflame
B The
being touched by the sun beams, emitted a distinct
and agreeable sound. Tacitus mentions it as one of
the particular curiosities which Germanicus; took
notice of in his journey through Egypt; and Strabo
affirms that he, with many others, heard it. 

14 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book I.
The powers of fancy, her delighted sons
To three illustrious orders have referr'd;
Three sister graces, whom the painter's hand,
The poet's tongue confesses; the sublime,
The wonderful, the fair. I see them dawn!
I see the radiant visions, where they rise,
More lovely than when Lucifer displays
His beaming forehead thro' the gates of mom,
To lead the train of Phœbus and the spring.
Say, why was man so eminently rais'd
Amid the vast creation; why ordain'd
Thro' life and death to dart his piercing eye,
With thoughts beyond the limit of his frame;
But that the Omnipotent might send him forth
In sight of mortal and immortal powers,
As
Say why was man &c.] In apologizing for the
frequent negligence of the sublimest authors of
Greece, those godlike geniuses, says Longinus,
were well assured that nature had not intended man
for a low spirited or ignoble being; but bringing
us into life and the midst of this wide universe, as
before a multitude assembled at some heroic solem-
nity that we might be spectators of all her magnifi-
cence, and candidates high in emulation for the
prize of glory; she has therefore implanted in our
souls an inextinguishable love of every thing great
and exalted, of every thing which appears divine
beyond our comprehension. Whence it comes to
pass, that even the whole world is not an object
sufficient for the depth and rapidity of human imag-
ination, which often sallies forth beyond the limits
of all that surrounds us. Let any man call his eye
through the whole circle of our existence, and con-
sider how especially it abounds in excellent and
grand

Book I. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 15 
As on a boundless theatre to run
The great career of justice; to exalt
His gen'rous aim to all diviner deeds;
To shake each partial purpose from his breast;
And thro' the milts of passion and of sense,
And thro' the tossing tide of chance and pain
To hold his course unfault'ring, while the voice
Of truth and virtue, up the steep ascent
Of nature, calls him to his high reward,
The applauding smile of heaven? Else wherefore
In mortal bosoms, this unquenched hope [burns,
That breathes from day to day sublimer things,
And mocks possession? wherefore darts the mind,
With such resistless ardor to imbrace
Majestic forms? impatient to be free,
Spurning the gross controul of wilful might;
Proud of the strong contention of her toils;
Proud to be daring? Who but rather turns
To heaven's broad fire his unconstrained view,
Than to the glimm'ring of a waxen flame?
Who that, from Alpine heights his lab'ring eye
Shoots round the wide horizon to survey
The Nile or Ganges roll his wasteful tide
Thro' mountains, plains, thro' empires black with
And continents of sand; will turn his gaze [shade,
To mark the windings of a saanty rill
That murmurs at his feet? The high born soul
Disdains to rest her heaven aspiring wing
Beneath its native quarry. Tired of earth
And this diurnal scene, she springs aloft
Thro'
grand objects, he will soon acknowledge for what
enjoyments and pursuits we were destined. Thus
by the very propensity of nature we are led to ad-
mire, not little springs or shallow rivulets, however
clear and delicious, but the Nile, the Danube, and
much more than all, the Ocean, &c. Longin. de
Sublim. §. xxxiv.

16 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book I.
Thro' fields of air; pursues the flying storm;
Rides on the volley'd lightning thro' the heavens;
Or yok'd with whirlwinds and the northern blast,
Sweeps the long tract of day. Then high she soars
The blue profound, and hovering o'er the sun
Beholds him pouring the redundant stream
Of light; beholds his unrelenting sway
Bend the reluctant planets to absolve
The fated rounds of time. Thence far effus'd
She darts her swiftness up the long career
Of devious comets; thro' its burning signs
Exulting circles the perennial wheel
Of nature, and looks back on all the stars,
Whose blended light, as with a milky zone,
Invests the orient. Now amaz'd she views
The empyreal waste, where happy spirits hold,
Beyond this concave, heaven their calm abode;
And fields of radiance, whose unfading light
Has travell'd the profound fix thousand years,
Nor yet arrives in fight of mortal things.
Even on the barriers of the world untir'd
She meditates the eternal depth below;
Till
The empyreal waste] Ne se peut-il point qu'il
y a un grand espace audela de la region des etoiles?
Que ce soit le ciel empyree, ou non, toujours cet
espace immense qui environne toute cette region,
pourra etre rempli de bonheur & de gloire. Il
pourra etre conqu comme l'ocean, ou se rendent les
fleuves de toutes les creatures bienheureuses, quand
elles seront venues a leur perfection dans le systeme
des etoiles. Leibnitz dans la Theodicee, part i.
§ 19.
Whose unfading light, &c.] It was a notion of
the great Mr. Huygens, that there may be fixed
stars at such a distance from our solar system, as
that their light shall not have had time to reach us,
even from the creation of the world to this day.

Book I. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 17 
Till, half recoiling, down the headlong steep
She plunges; soon o'erwhelm'd and swallow'd up
In that immense of being. There her hopes
Rest at the fated goal. For from the birth
Of mortal man, the sov'reign Maker said,
That not in humble or in brief delight,
Not in the fading echoes of renown,
Powers purple robes, or pleasure's flow'ry lap
The soul should find enjoyment; but from these
Turning disdainful to an equal good,
Thro’ all the ascent of things inlarge her view,
Till every bound at length should disappear,
And infinite perfection close the scene.
Call now to mind what high, capacious powers
Lie folded up in man; how far beyond
The praise of mortals, may the eternal growth
Of nature to perfection half divine,
Expand the blooming soul? What pity then
Should sloth's unkindly fogs depress to earth
Her tender blossom; choak the dreams of life,
And blast her spring! Far otherwise design'd
Almighty wisdom; nature's happy cares
The obedient heart far otherwise incline.
Witness the sprightly joy when aught unknown
Strikes the quick sense, and wakes each active power
To brisker measures; witness the neglect
Of all familiar prospects, tho' beheld
B2 With
--the neglect
Of all familiar prospects, &c.] It is here said, that
in consequence of the love of novelty, objects which
at first were highly delightful to the mind, lose that
effect by repeated attention to them. But the in-
stance of habit is opposed to this observation; for
there objects at first distasteful are in time render'd
intirely agreeable by repeated attention.
The

18 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book I.
With transport once; the fond, attentive gaze
Of young astonishment; the sober zeal
Of age, commenting an prodigious things,
For such the bounteous providence of heaven
In
The difficulty in this case will be removed, if we
consider, that when objects at first agreeable, lose
that influence by frequently recurring, the mind is
wholly passive and the perception involuntary; but
habit, on the other hand, generally supposes choice
and activity accompanying it; so that the pleasure
arises here not from the object, but from the mind's
conscious determination of its own activity; and
consequently increases in proportion to the frequency
of that determination,
It will still be urged perhaps, that a familiarity
with disagreeable objects renders them at length ac-
ceptable, even when there is no room for the mind
to resolve or act at all. In this case, the appear-
ance must be accounted for, one of these ways.
The pleasure from habit may be meerly negative.
The object at first gave uneasiness; this uneasiness
gradually wears off as the object grows familiar;
and the mind finding it at last intirely removed,
reckons its situation really pleasurable, compared
with what it had experienced before.
The dislike conceived of the object at first, might
see owing to prejudice or want of attention. Con-
sequently the mind being necessitated to review it
often, may at length percieve its own mistake, and
be reconciled to what it had looked on with aver-
sion. In which case, a sort of instinctive justice
naturally leads it to make amends for the injury,
by running toward the other extreme of fondness
and attachment.
Or lastly, tho' the object itself should always
Continue disagreeable, yet circumstances of pleasure
or

Book I. PLEASURE OF IMAGINATION. 19 
In every breast implanting this desire
Of objects new and strange, to urge us on
With unremitted labour to pursue
Those sacred stores that wait the ripening soul,
In truth's exhaustless bosom. What need words
To paint its power? For this the daring youth
Breaks from his mother's weeping anxious arms,
In foreign climes to rove; the pensive sage,
Heedless of sleep or midnight's harmful damp.
Hangs o'er the sickly taper; and until'd
The virgin follows, with inchanted step,
The mazes of some wild and wond'rous tale,
From morn to eve; unmindful of her form,
Unmindful of the happy dress that stole
The wishes of the youth, when every maid
With envy pin'd. Hence finally, by night
The village matron, round the blazing hearth,
Suspends the infant audience with her tales,
Breathing astonishment! of witching rhymes,
And
or good fortune may occur along with it. Thus an
association may arise in the mind, and the object
never be remembered without those pleating cir-
cumstances attending it; by which means the disa-
greeable impression it at first occasioned will in time
be quite  obliterated.
--this desire
Of objects new and strange--] These two ideas
are oft confounded; tho'  it is evident the meer
novelty of an object makes it agreeable, even where
the mind is not affected with the least degree of
wonder; whereas wonder indeed always implies
novelty, being never excited by common or well
known appearances. But the pleasure in both cases
is explicable from the same final cause, the acquisi-
tion of knowledge and enlargement of our views of
nature; and on this account it is natural to treat of
them together.

20 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book I
And evil spirits; of the death bed call
To him who robb'd the widow, and devour'd
The orphan's portion; of unquiet souls
Ris'n from the grave to ease the heavy guilt
Of deeds in life conceal'd; of shapes that walk
At dead of night, and clank their chains, and wave
The torch of hell around the murd'rer's bed.
At every solemn pause the croud recoil
Gazing each other speechless, and congeal'd
With shiv'ring sighs; till eager for the event,
Around the beldam all erect they hang,
Each trembling heart with geateful terrors quell'd;
But lo! disclos'd in all her smiling pomp,
Where beauty onward moving claims the verse
Her charms inspire; the freely flowing verse
In thy immortal praise, O form divine,
Smooths her mellifluent stream. Thee, beauty, thee,
The regal dome, and thy enlivening ray
The mossy roofs adore; thou, better fun!
For ever beamest on the inchanted heart
Love, and harmonious wonder, and delight
Poetic. Brightest progeny of heaven!
How shall I trace thy features? where select
The roseate hues to emulate thy bloom?
Haste then, my long, thro' nature's wide expanse,
Haste then, and gather all her comeliest wealth,
Whate'er bright spoils the florid earth contains,
Whate'er the waters, or the liquid air,
To deck thy lovely labour. Wilt thou fly
With laughing Autumn to the Atlantic isles,
And                                            
Atlantic isles.] By these islands, which were also
called the Fortunate, the ancients are now general-
ly supposed to have meant the Canaries. They
were celebrated by the poets for the mildness and
fertility of the climate; for the gardens of the
daughters

Book I. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 21 
And range with him th'Hesperian field, and see,
Where're his fingers touch the fruitful grove,
The branches shoot with gold; where'er his step
Marks the glad foil, the tender clusters glow
With purple ripeness, and invest each hill
As with the blushes of an evening sky.
Or wilt thou rather stoop thy vagrant plume,
Where, gliding thro' his daughter's honour'd shades,
The smooth Peneus from his glassy flood
Reflects purpureal Tempe's pleasant scene?
Fair Tempe! haunt belov'd of sylvan powers,
Of nymphs and fawns; where in the golden age
They play'd in secret on the shady brink
With ancient Pan; while round their choral steps
Young hours and genial gales with constant hand
Shower'd blossoms, odours, shower'd ambrosial dews
And spring's Elysian bloom. Her flow'ry store
To thee nor Tempe shall refuse; nor watch
Of winged Hydra guard Hesperian fruits
From thy free spoil. O bear then, unreprov'd,
Thy smiling treasures to the green recess
Where young Dione stays. With sweetest airs
Intice her forth to lend her angel form
For beauty's honour'd image. Hither turn
Thy graceful footsteps; hither, gentle maid,
Incline thy polish'd forehead; let thy eyes
Effuse the mildness of their azure dawn;
And may the fanning breezes waft aside
The radiant locks, dissolving as it bends
With airy softness from the marble neck
The cheek fair blooming, and the rosy lip
Where
daughters of Hesperus, the brother of Atlas; and
the dragon which constantly watched their golden
fruit, till it was slain by the Tyrian Hercules.
Where gliding thro’ his daughter's honour'd shades.]
Daphne, the daughter of Peneus, transformed into
a laurel.

22 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book I.
Where winning smiles and pleasure sweet as love,
With sanctity and wisdom, temp'ring blend
Their soft allurement. Then the pleasing force
Of nature, and her kind parental care,
Worthier I'd sing; then all the enamour'd youth,
With each admiring virgin, to my lyre
Should throng attentive, while I point on high
Where beauty's living image, like the morn
That wakes in zephyr's arms the blushing May,
Moves on ward; or as Venus, when she flood
Effulgent on the pearly car, and smil'd,
Fresh from the deep, and conscious of her form,
To see the Tritons tune their vocal shells,
And each cœrulean sister of the flood
With fond acclaim attend her o'er the waves,
To seek the Idalian bower. Ye smiling band
Of youths and virgins, who thro' all the maze
Of young desire with rival steps pursue
This charm of beauty; if the pleasing toil
Can yield a moment's respite, hither turn
Your favourable ear, and trust my words,
I do not mean to wake the gloomy form
Of superstition drest in wisdom's garb,
To damp your tender hopes; I do not mean
To bid the jealous thund'rer fire the heavens
Or shapes infernal rend the groaning earth
To fright you from your joys; my chearful song
With better omens calls you to the fields
Pleas'd with your gen'rous ardour in the chace
And warm as you. Then tell me, for you know,
Does beauty ever deign to dwell where health
And active use are strangers? Is her charm
Confess'd in aught, whose most peculiar ends
Are lame and fruitless? Or did nature mean
This awful stamp the herald of a lye;
To hide the shame of discord and disease,
And catch with far hypocrisy the heart
Of idle faith? O no! with better cares,
Th’

Book I. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 23 
Th' indulgent mother, conscious how infirm
Her offspring tread the paths of good and ill,
By this illustrious image, in each kind
Still more illustrious where the object holds
Its native power's most: perfect, she by this
Illumes the headlong impulse of desire,
And sanctifies his choice. The generous glebe
Whose bosom smiles with verdure, the clear trait
Of dreams delicious to the thirsty soul,
The bloom of nectar'd fruitage ripe to sense,
And every charm of animated things,
Are only pledges of a date sincere,
Th' integrity and order of their frame,
When all is well within, and every end
Accomplish'd. Thus was beauty sent from heaven
The lovely ministress of truth and good
In this dark world: for truth and good are one,
And beauty dwells in them, and they in her,
With like participation. Wherefore then,
O sons of earth! would you dissolve the tye?
O wherefore,
-------Truth and good are one,
And beauty dwells in them, &c.] "Do you
" imagine, says Socrates to his libertine disciple, that
" what is good is not also beautiful? Have you not
" observed that these appearences always coincide?
" Virtue, for instance, in the same respect as to which
" we call it good, is ever acknowledged to be beauti-
" ful also in the characters of men we always join
" the two denominations together. The beauty of
" human bodies correspond in like manner, with
" that œconomy of parts which constitutes them good
" and in all the circumstances  which occur in life
" the same object is constantly accounted both beau-
" tiful and good, inasmuch as it answers the pur-
" poses for which it was designed. Xenophon, Me-
" morab. Socrat. 1, 3, c, 8,
This

24 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book I.
O wherefore, with a rash, imperfect aim,
Seek you those slow'ry joys with which the hand
Of lavish fancy paint's each flattering scene
Where beauty seems to dwell, nor once enquire
Where is the sanction of eternal truth,
Or where the seal of undeceitful good,
To save your search from folly? Wanting these,
Lo! beauty withers in your void embrace,
And
This excellent observation has been illustrated
and extended by the noble restorer of ancient philo-
sophy; See the Characteristics, vol ii, p, 399, & vol.
3, p, 181. And his most ingenious disciple has par-
ticularly shewn that it holds in the general laws of
nature, in the works of art, and the conduct of the
sciences. Inquiry into the original of our ideas of
beauty and virtue; Treat. 1, §, 8. As to the con-
nection between beauty and truth, there are two O-
pinions concerning it. Some philosophers assert an
independent and invariable law in nature, in conse-
quence of which all rational beings must alike
perceive beauty in some certain proportions, and
deformity in the contrary. And this necessity being
supposed the same with that which commands the
assent or dissent of the understanding, it follows of
course that beauty is founded on the universal
and unchangeable law of truth.
But there are others who believe beauty to be
meerly a relative and arbitrary thing; that indeed it
was a benevolent design in nature to annex so delight-
ful a sensation to those objects which are best and
most perfect in themselves, that so we might be engaged
to the choice of them at once, and without staying
to infer their usefulness from their structure and ef-
fects; but that it is not impossible, in a physical sense
that two beings of equal capacities for truth, should
perceive

Book I. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 25 
And with the glitt'ring of an idiot's toy
Did fancy mock your vows. Nor let the gleam
Of youthful hope that shines upon your hearts,
Be chill'd or clouded at this awful task
To learn the lore of undeceitful good,
And truth eternal. Tho' the pois'nous charms
Of baleful superstition guide the feet
Of servile numbers, thro' a dreary way
To their abode, thro' deserts, thorns and mire;
And leave the wretched pilgrim all forlorn
To muse, at last, amidst the ghostly gloom
Of graves, and hoary vaults, and cloister'd cells;
To walk with spectres thro' the midnight shade,
And to the screaming owl's accursed song
Attune the dreadful workings of his heart;
Yet be not you dismay'd. A gentler star
Your lovely search illumes. From the grove
Where wisdom talk'd with her Athenian sons,
Could my ambitious hands intwine a wreath
C Of
perceive, one of them beauty and the other deformity
in the same relations. And upon this supposition,
by that truth which is always connected with beauty,
nothing more can be meant than the conformity of
any object to those proportions, upon which, after
careful examination, the beauty of that species is
found to depend. Polycletus for instance, the fa-
mous sculptor of Sicyon, from an accurate mensu-
ration of the several parts of the most perfect human
bodies, deduced a canon or system of proportions,
which was the rule of all succeeding artists. Suppose
a state modell'd according to this canon. A man of
mere natural taste, upon looking at it, without enter-
ing into its proportions, confesses and admires its
beauty; whereas a professor of the art applies his
measures to the head, the neck, or the hand, and,
without attending to its beauty, pronounces the work-
manship to be just and true.

26 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book I.
Of PLATO's olive with the Mantuan bay,
Then should my pow'rful voice at once dispel
These monkish horrors: then in light divine
Disclose the Elysian prospect, where the steps
Of those whom nature charms, thro' blooming walks,
Thro' fragrant mountains and poetic streams,
Admit the train of sages, heroes, bards,
Led by their winged genius and the choir
Of laurell'd science and harmonious art,
Proceed exulting to the eternal shrine,
Where truth inthron'd with her celestial twins,
The undivided part'ners of her sway,
With good and beauty reigns. O let not us,
Lull'd by luxurious pleasure's languid strain,
Or courching to the frowns of bigot rage,
O let not us a moment pause to join
The godlike band.. And if the gracious power
That first awaken'd my untutor'd song,
Will to my invocation breathe anew
The tuneful spirit; then thro' all our paths,
Ne'er shall the sound of this devoted lyre
Be wanting; whether on the rosy mead,
When summer smiles, to warm the melting heart
Of luxury's allurement; whither firm
Against the torrent and the stubbon hill
To urge bold virtue's unremitted nerve
And wake the stronge divinity of soul
That conquers chance and sate; or weather struck
For sounds of triumph, to proclaim her toils
Upon the lofty summit, round her brow
To twine the wreathe of incorruptive praise;
To trace her hallow'd light thro future worlds.
And bless heaven's image in the heart of man.
Thus with a faithful aim have we presum'd,
Adventurous, to delineate nature's form;
Whether in vast, majestic pomp array'd,
Or drest for pleasing wonder, or serene
In

Book I. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 27 
In beauty's rosy smile. It now remains,
Thro' various being's fair proportion'd scale,
To trace the rising lustre of her charms,
From their first twilight, shining forth at length
To full meridian splendour. Of degree
The least and lowliest in effusive warmth
Of colours mingling with a random blaze,
Doth beauty dwell. Then higher in the line
And variation of determin'd shape,
Where truth's eternal measures mark the bound
Of circle, cube, or sphere. The third ascent
Unites this varied symmetry of parts
With colour's bland allurement; as the pearl
Shines in the concave of its azure bed,
And painted shells indent their speckled wreath
Then more attractive rise the blooming forms
Thro' which the breath of nature has infus'd
Her genial power to draw with pregnant veins
Nutritious moisture from the bounteous earth,
In fruit and feed prolific; thus the flowers
Their purple honours with the spring resume;
And such the stately tree which autumn bends
With blushing treasures. But more lovely still
In nature's charm, where to the full content
Of complicated members, to the bloom
Of colour, and the vital change of growth,
Life's holy flame and piercing sense are given.
And active motion speaks the temper'd soul;
So moves the bird of Juno; so the steed
With rival ardor beats the dusty plain,
And faithful dogs with eager airs of joy
Salute their fellows. Thus doth beauty dwell
There most conspicuous, ev'n in outward shape,
Where dawns the high expression of a mind;
By steps conducting our enraptur'd search
To that eternal origin, whose power,
Thro' all the unbounded symmetry of things,
Like rays effulging from the parent sun,
This

28 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book I.
This endless mixture of her charms diffus'd.
Mind, Mind alone, bear witness, earth and heaven!
The living fountains in itself contains
Of beauteous and sublime; here hand in hand,
Sit paramount the Graces; here inthron'd
Celestial Venus with divinest airs,
Invites the soul to never lading joy.
Look then abroad thro' nature, to the range
Of planets, suns, and adamantine spheres
Wheeling unshaken thro' the void immense;
And speak, O man! does this capacious scene
With half that kindling majesty dilate
Thy strong conception, as when Brutus rose
Refulgent from the stroke of Cæsar's fate,
Amid the croud of patriots; and his arm
A lost extending, like eternal Jove
When guilt brings down the thunder, call'd aloud
On Tully's name, and shook his crimson steel,
And bade the father of his country, hail!
For lo! the tyrant prostrate on the dust,
And Rome again is free? Is aught so fair
In all the dewy landscapes of the spring,
In the bright eye of Hesper or the morn,
In nature's fairest forms, is aught so fair
As virtuous friendship? as the candid blush
Of him who drives with fortune to be just?
The graceful tear that streams for other's woes?
Or the mild majesty of private life,
Where peace with ever blooming olive crowns
The gate; where honour's liberal hands effuse
Unenvy'd treasures, and the snowy wings
Of
As when Brutus rose, &c.] Cicero himself describes
this fact. Cæsare intersecto statim cruentum alte
extollens M. Brutus pugionem, Ciceronem nomina-
tim exclamavit, atque ei recuperatum libertatem est
gratulatus. Bic, Philipp. 2, 12.

Book I. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 29 
Of Innocence and love protect the scene?
Once more search, undismay'd, the dark profound,
Where nature works in secret; view the beds
Of min'ral treasure, and the eternal vault
That bounds the hoary ocean; trace the forms
Of atoms moving with incessant change
Their elemental round; behold the seeds
Of being, and the energy of life
Kindling the mass with ever active flame;
Then to the secrets of the working mind
Attentive turn; from dim oblivion call
Her fleet ideal band; and bid them, go!
Break thro time's barrier, and o'ertake the hour
That saw the heavens created; then declare
If aught were found in those external scenes
To move thy wonder now. For what are all
The forms which brute, unconscious matter wears,
Greatness of bulk, or symmetry of parts?
Not reaching to the heart, soon feeble grows
The superficial impulse; dull their charms,
And satiate soon, and pall the languid eye,
Not so the moral species, or the powers
Of genius and design; the ambitious mind
There sees herself; by these congenial forms
Touch'd and awaken'd, with intenser act
She bends each nerve, and meditates well pleased
Her features in the mirror. For of all
The inhabitants of earth, to man alone
Creative wisdom gave to lift his eye
To truth's eternal measures; thence to frame
The sacred laws of action and of will,
Discerning justice from unequal deeds,
And temperance from folly. But beyond
This energy of truth, whose dictates bind
Assenting reason, the benignant fire,
To deck the honour'd paths of just and good,
Has added bright imaginations rays;
C2 Where

30 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book l.
Where virtue, rising from the awful depth
Of truth's mysterious bosom, doth forsake
The unadorn'd condition of ideas,
And dress'd by fancy in ten thousand hues,
Assumes a various feature, to attract,
With charms responsive to each gazer's eye,
The hearts of men. Amid his rural walk,
The ingenious youth whom solitude inspires
With purest wishes, from the pensive shade
Beholds her moving like a virgin muse
That wakes her lyre to some indulgent theme
Of harmony and wonder; while among
The herd of servile minds, her strenuous form
Indignant flashes on the patriot's eye,
And thro' the rolls of memory appeals
To ancient honour; or in act serene,
Yet watchful, rises the majestic sword
Of public pow'r, from dark ambition's reach
To guard the sacred volume of the laws.
Genius of antient Greece! whose faithful steps
Well pleas'd I follow thro' the sacred paths
Of nature and of science; nurse divine
Of all heroic deeds and fair desires!
O! let the breath of thy extended praise
Inspire my kindling bosom to the height
Of this untempted theme. Nor be my thoughts
Presumptuous counted, if, amid the calm
That smooths this vernal evening into smiles,
I steal impatient from the sordid haunts
Of strife and low ambition, to attend
Thy
Where virtue rising from the awful depth
Of truth's mysterious bosom, &c.] According to the
opinion of those who assert moral obligation to be
founded on an immutable and universal law, and
that pathetic feeling which is usually called the moral
sense, to be determined by the peculiar temper of the
imagination and the earliest associations of ideas.

Book I. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 31 
Thy sacred presence in the sylvan shade,
By their malignant footsteps ne'er prosan'd.
Descend, propitious! to my favour'd eye;
Such in thy mein, thy warm exalted air,
As when the Persian tyrant, foil'd and stung
With shame and desperation, gnash'd his teeth
To see thee rend the pageants of his throne;
And at the lightning of thy listed spear
Crouch'd like a slave. Bring all thy martial spoils,
Thy palms, thy laurels, thy triumphal songs,
Thy finding band of arts, thy godlike fires
Of civil wisdom, thy heroic youth
Warm from the schools of glory. Guide my way
Thro' fair Lyceum's walk, the green retreats
Of Academus, and the thymy vale,
Where, oft enchanted with Socratic sounds,
Ilissus pure devolv'd his tuneful stream
In gentle murmurs. From the blooming store
Of these auspicious fields, may I unblam'd
Transplant some living blossoms, to adorn
My native clime: while far above the flight
Of fancy's plume aspiring, I unlock
The springs of antient wisdom; while I join
Thy name, thrice honour'd! with th' immortal
Of nature; while to ray compatriot youth [praise
I point the high example of thy sons,
And tune to Attic themes the British lyre.
Lyceum.] The school of Aristotle.
Academus.] The school of Plato.
Ilissus.] One of the rivers on which Athens was sit-
uated. Plato, in some of his finest dialogues lays the
scene of the conversation with Socrates on its banks.
THE

ARGUMENT.
THE separation of the works of the Imagination
from philosophy, the cause of their abuse among
the moderns. Prospect of their reunion under the
influence of public liberty. Enumeration of accident-
al pleasures, which increase the effect of objects de-
lightful to the imagination. The pleasures of sense
Particular circumstances of the mind. Discovery of
truths. Perception of contrivance and design. Emo-
tion of the passions. All the natural passions partake
of a pleasing sensation, with the final cause of this
constitution illustrated by an allegorical vision, and
exemplified in sorrow, pity, terror, and indignation.

THE 
PLEASURES
OF
IMAGINATION.
BOOK SECOND.
WHEN shall the laurel and the vocal string
Resume their honours? When shall we behold
The tuneful tongue, the Promethean hand
Aspire to ancient praise? Alas I how faint,
How slow the dawn of beauty and of truth
Breaks the reluctant shades of Gothic night
Which yet involve the nations! Long they groan'd
Beneath the furies of rapacious force;
Oft as the gloomy north, with iron swarms
Tempestuous pouring from her frozen caves,
Blasted the Italian shore, and swept the works
Of liberty and wisdom down the gulph
Of all devouring night. As long immur'd
In noontide darkness by the glimm'ring lamp,
Each muse and each fair science pin'd away
The sordid hours; while foul, barbarian hands
Their mysteries prosan'd, unstrung the lyre,
And chain'd the soaring pinion down to earth.
At last the muses rose, and spurn'd their bonds,
And
At last the muses rose, &c] About the age of
Hugh Capet, the founder of the third race of French
kings, the poets of Provence were in high reputa-
tion; a sort of stroling bards or rhapsodists, who
went  about the courts of princes and noblemen,
entertaining them at festivals with music and poetry.
They attempted both the epic ode and satire, and
abounded

34 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book II. 
And wildly warbling scatter'd as they flew,
Their blooming wreaths from fair Valclusa's bowers
To Arno's myrtle border and the shore
Of soft Parthenope. But still the rage
Of dire ambition, and gigantic power,
From public aims, and from the busy walk
Of civil commerce, drove the bolder train
Of penetrating science to the cells,              
Where studious ease consumes the silent hour
In shadowy searches and unfruitful care.
Thus
abounded in a wild fantastic vein of fable, partly
allegorical, and partly founded on traditionary le-
gends of the Saracen wars. These were the rudi-
ments of the Italian poetry. But their taste and
composition must have been extremely barbarous,
as we may judge by those that followed the turn of
their fable in much politer times; such as Boiardo,
Bernardo Tasso, Ariosto, &c.
Valclusa.] The famous retreat of Francesco
Petracha, the father of Italian poetry, and his mis-
tress Laura, a lady of Avignon.
Arno.] The river which runs by Florence, the
birth place of Daute Boccacio.
Parthenope.] Or Naples, the birth place of San-
nazaro. The great Torquato Tasso was born at
Sorrento, in the kingdom of Naples.
-------- the rage
Of dire ambition, &c] This relates to the cruel
wars among the republics of Italy, and the abomina-
ble politics of its petty princes, about the fifteenth
century. These at last, in conjunction with papal
power, entirely extinguished the spirit of liberty in
that country, and established that abuss of the fine
arts, which has since been propagated over Europe.

Book II. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 35 
Thus from their guardians torn, the tender arts
Of mimic fancy and harmonious joy,
To priestly domination and the lust
Of lawless courts, their amiable toil
For three inglorious ages have resign'd,
In vain reluctant; and Torquato's tongue
Was turn'd for slavish peans at the throne
Of tinsel pomp; and Ranphael's magic hand
Effus'd
Thus from their guardians torn, the tender arts,
&.c] Nor were they only losers by the separation.
For " Philosophy itself (to use the words of a phi-
losopher) being thus severed from the sprightly arts
and sciences, must consequently grow dronish, insipid,
pedantic, useless, and directly opposite to the real
knowledge and practice of the world." So, that a gen-
tleman of the world (says another excellent writer)
cannot easily bring himself to like so austere and un-
gainly a form: so greatly is it charged with what
was once the delight of the fined gentlemen of an-
tiquity, and their recreation after the hurry of public
affairs. From this condition it cannot be recov-
ered, but by uniting it once more with the works of
imagination; and we have had the pleasure of ob-
serving a very great progress made towards their
union with England within these few years. It is
hardly possible to conceive them at a greater distance
from each other than at the revolution, when Locke
stood at the head of one party, and Dryden of the
other. But the general spirit of liberty, which has
ever since been growing, naturally invited our men
of wit and genius to improve that influence, which
the arts of persuasion give them with the people, by
applying them to subjects of importance to society.
Thus poetry and eloquence became considerable;
and philosophy is now of course obliged to borrow
of their embellishments, in order even to gain audi-
ence with the public.

36 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book II.
Effus'd its fair creation to inchant
The fond adoring herd in Latian fanes
To blind belief; while on their prostrate necks
The sable tyrant plants his heel secure.
But now behold! the radiant era dawns,
When freedom's ample fabric, fix'd at length
For endless years on Albions happy shore
In full proportion, once more shall extend
To all the kindred powers of social bliss
A common mansion, a parental roof.
There shall the Virtues, there shall Wisdom's train,
Their long lost friends rejoining, as of old,
Embrace the smiling family of arts,
The Muses and the Graces. Then no more
Shall vice diffracting their delicious gifts
To aims abhorr'd, with high distaste and scorn
Turn from their cham the philosophic eye,
The patriot bosom: then no more the paths
Of public care or intellectual toil,
Alone by footsteps haughty and severe,
The gloomy state he trod; the harmonious Muse
And her persuasive filters then shall plant
Their sheltering laurels o'er the bleak ascent,
And shed their flowers along the rugged way.
Arm'd with the lyre, already have we dar'd
To pierce divine philosophy's retreats
And teach the Muse her lore; already strove
Their long divided honours to unite,
While tempering this deep argument we sang
Of truth and beauty. Now the same fair talk
Impends; now urging our ambitious toil,
We hasten to recount the various springs
Of adventitious pleasure, which adjoin
Their grateful influence to the prime effect
Of objects grand or beauteous, and inlarge
The complicated joy. The sweets of sense,
Do they not oft with kind accession flow,
To raise harmonious fancy's native charm ?
So

Book II. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 37 
So while we taste the fragrance of the rose,
Glows not her blush the fairer? While we view
Amid the noontide walk a limpid rill
Gush thro' the trickling herbage, to the thirst
Of summer yielding the delicious draught
Of cool refreshment; o'er the mossy brink
Shines not the surface clearer, and the wave;
With sweeter music murmur as they flow?
Nor this alone; the various lot of life
Oft from external circumstance assumes
A moment's disposition to rejoice
In those delights which at a different hour
Would pass unheeded. Fair the face of spring,
When rural songs and odours wake the morn,
To every eye; but how much more to his,
Round whom the bed of sickness long diffus'd
Its melancholy gloom! how doubly fair,
When first with fresh-born vigor he inhales
The balmy breeze, and feels the blessed sun
Warm at his bosom, from the springs of life
Chasing oppressive damps and languid pain!
Or shall I mention, where celestial truth
Her awful light discloses, to effulge
A more majestic pomp on beauty's frame?
For man loves knowledge, and the beams of truth
More welcome touch his understanding eye,
Than all the blandishments of sound, his ear,
Than all of taste his tongue. Nor ever yet
The melting rainbow's vernal-tinctur'd hues
To me have shone so pleasing, as when first
The hand of science pointed out the path
In which the sun-beams gleaming from the west
Fall on the watry cloud, whose darksome veil
Involves the orient; and that trickling show'r
Piercing through every crystaline convex
Of clust'ring dew-drops to their flight oppos'd,
D Recoil

38 PLEASURE OF IMAGINATION: Book II.
Recoil at length where concave all behind
The internal surface of each glassy orb
Repells their forward passage into air;
That thence direct they seek the radiant goal
From which their course began; and, as they strike
In diff'rent lines the gazer's obvious eye,
Assume a diff'rent lustre, thro' the brede
Of colours changing from the splendid rose
To the pale violet's dejected hue.
Or shall we touch that kind access of joy,
That springs to each fair object, while we trace,
Thro' all its fabric, wisdom's artful aim
Disposing every part, and gaining dill
By means proportion'd her benignant end?
Speak, ye, the pure delight, whose favour'd steps
The lamp of science thro' the jealous maze
Of nature guides, when haply you reveal
Her secret honours; whether in the sky,
The beauteous laws of light, the central pow'rs
That wheel the pensile planets round the year:
Whether in wonders of the rolling deep,
Or smiling fruits of pleasure-pregnant earth,
Or fine adjusted springs of life and sense
You scan the counsels of their author's hand.
What, when to rise the meditated scene,
The flame of passion, thro' the struggling soul
Deep-kindled, shows across that sudden blaze
The object of its rapture vast of size.
With fiercer colours and a night of shade?
What like a storm from their capacious bed
The sounding seas o'erwhelming, when the might
Of these eruptions, working from the depth
Of man's strong apprehension, shakes his frame
Ev'n to the base; from every naked sense
Of pain or pleasure dissipating all
Opinion's feeble cov'rings, and the veil
Spun

Book II. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 39 
Spun from the cobweb-fashion of the times
To hide the feeling heart? Then nature speaks
Her genuine language, and the words of men,
Big with the very motion of their souls,
Declare with what accumulated force,
The impetuous nerve of passion urges on
The native weight and energy of things.
Yet more; her honours where nor beauty claims,
Nor shows of good the thirsty sense allure,
From passion's power alone our nature holds
Essential pleasure. Passion's fierce illapse
Rouzes the mind's whole fabric; with supplies
Of daily impulse keeps the elastic pow'rs
Intensely poiz'd, and polishes anew
By that collision all the fine machine;
Else
From passion's power alone, &c.] This very mysteri-
ous kind of pleasure which is often found in the exer-
cise of passions generally counted painful, has been
taken notice of by several authors. Lucretius re-
solves it unto self-love.
Suava mari magno, &c. lib. II. 1.
As if a man was never pleas'd in being moved at the
distress of a tragedy, without a cool reflection that
tho' these fictious personages were so unhappy, yet
he himself was perfectly at ease and in safety. The
ingenious and candid author of the Reflexions criti-
ques sur la poesie & sur la peinture, accounts for it by
the general delight which the mind takes in its own
activity, and the abhorrence it feels of an indolent
and unattentive state: and this joined with the moral
applause of its own temper, which attends these
emotions when natural and just, is certainly the true
foundation of the pleasure, which as it is the origin
and basis of tragedy and epic deserved a very partic-
ular consideration in this poem.

40 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book II.
Else rust would rise, and foulness, by degrees
Incumb'ring, choak at last what heaven design’d
For ceaseless motion and a round of toil.
But say, does every passion men endure
Thus minister delight? That name indeed
Becomes the rosy breath of love; becomes
The radiant smiles of joy, the applauding hand
Of admiration; but the bitter show'r
That sorrow sheds upon a brother's grave,
But the dumb palsy of nocturnal fear,
Or those consuming fires that gnaw the heart
Of panting indignation, find we there
To move delight? Then listen, while my tongue
The unalter'd wilt of heav'n with faithful awe
Reveals; what old Harmodious wont to teach
My early age; Harmodious who had weigh'd
Within his learned mind whate'er the schools
Of wisdom, or thy lonely-whisp'ring voice,
O faithful nature! dictate of the laws
Which govern and support this mighty frame
Of universal being. Oft the hours
From morn to eve have stole unmark'd away,
While mute attention hung upon his lips,
As thus the sage his awful tale began.
'Twas in the windings of an ancient wood,
When spotless youth with solitude resigns
To sweet philosophy the studious day,
What time pale autumn shades the silent eve,
Musing I rov'd. Of good and evil much,
And much of mortal man my thought revolv'd,
When starting full on fancy's gushing eye,
The mournful image of Parthenia's fate,
That hour, O long belov'd and long deplor'd!
When blooming youth, nor gentlest wisdom's arts,
Nor Hymen's honours gather'd for thy brow,
Nor all thy lover's, all thy father's tears
Avail'd to snatch thee from the cruel grave;
Thy

Book II. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 41 
Thy agonizing looks, thy last farewell
Struck to the inmost feeling of my soul
As with the hand of death. At once the shade
More horrid nodded o'er me, and the winds
With hoarser murm'ring shook the branches. Dark
As midnight storms, the scene of human things,
Appear'd before me; desarts, burning sands
Where the parch'd adder dies; the frozen south,
And desolation blasting all the west
With rapine and with murder: tyrant pow'r
Here sits inthron'd in blood; the baleful charms
Of superstition there infect the skies,
And turn the sun to horror. Gracious heaven!
What is the life of man? Or cannot these,
Nor these portents thy awful will suffice?
That propagated thus beyond their scope;
They rise to act their cruelties a new
In my afflicted bosom, thus decreed
The universal sensitive of pain,
The wretched heir of evils not its own!
Thus I, impatient; when at once effus'd,
A flashing torrent of Celestial day
Burst thro' the shadowy void. With slow descent;
A purple cloud came floating through the sky,
And poiz'd at length within the circling trees,
Hang obvious to my view; till opening wide
Its lucid-orb, a more than human form
Emerging lean'd majestic o'er my head,
And instant thunder shook the conscious grove.
Then melted into air the liquid cloud,
And all the shining vision stood-reveal'd
A wreath of palm his ample forehead bound,
And o'er his shoulder, mantling to his knee,
Flow'd the transparent robe, around his waist
Collected with a radiant zone of gold
Etherial; there in mystic signs engrav'd
I read his office high and sacred name,
Genius of human kind. Appall'd I gaz'd
D2 The

42 PLEASURES OF IMAIGINATION. Book II.
The godlike presence; for athwart his brow
Displeasure, temper'd with a mild concern,
Look'd down reluctant on me, and his words
Like distant thunders broke the murm'ring air.
Vain are thy thoughts, O child of mortal birth.
And impotent thy tongue. Is thy short span.
Capacious of this universal frame?
Thy wisdom all-sufficent? Thou, alas!
Dost thou aspire to judge between the Lord
Of nature and his works? to lift thy voice
Against the sovereign order he decreed
All good and lovely? to blaspheme the bands
Of tenderness innate and social love,
Holiest of things! by which the general orb
Of being, as with adamantine links,
Was drawn to perfect union and sustain'd
From everlasting? Hast thou felt the pangs
Of soft'ning sorrow, of indignant zeal
So grievious to the soul, as thence to wish
The ties of nature broken from thy frame;
That so thy selfish unrelenting heart
May cease to mourn its lot, no longer then
The wretched heir of evils not its own?
O fair benevolence of gen'rous minds!
O man by nature form'd for all mankind!
He spoke; abash'd and silent I remain'd,
As conscious of my lips' offence, and aw'd
Before his presence, though my secret soul
Disdain'd the imputation. On the ground
I fix'd my eyes; till from his airy couch
He stoop'd sublime, and touching with his hand
My dazzling forehead, Raise thy sight, he cry'd,
And let thy sense convince, thy erring tongue.
I look'd, and lo! the former scene was chang'd
For verdant alleys and surrounding trees,
A solitary

Book II. PLEASURE OF IMAGINATION. 43 
A solitary prospect, wide and wild,
Rush'd on my senses. 'Twas a horrid pile
Of hills with many a shaggy forest mix'd,
With many a sable cliff and glitt'ring stream.
A lost recumbent o'er the hanging ridge,
The brown woods wav'd, while ever-trickling springs
Wash'd from the naked roots of oak and pine,
The crumbling soil; and still at every fall
Down the steep windings of the channel'd rock,
Remurm'ring rush'd the congregated floods
With hoarser inundation; till at last
They reach'd a grassy plain, which from the skirts
Of that high desart spread her verdant lap,
And drank the gushing moisture, where confin'd
In one smooth current, o'er the lilied vale
Clearer than glass it flow'd. Autumnal spoils
Luxuriant spreading to the rays of morn,
Blush'd o'er the cliffs, whose half-incircling mound'
As in a sylvan theatre inclos'd
That flow'ry level. On the river's brink
I spy'd a fair pavilion, which diffus'd
Its floating umbrage 'mid the silver shade
Of osiers. Now the western sun reveal’d
Between two parting cliffs his golden orb,
And pour'd across the shadow of the hills,
On rocks and floods, a yellow stream of light
That cheer'd the solemn scene. My list'ning pow'r;
Were aw'd, and every thought in silence hung,
And wondering expectation. Then the voice
Of that celestial pow'r, the mystic show
Declaring, thus my deep attention call'd.
Inhabitant of earth, to whom is giv’n
The gracious ways of providence to learn,
Receive
Inhabitant of earth, &c] The account of the econ-
omy of providence here introduced, as the most pro-
per

44 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book II.
Receive my sayings with a stedfast ear ----
Know then, the sov'reign spirit of the world,
Though self-collected from etherial time,
Within his own deep essence he beheld
The circling bounds of happiness unite;
Yet by immense benignity inclin'd
To
per to calm and satisfy the mind when, under the
compunction of private evils, seems to have come o-
riginally from the Pythagorean school; but of all the
ancient philosophers, Plato has most largely insisted
upon it, has established it with all the strength of his
capacious understanding, and ennobled it with all the
magnificence of his divine imagination. He has one
passage so full and clear on the head, that I am per-
suaded the reader will be pleased to see it here, tho'
somewhat long. Addressing himself to such as are
not satisfied concerning divine providence, The being
who presides over the whole, says he, has dispos'd and com-
plicated all things for the happiness and virtue of the
whole, every part of which, according to the extent of 
its influence, does and suffers what is fit and proper.
One of these parts is yours, O unhappy man ! which tho’
in itself most inconsiderable and minute, yet being con-
nected with the universe, ever seeks to co-operate with
that supreme order. You in the mean time are igno-
rant of the very end for which all particular natures
are brought into existence, that the all-comprehending
nature of the whole may be perfect and happy; existing,
as it does, not for your sake, but the cause and reason
of your existence, which, as in the symmetry of every
artificial work, must of necessity concur with the gene-
ral design of the artist, and be subservient to the whole
of which it is a part. Your complaint therefore is igno-
rant and groundless: since according to the various en-
ergy of creation, and the common laws of nature, there
is a constant provision of that which is best at the same
time

Book II. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 45 
To spread around him that primeval joy
Which fill'd himself, be rais'd his plastic arm,
And sounded thro' the hollow depth of space
The strong, creative mandate. Strait arose
These heav'nly orbs, the glad abodes of life
Effusive
time for you and for the whole.----For the governing
intelligence clearly beholding all the actions of animated
and self-moving creatures, and that mixture of good and
evil which diversifies them, consider first of all by
what disposition of things, and what situation of each
individual in the general system, vice might be depressed
and subdued, and virtue made secure of victory and
happiness with the greatest faculty and in the highest
degree possible. In this manner be ordered, thro, the
entire circle of being, the internal constitution of every
mind, where should be its station in the universal fabric,
and thro' what variety of circumstances it should proceed
in the whole tenour of its existence. He goes on in his
sublime manner to assert a future state of retribution,
as well for these who, by the exercise of good dispositions
being harmonized and assimilated to the divine virtue,
are consequently removed to a place of unblemish’d sanc-
tity and happiness: as those who by the most stagitious
arts have arisen from contemptible beginnings to the
greatest affluence and power, and whom therefore you
look upon as unanswerable instances of negligence in the
gods, because you are ignorant of the purpose to which
they are subservient, and in what manner they contri-
bute to that supreme intention of good to the whole.
Plato de Leg. x. 16.
This theory has been delivered of late, especially
abroad, in a manner which subverts the freedom of
human actions; whereas Plato appears very careful
to preserve it, and has been in that respect imitated
by the best of his followers.

46 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book II.
Effusive kindled by his breath divine
Thro' endless forms of being. Each inhal'd
From him its portion of the vital flame,
In treasure such, that from the  wide complex.
Of coexistent orders, one might rise,
One order, all-involving and intire.
He too beholding in the sacred light
Of his essential reason, all the shapes
Of swift contingence, all successive ties
Of action propagated through the sum
Of possible existence, he at once,
Down the long series of eventful time,
So fix'd the dates of being, so dispos'd
To every living soul of every kind,
The field of motion and the hour of rest,
That all conspir'd to his supreme design,
To universal good; with full accord,
Answ'ring the  mighty model he had chose,
The best and fairest of unnumber'd worlds
That lay from  everlasting in the store
Of his divine conceptions. Nor content
By
----One might rise,
One order, &c.] See the meditations of Antonius
and the characteristics, passim.
The best and fairest, &c] This opinion is so old,
that Timœus Locrus calls the supreme being the arti-
ficer of that which is best; and represents him as re-
solving in the beginning to produce the most excel-
lent work, and as copying the world most exactly
from his own intelligible and essential idea; so that
it yet remains, as it was at first perfect in beauty
and will never stand in need of any correction or
improvement. There is no room for a caution here,
to understand these expressions, not of any particular
circumstances of human life separately consider'd,
but of the sum or universal system of life and being.

Book II. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 47 
By one exertion of creating power,
His goodness to reveal; through every age,
Thro’ every moment up the tract of time,
His parent hand with ever new increase
Of happiness and virtue has adorn'd
The vast harmonious frame: his parent hand
From the mute shell fish gasping on the shore.
To men, to angels, to celestial minds,
Forever leads the generations on
To higher scenes of being; while supplied
From day to day by his enlivening breath,
Inferior orders in succession rise
To fill the void below. As flame ascends,
As bodies to their proper center move,
As the poiz'd ocean to th' attracting moon
Obedient swells, and every headlong stream
Devolves its winding waters to the main;
So all thing, which have life, aspire to God,
The sun of being, boundless, unimpair'd,
Center of souls! Nor does the faithful voice
Of nature cease to prompt their eager steps
Aright; nor is the care of heaven whithheld
From granting to the talk proportion'd aid;
That in their stations all may persevere
To climb th' ascent of being, and approach
Forever nearer to the life divine.
That rocky pile thou see'st, that verdant lawn
Fresh water'd from the mountains. Let the scene
Paint in thy fancy the primeval seat
Of man, and where the will supreme ordain'd
His mansion, that pavilion fair diffus'd
Along the shady brink, in this recess
To
As flame ascends, &c.] This opinion, tho' not held
by Plato or any of the ancients, is yet a very natural
consequence of his principles, But the disquisition
is too complex and extensive to be enter'd upon here. 

48 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book II.
To wear the appointed season of his youth;
Till riper hours should open to his toil
The high communion of superior minds,
Of consecrated heroes and of gods.
Nor did the Sire omnipotent forget
His tender bloom to cherish; nor withheld
Celestial footsteps from his green abode.
Oft from the radiant honours of his throne,
He sent whom most he lov'd, the sov'reign fair.
The effluence of his glory, whom he plac'd
Before his eyes for ever to behold;
The goddess from whose inspiration flows
The toil of patriots, the delight of friends;
Without whose work divine, in heaven or earth,
Nought lovely, nought propitious comes to pass,
Nor hope, nor praise, nor honour. Her the sire
Gave it in change to rear the blooming mine.
The folded powers to open, to direct
The growth luxuriant of his young desires,
And from the laws of this majestic world
To teach him what was good. As thus the nymph
Her daily care attended, by her side
With constant steps her gay companion stay'd,
The fair Euphrosyne, the gentle queen
Of smiles, and graceful gladness, and delights
That cheer alike the hearts of mortal men
And powers immortal. See the shining pair!
Behold, where from his dwelling now disclos'd,
They quit their youthful charge and seek the skies.
I look’d, and on the flow'ry turf there stood,
Between two radiant forms, a smiling youth
Whose tender cheeks display'd the vernal flower
Of beauty; sweetest innocence illum'd
His bashful eyes, and on his polish'd brow
Sate young Simplicity. With fond regard
He view'd the associates, as their steps they mov'd;
The younger chief his ardent eyes detain'd,
With

Book II. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 49 
With mild regret invoking her return.
Bright as the star of evening she appear'd
Amid the dusky scene. Eternal youth
O'er all her form its glowing honours breath'd;
And smiles eternal, from her candid eyes,
Flow'd like the dewy lustre of the morn
Effusive trembling on the placid waves.
The spring of heaven had shed its blushing spoils
To bind her sable tresses; full diffus’d
Her yellow mantle floated on the breeze;
And in her hand she wav'd a living branch
Rich with immortal fruits, of power to calm
The wrathful heart, and from the bright'ning eyes
To chase the cloud of sadness. More sublime
The heavenly part'ner mov'd. The prime of age
Compos'd her steps. The presence of a god,
High on the circle of her brow inthron'd,
From each majestic motion darted awe,
Devoted awe! till cherish'd by her looks
Benevolent and meek, confiding love
To filial rapture soften'd all the soul.
Free in her graceful hand she poiz'd the sword
Of chaste dominion. An heroic crown
Display'd the old simplicity of pomp
Around her honour'd head. A matron's robe,
White as the sunshine streams through vernal clouds,
Her stately form invested. Hand in hand
The immortal pair forsook the enamell'd green,
Asceading slowly. Rays of limpid light
Gleam'd round their path; celestial rounds were
And thro' the fragrant air etherial dews [hear’d
Distill'd around them; till at once the cloud:
Disparting wide in midway sky, withdrew
Then airy veil, and left a bright expanse
Of empyrean flame where spent and drown'd,
Afflicted vision plung'd in vain to scan
What object it involv'd. My feeble eyes
Indur’d not. Bending down to earth I stood,
E With

50 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book II.
With dumb attention. Soon a female voice,
As watry murmurs sweet, or warbling shades
With sacred invocation thus began.
Father of gods and mortals! whose right arm
With reins eternal guides the moving heavens,
Bend thy propitious ear Behold well pleas'd
I seek to finish thy divine decree.
With frequent steps I visit yonder seat
Of man, thy offspring; from tender seeds
Of justice and of wisdom, to involve
The latent honours of his generous frame;
Till thy conducting hand shall raise his lot
From earth's dim scene to these etherial walk;
The temple of thy glory. But not me,
Not my directing voice he oft requires,
Or hears delighted; this inchanting maid,
The associate thou hast given me, her alone
He loves, O father! absent, her he craves;
And but for her glad-presence ever join'd,
Rejoices not in mine; that all my hopes
This thy benignant purpose to fulfil,
I deem uncertain; and my daily cares
Unfruitful all and vain, unless by thee
Still farther aided in the work divine.
She ceas'd; a voice more awful thus reply’d,
O thou! in whom for ever I delight,
Fairer than all the inhabitants of heaven,
Best image of thy author! far from thee
Be disappointment, or distaste, or blame;
Who soon or late shall every work fulfil,
And no resistance find. If man refuse
To hearken to thy dictates; or allur’d
By meaner joys, to any other power
Transfer the honours due to thee alone;
That joy which he pursues he ne'er shall taste
That power in whom delighteth ne'er behold
Go

Book II. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 51 
Go then once more, and happy be thy toil;
Go then ! but let not this thy smiling friend
Partake thy footsteps. In her stead, behold!
With thee the sons of Nemesis I send;
The fiend abhorr'd! whose vengeance takes account
Of sacred order's violated laws.
See where he calls thee, burning to be gone,
Fierce to exhaust the tempest of his wrath
On yon devoted head. But thou, my child,
Controul his cruel frenzy, and protect
Thy tender charge. That when dispair shall  grasp
His agonizing bosom, he may learn,
That he may learn to love the gracious hand
Alone sufficient in that hour of ill,
To save his feeble spirit; then confess
Thy genuine honours, O excelling fair!
When all the plagues that wait the dearly will
Of this avenging demon, all the storms
Of night infernal, serve but to display
The energy of thy superior charms
With mildest awe triumphant o'er his rage,
And shining clearer in the horrid gloom.
Here ceas'd that awful voice, and soon I felt
The cloudy curtain of refreshing eve
Was clos'd once more, from that immortal fire
Shelt'ring my eye-lids. Looking up, I view'd
A vast gigantic spectre striding on
Thro' murm'ring thunders and a waste of clouds,
With dreadful action. Black as night his brow
Relentless frowns involv'd. His savage limbs
With sharp impatience violent he writh'd,
As thro' convulsive anguish; and his hand
Arm'd with a scorpion lash, full oft he rais'd
In madness to his bosom; while his eyes
Rain'd bitter tears, and bellowing loud he shook
The void with horrour. Silent by his side
The virgin came. No discomposure stirr'd
Her 

52 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book II.
Her features. From the glooms which hung around,
No stain of darkness mingled with the beam
Of her divine effulgence. Now they stoop
Upon the river bank; and now to hail
His wonted guests with eager steps advanc'd
The unsuspecting inmate of the shade.
As when a famish'd wolf, that all night long
Had rang'd the Alpine snows, by chance at morn
Sees from a cliff incumbent o'er the smoke
Of some lone village, a neglected kid
That strays along the wild for herb or spring;
Down from the winding ridge he sweeps a main,
And thinks he tears him; so with tenfold rage,
The monster sprung remorseless on his prey.
Amaz'd the stripling stood; with panting bread
Feebly he pour'd the lamentable wail
Of helpless consternation, struck at once,
And rooted to the ground. The queen beheld
His terrour, and with looks of tend'rest care
Advanc'd to save him. Soon the tyrant felt
Her awful power. His keen tempestuous arm
Hung nerveless, nor descended where his rage
Had aim'd the deadly blow; then dumb retir'd
With sullen rancour. Lo! the sov'reign maid
Folds with a mother's arms the fainting boy,
Till life rekindles in his rosy cheek;
Then grasps his hand, and chears him with her tongue.
O wake thee, rouze thy spirit! Shall the spite
Of yon tormentor thus appall thy heart,
While I, thy friend and guardian am at hand
To rescue and to heal? O let thy soul
Remember, what the will of heav'n ordains
Is ever good for all; and if for all,
Then good for thee. Nor only by the warmth
And soothing sunshine of delightful things,
Do minds grow up and flourish. Oft misled
By

Book II. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 53 
By that bland light, the young unpractis'd views
Of reason wander through a fatal road,
Far from their native aim; as if to lye
Inglorious in the fragrant shade, and wait
The soft access of ever circling joys,
Were all the end of being. Ask thy self,
This pleasing errour did it never lull
Thy wishes? Has thy constant heart refus'd
The silken fetters of delicious ease?
Or when divine Euphrosyne appear'd
Within this dwelling, did not thy desires
Hang far below that measure of thy fate,
Which I reveal’d before thee? and thy eye,
Impatient of my counsels, turn away
To drink the soft effusion of her smiles?
Know then, for this the ever lading fire
Deprives thee of her presence, and instead
O wise and still benevolent! ordains
This horrid visage hither to pursue
My steps; that so thy nature may discern
Its real good, and what alone can save
Thy feeble spirit in this hour of ill
From folly and despair. O yet belov'd!
Let not this headlong terrour quite o'erwhelm
Thy  featter'd powers; nor fatal doem the rage
Of this tormentor, nor his proud assault,
While I am here to vindicate thy toil,
Above the generous question of thy arm.
Brave be thy fears, and in thy weakness strong.
This hour he triumphs; but confront his might,
And dare him to the combat, then with ease
Disarm’d and quell'd, his fierceness he resigns
To bondage and to scorn; while thus inur'd
By watchful danger, by unceasing toil,
The immortal mind, superior to his fate,
Amid the outrage of external things,
Firm as the solid base of this great world,
Rests on his own foundations. blow, ye winds!
E2 Ye

54 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book II.
Ye waves! ye thunders! roll your tempest on;
Shake, ye old pillars of the marble sky!
Till all its orbs and all its worlds of fire
Be loosen'd from their seats; yet still serene,
The unconquer'd mind looks down upon the wreck,
And ever stronger as the storms advance,
Firm through the closing ruin holds his way,
Where nature calls him to the destin'd goal.
So spake the goddess; while thro' all her frame
Celestial raptures flow'd, in every word,
In every motion kindling warmth divine
To seize who listen'd. Vehement and swift
As light'ning fires the aromatic shade
In Æthiopian fields, the stripling felt
Her inspiration catch his fervid soul,
And starting from his langour thus exclaim'd
Then let the trial come! and witness thou,
If terrour be upon me if I think
To meet the storm or faulter in my strength
When hardest it besets me. Do not think
That I am fearful and infirm of soul,
As late thy eyes beheld; for thou hast chang'd
My nature; thy commanding voice has wak'd
My languid powers to bear me boldly on,
Where'er the will divine my path ordains
Through toil or peril; only do not thou
Forsake me; O be thou for ever near,
That I may listen to thy sacred voice,
And guide by thy decrees my constant foes.
But say, for ever are my eyes bereft?
Say shall the fair Euphrosyne not once
Appear again to charm me! Thou, in heaven!
O thou eternal arbiter of things!
Be thy great bidding done; for who am I
To question thy appointment? Let the frowns
Of this avenger every morn o'ercast
The

Book II. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 55 
The chearful dawn, and every evening damp
With double night my dwelling; I will learn
To hail them both, and unrepining bear
His hateful presence; but permit my tongue
One glad request, and if my deeds may send
Thy awful eye propitious, O restore
The rosy featur'd maid; again to chear
This lonely seat, and bless me with her smile
He spoke; when instant, thro' the sable glooms
With which that furious presence had involv'd
The ambient air a flood of radiance came
Swift as the light'ning flash; the melting cloud;
Flew diverse, and amid the blue serene
Euphrosyne appear'd. With sprightly step
The nymph alighted on the irriguous lawn,
And to her wond'ring audience, thus began.
Lo! I am here to answer to your vows,
And be the meeting fortunate; I come
With joyful tidings; we shall part no more.
Hark! how the gentle Echo from her cell
Talks thro' the cliffs, and murm'ring o'er the stream,
Repeats the accent; we shall part no more,
O my delightful friends; well pleas’d on high
The father has beheld you, while the might
Of that stern foe with bitter trial prov'd
Your equal doings; then for ever spake
The high decree; that thou, celestial maid
Howe'er that grisly phantom on thy steps
May sometimes dare intrude, yet never more
Shalt thou descending to the abode of man,
Alone endure the rancour of his arm,
Or leave thy lov,d Euphronsyne behind.
She ended; and the whole romantic scene
Immediate vanish'd; rocks, and woods, and rills.
The mantling tent and each mysterious form
Flew like the pictures of a morning dream,
When son shine fills the bed. A while I stood
Perplex’d

56 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book II.
Perplex'd and giddy till the radiant power
Who bade the visionary landscape rise,
As up to him I turn'd, with gentlest looks
Preventing my inquiry, thus began.
There let thy soul acknowledge its complaint
How blind, how impious! There behold the ways
Of heav'n's eternal destiny to man,
For every just, benevolent and wise;
That virtue's awful steps, how'er pursued
By vexing fortune and intrusive pain,
Should never be divided from her chaste,
Her fair attendant, pleasure. Need I urge
Thy tardy thought thro' all the various round
Of this existence, that thy soft'ning soul
At length may learn what energy the hand
Of virtue mingles in the bitter tide
Of passion swelling with distress and pain,
To mitigate the sharp with gracious drops
Of cordial pleasure ? Ask the faithful youth,
Why the cold urn of her whom, long he lov'd
So often fills his arms; so often draws
His lonely footsteps at the silent hour,
To pay the mournful tribute of his tears?
O! he will tell thee, that the wealth of worlds
Should ne'er seduce his bosom to forego
That sacred hour when dealing from the noise
Of care and envy, sweet remembrance sooths
With virtue's kindest looks his aching breast,
And turns his tears to rapture. Ask the crowd
Which flies impatient from the village walk
To climb the neighb'ring cliffs, when far below
The cruel winds have hurl'd upon the coast
Some helpless bark; while sacred pity melts
The general eye, or terrour's icy hand
Smites their distorted limbs and horrent hair;
While every mother closer to her breast.
Catches

Book II. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 57 
Catches her child, and pointing where the waves
Foam thro' the shatter'd vessel, shrieks aloud
As one poor wretch that spreads his piteous arms
For succour, swallow'd by the roaring surge,
As now another dash'd against the rocks,
Drops lifeless down; O deemest thou indeed
No kind endearment here by nature given
To mutual terrour and compassion's tears?
No sweetly melting softness which attracts,
O'er all that edge of pain, the social powers
To this their proper action and their end?
Ask thy own heart. When at the midnight hour,
Slow thro' that studious gloom thy pausing eye
Led by the glimm'ring taper moves around
The sacred volumes or the dead; the songs
Of Grecian bards, and, records wrote by same
For Grecian heroes, where the present power
Of heaven and earth surveys the immortal page,
Ev'n as a father blessing, while he reads,
The praises of his son. If then thy soul,
Spurning the yoke of these inglorious days,
Mix in their deeds and kindle with their flame;
Say; when the prospect blackens on thy view,
When rooted from the base, heroic states
Mourn in the dust and tremble at the frown
Of curd ambition; when the pious band
Of youths who fought for freedom and their fires,
Lie side by side in gore; when russian pride
Usurps the throne of justice, turns the pomp
Of public power, the majesty of rule,
The sword, the laurel, and the purple robe,
To slavish empty pageants, to adorn
A
-----when the pious hand, &c] The reader will
here naturally recollect the fate of the sacred batal-
ion of Thebes, which at the battle of Chæonary was
utterly destroy'd every man being found lying dead
by his friend.

58 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book II.
A tyrant's walk, and glitter in the eyes
Of such as bow the knee; when honour'd urns
Of patriots and of chiefs the awful bust
And storied arch, to glut the coward rage
Of regal envy, strew the public way
With hallowed ruins; when the muse's haunt,
The marble porch where wisdom wont to talk
With Socrates or Tully, hears no more,
Save the hoarse jargon of contentious monks,
Or female superstition's midnight pray'r;
When ruthless rapine from the hand of time
Tears the destroying scythe, with surer blow
To sweep the works of glory from their base;
Till desolation o'er the grass grown street
Expands his raven wings, and up the wall,
Where senates once the price of monarchs doom'd,
Hisses the gliding snake thro' hoary weeds
That clasp the mould'ring column; thus defac'd,
Thus widely mournful when the prospect thrills
Thy beating bosom when the patriot's tear
Starts from thine eye, and thy extended arm
In fancy hurls the thunderbolt of Jove
To fire the impious wreath on Philip's brow,
Or dash Octavius from the trophied car!
Say, does thy secret soul repine to taste
The big distress? Or would'st thou then exchange
Those heart ennobling sorrows for the lot
Of him who sits amid the gaudy herd
Of mute barbarians bending to his nod,
And bears aloft his gold invested front,
And says within himself, “I am king.
" And wherefore should the clam'rous voice of woe,
" Intrude upon mine ear (The baleful dregs
Of these late ages, this inglorious draught
Of servitude, and folly, have not yet,
Blest

Book II. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 59 
Blest be the eternal ruler of the world!
Defil'd to such a depth of sordid shame.
The native honours of the human soul,
Nor so effac'd the image of its sire.
ARGUMENT.

ARGUMENT.
PLEASURE in observing the tempers and manners
of men, even where vicious or absurd. The origin
of vice, from false representations  of the fancy, pro-
ducing false opinions concerning good  and evil. In-
quiry into ridicule. The general sources of ridicule,
in the minds and characters of men, enumerated. Fi-
nal cause of the sense of ridicule. The resemblance of
inanimate things to the sensations and properties of
the mind. The operations of the mind in the produc-
tion of the works of imagination, described. The se-
condary pleasure from imitation. The benevolent or-
der of the world illustrated in the arbitrary connec-
tion of these pleasures with the objects which excite
them. The nature and conduct of taste. Concluding
with an account of the natural and moral advantages
resulting from a sensible and well formed imagination.

THE
PLEASURES
OF
IMAGINATION.
BOOK THIRD.
WHAT wonder therefore, since th'endearing ties
Of passion link the universal kind
Of man so close, what wonder if to search
This common nature through the various change
Of sex, and age, and fortune, and the frame
Of each peculiar, draw the busy mind
With unrefined charms? The spacious west,
And all the teeming regions of the south
Hold not a quarry, to the curious flight
Of knowledge, half so tempting or so fair,
As man to man. Nor only where the smiles
Of love invite; nor only where the applause
Of cordial honour turns the attentive eye
On virtue's graceful deeds. For since the course
Of things external acts in different ways
On human apprehensions, as the hand
Of nature temper'd to a different frame
Peculiar minds; so haply where the powers
Of fancy neither lessen nor enlarge
F The
where the powers
Of fancy, &c] The influence of the imagination
on the conduct of life is one of the most important
points in moral philosophy. It were easy by an
induction of facts to prove that the imagination di-
rects almost all the passions, and mixes with almost
every circumstance of action or pleasure. Let any
man

62 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book III
The images of things, but paint in all
Their genuine hues, the features which they wore
In nature; their opinion will be true,
And action right. For action treads the path
In which opinion says he follows good.
Or flies from evil; and opinion gives
Report of good or evil, as the scene
Was
man, even of the coldest head and soberest industry,
analyse the idea of what he calls his interest; he
will find that it consists chiefly of certain images of
decency, beauty and order, variously combined into
one system, the idol which he seeks to enjoy by la-
bour, hazard, and self denial. It is on this account
of the last consequence to regulate images by the
standard of nature and the general good; otherwise
the imagination, by heightening some objects be-
yond their real excellence and beauty, or by repre-
senting others in a more odious or terrible shape
than they deserve, may of course engage us in pur-
suits utterly inconsistent with the laws of the moral
order.
If it be objected, that this account of things sup-
poses the passions to be merely accidental, whereas
there appears in some a natural and hereditary dis-
position to certain passions prior to all circumstances
of education or fortune; it may be answered, that
though no man is born ambitious or a miser, yet he
may inherit from his parents a peculiar temper or
complexion of mind, which shall render his imagi-
nation more liable to be struck with some particu-
lar objects, consequently dispose him to form opin-
ions, of good and ill, and entertain passions of a par-
ticular turn. Some men for instance, by the origi-
nal frame of their minds, are more delighted with
the vast and magnificent, others on the contrary
with the elegant and gentle aspects of nature. And
it

Book III. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 63 
Was drawn by fancy, lovely or deform'd.
Thus her report can never there be true,
Where fancy cheats the intellectual eye,
With glaring colours and distorted lines.
Is there a man, who at the sound of death,
Sees ghastly shapes of terror conjur'd up,
And
it is very remarkable, that the disposition of the mo-
ral powers is always similar to this of the imagina-
tion; that those who are most inclined to admire
prodigious and sublime objects in the physical
world, are also most inclined to applaud examples
of fortitude and heroic virtue in the moral. While
those who are charmed rather with the delicacy and
sweetness of colours, and forms, and sounds, never
fail in like manner to yield the preference to the
softer scenes of virtue and the sympathies of a do-
mestic life. And this is sufficient to account for
the objection.
Among the ancient philosophers, though we have
several hints concerning this influence of the ima-
gination upon morals among the remains of the
Socratic school, yet the Stoics were the first who
paid it a due attention. Zeno, their founder, thought
it impossible to preserve any tolerable regularity in
life, without frequently inspecting those pictures or
appearances of things which the imagination offers
to the mind. [Diog Laert. I. vii] The medita-
tions of M. Aurelius, and the discourses of Epic-
tetus, are full of the same sentiments; insomuch
that this latter makes the right management of the
fancies, the only thing for which we are accounta-
ble to providence, and without which a man is no
other than stupid or frantic. Arrian. I. i. c. 12.
and I. ii. c. 22. See also the characteristics, vol. 1
from  p. 313, to p. 321, where this Stoical doctrine
is embellished with all the eloquence of the graces
of Plato.

64 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book III. 
And black before him; nought but deathbed groans,
And fearful prayers, and plunging from the brink
Of light and being, down the gloomy air,
And unknown depth? Alas! in such a mind,
If no bright forms of excellence attend
The image of his country; nor the pomp
Of sacred senates, nor the guardian voice
Of justice on her throne, nor aught that wakes
The conscious bosom with a patriot's flame;
Will not opinion tell him, that to die,
Or stand the hazard, is a greater ill
Than to betray his country? And in act
Will he not chuse to be a wretch and live?
Here vice begins then. From the inchanting cup
Which fancy holds to all, the unwary thirst
Of youth oft swallows a Circæan draught,
That sheds a baleful tincture o'er the eye
Of reason, till no longer he discerns,
And only guides to err. Then revel forth
A furious band that spurn him from the throne;
And all is uproar. Thus ambition grasps
The empire of the soul; thus pale revenge
Unsheath's her murd'rous dagger; and the hands
Of lust and rapine, with unholy arts,
Watch to o'erturn the barrier of the laws
That keeps them from their prey; thus all the plagues
The wicked bear, or o'er the trembling scene
The tragic muse discloses, under shapes
Of honour, safety, pleasure, ease or pomp,
Stole first into the mind. Yet not by all
Those lying forms which fancy in the brain.
Engenders, are the kindling passions driven
To guilty deeds; nor reason bound in chains,
That vice alone may lord it; oft adorn'd
With solemn pageants, folly mounts his throne,
And plays her ideot antics, like a queen.
A thousand garbs she wears; a thousand ways
She wheels her giddy empire. Lo, thus far
With

Book III. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 65 
With bold adventure, to the Mantuan lyre
I sing of nature's charms, and touch well pleas'd
A stricter note; now haply must my song
Unbend her serious measure, and reveal
In lighter drains, how folly's awkward arts
Excite impetuous laughter's gay rebuke;
The sportive province of the comic muse.
See in what crouds the uncouth forms advance;
Each would outstrip the other, each prevent
Our careful search, and offer to your gaze,
Unask'd, his motly features. Wait awhile,
My curious friends I and let us first arrange
In proper orders your promiscuous throng.
Behold the foremost band; of slender thought,
And easy faith! whom flattering fancy sooths
With lying spectres, in themselves to view
Illustrious forms of excellence and good,
That scorn the mansion. With exulting hearts
F2 The
---------how folly's awkward arts, &c.] Notwith-
standing the general influence of ridicule on private
and civil life, as well as on learning and the scienc-
es, it has been almost constantly neglected or mis-
represented, by divines especially. The manner of
treating these subjects in the science of human na-
ture, should be precisely the same as in natural
philosophy; from particular facts to investigate the
stated order in which they appear, and then apply
the general law, thus discovered, to the explication
of other appearances and the improvement of useful
arts.
Behold the foremost band, &c.] The first and
most general source of ridicule in the chambers oi
men, is vanity or self applause for some desirable
quality or pessession which evidently does not be-
long to those who assume it.

66 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book III.
They spread their spurious treasures to the sun;
And bid the world admire! but chief the glance
Of wishful envy draws their joy bright eyes,
And lifts with self applause each lordly brow.
In number boundless as the blooms of spring,
Behold their glaring idols, empty shapes
By fancy gilded o'er, and then set up
For adoration. Some in learning's garb,
With formal band and sable cinctur'd  gown,
And rags of mouldy volumes. Some elate
With martial splendour, steely  pikes, and swords.
Of costly frame, and gay Phœnician robes
Inwrought with flow'ry gold, assume the port
Of stately valour; list'ning by his side
There stands a female form; to her, with looks
Of earned import, pregnant with amaze,
He talks of deadly deeds, of breaches, storms,
And sulph'rous mines, and ambush; then at once
Breaks off, and smiles to see her look so pale,
And asks some wond'ring question of her fears.
Others of graver mien; behold, adorn'd
With holy ensigns, how sublime they move,
And bending oft their sanctimonious eyes,
Take homage of the simple minded throng;
Ambassadors of heaven! Nor much unlike
Is he whose visage, in the hazy mist
That mantle every feature, hides a brood
Of politic conceits; of whispers, nods,
And hints deep omen'd with unwieldly schemes,
And dark portents of state. Ten thousand more,
Prodigious habits and tumultuous tongues,
Pour dauntless in and swell the boastful band.
Then comes the second order; all who seek
he debt of praise, where watchful unbelief
Darts through the thin pretence her squinting eye
On some retir'd appearance which belies
The boasted virtue, or annuls the applause
That

Book III. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 67 
That justice else would pay. Here side by side
I see two leaders of the solemn train,
Approaching; one a female, old and grey,
With eyes demure and wrinkle surrow'd brow,
Pale as the cheeks of death; yet still she stuns
The sick'ning audience with a nauseous tale
How many youths her myrtle chains have worn,
How many virgins at her triumphs pin'd!
Yet how resolv'd she guards her cautious heart;
Such is her terror at the risques of love,
A man's seducing tongue! The other seems
A bearded sage, ungentle in his mein,
And sordid all his habit; peevish want
Grins at his heels, while down the gazing throng.
He stalks, resounding in magnific phrase
The vanity of riches, the contempt
Of pomp and power. Be prudent in your zeal,
Ye grave associates! let the silent grace
Of her who blushes at the fond regard
Her charms inspire, more eloquent unfold
The praise of spotless honour; let the man
Whose eye regards not his illustrious pomp
And ample store, but as indulgent streams
To chear the barren soil and spread the fruits
Of joy, let him by juster measure fix
The price of riches and the end of power.
Another tribe succeeds; deluded long
By fancy's dazzling optics, these behold
The images of some peculiar things
With brighter hues resplendent, and portray'd
With features nobler far than e'er adorn'd
Their genuine objects. Hence the fever'd heart
Pants
Another tribe succeeds, &c.] Ridicule from a no-
tion of excellence in particular objects dispropor-
tioned to their intrinsic value, and inconsistent with
the order of nature.

68 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book III.
Pants with delirious hope for tinsel charms;
Hence oft obtrusive on the eye of scorn,
Untimely zeal her witless pride, betrays;
And serious manhood, from the tow'ring aim
Of wisdom, stoops to emulate the boast
Of childish toil. Behold yon mystic form,
Bedeck'd with feathers, insects, weeds, and shells!
Not with intenser brow the Samian sage
Bent his fix'd eye, on heaven's eternal fires,
When first the order of that radiant scene
Swell'd his exulting thought, than this surveys
A muckworm's entrails or a spider's fang.
Next him a youth, with flowers and myrtles crown'd
Attends that virgin form, and blushing kneels,
With fondest gesture and a suppliant's tongue,
To win her coy regard. Adieu, for him,
The dull engagements of the bustling world!
Adieu the sick impertinence of praise!
And hope and action! for with her alone,
By dreams and shades, to deal the sighing hours.
Is all he asks, and all that fate can give!
Thee too, facetious Momion, wandering here,
Thee dreaded censor! oft have I beheld
Bewilder'd unawares. Alas! too long
Flush'd with thy comic triumphs and the spoils
Of fly derision! till on every side
Hurling thy random bolts, offended truth
Assign'd thee here thy station with the slaves
Of folly. Thy once formidable name
Shall grace her humble records, and be heard
In scoffs and mock'ry banded from the lips
Of vengeful brotherhood around,
So oft the patient victims of thy scorn.
But now, ye gay! to whom indulgent fate,
Of all the muse's empire hath assign'd
The
But now, ye gay, &c.] Ridicule from a notion
of excellence, where the object is absolutely odious
or

Book III. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 69 
The fields of folly, hither each advance
Your sickles; here the teeming soil affords
Its richest growth. A fav'rite brood appears;
In whom the demon, with a mother's joy,
Views all her charms reflected, all her cares
At full repaid. Ye most illustrious band!
Who scorning reason's tame, pedantic rules,
And order's vulgar bondage, never meant
For souls sublime as yours, with generous zeal
Pay vice the rev'rence virtue long usurp'd,
And yield deformity the fond applause
Which beauty wont to claim; forgive my song,
That for the blushing diffidence of youth,
It shuns the unequal province of your praise.
Thus far triumphant in the pleasing guile
Of bland imagination; folly's train
Have dar'd our search; but now a dastard kind
Advance reluctant, and with fault'iing feet
Shrink, from the gazer's eye; enfeebled hearts,
Whom fancy chills with visionary fears,
Or bends to servile tameness with cenceits
Of shame, of evil, or of base defect,
Fantastic and delusive. Here the slave
Who droops abash'd with sullen pomp surveys
His humbler habit; here the trembling wretch
Unnerv'd and froze with terror's icy bolts
Spent in weak wailings, drown'd in shameful tears,
At every dream of danger; here subdued
By frontless laughter and the hardy scorn
Of old, unfeeling vice, the abject soul
Who blushing half resigns the candid praise
Of temperance and honour; half disowns
A freeman's hatred of tyrannic pride;
And hears with sickly smiles the venal mouth
With
or contemptible. This is the highest degree of the
ridiculous; as in the affectation of diseases or vices.
Thus far triumphant, &c.] Ridicule from falso
shame or groundless fear.

70 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book III.
With foulest licence mock the patriot's name.
Last of the motley bands on whom the power
Of gay derision bends her hostile aim,
Is that where shameful ignorance presides.
Beneath her sordid banners, lo! they march,
Like blind and lame. Whate'er their doubtful hands.
Attempt, confusion strait appears behind,
And troubles all the work. Thro' many a maze,
Perplex'd they struggle, changing every path,
O'erturning every purpose; then at last
Sit down dismay'd, and leave the entangled scene
For scorn to sport with. Such then is the abode
Of folly in the mind; and such the shapes
In which she governs her obsequious train.
Thro' every scene of ridicule in things
To lead the tenure of my devious lay;
Through every swift occasion, which the hand
Of laughter points at, when the mirthful sting
Distends her sallying nerves and choaks her tongue;
What were it but to count each crystal drop
Which morning's dewy fingers on the blooms
Of May distill? Suffice it to have said,
Where'er
Last of the, &c.] Ridicule from the ignorance
of such things as our Circumstances require us to
know.
--suffice it to have said, &c] By comparing
these general sources of ridicule with each other,
and examining the ridiculous in other objects, we
may obtain a general definition of it equally ap-
plicable to every species. The most important, cir-
cumstance of this definition is laid down in the lines
referred to; but others more minute we shall sub-
join here. Aristotle's account of the matter seems
both imperfect and false; the ridiculous is some cer-
tain fault or turpitude without pain, and not destruc-
tive to its subject. Poetic. c. v. For allowing it to
be

Book III. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 71 
Where'er the power of ridicule displays
Her quaint ey'd visage, some incongruous form.
Some stubborn dissonance of things combin'd,
Strikes on the quick observer; whether pomp,
Or praise, or beauty mix their partial claim
Where
be true, as it is not, that the ridiculous is never ac-
companied with pain, yet we might produce many
instances of such a fault or turpitude which cannot
with any tolerable propriety be called ridiculous.
So that the definition does not distinguish the thing
defined. Nay further, even when we perceive the
turpitude tending to the destruction of its subject, we
may still be sensible of a ridiculous appearance, till
the ruin become imminent and the keener sensations
of pity or terror banish the ludicrous apprehension
from our minds. For the sensation of ridicule is
not a bare perception of the agreement of disagree-
ment of ideas; but a passion or emotion of the
mind consequential to that perception. So that the
mind may perceive the agreement or disagreement,
and yet not feel the ridiculous, because it is engrossed
by a more violent emotion. Thus it happens that
some men think those objects ridiculous, to which
others cannot endure to apply the name; because
in them they excite a much intenser and more im-
portant feeling. And this difference, among other
causes, has brought a good deal of confusion into
this question.
That which makes objects ridiculous is some
ground of admiration or esteem connected with other
more general circumstances, comparatively worth-
less or deformed; or it is some circumstance of tur-
pitude or deformity connected with what is in ge-
neral excellent or beautiful; the inconsistent prop-
erties existing either in the objects themselves, or
in the apprehension of the person to whom they re-
late

72 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book III.
Where sordid fashions, where ignoble deeds,
Where foul deformity were wont to dwell,
Or whether these with violation, loath'd,
Invade resplendent pomp's imperious mein.
The charms of beauty, or the boast of praise.
Ask
late; belonging always to the same order or class
of being, implying sentiment or design; and excit-
ing no acute or vehement emotion of the heart.
To prove the several parts of this definition. The
appearance of excellence or beauty connected with
a general condition comparatively sordid or deform-
ed, is ridiculous; for instance, pompous preten-
sions to wisdom joined with ignorance and folly in
the Socrates of Aristophanes; and the applause of
military glory with cowardice and stupidity in the
Thraso of Terence.
The appearance of deformity or turpitude in con-
junction with what is in general excellent or vene-
rable, is also ridiculous; for instance, the personal
weaknesses of a magistrate appearing in the solemn
and public functions of his station.
The incongruous properties may either exist in
the objects themselves, or in the apprehension of
the person to whom they relate. In the last men-
tioned instances they both exist in the objects; in
the instance from Aristophanes and Terence, one of
them is objective and real, the other only founded
in the apprehension of the ridiculous character.
The inconsistent properties must belong to the
same order or class of being. A coxcomb in fine
cloaths bedaubed by accident in foul weather, is a
ridiculous object; because his general apprehension
of excellence and esteem is referred to the splen-
dour and expence of his dress. A man of sense
and merit in the same circumstances, is not counted
ridiculous; because the general ground of excel-
lency 

Book III. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 73 
Ask we for what fair end,the almighty fire
In mortal bosoms wakes this gay contempt,
The grateful stings of laughter, from disgust
Educing pleasure? Wherefore, but to aid
G The
lency and esteem in him, is, both in fact and in his
own apprehension, of a Very different species.
Every ridiculous object implies sentiment or de-
sign. A column placed by an architect without a
capital or base is laughed at. The same column in
a ruin causes a very different sensation.
And lastly, the occurrence must excite no acute
or vehement emotion of the heart, such a terror,
pity, or indignation; for in that case, as was ob-
served above, the mind is not at leisure to contem-
plate the ridiculous.
Whether any appearance not ridiculous be in-
volved in this description; and whether it com-
prehend every species and form of the ridiculous,
must be determined by repeated applications of it
to particular instances.
Ask we for what fair end, &c] Since it is beyond
all contradiction evedent that we have a natural
sense or feeling of the ridiculous, and since so good
a reason may be assigned to justify the supreme Being
for bellowing it; one cannot without astonishment
reflect on the conduct of those men who imagine it
is for the service of true religion to vilify and black-
en it without distinction, and endeavour to persuade
us that it is never applied but in a bad cause. Rid-
icule is not concerned with mere speculative truth
or falsehood. It is not in abstract propositions or
theorems, but in actions and passions, good and evil,
beauty and deformity, that we find materials for it;
and all these terms are relative, implying approba-
tion or blame. To ask then whether ridicule be a
test of truth, is in other words, to ask whither that
which


74 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book III.
The tardy steps of reason, and at once
By this prompt impulse urge us to depress
The giddy aims of folly? Though the light
Of truth slow dawning on the inquiring mind,
At
which is ridiculous can be morally true, can be just
and becoming; or whether that which is just and
becoming, can be ridiculous. A question that does
not deserve a serious answer. For it is most evident,
that as in a metaphysical proposition offer'd to the
understading for its assent, the faculty of reason ex-
amines the terms of the proposition, and finding one
idea which was supposed equal to another, to be in
fact unequal, of consequence rejects the proposition as
a falsehood; so in objects offer’d to the mind for its
esteem or applause, the faculty of ridicule feeling an
incongruity in the claim, urges the mind to reject
with laughter and contempt. When therefore we
observe such a claim, obtruded upon mankind, and
the inconsistent circumstances, carefully concealed
from the eye of the public, it is our business, if the
matter be of importance to society, to drag out
those latent circumstances, and by setting them full
in view, convince the world how ridiculous the
claim is; and thus a double advantage is gained;
for which we both detect the moral falsehood soon-
er than in the  way of speculative inquiry, and im-
press the minds of men with a stronger sense of the
vanity and error of its authors. And this and no
more is meant by the application of ridicule.
But it is said, the practice is dangerous, and may
be inconsistent with the regard we owe to objects of
real dignity and excellence. I answer, the practice
fairly managed can never be dangerous; men may
be dishonest in obtruding circumstances foreign to
the object, and we may be inadvertent in allowing
those circumstances to impose upon us; but the
sense

Book III. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 75 
At length unfolds, through many a subtile tie,
How these uncouth disorders end at last
In public evil; yet benignant heav'n
Conscious how dim the dawn of truth appears
To thousands; conscious what a scanty pause
From labours and from care, the wider lot
Of humble life affords for studious thought
To scan the maze of nature; therefore stampt
The glaring scenes with characters of scorn,
As broad, as obvious to the passing clown,
As to the letter'd sage's curious eye.
Such are the various aspects of the mind---
Some heav'nly genius, whose unclouded thoughts
Attain
sense of ridicule always judges right; the Socrates
of Aristophanes is as truly ridiculous a character as
ever was drawn. True, but it is not the character
of Socrates, the divine moralist and the father of
ancient wisdom. What then? did the ridicule of
the poet hinder the philosopher from detecting and
disclaiming those foreign circumstances which he had
falsely introduced into his character, and thus ren-
dering the satirist doubly ridiculous in his turn?
No. But it nevertheless had an ill influence on
the minds of the people. And so has the reasoning
of Spinoza made many atheists; he has founded it
indeed on suppositions utterly false, but allow him
these, and his conclusions are unavoidably true.
And if we must reject the use of ridicule, because
by the imposition of false circumstances, things may
be made to seem ridiculous, which are not so in
themselves; why we ought not in the same man-
ner to reject the use of reason, because by proceed-
ing on false principles, conclusions will appear true
which are impossible in nature, let the vehement
and obstinate declaimers against ridicule determine.

76 PLEASURED OF IMAGINATION. Book III.
Attain that secret harmony which blends
The ethereal spirit with its mould of clay;
O! teach me to reveal the grateful charm
That search less nature o'er the sense of man
Diffuses, to behold, in lifeless things,
The inexpressive semblance of himself,
Of thought and passion. Mark the sable woods.
That shade sublime yon mountain's nodding brow;
With what religious awe the solemn scene
Commands your steps! as if the reverend form
Of Minos or of Numa should forsake
Th' Elysian seats, and down the imbow'ring glade
Move to your pausing eye! Behold th' expanse
On you gay landscape, where the silver clouds
Flit o'er the heav'ns before the sprightly breeze;
Now their grey cincture skirts the doubtful fun;
Now streams of splendor, thro' their opening veil.
Effulgent, sweep from off the gilded lawn
The aerial shadows; on the curling brook,
And on the shady margin's quiv'ring leaves
With quickest lusture glancing; while you view
The prospect, say, within your chearful breast
Plays not the lively sense of winning mirth
With clouds and sunshine chequer'd, while the round
Of social, converse, to the inspiring tongue
Of some gay nymph amid her subject train,
Moves all obsequious? Whence is this effect,
This kindred power of such discordant things?
Or flows their semblance from that mystic tone
To which the new born mind's harmonious powers
At first were strung? Or rather from the links
Which artful custom twines around her frame?
For when the diff'rent images of things
By chance combin'd, have struck the attentive soul
With
The inexpressive semblance, &c.] This similitude is
the foundation of almost all the ornaments of poetic
diction.

77 Book III. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION.
With deeper impulse, or connected long,
Have drawn her frequent eve; howe'er distinct;
The external scenes, yet oft the ideas gain 
From that conjunction an eternal tie,
And sympathy unbroken. Let the mind
Recal one partner of the various league,
Immediate, lo! the firm confed'rates rise,
And each his former station strait resumes;
One movement governs the consenting throng,
And all at once with rosy pleasure shine,
Or all are sadden'd with the glooms of care.
'Twas thus, if ancient same the truth unfold,
Two faithful needles, from the informing touch
Of the same parent stone, together drew
Its mystic virtue, and at first conspir'd
With fatal impulse quiv'ring to the pole;
Then tho' disjoin'd by kingdoms, tho' the main
Roll'd its broad surge betwixt, and diff'rent stars.
Beheld their wakeful motions, yet preserv'd
The former friendsh'ip, and remember'd still
The alliance of their birth; whate'er the line
Which once possess'd, nor pause, nor quiet knew
The sure associate, ere with trembling speed
He found its path and fix'd unerring there.
Such is the secret union, when we feel
A song, a flower, a name at once restore
Those long connected scenes where first they mov'd;
The attention; backward thro' her mazy walks
Guiding the wanton fancy to her scope,
To temples, courts, or fields; with all the band
Of painted forms, of passions arid designs
Attendant; Whence, if pleasing in itself,
The prospect from that sweet accession gains
Redoubled influence o'er the list'ning mind.
G2 By
Two faithful needles, &c.] See the elegant poem
recited by cardinal Bembo in the character of Lu-
cretius; Strada Prolus. vi. Academ. 2. c. 5.

78 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book III.
By these mysterious ties the busy power
Of mem'ry her ideal train preserves
Intire; or when they would elude her watch,
Reclaims their fleeting footsteps from the waste
Of dark oblivion; thus collecting all
The various forms of being to present,
Before the curious aim of mimic art,
Their largest choice; like spring's unfolded blooms
Exhaling sweetness, that the skilful bee
May taste at will, from their selected spoils
To work her dulcet food. For not the expanse
Of living lakes in summer's noontide calm,
Reflects the bord'ring shade and sun bright heavens
With fairer semblance; not the sculptur'd gold
More faithful keeps the graver's lively trace,
Than he whose birth the sister powers of art
Propitious view'd, and from his genial star
Shed influence to the seeds of fancy kind;
Than his attemper'd bosom must preserve
The seal of nature. There alone unchang'd,
Her form remains. The balmy walks of May
There breathe perennial sweets; the trembling chord
Resounds for ever in the abstracted ear,
Melodious; and the virgin's radiant eye,
Superiour to disease, to grief, and time,
Shines with unbating lustre. Thus at length
Endow'd with all that nature can bestow,
The child of fancy oft in silence bends
O'er these mix'd treasures of his pregnant breast,
With conscious pride. From them he oft resolves
To frame he knows not what excelling things;
And win he knows not what sublime reward
Of praise and wonder. By degrees the mind
Feels her young nerves dilate; the plastic powers.
Labour
By these mysterious ties, &c.] The act of remem-
bring seems almost wholly to depend on the associ-
ation of ideas.

Book III. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 79 
Labour for action; blind emotions heave
His bosom; and with loveliest frenzy caught,
From earth to heaven he rolls his daring eye,
From heaven to earth. Anon ten thousand shapes,
Like spectres trooping to the wizard's call,
Fleet swift before him. From the womb of earth,
From ocean's bed they come; the eternal heavens
Disclose their splendour, and the dark abvss
Pours out her births unknown. With fixed gaze
He marks the rising phantoms. Now compares
Their diff'rent forms; now blends them, now di-
Inlarges and extenuates by turns; [vides;
Opposes, ranges in fantastic bands,
And infinitely varies. Hither now,
Now thither fluctuates his inconstant aim,
With endless choice perplex'd.  At length his plan
Begins to open. Lucid order dawns;
And as from Chaos old the jarring seeds
Of nature at the voice divine repair'd
Each to its place, till rosy earth unveil'd
Her fragrant bosom, and the joyful sun
Sprung up the blue serene; by swift degrees
Thus disentangled, his entire design
Emerges, Colours mingle, features join,
And lines converge; the fainter parts retire;
The fairer eminent in light advance;
And every image on its neighbor smiles.
A while the stands, and with a father's joy
Contemplates. Then with Promethean art
Into its proper vehicle he breathes
The fair conception; which imbodied thus,
And permanent, becomes to eyes or ears
An
Into its proper vehicle, &c.] This relates to the
different sorts of corporeal mediums, by which the
ideas of the artist are rendered palpable to the sen-
ses; as by sounds, in music, by lines and shadows,
in painting; by diction, in poety, &c.

80 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book III.
An Object ascertain'd; while thus inform'd
The various organs of his mimic skill,
The consonance of founds the featur'd rock,
The shadowy picture and impassion'd verse,
Beyond their proper pow'rs attract the soul
By that expressive semblance, while in sight
Of nature's great original we scan
The lively child of art; while line by line,
And feature after feature we refer
To that sublime exemplar whence it stole
Those animating charms. Thus beauty's palm
Betwixt'em wav'ring hangs; applauding love
Doubts where to chuse; and mortal man aspires
To tempt creative praise. As when a cloud
Of gath'ring hail with limpid crusts of ice
Inclos'd and obvious to the beaming sun,
Collects his large effulgence; strait the heav'ns
With equal flames presents on either hand
The radiant visage: Persia stands at gaze,
Appall'd; and on the brink of Ganges waits
The snowy vested seer, in Mithra's name,
To which the fragrance of the south shall burn,
To which his warbled orisons ascend.
Such various bliss the well tun'd heart enjoys,
Favour'd of heaven! While plung'din sordid cares
The unfeeling vulgar mocks the boon divine;
And harsh austerity, from whose rebuke
Young love and smiling wonder shrink away,
Abash'd and chill of heart, with sager frowns
Condemns the fair enchantment. On my strain,
Perhaps ev'n now some cold, fastidious judge
Costs a disdainful eye; and calls my toils,
And calls the love and beauty which I sing,
The dream of folly. Thou grave censor I say,
Is beauty then a dream, because the glooms
Of dulness hang too heavy on thy sense
To let her shine upon thee? So the man
Whose

Book III. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 81 
Whose eye ne'er open'd on the light of heaven,
Might smile with (corn while raptur'd vision tells
Of the gay, colour'd radiance flush bright
O'er all creation. From the wife be far
Such gross unhallow'd pride; nor needs my song
Descend so low; but rather now unfold,
If human thought could reach, or words unfold
By what mysterious fabric of the mind,
The deep felt joys and harmony of sound
Result from airy motion; and from shape
The lovely phantoms of sublime and fair.
By what fine ties hath God connected things
When present in the mind; which in themselves
Have no connection? Sure the rising sun,
O'er the cœrulian convex of the sea,
With equal brightness and with equal warmth
Might roll his fiery orb; nor yet the soul
Thus feel her frame expanded, and. her powers
Exulting in the splendour the beholds;
Like a young conqu'ror moving thro' the pomp
Of some triumphal day. When join'd at eve,
Soft mum'ring streams and gales of gentlest breath
Melodious Philomela’s wakeful srain
Attemper, could not man's discerning ear
Through all its tones the symphony pursue ,
Nor yet this breath divine of nameless joy
Steal thro' his veins and fan the awaken'd heart,
Mild as the breeze, yet rapt'rous as the song?
But were not nature still endow'd at large
With all which life requires, tho' unadorn'd
With such enchantment? Wherefore then her form
So exquisitely fair? her breath perfume'd
With such etherial sweetness?  Whence her voice
Inform'd at will to raise or to depress
The impassion'd soul? and whence the robes of light
Which thus invest her with more lovely pomp
That fancy can describe? Whence but from thee
O source

82 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book III.
O source divine of ever flowing love,
And thy unmeasur'd goodness? Not content
With every food of life to nourish man,
By kind illusions of the wond'ring sense
Thou mask'it all nature beauty to his eye,
Or music to his ear; well-pleas'd he scans
The goodly prospect; and with inward smiles
Treads the gay verdure of the painted plain;
Beholds the azure canopy of heaven,
And living lamps that over-arch his head
With more than regal splendour; bends his ears
To the full choir of water, air, and earth;
Nor heeds the pleasing error of his thought,
Nor doubts the painted green or azure arch,
Nor questions more the music's mingling sounds
Than space, or motion, or eternal time;
So sweet he feels their influence to attract
The fixed soul; to brighten the dull glooms
Of care, and make the destin'd road of life
Delightful to his feet. So fables tell,
Th' advent'rous hero, bound on hard exploits,
Beholds with glad surprize, by secret spells
Of some kind sage, the patron of his toils,
A visionary paradise disclos'd
Amid the dubious wild; with streams, and shades,
And airy songs, the enchanted landscape smiles,
Cheats his long labours and renews his frame.
What then is taste, but these internal pow'rs
Active, and strong, and feelingly alive
To each fine impulse‽ a discerning sense
Of decent and sublime, with quick disgust
From things deform'd, or disarrang'd, or gross
In species? This, nor stores of gold,
Nor purple state, nor culture can bestow;
But God alone, when first his active band
Imprints the secret byass of the soul.
He, mighty Parent! wise and just in all,
Free

Book III. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 83 
Free as the vital breeze Or light of heav'n,
Reveals the charms of nature. Ask the swain
Who journeys homeward from a summer day's
Long labour, why, forgetful of his toils
And due repose, he loiters to behold
The sunshine gleaming as thro' amber clouds,
O'er all the western sky; full soon, I ween,
His rude expression and untutor'd airs,
Beyond the pow’r of language will unfold
The form of beauty smiling at his heart,
How lovely! how commanding! But tho' heav'n
In every breast hath town these early seeds
Of love and admiration, yet in vain,
Without fair culture's kind parental aid
Without enlivening suns, and genial show'rs,
And shelter from the blast, in vain we hope
The tender plant should rear its blooming head,
Or yield the harvest promis'd in its spring.
Nor yet will every soil with equal stores
Repay the tiller's labour; or attend
His will, obsequious, whether to produce
The olive or the laurel. Diff'rent minds
Incline to different objects; one pursues,
The vast alone, the wonderful, the wild;
Another sighs for harmony, and grace,
And gentlest beauty. Hence when lightning fires
The arch of heaven, and thunders rock the ground,
When furious whirlwinds rend the howling air,
And ocean, groaning from the lowest bed
Heaves his tempestuous billows, to the sky;
Amid the mighty uproar, while below
The nations tremble, Shakespear looks abroad
From some high cliff, superiour, and enjoys
The
----One pursues
The vast alone, &c.] See the note to ver. 18. of
this book.

84 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book III.
The elemental war. But Waller longs,
All on the margin of some slow'ry dream
To spread his careless limbs amid the cool
Of plantane shades, and to the list'ning deer,
The tale of slighted vows and love's disdain
Resound soft warbling all the live long day:
Consenting Zephyr sighs; the weeping rill
Joins in his plaint, melodious; mute the groves;
And hill and dale with all their echoes mourn.
Such and so various are the tastes of men.
Oh! blest of heav'n, whom not the languid songs
Of luxury, the Siren! not the bribes
Of sordid wealth, nor all the gaudy spoils
Of pageant honour can seduce to leave
Those ever-blooming sweets, which from the store
Of nature fair imagination culls
To charm th' enliven'd soul! What tho' not all
Of mortal offspring can attain the heights
Of envied life; though only few possess
Patrician treasures or imperial state;
Yet nature's care, to all her children just,
With richer treasures and an ampler state
Endows at large whatever happy man
Will deign to use them. His the city's pomp,
The rural honours his. Whate'er adorns
The princely dome, the coloumn and the arch;
The breathing marbles and the sculptur'd gold,
Beyond
Waller longs, &c.]
O! how I long my careless limbs to lay
Under the plantane shade; and all the day
With am'rous airs my fancy entertain, &c.
WALLER, Battle of the Summer-islands. CI
And again,
While in the park I sing the lift’ing deer
Attend my passion, and forget to fear, &c.
At Pens-hurst.

Book III. PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 85 
Beyond the proud possessor's narrow claim,
His tuneful breast enjoys. For him, the spring
Distills her dews, and from the silken gem
Its lucid leaves unfolds; for him, the hand
Of autumn tinges every fertile branch
With blooming gold and blushes like the morn.
Each passing hour sheds tribute from her wings;
And still new beauties meet his lonely walk;
And loves unfelt attract him. Not a breeze
Flies o'er the meadow, not a cloud imbibes
The setting fun's effulgence, not a strain
From all the tenants of the warbling shade
Ascends, but whence his bosom can partake
Fresh pleasure, unreprov'd. Nor thence partakes
Fresh pleasure only; for the attentive mind,
H By
---- Not a breeze, &c.] That this account may
not appear rather poetically extravagant than just in
philosophy, it may be proper to produce the senti-
ment of one of the greatest, wisest, and bed of men
on this article; one so little to be suspected of par-
tiality in the case, that he reckons it among those fa-
vours for which he  was especially thankful to the
gods, that they had not suffered him to make any
great proficiency in the arts of eloquence and poetry
led by that mean he should have been diverted from
pursuits of more importance to his high station.
Speaking of the beauty of universal nature, he ob-
serves that there is a pleasure and graceful aspect in
every object we preceive, when once we consider
its connection with that general order. He instances.
in many things which at first sight would be thought
rather deformities; and then adds, that a man who
enjoys a sensibility of temper with a just comprehen-
sion of the universal order will discern many amia-
ble things, nor credible to every mind, but to those
alone who have entered into an honourable familiarity
with nature and her works. M. Antonin. iii. 2

86 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. Book III.
By this harmonious action on her pow'rs,
Becomes herself harmonious; wont so long
In outward things to meditate the charm
Of sacred order, soon she seeks at home
To find a kindred order, to exert
Within herself this elegence of love,
This fair inspir'd delight: her temper'd pow'rs
Refine at length, and every passion wears
A chaster, milder, more attentive mien.
But if to ampler prospects, if to gaze
On nature's form where negligent of all
These lesser graces, she assumes the port
Of that eternal Majesty that weigh'd
The world's foundations, if to these the mind
Exalt her daring eye; then mightier far
Will be the change, and nobler. Would the forms
Of servile custom cramp her generous pow'rs?
Would sordid policies, the barb'rous growth
Of ignorance and rapine, bow her down
To tame pursuits, to indolence and fear!
Lo! she appeals to nature, to the winds
And rolling waves, the sun's unwearied course,
The elements and seasons: all declare
or what th' eternal Maker has ordain'd
The pow'rs of man; we feel within ourselves
His energy divine: he tells the heart,
He meant, he made us to behold and love
What he beholds and loves, the general orb
Of life and being; to be great like him,
Beneficent and active. Thus the men
Whom nature's works can charm, with God himself
Hold converse; grow familiar, day by day
With his conceptions; act upon his plan;
And form to his, the relish of their souls.

THE
ART
OF PRESERVING
HEALTH.
By Dr. ARMSTRONG. 



THE
ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH.
BOOK FIRST.
AIR.
DAUGHTER of Pæon, queen of every joy,
HYGEIA;*  whose indulgent smile sustains
The various race luxuriant nature pours,
And on the immortal essences bellows
Immortal youth; auspicious, O descend!
Thou chearful 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 thro' the tracts
Of air, thro' earth, and ocean's deep domain.
When thro' the blue serenity of heaven
Thy power approaches, all the wasteful host
Of pain and sickness squalid and deform'd,
Confounded sink into the loathsome 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 thro' the shuddering air; whatever plagues
H2 Or
*Hygeia, the goddess of health, was, according to
tie genealogy of the heathen deities, the daughter of
Esculapius; who, as well as Apollo, was distinguished.
by the name of Pæon.

90 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book I.
Or meagre famine breeds, or with slow wings
Rise from the putrid wat'ry element,
The damp waste forest, motionless and rank,
That smothers earth, and all the breathless winds.
Or the vile carnage of the inhuman field;
Whatever baneful breathes the rotten south;
Whatever ills the extremes or sudden change
Of cold and hot, or moist and dry produce;
Then 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 chearful, active energy,
No rapture swells the bread, 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 longed to maintain."
" Tis hard, in such a strife of rules, to chuse
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
Thro' paths the muses never trod before.
Nor should I wander doubtful of my way,
Had I the lights of that sagacious mind
Which

Book I. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 91
Which taught to check the pestilential fire,
And quell the dreaded Python of the Nile.
O Thou beloved by the grateful 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 and 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 sighing 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 slumbering deep remains, and ranker grows
With sickly rest; and tho' the lungs abhor
To drink the dun fuliginous abyss
Did not the acid vigour of the mine,
Roll'd from so many thundering chimneys, tame
The putrid salts that overswam the sky;
This eaustick venom would perhaps corrode
Those tender cells that draw the vital air,
In

92 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book I.
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 winds
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 soft'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 chuse thy feat, 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 may'st 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 chearful air;
But on the marshy plains that Essex spreads
Build not, nor rest too long thy wandering 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

Book I. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 93
Compress'd the slothful Naiad of the fens
From such a mixture sprung this fitful pest.
With feverish blasts subdues the sick'ning land;
Cold Tremors come, and 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 chearful, pure, the animated bloom,
Dies from the face, with squalid atrophy
Devour’d, in sallow melancholy clad.
And oft the sorceress, in her fated 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

94 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book I.
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 thro' the veins,
Unactive in the services of life,
Unfit to lead its pitchy current thro'
The secret mazy channels of the brain.
The melancholic fiend, that worst despair
Of physic hence, the rust complexion'd titan
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 chusing is deny'd
To half mankind, a further task ensue;
How best to mitigate these fell extremes,
How breathe unhurt the withering element,
Or hazy atmosphere; tho' custom moulds
To every clime the soft Promethean clay
And he who first the fogs of Essex breath'd
So kind is native air may in the fens
Of Essex from inveterate ills revive
At pure Montpelier or Bermuda caught;
But if the raw and oozy heav'n offend,
Correct the soil, and dry the sources up
Of wat'ry exhalation; wide and deep
Couduct your Trenches thro' the spouting Bog;
Solicitous, with all your winding arts,
Betray th'unwilling lake into the stream;
And

Book I. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 95
And weed the forest, and invoke the winds
To break the toils where strangled vapours lie;
Or thro' the thickets send the crackling flames.
Mean time, at home with chearful 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 chace.
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 wat'ry heavens.
But neither these, nor all Appolo'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 fat'ning clime let all the sons of ease
Avoid; if indolence would with 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 thick'ning blood.
Deep in the waving forest chuse your seat,
Where fuming trees refresh the thirsty air;
And wake the fountains from their secret beds,
And into lakes dilate the running 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 chuse, tormented in the boiling wave;
That thro' the thirsty chanels 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

96 ART OF PRESENVING HEALTH. Book I.
For with the viscious 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 dorms 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 unexpected 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; not mix in every monstrous day.
Mean time, the moist malignity to shun
Of burden'd skies; mark where the dry champain
Swells into chearful hills; where Marjoram
And Thyme, the love of bees, perfume the air;
And

Book I. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 97
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 wintry morn arise,
The summer evening blushing in the west;
While with unbrageous 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 move
The mind with calm delight, promotes the just
And natural movements of th' 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 goods.
Chiefly for this I praise the man who builds
High on the breezy ridge, whose lofty sides
Th' etherial deep with endless billows laves.
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;
I Dry

98 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book I.
Dry be your house; but airy more than warm.
Else every breath of ruder wind will strike
Your tender body thro' with rapid pains;
Fierce coughs will teize you, hoarsness 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 streaming life,
Let lofty cielings grace your ample rooms;
And dill at azure noontide may your dome
At every window drink the liquid sky.
Need we the funny situation here,
And theatres open to the south, commend?
Here, when 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 never hope
To feel the genial vigor 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 soft'ring sun; whose energy divine
Dwells not in mortal fire; whose generous heat
Glows thro' the mass of grosser elements,
And kindles into life the pond'rous spheres.
Chear'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!

THE
ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH.
BOOK SECOND.
DIET.
ENOUGH of air. A desart subject now,
Rougher and wilder, rises to my sight.
A barren waste, where not a garland grows
To bind the muse's brow: not even a proud
Stupendous solitude frowns o'er the heath,
To rouse a nobler horror in the soul;
But rugged paths fatigue, and error leads
Thro' endless labyrinths the devious feet.
Farewel, etherial 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, thro' 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 thousands 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 date of man.
For

100 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book II.
For this the watchful appetite was giv'n,
Daily with fresh materials to repair
This unavoidable expence 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 thro' 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 the 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 rancid bacon rue,
Nor that which Cestria sends, tenacious pane
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 subtiliz'd to chyle, the liquid food
Readiest obeys the assimilating powers;
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 vigour glorious let him die;
Nor day till rigid age, or heavy ails,
Absolve him ill requited from the yoke.
Some with high forage, end luxuriant ease,
Indulge

Book II. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 101
Indulge the veteran ox; but wiser thou,
From the bleak 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 loathsome 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,
Coily 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.
Chuse leaner viands, ye of jovial make!
Chuse sober meals; and rouse to active life
Your cumbrous clay; nor on the enfeebling down,
Irresolute, protract the morning hours.
But let the man, whose bones are thinly clad,
With chearful ease, and succulent repast,
Improve his slender habit. Each extreme
From the blest mean of sanity departs.
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
I2 Impetuous

102 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book II.
Impetuous rages thro' 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 pow'rs
For cooler, kinder sustenance, implore.
Some even the generous nutriment detest,
Which in the shell, the sleeping Embryo rears.
Some, more unhappy still, repeat the gifts
Of Pales; soft, delicious and benign:
The balmy quintescence of every flower,
And every grateful herb that decks the spring;
The soft'ring dew of tender sprouting life;
The blest 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.
Try all the bounties of this fertile globe,
There is not such a salutary food,
As suits with every stomach. But except,
Amid the mingled mass of fish and fowl,
And boil'd and back'd, you hesitate by which
You sunk oppress'd, or whether not by all;
Taught by experience soon you may discern
What pleases, what offends. Avoid the cates
That lull the sickned appetite too long;
Or heave with feverish slushings all the face,
Burn in the palms, and parch the rough'ning tongue
Or much diminish, or too much increase
Th' expence which nature's wise economy,
Without or waste or avarice maintains.
Such cates abjur'd, let prouling hunger loose
And bid the curious palate roam at will;
They scarce can err amid the various stores
That burst the teeming entrails of the world.
Led by sagacious taste, the ruthless king
Of beasts on blood and slaughter only lives;
The

Book II. ART OF PRESENVING HEALTH. 103
The tyger, form'd alike to cruel meals,
Would at the manger starve: of milder seeds,
The generous horse to herbage and to grain
Confines his wish; thro' fabling Greece resound
The Thracian Heeds with human carnage wild.
Prompted by instinct's never-erring power,
Each creature knows its proper aliment';
But man the inhabitant of every clime,
With all the commoners of nature seeds.
Directed, bounded, by this pow'r within,
Their cravings are well-aim'd; voluptuous man
Is by superior faculties misled;
Misled from pleasure even in quest of joy.
Sated with nature's boons, what thousands seek,
With dishes tortur'd from their native taste,
And mad variety to spur beyond
Its wiser will the jaded appetite!
Is this for pleasure? Learn a juster taste;
And know, that temperence is true luxury.
Or is it pride? Pursue some noble aim.
Dismiss you parasites, who praise for hire;
And earn the fair esteem of honest men,
Whose praise is same. Form'd of such clay as yours.
The sick, the needy, shiver at your gates.
Even modest want may bless your hand unseen,
Tho' hush'd in patient wretchedness at home.
Is there no virgin, grac'd with every charm
But that which binds the mercenary vow?
No youth of genius, whose neglected bloom
Unfoster'd sickens in the barren shade?
No worthy man, by fortune's random blows,
Or by a heart too generous and humane,
Constrain'd to leave his happy natal seat,
And sigh for wants more bitter than his own?
There are while human miseries abound,
A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth,
Without a fool or flatterer at your board,
Without one hour of sickness or disgust.
But

104 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book II.
But other ills the ambiguous feast pursue,
Besides provoking the lascivious taste.
Such various foods, tho' harmless each alone,
Each other violate; and oft we see
What strife is brew'd, and what  pernicious bane,
From combitations of innoxious things.
The unbounded taste I mean not to confine
To hermit's diet, needlessly severe.
But would you long the sweets of health enjoy,
Or husband pleasure; at one impious meal
Exhaust not half the bounties of the year,
And of each realm. It matters not mean while
How much to morrow differ from to day;
So far indulge; 'tis fit, besides, that man,
To change obnoxious, be to change inur'd.
But stay the curious appetite, and taste
With caution fruits you never tried before;
For want of use the kindest aliment
Sometimes offends while custom tames the rage
Of poison to the mild amity with life.
So heaven has form'd us to the general taste
Of all its gifts; so custom has improv'd
This bent of nature; that few simple foods,
Of all that earth, or air, or ocean yield,
But by excess offend. Beyond the sense
Of light refection, at the genial board
Indulge not often; nor protract the feast
To dull satiety; till soft and slow
A drowzy death creeps on th' expansive soul
Oppress'd, and smother'd the celestial fire.
The stomach, urg'd beyond its active tone,
Hardly to nutrimental chyle subdues
The softest food: unfinish'd and deprav'd
The chyle, in all its future wand'rings owns
Its turbid fountain; not by purer streams
So to be clear'd, but foulness will remain.
To sparkling wine what ferment can exalt
Th’

Book II. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 105
Th' unripen'd grape? Or what machanic skill
From the crude ore can spin the ductile gold?
Gross riot treasures up a wealthy fund
Of plagues: but more immedicable ills
Attend and lean extreme. For physic knows
How to disburden the too tumid veins,
Even how to ripen the half-labour'd blood;
But to unlock the elemental tubes,
Collaps'd and shrunk with long inanity,
And with balsamic nutriment repair
The dried and worn out habit, were to bid
Old age grow green, and wear a second spring;
Or the tall ash, long ravish'd from the soil,
Thro' wither'd veins imbibe the vernal dew.
When hunger calls, obey; nor often wait
Till hunger sharpen to corrosive pain:
For the keen appetite will feast beyond
What nature well can bear; and one extreme
Ne'er without danger meets its own reverse.
Too greedily the exhausted veins absorb
The recent chyle, and load enfeebled powers
Oft to the extinction of the vital flame.
To the pale cities, by the firm-set siege
And famine humbled, may this verse be borne;
And hear ye hardest sons that Albion breeds,
Long toss'd and famish'd on the wint'ry main;
The war shook off, or hospitable shore
Auain'd, with temperance bear the shock of joy;
Nor crown with festive rites th' auspicious day:
Such feast might prove more fatal than the waves,
Than war, or famine. While the vital fire
Burns feebly heap not the green fuel on,
But prudently foment the wandering spark
With what the soonest feels its kindred touch;
Be frugal even of that; a little give
At first; that kindled, add a little more;
Till, by deliberate nourishing, the flame.
Reviv'd, with all its wonted vigour glows.
But

106 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book II.
But tho' the two, the full and the jejune,
Extremes have each their vice; it much avails
Ever with gentle tide to ebb and flow
From this to that: so nature learns to bear
Whatever chance or headlong appetite
May bring. Besides, a meagre day subdues
The cruder clods by sloth or luxury
Collected; and unloads the wheels of life.
Sometimes a coy aversion to the feast
Comes on, while yet no blacker omen lowers;
Then is a time to shun the tempting board,
Were it your natal or your nuptial day.
Prehaps a fast so seasonable starves
The latent seeds of woe, which rooted once
Might cost you labour. But the day return'd
Of festal luxury, the wise indulge
Most in the tender vegetable breed;
Then chiefly when the summer's beams inflame
The brazen heavens; or angry Syrius sheds
A feverish taint thro' the still gulph of air.
The moist cool viands then, and flowing cup
From the fresh diary-virgin's liberal hand,
Will save your head from harm, tho' round th' world
The dreaded Causos roll his wasteful fires.
Pale humid Winter loves the generous board,
The meal more copious, and a warmer fare;
And longs, with old wood and old wine, to chear
His quaking heart. The seasons which divide
Th' empires of heat and cold; by neither claim'd
Influenc'd by both; a middle regimen
Impose. Thro' autumn's languishing domain
Descending, nature by degrees invites
To glowing luxury. But from the depth
Of winter, when the invogorated year
Emerges; when Favonius flush'd with love,
Toyful and young, in every breeze descends
More warm and wanton on his kindling bride;
Then, shepherds, then begin to spare your flocks,
And

Book II. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 107
And learn, with wise humanity, to check
The lust of blood. Now pregnant earth commits
A various offspring to the indulgent sky:
Now bountious nature seeds with lavish hand
The prone creation; yields what once suffic'd
Their dainty sovereign, when the world was young;
E'er yet the barbarious thirst of blood had seiz'd
The human breast. Each rolling month matures
The food that suits it most; so does each clime.
Far in the horrid realms of winter, where
The establish'd ocean heaps a monstrous waste
Of shining rocks and mountains to the pole;
There lives a hardy race, whose plainest wants
Relentless earth, their cruel step-mother,
Regards not. On the wade of iron fields,
Untaim'd, untractable, no harvests wave;
Pomona hates them, and the clownish god
Who tends the garden. In this frozen world
Such cooling gifts were vain; a fitter meal
Is earn'd with ease; for here the fruitful spawn
Of Ocean swarms, and heaps their genial board
With generous fare and luxury profuse.
These are their bread, the only bread they know;
These, and their willing slave the deer, that crops
The shrubby herbage on their meager hills.
Girt by the burning zone, not thus the south
Her swarthy sons, in either Ind, maintains;
Or thirsty Lybia; from whose fervid loins
The lion bursts, and every fiend that roams
The affrighted wilderness. The mountain herd,
Adust and dry, no sweet repast affords;
Nor does the tepid main such kinds produce,
So perfect, so delicious, as the stores
Of icy Zembla. Rashly where the blood
Brews feverish frays; where scarce the tubes sustain
Its tumid fervor and tempestuous course;
Kind nature tempts not to such gifts as these.
But

108 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book II.
But here in livid ripeness melts the grape;
Here, finish'd by invigorating suns,
Thro' the green shade the golden Orange glows;
Spontaneous here the turgid Melon yields
A generous pulp; the Coco swells on high
With milky riches; and in horrid mail
The soft Ananas wraps its tender sweets.
Earth's vaunted progeny; in ruder air
Too coy to flourish, even too proud to live;
Or hardly rais'd by artificial fire
To vapid life. Here with a mother's smile
Glad Amalthea pours her copious horn.
Here buxom Ceres reigns; the autumnal sea
In boundless billows fluctates o'er their plains.
What suits the climate bed, what suits the men,
Nature profuses most, and most the taste
Demands. The Fountain, edg'd with racy wine
Or acid fruit, bedews their thirsty souls.
The breeze eternal breathing round their limbs
Supports in else intolerable air;
While the cool Palm, the Plantain, and the grove
That waves on gloomy Lebanon, assuage
The torrid hell that beams upon their heads.
Now come, ye Naiads, to the fountains lead;
Now let me wander thro' your gelid reign.
I burn to view the enthasiastic wilds
By mortal else untrod. I hear the din
Of waters thundering o'er the ruin'd cliffs.
With holy rev'rence I approach the rocks
Whence glide the streams renown'd in ancient song.
Here from the desart down the rumbling steep
First springs the Nile; here bursts the sounding Po
In angry waves; Euphrates hence devolves
A mighty flood to water half the East;
And there, in Gothic solitude reclin'd,
The chearless Tanais pours his hoary urn.
What solemn twilight! What stupendous shades,
Enwrap

Book II. ART OF PRESENVING HEALTH. 109
Enwrap these infant floods! Thro' every nerve
A sacred horror thrills, a pleasing fear
Glides o'er my frame. The forest deepens round;
And more gigantic still the impending trees
Stretch their extravagant arms athwart the gloom.
Are these the confines of some fairy world?
A land of Genii? Say, beyond these wilds
What unknown nations? If indeed beyond
Aught habitable lies. And whether leads,
To what strange regions, or of bliss or pain,
That subterraneous way? Propitious maids,
Conduct me, while with fearful steps I tread
This trembling ground. The task remains to sing
Your gifts; so Pæon, so the powers of health
Command, to praise your chrystal element:
The chief ingredient in heaven's various works;
Whose flexile genius sparkles in the gem,
Grows firm in oak, and fugitive in wine;
The vehicle, the source of nutriment
And life, to all that vegetate or live.
O comfortable streams! With eager lips
And trembling hand the languid thirsty quaff
New life in you; fresh vigour fills their veins.
No warmer cups the rural ages knew;
None warmer sought the fires of human kind.
Happy in temperate peace! Their equal days
Felt not th' alternate fits of feverish mirth,
And sick dejection. Still serene and pleas'd,
They knew no pains but what the tender soul
With pleasure yields to, and would ne'er forget;
Blest with divine immunity from ails,
Long centuries they liv'd; their only fate
Was ripe old age, and rather deep than death.
Oh! could those worthies from the world of gods
Return to visit their degenerate sons,
How would they scorn the joys of modern time,
With all our art and toil improv'd to pain!
K Too

110 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book II.
Too happy they! But wealth brought luxury,
And luxury on sloth begot disease.
Learn temperance, friends; and hear without dis-
The choice of water. Thus the Coan sage [dain
Opin'd, and thus the learn'd of every school.
What lead of foreign principles partakes
Is best: the lightest, then; what bears the touch
Of fire the least, and soonest mounts in air;
The most insipid; the most void of smell.
Such the rude mountain from his horrid sides
Pours down; such waters in the sandy vale
Forever boil, alike of winter frosts
And dimmer heat secure. The lucid stream,
O'er rocks resounding, or for many a mile
Hurl'd down the pebbly channel, wholsome yields,
And mellow draughts; except when winter thaws
And half the mountains melt into the tide.
Tho' thirst were ne'er so resolute, avoid
The sordid lake, and all such drowsy floods
As fill from Lethe Belgia's slow canals;
With rest corrupt, with vegetation green;
Squalid with generation, and the birth
Of little monsters; till the power of fire
Has from profane embraces disengag'd
The violated lymph. The virgin stream
In boiling wades its finer soul in air.
Nothing like simple element dilutes
The food, or gives the chyle so soon to flow
But where the stomach, indolently given;
Toys with its duty, animate with wine
Th' insipid stream: tho' golden Ceres yields
A more voluptuous, a more sprightly draught.
Prehaps more active. Wine unmix'd, and all
The gluey deeds that from the vex'd abyss
Of fermentation spring; with spirit fraught,
And furious with intoxicating fire;
Retard

Book II. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 111
Retard concoction, and preserve unthaw'd
Th' embodied mass. You see what countless years
Embalm'd in fiery quintescence of wine,
The puny wonders of the reptile world,
The tender rudiments of life, the slim
Unrav'lings of minute anatomy,
Maintain there texture, and unchang'd remain! 
We curse not wine, the vile excess we blame;
More fruitful than the accumulated board
Of pain and misery. For the subtil draught
Faster and surer swells the vital tide;
And with more active poison than the floods
Of grosser crudity, convey, pervades
The far-remote meanders of our frame.
Ah! fly deceiver! Branded o'er and o'er,
Yet still believ'd! Exulting o'er the wreck
Of sober Vows! But the Parnassian maids
Another time perhaps shall sing the joys,
The fatal charms, the many woes of wine;
Perhaps its various tribes, and various powers.
Meantime, I would not always dread the bowl,
Nor every trespass shun. The feverish strife,
Rous'd by the rare debauch, subdues, expels
The loitering crudities that burden life;
And, like a torrent full and rapid, clears
The obstructed tubes. Besides, this restless world
Is full of chances, which by habit's power
To learn to bear is easier than to shun.
Ah! when ambition, meagre love of gold,
Or sacred country calls, with mellowing wine
To moisten well the thirsty suffrages;
Say how, unseason'd to the midnight frays
Of Comus and his rout, wilt thou contend
With Centaurs long to hardy deeds inur'd?
Then learn to revel; but by slow degrees:
By

112 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book II.
By slow degrees the liberal arts are won;
And Hercules grew strong. But when you smooth
The brows of care, indulge your festive vein
In cups by veil-inform'd experience found
The least your bane; and only with your friends
There are sweet follies, frailties to be seen
By friends alone, and men of generous minds,
Oh! seldom may the fatal hours return
Of drinking deep! I would not daily taste
Except when life declines, even sober cups
Weak withering age no rigid law forbids,
With frugal nectar, smooth and flow with balm,
The sapless habit daily to bedew,
And give the hesitating wheels of life
Gliblier to play. But youth has better joys;
And is it wise when youth with pleasure flows,
To squander the reliefs of age and pain?
What dext'rous thousands just within the goal
Of wild debauch direct their nightly course!
Perhaps no sickly qualms bedim their days,
No mourning admonitions shock the head.
But ah! what woes remain! Life rolls apace,
And that incurable disease, old age,
In youthful bodies more severely felt,
More sternly active, shakes their blasted prime:
Except kind nature by some hasty blow
Prevent the lingering fates. For know, whate'er
Beyond its natural fervor hurries on
The sanguine tide; whether the frequent bowl,
High-season'd fare, or exercise to toil
Protracted; spurs to its last stage tir'd life,
And sows the temples with untimely snow.
When life is new, the ductile fibres feel
The heart's increasing force; and, day by day,
The growth advances; till the larger tubes,
Acquiring

Book II. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 113
Acquiring, from their* elemental veins,
Condens'd to solid chords, a firmer tone,
Sustain and just sustain, the impetuous blood.
Here stops the growth. With overbearing pulse
And pressure, still the great destroy the small;
Still with the ruins of the small grow strong.
Life glows mean time amid the grinding force
Of viscious fluids and elastic tubes;
Its various function vigorously are plied
By strong machinery; and in solid health
The man confirm'd long triumphs o'er disease.
But the full ocean ebbs: there is a point,
By nature fix'd, whence life must downwards tend;
For still the beating tide consolidates
The stubborn vessels, more reluctant still,
To the weak throbbings of the enfeebled heart.
This languishing, these strength'ning by degrees
To hard, unyielding, unelastic bone,
Thro' tedious channels the congealing flood
Crawls lazily, and hardly wanders on;
It loiters still: and now it stirs no more.
This is the period few attain; the death
Of nature: thus, so heaven ordain'd it, life
Destroys itself; and could these laws have chang'd
K2 Nestor
*In the human body as well as in those of other
animals, the larger blood-vessels are composed of
smaller ones; which by the violent motion and press-
ure of the fluids in the large vessels, lose their cavities
by degrees, and degenerate into impervious chords
or fibres. In proportion as these small vessels be-
come solid, the larger must of course grow less ex-
tensile, more rigid, and make a stronger resistance to
the action of the heart, and force of blood. From
this gradual condensation of the smaller vessels, and
consequent rigidity of the larger ones, the progress.
of the human body from infancy to old age is ac-
counted for.

114 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book II.
Nestor might now the fates of Troy relate:
And Homer live immortal as his song.
[stood
What does not fade? The tower that long had
The crush of thunder, and the warring winds,
Shook by the flow, but sure destroyer, Time,
Now hangs in doubtful ruins o'er its base.
And flinty pyramids, and walls of brass,
Descend; tho Babylonian spires are sunk;
Achaia, Rome, and Egypt, moulder down.
Time shakes the stable tyranny of thrones,
And tottering empires rush by their own weight
This huge rotundity we tread grows old;
And all those worlds that roll around the sun,
The sun himself shall die; and ancient Night
Again involve the desolate abyss:
Till the great FATHER thro' the lifeless gloom
Extend his arm to light another world,
And bid new planets roll by other laws.
For thro' the regions of unbounded space,
Where unconfin'd omnipotence has room
Being in various systems, fluctuates still
Between creation and abhorr'd decay;
It ever did; perhaps and ever will.
New worlds are still emerging from the deep,
The old descending, in their turns to rise.

THE
ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 
BOOK THIRD.
EXERCISE.
[pass'd
THRO' various toils th' adven'trous muse has
But half the toil, and more than half, remains.
Rude is her theme, and hardly fit for song;
Plain and of little ornament; and I
But little practised in th' Aonian arts.
Yet not in vain such labours have we tried,
If aught these lays the fickle health confirm.
To you, ye delicate, I write; for you
I tame my youth to philosophic cares,
And grow still paler by the midnight lamps.
Not to debilitate with timorous rules
A hardy frame; nor needlessly to brave
Unglorious dangers, proud of mortal strength;
Is all the lesson that in wholsome years
Concerns the strong. His care were ill bestow'd
Who would with warm effeminacy nurse
The thriving oak, which on the mountain's brow
Bears all the blasts that sweep the wintry heaven.
Behold the labourer of the glebe, who toils
In dust, in rain, in cold and sultry skies:
Save but the grain from mildews and the flood,
Nought anxious he what sickly stars ascend.
He knows no laws by Esculapius given;
He studies none. Yet him nor midnight fogs
Infest, nor those envenom'd shafts that fly
When rabid Sirius fires th' autumnal noon,
His habit pure with plain and temperate meals,
Bobust with labour, and by custom steel'd
To every casualty of varied life;
Serene

116 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book III.
Serene he bears the peevish eastern blast,
And uninfected breathes the mortal south.
Such the reward of rude and sober life;
Of labour such. By health the peasants toil
Is well repaid; if exercise were pain
Indeed, and temperance pain. But arts like these
Laconia nurs'd of old her hardy sons;
And Rome's unconquer'd legions urg'd their way,
Unhurt, thro' every toil in every clime.
Toil, and be strong. By toil the flaccid nerves.
Grow firm and gain a more compacted tone;
The greener juices are by toil subdu'd,
Mellow'd and subtiliz'd; the vapid old
Expell'd, and all the rancor of the blood.
Come, my companions, ye who feel the charms
Of nature and the year; come, let us stray
Where chance or faney leads our roving walk:
Come, while the soft voluptuous breezes fan
The fleecy heavens, enwrap the limbs in balm,
And shed a charming langour o'er the soul.
Nor when bright winter lows with prickly frost
The vigorous ether, in unmanly warmth
Indulge at home; nor even when Eurus' blasts
This way and that convolve the labouring woods.
My liberal walks, save when the skies in rain
Or fogs relent, no reason should confine
Or to the cloister'd gallery or arcade.
Go, climb the mountain; from th' etherial source
Imbibe the recent gale. The chearful morn
Beams o'er the hills; go, mount th' exulting steed,
Already, see, the deep mouth'd beagles catch
The tainted mazes; and, on eager sport
Intent, with emulous impatience try
Each doubtful tract. Or, if a nobler prey
Delights you more, go chase the desperate deer;
And thro' its deepest solitudes awake
The vocal forest with the jovial horn,
But

Book III. ART OF PRESERVING HAELTH. 117
But if the breathless chase o'er hill and dale,
Exceed your strength; a sport of less fatigue
Not less delightful, the prolific stream
Affords. The crystal rivulet, that o'er
A stony channel rolls its rapid maze,
Swarms with the silver fry. Such, thro' the bounds
Of Pastoral Strafford, runs the brawling Trent;
Such Eden, sprung from Cumbrian mountains; such
The Esk, o'erhung with woods; and such the stream
On whose Arcadian banks I first drew air,
Liddal; till now, except in Doric lays
Tun'd to her murmurs by her lovesick swains,
Unknown in song; tho' not a purer stream,
Thro' meads more flow'ry, or more romantic groves,
Rolls toward the western main. Hail sacred flood!
May still thy hospitable swains be blest
In rural innocence; thy mountains still
Teem with the fleecy race; thy tuneful woods
Forever flourish; and thy vales look gay
With painted meadows, and the golden grain!
Oft, with thy blooming sons, when life was new,
Sportive and petulent, and charm'd with toys,
In thy transparent eddies have I lav'd:
Oft trac'd with patient steps thy fairy banks,
With the well imitated fly to hook
The eager, trout, and with the slender line
And yielding rod solicit to the shore
The struggling panting prey; while vernal clouds
And tepid gales obscur'd the ruffled pool,
And from the deeps call'd forth the wanton swarms.
Form'd on the Samian school, or those of Ind,
There are who think these pastimes scarce humane.
Yet in my mind, and not relentless I,
His life is pure that wears no fouler stains.
But if thro' genuine tenderness of heart,
Or secret want of relish for the game,
You shun the glories of the chace, nor care
To

118 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book III.
To haunt the peopled stream; the garden yields
A soft amusement, an humane delight.
To raise the insipid nature of the ground;
Or tame its savage genius to the grace
Of careless sweet rusticity, that seems
The amiable result of happy chance,
Is, to create; and gives a godlike joy,
Which every year improves.  Nor thou disdain
To check the lawless riot of the trees,
To plant the grove, or turn the barren mould.
O happy he! whom, when his years decline,
His fortune and his fame by worthy means
Attain'd, and equal to his moderate mind;
His life approv'd by all the wise and good,
Even envy'd by the rain, the peaceful groves
Of Epicurus, from this stormy world
Receive to rest; of all ungrateful cares
Absolv'd, and sacred from the selfish crowd.
Happiest of men ! if the fame soil invites
A chosen few, companions of his youth,
Once fellow rakes perhaps, now rural friends;
With whom in easy commerce to pursue
Nature's free charms, and vie for sylvan fame;
A fair ambition; void of strife or guile,
Or jealousy, or pain to be outdone.
Who plans the inchanted garden, who directs
The visto best, and bell conducts the stream;
Whose groves the fastest thicken and ascend;
Whom first the welcome spring salutes; who shows
The earliest bloom, the sweetest, proudest charms,
Of Flora; who best gives Pomona's juice
To match the sprightly genius of Champain.
Thrice happy days! in rural business past.
Bled winter nights! when, as the genial fire
Chears the wide hall, his cordial family
With soft domestic arts the hours beguile,
And pleasing talk that starts no timorous fame,
With witless wantonness to hunt it down:
Or

Book III. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 119
Or thro' the fairy land of tale or song
Delighted wander, in fictitious fates
Engag'd and all that strikes humanity;
Till lost in fable, they the stealing hour
Of timely rest forget. Sometimes, at eve,
His neighbours lift the latch, and bless unbid
His festal roof; while o'er the light repast
And sprightly cups, they mix in social joy;
And, thro' the maze or conversation, trace
Whate'er amuses or improves the mind.
Sometimes at eve, for I delight to taste
The native zest and flavour of the fruit,
Where sense grows wild, and takes of no manure,
The decent, honest, chearful husbandman,
Should drown his labours in my friendly bowl;
And at my table find himself at home.
Whate'er you study, in whate'er you sweat
Indulge your taste. Some love the manly foils;
The tennis some, and some the graceful dance.
Others, more hardy, range the purple heath,
Or naked stubble; where from field to field
The sounding coveys urge their labouring flight;
Eager amid the rising cloud to pour
The gun's unerring thunder and there are
Whom still the meed of the green archer charms.
He chuses best, whose labour entertains
His vacant fancy most: the toil you hate
Fatigues you soon, and scarce improves your limbs.
As beauty still has blemish; and the mind
The most accomplish'd its imperfect side;
Few bodies are there of that happy mould
But some one part is weaker than the rest;
The legs, perhaps, or arms refuse their load,
Or the chest labours. These assiduously,
But gently, in their proper arts employ'd
Acquire a vigour and elastic spring,
To

120 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book III.
To which they were not born. But weaker parts
Abhor fatigue and violent discipline.
Begin with gentle toils; and as your nerves
Grow firm, to hardier by just steps aspire.
The prudent, even in every moderate walk,
At first but saunter; and by slow degrees
Increase their pace. This doctrine of the wise
Well knows the matter of the flying steed.
First from the goal the manag'd coursers play
On bended reins; as yet the skilful youth
Repress their foamy pride; but every breath
The race grows warmer, and the tempest swells;
Till all the fiery mettle has its Way,
And the thick thunder hurries o'er the plain.
When all at once from indolence to toil
You spring, the fibres by the hasty shock
Are tir'd and crack'd, before their unctuous coats,
Compress'd, can pour the lubricating balm.
Besides, collected in the passive veins,
The purple mass a sudden torrent rolls,
O'erpowers the heart, and deluges the lungs
With dangerous inundation: oft the source
Of fatal woes; a cough that forms with blood.
Asthma, and feller Peripneumonie,*
Or the slow minings of the hectic fire.
Th' athletic fool, to whom what heaven denied
Of soul is well compensated in limbs,
Oft from his rage, or brainless frolic, feels
His vegetation and brute force decay.
The men of better clay and finer mould
Know nature, feel the human dignity;
And scorn to vie with oxen or with apes.
Pursu'd prolixly, even the gentlest toil
Is waste of health: reprose by small fatigue
Is
* The inflammation of the lungs. 

Book III. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 121
Is earn'd; and, where your habit is not prone
To thaw, by the first moisture of the brows.
The fine and subtle spirits cost too much
To be profus'd, too much the roscid balm.
But when the hard varieties of life
You toil to learn; Or try the dusty chace,
Or the warm deeds of some important day;
Hot from the field, indulge not yet your limbs
In wish'd repose, nor court the fanning gale,
Nor taste the spring. O! by the sacred tears
Of widows, orphans, mothers, sisters, fires,
Forbear! No other pestilence has driven
Such myriads o'er th' irremeable deep.
Why this so fatal, the sagacious muse
Thro' nature's cunning labyrinths could trace;
But there are secrets Which who knows not now,
Must, ere he reach them, climb the heapy Alps
Of science; and devote seven years to toil.
Besides, I would not stun your patient ears
With what it little boots you to attain.
He knows enough, the mariner, who knows [boil,
Where lurk the shelves, and where the whirlpools
What signs portend the storm; to subtler minds
He leaves to scan, from what mysterious cause
Charybdis rages in the Ionian Wave;
Whence those impetuous currents in the main,
Which neither oar nor fail can stem; and why
The rough'ning deep expects the storm, as sure
As red  Orion mounts the shrouded heaven.
In ancient times, when Rome with Athens vied
Far polish'd luxury and useful arts;
All hot and reeking from the Olympic strife,
And warm Palestra, in the tepid bath
Th' athletic youth relax'd their weary'd limbs.
Soft oils bedew'd them, with the grateful pow'rs
Of Nard and Cassia fraught, to sooth and heal
The cherish'd nerves. Our less voluptuous clime
L Not

122 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book III.
Not much invites us to such arts as these.
‘Tis not for these, whom gelid skies embrace,
And chilling fogs; whose perspriation feels
Such frequent bars from Eurus and the North;
‘Tis not for those to cultivate a skin
Too soft; or teach the recremental fume
Too fall to crowd thro' such precarious ways.
For thro' the small arterial mouths, that pierce
In endless millions the close-woven skin,
The baser fluids in a constant stream
Escape, and viewless melt into the winds.
While this eternal, this most copious waste
Of blood degenerate into vapid brine,
Maintains its wonted measure; all the powers
Of health befriend you, all the wheels of life
With ease and pleasure move: but this restrain'd
Or more or less, so more or less you  feel
The functions labour. From this fatal source
What woes descend is never to be sung.
To take their numbers, were to count the sands
That ride in whirlwind the parch'd Lybian air;
Or waves that, when the blustring North embroils
The Baltic, thunder on the German shore.
Subject not then, by soft emollient arts,
This grand expence, on which your fates depend,
To every caprice of the sky; nor thwart
The genius of your clime; for from the blood
Least fickle rise the recremental streams,
And least obnoxious to the styptic air,
Which breathe thro* straiter and more callous pores.
The tempered Scythian hence, half naked treads
His boundless snows, nor rues the inclement heaven;
And hence our painted ancestors defied
The East; nor cursed, like us, their fickle sky.
The body, moulded by the clime, endures,
The Equator heats, or Hyperborean frost:
Except by habits foreign to its turn,
Unwise 

Book III. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 123
Unwise, you counteract its forming pow'r.
Rude at the first, the winter shocks you less
By long acquaintance: study then your sky,
Form to its manners your obsequious frame,
And learn to differ what you cannot shun.
Against the rigours of a damp cold heav'n
To fortify their bodies, some frequent
The gelid cistern; and, where nought forbids,
I praise their dauntless heart. A frame so steel'd
Dreads not the cough, nor those ungenial blasts
That breathe the Tertian or fell Rheumatism;
The nerves so temper'd never quit their tone,
No chronic languors haunt such hardy breasts.
But all things have their bounds: and he who makes
By daily use the kindest regimen
Essential to his health, should never mix
With human kind, nor art nor trade pursue.
He not the safe vicissitudes of life
Without some shock endures; ill-fitted he
To want the known, or bear unusual things.
Besides, the powerful remedies of pain
Since pain in spite of all our care will come,
Should never with your prosperous days of health
Grow too familiar: For by frequent use
The strongest medicines lose their healing power
And even the surest poisons their's to kill.
Let those who from the frozen Arctos reach
Parch'd Mauritania, or the sultry West,
Or the wide flood that waters Indostan,
Plunge thrice a day, and in the tepid wave
Untwist their stubborn pores, that full and free
The evaporation thro’ the soft'ned skin
May bear proportion to the swelling blood.
So shall they 'scape the fevers rapid flames;
So feel untainted the hot breath of hell.
With us, the man of no complaint demands
The warm ablution, just enough to clear
The

124 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book III.
The sluices of the skin, enough to keep
The body sacred from indecent soil.
Still to be pure, even did it not conduce
As much it does, to health, were greatly worth
Your daily pains. 'Tis this adorns the rich;
The want of this is poverty's worst woe:
With this external virtue, age maintains
A decent grave; without it, youth and charms
Are loathsome. This the skilful virgin knows:
So doubtless do your wives. For married sires
As well as lovers, still pretend to taste;
Nor is it less, all prudent wives can tell,
To lose a husband's, than a lover's, heart.
But now the hours and seasons when to toil,
From foriegn themes recal my wandring song.
Some labour fasting, or but slightly fed,
To lull the grinding stomach's hungry rage;
Where nature feeds too corpulent a frame,
'Tis wisely done. For while the thirsty veins,
Impatient of lean penury, devour
The treasur'd oil, then is the happiest time
To shake the lazy balsam from its cells.
Now while the stomach from the full repast
Subsides; but ere returning hunger gnaws,
Ye leaner habits give an hour to toil;
And ye whom no luxuriancy of growth
Oppresses yet, or threatens to oppress.
But from the recent meal no labours please,
Of limbs or mind. For now the cordial powers
Claim all the wandring spirits to a work
Of strong and subtle toil, and great event;
A work of time and you may rue the day
You hurried, with ill-seasoned exercise,
A half concocted chyle into the blood,
The body overcharg'd with unctuous phlegm
Much toil demands: the lean elastic less.
While winter chills the blood, and binds the veins,
No

Book III. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 125.
No labours are too hard: by those you 'scape
The slow diseases of the torpid year;
Endless to name; to one of which alone,
To that which tears the nerves, the toil of slaves
Is pleasure: oh! from such inhuman pains
May all be free who merit not the wheel!
But from the burning Lion when the sun
Pours down his sultry wrath; now while the blood
Too much already maddens in the veins,
And all the finer fluids thro’ the skin
Explore their flight; me, near the cool cascade
Reclin'd, or saunt'ring in the lofty grove,
No needless slight occasion should engage
To pant and sweat beneath the fiery noon.
Now the fresh morn alone and mellow eve
To shady walks and active rural sports
Invite. But while the chilling dews descend,
May nothing tempt you to the cold embrace
Of humid skies; though 'tis no vulgar joy
To trace the horrors of the solemn wood,
While the soft evening saddens into night;
Tho' the sweet poet of the vernal groves
Melts all the night in strains of amorous woe.
The shades descend, and midnight o'er the world
Expands her sable wings. Great nature droops
Through all her works. Now happy he whose toil
Has o'er his languid powerless limbs diffus'd
A pleasing lassitude: he not in vain
Invokes the gentle deity of dreams.
His powers the most voluptuously dissolve
In solt repose: on him the balmy dews
Of sleep with double nutriment descend.
But would you sweetly waste the blank of night
In deep oblivion; or on fancy's wings
Visit the paradise of happy dreams,
And waken chearful as the lively morn;
Oppress not nature sinking down to rest
L2 With

126 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book III.
With feasts too late, too solid, or too full.
But be the first concoction half matur'd,
Ere you to mighty indolence resign
Your passive faculties. He from the toils
And troubles of the day to heavier toil
Retires, whom trembling from the tower that rocks
Amid the clouds, or Calpe's hideous height,
The busy demons hurl, or in the main
O'erwhelm, or bury struggling under ground.
Not all a monarch's luxury the woes
Can counterpoise, of that most wretched man,
Whose nights are shaken with the frantic fits
Of wild Orestes; whose delirious brain,
Stung by the furies, works with poisoned thought:
With pale and monstrous painting shocks the soul;
And mangled consciousness bemoans itself
For ever torn; and chaos floating round.
What dreams presage, what dangers these or those
Portend to sanity, tho’ prudent seers
Reveal'd of old, and men of deathless fame;
We would not to the superstitious mind
Suggest new throbs, new vanities of fear.
'Tis ours to teach you from the peaceful night
To banish omens, and all restless woes.
In study some protract the silent hours,
Which others consecrate to mirth and wine;
And sleep till noon, and hardly live till night,
But surely this redeems not from the shades
One hour of life. Nor does it nought avail
What season you to drowsy Morpheus give
Of the ever varying circle of the day;
Or whether thro' the tedious winter gloom,
You tempt the midnight or the morning damps.
The body fresh and vigorous from repose,
Defies the early fogs; but, by the toils
Of wakeful day, exhausted and unstrung,
Weakly resists the night's unwholsome breath.
The

Book III. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 127
The grand Discharge, the effusion of the skin,
Slowly impair'd, the languid maladies
Creep on, and thro’ the sick'ning functions steal.
So, when the chilling East invades the spring,
The delicate Narcissus pines away
In hectic langour; and a slow disease
Taints all the family of flowers, condemn'd
To cruel heavens. But why, already prone
To fade, should beauty cherish its own bane?
O shame! O pity! nimpt with pale Quadrille,
And midnight cares, the bloom of Albion dies!
By toil subdued, the Warrior and the Hind
Sleep fast and deep; their active functions soon
With generous streams the subtle tubes supply,
And soon the tonick irritable nerves
Feel the fresh impulse, and awake the soul.
The sons of Indolence, with long repose,
Grow torpid; and, with slowest Lethe drunk,
Feebly and lingeringly return to life,
Blunt every sense, and powerless every limb.
Ye, prone to deep, whom sleeping most annoys.
On the hard mattress or elastic couch
Extend your limbs, and wean yourselves from sloth;
Nor grudge the lean projector, of dry brain
And springy nerves, the blandishments of down.
Nor envy while the buried bacchanal
Exhales his surfeit in prolixer dreams.
He without riot in the balmy feast
Of life, the wants of nature has supplied
Who rises cool, serene, and full of soul.
But pliant nature more or less demands,
As custom forms her; and all sudden change
She hates of habit, even from bad to good.
If faults in life, or new emergencies,
From habits urge you by long time confirm'd,
Slow may the change arrive, and stage by stage;
Slow

128 ART OF PRESERVlNG HEALTH. Book III.
Slow as the shadow o'er the dial moves,
Slow as the Healing progress of the year.
Observe the circling year. How unperceiv'd
Her seasons change! Behold! by slow degrees,
Stern Winter tam'd into a ruder spring!
The ripen'd Spring a milder summer glows;
Departing Summer sheds Pomona's store;
And aged Autumn brews the Winter storm.
Slow as they come, these changes come not void
Of mortal shocks; the cold and torrid reigns,
The two great periods of the important year,
Are in their first approaches seldom safe;
Funereal autumn all the sickly dread,
And the black fates deform the lovely spring.
He well advis'd, who taught our wiser sires
Early to borrow Muscovy's warm spoils,
Ere the first frost has touch'd the tender blade;
And late resign them, tho' the wanton spring
Should deck her charms with all her sister's rays.
For while the effluence of the skin maintains
Its native measure, the pleuritic Spring
Glides harmless by; and Autumn, sick to death
With swallow Quartans, no contagion breathes.
I in prophetic numbers could unfold
The omens of the year; what seasons teem
With what diseases; what the humid South
Prepares, and what the Demon of the East;
But you perhaps refuse the tedious song.
Besides, whatever plagues in heat, or cold,
Or drought, or moisture dwell, they hurt not you,
Skill'd to correct the vices of the sky,
And taught already how to each extreme
To bend your life. But should the public bane
Infect you, or some trespass of your own,
Or flaw of nature hint mortality:
Soon as a not unpleasing horror glides
Along

Book III.  ART OF PRESENVING HEALTH. 129
Along the spine, thro' all your torpid' limbs;
When first the head throbs or the stomach feels
A sickly load, a weary pain the loins;
Be Celsus call'd; the fates come rushing on;
The rapid fates admit of no delay.
While wilful you, and fatally secure,
Expect tomorrow's more an spicious sun,
The growing pest, whose infancy was weak
And easy vanquish'd, with triumphant sway
Overpowers your life. For want of timely caret
Millions have died of medicable wounds.
Ah! in what perils is vain life engag'd!
What flight neglects, what trivial faults destroy
The hardest frame! Of indolence, of toil,
We die: of want, of superfluity.
The all surrounding heaven, the vital air,
Is big with death. And, tho' the putrid South
Be shut; tho' no convulsive agony
Shake, from the deep foundations of the world
The imprisoned plagues; a secret venom oft
Corrupts the air, the water, and the land.
What livid deaths has fad Byzantium seen!
How oft has Cairo, with a mothers woe,
Wept o'er her slaughter'd sons, and lonely streets!
Even Albion, girt with less malignant skies,
Albion the poison of the Gods has drunk,
And felt the sting of monsters all her own.
Ere yet the fell Plantagenets had spent
Their ancient rage, at Bosworth’s purple field;
While for which tyrant England should receive
Her legions in incestuous murders mix'd,
And daily horrors; till the fates were drunk
With kindred blood by kindred hands profus'd;
Another plague of more gigantic arm
Arose, a monster never known before,
Rear'd from Cocytus its portentous head.
This

130 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book III.
This rapid fury not, like other pests,       .
Pursu'd a gradual course, but in a day
Rush'd as a florin o'er half the astonish'd isle,
And strew'd with sudden carcases the land.
First thro the shoulders, or whatever part
Was seiz'd the first, a fervid vapour sprung.
With rash combustion thence, the quivering spark
Shot to the heart, and kindled all within;
And soon the surface caught the spreading fires.
Thro' all the yielding pores the melted blood
Gush'd out in smoaky sweats; but nought assuag'd
The torrid heat within, nor aught reliev'd
The stomach's anguish. With incessant toil,
Desperate of ease, impatient of their pain,
They toss'd  from side to side. In vain the stream,
Ran full and clear, they burnt and thirsted still.
The restless arteries with rapid blood
Beat strong and frequent. Thick and pantingly
The breath was fetch'd, and with huge labrings heav'd.
At last a heavy pain oppress'd the head,
A wild delirium came; their weeping friends
Were strangers now, and this no home of theirs.
Harass'd with toil on toil, the sickning powers
Lay prostrate and o'cthrown; a pondrous sleep
Wrapt all the senses up; they slept and died.
In some a gentle horror crept at first
O'er all the limbs; the sluices of the skin
Withheld their moisture, till by art provok'd
The sweats o'erflow'd; but in a clammy tide:
Now free and copious, now restrain'd and slow;
Of tinctures various, as the temperature
Had mix'd the blond; and rank with fetid streams;
As if the pent-up humors by delay
Were grown more fell, more putrid, and malign.
Here lay their hopes, tho' little hope remain'd,
With full effusion of perpetual sweats
To

Book III. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 131
To drive the venom out. And here the fates
Were kind, that long they linger'd not in pain.
For who surviv'd the sun's diurnal race,
Rose from the dreary gates of hell redeem'd
Some the sixth hour oppress'd, and some the third.
Of many thousands few untainted 'scap'd
Of those infected fewer ‘scap'd alive;
Of those who liv'd some felt a second blow;
And whom the second spar'd a third destroy'd.
Frantic with fear, they sought by flight to shun
The fierce contagion. O'er the mournful land
The infected city pour'd her hurrying swarms;
Rous'd by the flames that fir'd her seats around;
The infected country rush'd into the town.
Some, sad at home, and in the desart some,
Abjur'd the fatal commerce of mankind;
In vain; where'er they fled the Fates pursu'd.
Others with hopes more specious, cross'd the main
To seek protection in far-distant skies;
But none they found. It seem'd the general air
Was then at enmity with English blood.
For, but the race of England, all were safe
In foreign climes; nor did this fury taste
The foreign blood which Albion then contain'd.
Where should they fly? The circumambient heav’s
Involv'd them still; and every breeze was bane.
Where find relief? The salutary art
Was mute; and, startled at the new disease,
In fearful whispers hopless omens gave.
To heaven with suppliant rites they sent their pray'rs;
Heav'n heaid them not. Of every hope depriv'd ;
Fatigu'd with vain resources; and subdu'd
With woes resistless and enfeebling fear;
Passive they sunk beneath the weighty blow.
Nothing but lamentable sounds were heard,
Nor ought was seen but ghastly views of death;
Infectious horror ran from face to face,
And

132 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book III.
And pale despair. 'Twas all the business then
To tend the sick, and in their turns to die.
In heaps they fell; and oft one bed, they say,
The sickning, dying, and the dead contain'd.
Ye guardian Gods, on whom the Fates depend
Of tottering Albion! Ye eternal fires,
That lead thro’ heav'n th' wandring year! Ye pow'rs.
That o'er the circling elements preside!
May nothing worse than what this age has seen
Arrive! Enough abroad, enough at home
Has Albion bled. Here a distemper'd heaven
Has thin'd his cities; from those lofty cliffs
That awe proud Gaul, to Thule's wint'ry reign;
While in the West, beyond the Atlantic foam,
Her bravest sons, keen for the sight, have died
The death of cowards, and of common men;
Sunk void of wounds, and fallen without renown.
But from these views the weeping Muses turn,
And other themes invite my wandering song.

THE
ART PRESERVING HEALTH.
BOOK FOURTH.
THE PASSIONS.
THE choice of aliment, the choice of air.
The use of toil, and all external things
Already sung; it now remains to trace
What good, what evil from ourselves proceeds;
And how the subtle principle within
Inspires with health, or mines with strange decay
The passive body. Ye poetic Shades,
That know the secrets of the world unseen,
Assist my song! For, in a doubtful theme
Engag'd, I wander thro' in mysterous ways.
There is, they say, arid I believe there is,
A spark within us of the immortal fire,
That animates and moulds the grosser frame;
And when the body sinks, escapes to heaven,
Its native feat; and mixes with the gods.
Mean while this heavenly perticle pervades
The mortal elements, in every nerve
It thrills with pleasure, or grows mad with pain.
And, in its secret conclave, as it feels
The body's woes and joys, this ruling power
Weilds at its will the dull material world,
And is the body's health or malady.
By its own toil the gross corporeal frame
Fatigues, extenuates, or destroys itself;
Nor less the labours of the mind corrode
The solid fabric. For by subtle parts.
Aid viewless atoms, secret Nature moves
The mighty wheels of this stupendous world.
M By 

134 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book IV.
By subtle fluids pour'd thro' subtle tubes
The natural, vital functions, are preform'd.
By these the stubborn aliments are tam'd;
The toiling heart distributes life and strength;
These the still-crumbling frame rebuild; and these
Are lost in thinking, and dissolve in air.
But 'tis  not Thought, for still the soul's employ'd,
'Tis painful thinking that corrodes our clay.
All day the vacant eye without fatigue
Strays o'er the heaven and earth; but long intent
On microscopic art its vigour fails.
Just so the mind, with various thoughts amus'd,
Nor aches itself, nor gives the body pain.
But anxious Study, Discontent, and Care,
Love without Hope, and Hate without revenge,
And Fear, and Jealousy, fatigue the soul,
Engross the subtle ministers of life,
And spoil the lab'ring functions of their share.
Hence the lean gloom that Melancholy wears;
The lover's paleness: and the fallow hue
Of envy, Jealousy; the meagre stare
Of fore revenge; the canker'd body hence
Betrays each fretful motion of the mind.
The strong-built pedant; who both night and day
Feeds on the coarsest fate the schools bestow,
And crudely fattens a gross Burman's stall,
O'erwhelm'd with phlegm lies in a dropsy drown'd,
Or sinks in lethargy before his time.
With useful studies you, and arts that please,
Employ your mind, amuse, but not fatigue.
Peace to each drowsy metaphysic sage!
And ever may the German folio's rest!
And some there are, even the elastic parts,
Whom strong and obstinate ambition leads
Thro' all the rugged roads of barren lore,
And gives to relish what their generous taste
Would

Book IV. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 135
Would else refuse. But may not thirst of fame,
Nor love of knowledge urge you to fatigue
With constant drudgery the liberal soul.
Toy with your books; and, as the various fits
Of humour seize you, from Philosophy
To Fable shift: from serious Antonine
To Rabelais' ravings, and from prose to song.
While reading pleases, but no longer, read;
And read aloud, resounding Homer's strain,
And weild the thunder of Demosthenes.
The chest so exercis'd improves its strength;
And quick vibrations thro' the bowels drive
The restless blood, which in unactive days
Would loiter else thro' unelastic tubes.
Deem it not trifling while I recommend
What posture suits; to stand and sits by turns,
As nature prompts, is bed. But o'er your leaves
To learn for ever, cramps the vital parts,
And robs the fine machinery of its play.
'Tis the great art of life to manage well
The restless mind. For ever on pursuit
Of knowledge bent it starves the grosser powers.
Quite unemploy'd, against its own repose
It turns its fatal edge, and sharper pangs
Than what the body knows imbitter life.
Chiefly where Solitude, sad nurse of care,
To sickly musing gives the pensive mind.
There madness enters; and the dim-ey'd Fiend,
Sour Melancholy, night and day provokes
Her own eternal wound. The sun grows pale;
A mournful visionary light o'erspreads
The chearful face of nature; earth becomes
A dreary desart, and heaven frowns above.
Then various shapes of curs'd illusion rise;
Whate'er the wretched fears, creating Fear
Forms out of nothing; and with monsters teems
Unknown

136 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book IV.
Unknown in hell. The prostrate soul beneath
A load of huge imagination heaves.
And all the horrors that the guilty feel.
With anxious fluttering wake the guiltless bread.
Such phantoms Pride in solitary scenes
Or Fear, on delicate Self-love creates.
From other cares absolv'd, the busy mind
Finds in yourself a theme to pore upon;
It finds you miserable or makes you so.
For while yourself you anxiously explore,
Timorous Self-love, with sick'ning Fancy's aid,
Presents the danger that you dread the most,
And ever galls you in your tender part.
Hence some for love, and some for jealousy.
For grim religion some, and some for pride,
Have lost their reason; some for fear of want
Want all their lives! and others every day
For fear of dying suffer worse than death.
Ah! from your bosoms banish if you can,
Those fatal guests; and first the Demon Fear;
That trembles at impossible events,
Lest aged Atlas should resign his load,
And heaven's eternal battlements rush down.
Is there an evil worse than fear itself?
And what avails it that indulgent heaven
From mortal eyes has wrapt the woes to come,
If we, ingenious to torment ourselves,
Grow pale at hideous fictions of our own?
Enjoy the present; nor with needless cares,
Of what may spring from blind Misfortune's womb
Appal the surest hour that life bestows.
Serene, and master of yourself, prepare
For what may come; and leave the rest to heaven.
Oft from the body, by long ails mistun'd,
These evils sprung, the most important health,
That of the mind, destroy; and when the mind
They

Book IV. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 137
They first invade, the conscious body soon
In sympathetic languishment declines.
These chronic passions, while from real woes
They rise, and yet without the body's fault
Infest the soul, admit one only cure;
Diversion, hurry, and a restless life.
Vain are the consolations of the wise,
In vain your friends would reason down your pain,
Oh ye whose souls relentless love has tam'd.
To soft distress, or friends untimely slain I
Court not the luxury of tender thought;
Nor deem it impious to forget those pains
That hurt the living, nought avail the dead.
Go, soft enthusiast! quit the cypress groves,
Not to the rivulet's lonely moanings tune
Your sad complaint. Go, seek the chearful haunts
Of men and mingle with the bustling croud;
Lay schemes for wealth, or power, or frame, the wish
Of nobler minds, and push them night and day,
Or join the caravan in quest of scenes
New to your eyes, and shifting every hour;
Beyond the Alps, beyond the Appennines.
Or, more advent'rous, rush into the field
Where war grows hot; and, raging thro' the sky,
The lofty trumpet swells the madding soul;
And in the hardy camp and toilsome march
Forget all softer and less manly cares.
But mod too passive, when the blood runs low,
Too weakly indolent to strive with pain,
And bravely by resisting conquer Fate,
Try Cercc's arts: and in the tempting bowl
Of poison'd Nectar sweet oblivion drink.
Struck by the powerful charm, the gloom dissolves
In empty air; Elysium opens round.
A pleasing phrenzy buoys the lighten'd soul,
And sanguine hopes dispel your fleeting care;
And what was difficult, and what was dire,
M2 Yields

138 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book IV.
Yields, to your prowess and superiour stars:
The happiest you of all that e'er were mad,
Or are, or shall be, could this folly last.
But soon your heaven is gone; a heavier gloom
Shuts o'er your head; and, as the thundering stream.
Swoln o'er its banks with sudden mountain rain,
Sinks from its tumult to a silent brook;
So, when the frantic raptures in your bread
Subside, you languish into mortal man;
You sleep, and waking find yourself undone.
For, prodigal of life, in one rash night
You lavish'd more than might support three days.
A heavy morning comes; your cares return
With ten-fold rage. An anxious stomach well
May be endur'd; so may the throbbing head;
But such a dim delirium, such a dream,
Involves you; such a dastardly dispair
Unmans your soul, as madd'ning Pentheus felt
When bated round Citheron's cruel sides,
He saw two suns, and double Thebes ascend.
You curse the sluggish Port; you curse the wretch
The felon, with unnatural mixture first
Who dar'd to violate the virgin Wine.
Or on the fugitive Champian you pour
A thousand curses; for to heaven your soul
It rapt, to plunge you deeper in despair.
Perhaps you rue even that divinest gift,
The gay, serene, good-natur'd Burgandy,
Or the fresh fragrant vintary of the Rhine;
And wish that heaven from mortals had withheld
The grape, and all intoxicating bowls.
Besides, it wounds you sore to recollect
What follies in your loose unguarded hour
Escap'd. By one irrevocable word,
Perhaps that meant no harm, you lose a friend.
Or in the rage of wine your hasty hand
Performs a deed to haunt you to your grave.
Add.

Book IV. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 139
Add that your means, your health, your parts decays
Your friends avoid you; brutishly transform'd
They hardly know you; or if one remains
To wish you well, he wishes you in heaven.
Despis'd, unwept you fall; who might have left
A sacred, cherish'd, sadly-pleasing name;
A name still to be utter'd with a sigh.
Your last ungrateful scene has quite effac'd
All sense and memory of your former worth.
How to live happiest; how avoid the pains,
The Disappointments, and disgusts of those
Who would in pleasure all their hours employ;
The precepts here of a divine old man
I shall recite. Tho* old, he still retain'd
His manly sense, and energy of mind,
Virtuous and wise he was, but not severe;
He still remember'd that he once was young;
His easy presence checked no decent joy.
Him even the dissolute admir'd; for he
A graceful looseness when he pleas'd put on,
And laughing could instruct. Much had he read,
Much more had seen; he studied from the life,
And in the original perus'd mankind.
Vers'd in the woes and vanities of life,
He pitied man; and much he pitied those
Whom falsely-smiling fate has cuis'd with means
To dissipate their days in quest of joy.
Our aim is Happiness; 'tis yours,'tis mine,
He said, 'tis the pursuit of all that live;
Yet few attain it, if 'twas e'er attain'd.
But they the widest wander from the mark,
Who thro' the flow'ry paths of saunt'ring joy
Seek this coy goddess; that from stage to stage
Invites us still, but shifts as we pursue.
For not to name the pains that pleasure brings
To counterpoise itself, relentless Fate
Forbids

140 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book IV.
Forbids that we thro' gay voluptuous wilds
Should ever roam; and were the Fates more kind,
Our narrow luxuries would soon be stale.
Were these exhaustless, Nature would grow sick,
And, cloy'd with pleasure, squeamishly complain
That all was vanity, and life a dream.
Let nature rest; be busy for yourself,
And for your friend; be busy even in vain
Rather than teize her sated appetites.
Who never fasts no banquet e'er enjoys;
Who never toils or watches never sleeps.
Let nature rest: and when the taste of joy
Grows keen, indulge; but shun satiety.
'Tis not for mortals always to be blest.
But him the least the dull or painful hours
Of life oppress, whom sober Sense conducts.
And Virtue, thro' this labyrinth we tread.
Virtue and Sense I mean not to disjoin;
Virtue and Sense are one; and, trust me, he
Who has not virtue, is not truly wise.
Virtue, for mere good nature is a fool,
Is sense and spirit, with humanity:
'Tis sometimes angry, and its frown confounds;
'Tis even vindictive, but in vengeance just.
Knaves fain would laugh at it; some great ones dare
But at his heart the most undaunted son
Of fortune dreads its name and awful charms.
To noblest uses this determines wealth;
This is the solid pomp of prosperous days;
The peace and shelter of adversity.
And if you pant for glory, build your fame
On this foundation, which the secret shock
Defies of Envy and all sapping Time.
The gawdy gloss of Fortune only strikes
The vulgar eye; the suffrage of the wise,
The praise that's worth ambition, is attain'd
By Sense alone, and dignity of mind.
Virtue,

Book IV. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 141
Virtue, the strength and beauty of the soul,
Is the bed gift of heaven: a happiness
That even above the smiles and frowns of fate
Exalts great Nature's favourites: a wealth
That ne'er incumbers, nor to baser hands
Can be transferr'd: it is the only good
Man justly boasts of, or can call his own.
Riches are oft by guilt and baseness earn'd;
Or dealt by chance, to shield a lucky knave.
Or throw a cruel sun shine on a fool.
But for one end, one much neglected use,
Are riches worth your care; for nature's wants
Are few, and without opulence supplied.
This noble end is, to produce the Soul;
To show the virtues in their fairest light;
To make Humanity the Minister
Of bounteous Providence; and teach the Breast
That generous luxury the gods enjoy.
Thus, in his graver vein, the friendly Sage
Sometimes declaim'd. Of Right and Wrong he taughs
Truths as refin'd as ever Athens heard;
And strange to tell! he practis'd what he preach'd.
Skill'd in the Passions, how to check their sway
He knew, as far as Reason can controul
The lawless Powers. But other cares are mine;
Form'd in the school of Pæon, I relate
What passions hurt the body, what improve:
Avoid them, or invite them, as you may.
Know then, whatever chearful and serene
Supports the mind, supports the body too.
Hence the most vital movement mortals feel
Is Hope; the balm and life blood of the soul.
It pleases, and it lasts. Indulgent heaven
Sent down the kind delusion, thro' the paths
Of rugged life; to lead us patient on;
And make our happiest date no tedious thing.
Our

142 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book IV.
Our greatest good, and what we least can spare,
Is Hope; the last of all our evils, Fear.
But there are passions grateful to the breast,
And yet no friends to Life; perhaps they please
Or to excess, and dissipate the soul;
Or while they please, torment. The stubborn clown,
The ill tam'd Russian, and pale Usurer,
If Love's omnipotence such hearts can mould,
May safely mellow into love; and grow
Refin'd, humane, and generous, if they can.
Love in such bosoms never to a fault.
Or pains or pleases. But ye finer Souls,
Form'd to soft luxury, and prompt to thrill
With all the tumults, all the joys and pains,
That beauty gives; with caution and reserve
Indulge the sweet destroyer of repose,
Nor court too much the queen of charming cares.
For while the cherish'd poison in the breast
Ferments and maddens, tick with jealousy,
Absence, dictrust, or even with anxious joy,
The wholsome appetites and powers of life
Dissolve in langour. The coy stamach loaths
The genial board: your chearful days are gone:
The generous bloom that flush'd your cheeks is fled.
To sighs devoted, and to tender pains,
Pensive you sit, or solitary stray,
And wake your youth in musing. Musing first
Toy'd into care your unsuspecting heart;
It found a liking there, a sportful fire,
And that fomented into serious love;
Which musing daily strengthens and improves
Thro' all the heights of fondness and romance:
And you're undone, the fatal shaft has sped,
If once you doubt whether you love or no.
The body wades away; th' infected mind,
Dissolv'd in female tenderness, forgets
Each manly virtue, and grows dead to fame.
Sweet

Book IV. ART OF PRESENVING HEALTH. 143
Sweet heaven, from such intoxicating charms,
Defend all worthy breasts! Not that I deem
Love always dangerous, always to be shun'd.
Love well repaid, and not too weakly sunk
In wanton and unmanly tenderness,
Adds bloom to health; o'er every virtue sheds
A gay, humane, and amiable grace,
And brightens all the ornaments of man.
But fruitless, hopeless disappointed, rack'd
With jealousy, fatigu'd with hope and fear,
Too serious, or too languishingly fond,
Unnerves the body, and unmans the soul.
And some have died for Love; and some run mad,
And some with desperate hand themselves have slain.
Some to extinguish, others to prevent,
A mad devotion to one dangerous Fair,
Court all they meet; in hopes to dissipate
The cares of Love amongst a hundred Brides.
The event is doubtful; for there are who find
A cure in this; there are who find it not.
'Tis no relief, alas! it rather galls
The wound, to those who are sincerely sick.
For while from feverish and tumultuous joys,
The nerves grow languid, and the soul subsides;
The tender Fancy smarts with every sting;
And what was Love before is Madness now.
Is health your care, or luxury your aim,
Be temperate still; when Nature bids, obey;
Her wild impatient sallies bear no curb.
But when the prurient habit of delight,
Or loose imagination, spurs you on
To deeds above your strength, impute it not
To Nature; Nature all compulsion hates.
Ah! let nor luxury nor vain renown
Urge you to feats you well might sleep without;
To make what should be rapture a fatigue,
A tedious task; nor in the wanton arms
Of

144 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book IV.
Of twining Lais melt your manhood down.
For from the colliquation of soft joys
How chang'd you rise! the ghost of what you was!
Languid, and melancholy, and gaunt, and wan;
Your veins exhausted, and your nerves unstrung.
Spoil'd of its balm and sprightly zest, the blood
Grows vapid phlegm; along the tender nerves
To each slight impulse tremblingly awake,
A subtle Fiend that mimics all the plagues,
Rapid and restless, springs from part to part.
The blooming honours of your youth are fallen;
Your vigour pines; your vital powers decay;
Diseases haunt you; and untimely Age
Creeps on: unsocial, impotent, and lewd.
Infatuate, impious epicure! to waste
The stores of pleasure, chearfulness, and health!
Infatuate all who make delight their trade,
And coy perdition every hour pursue.
Who pines with Love, or in lascivious flames
Consumes, is with his own consent undone;
He chuses to be wretched, to be mad;
And warn'd proceeds and wilful to his fate.
But there's a Passion, whole tempestuous sway
Tears up each virtue planted in the breast,
And, shakes to ruins proud philosophy.
For pale and trembling Anger rushes in.
With fault'ring speech, and eyes that wildly stare;
Fierce as the Tyger, madder than the seas,
Desperate, and aim'd with more than human strength.
How soon the calm, humane, and polish'd man,
Forgets compunction, and starts up a fiend!
Who pines in Love, or wastes with silent Cares,
Envy, or Ignominy, or tender Grief,
Slowly descends, and ling'ning to the shades.
But he whom Anger stings, drops, if he dies,
At once, and rushes apoplectic down;
Or a fierce fever hurries him to hell.
For,

Book IV. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 145
For, as the Body thro' unnumber'd strings
Reverbrates each vibration of the Soul;
As is ,the Passion, such is still the Pain
The Body feels; or chronic, or acute.
And oft a sudden storm at once o'erpowers.
The Life, or gives your Reason to the winds.
Such fates attend the rash alarm of Fear,
And sudden Grief, and Rage, and sudden Joy.
There are, mean time, to whom the boist'rous fit
Is health, and only sills the sails of life.
For where the Mind a torpid winter leads,
Wrapt in a body corpulant and cold,
And each clogg'd function lazily moves on;
A generous sally spurs the incumbent load,
Unlocks the bread, and gives a cordial glow.
But if your wrathful blood is apt to boil,
Or are your nerves too irritably strung;
Wave all Dispute; be cautious if you joke;
Keep Lent for ever; and forswear the bowl.
For one rash moment sends you to the shades,
Or shatters every hopeful scheme of life,
And gives to horror all your days to come.
Fate, arm'd with thunder, fire, and every plague
That ruins, tortures, or distracts mankind,
And makes the happy wretched in an hour,
O'erwhelms you not with woes so horrible
As your own wrath, nor gives more sudden blow
[wrong
While choler works, good friend, you may be
Distrust yourself, and sleep before you fight.
'Tis not too late to morrow to be brave;
If Honour bids, tomorrow kill or die.
But calm advice against a raging fit
Avails too little; and it tries the power
Of all that ever taught in Prose or Song,
To tame the Friend that sleeps a gentle Lamb,
And wakes a Lion. Unprovok’d and calm,
You

146 ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. Book IV.
You reason well, see as you ought to see,
And wonder at the madness of mankind;
Seiz'd with the common rage, you soon forget
The speculations of your wiser hours.
Beset the Furies of all deadly shapes,
Fierce and insidious, violent and slow;
With all that urge or lure us on the Fate;
What refuge shall we seek? what arms prepare?
Where Reason proves too weak, or void of wiles,
To cope with subtle or impetuous Powers,
I would invoke new Passions to your aid;
With indignation would extinguish Fear,
With Fear or generous Pity vanquish Rage,
And Love with Pride; and force to force oppose.
There is a Charm; a Power that sways the breast
Bids every Passion revel or be still;
Inspires with Rage, or all your Cares dissolves
Can sooth Distraction, and almost Despair.
That Power is Music; far beyond the stretch
Of those unmeaning warblers on our stage;
Those clumsy Heroes, those fat-headed gods,
Who move no Passion justly but Contempt;
Who, like our Dancers, light indeed and strong!
Do wond'rous feats, but never heard of grace.
The fault is ours; we bear those monstrous arts,
Good heaven! we praise them; we with loudest peals
Applaud the fool that highest lifts his heels;
And with insipid show of rapture, die
Of ideot notes, impertinently long.
But he the muse's laurel justly shares,
A Poet he, and touch'd with Heaven's own fire;
Who with bold rage or solemn pomp of sounds,
Inflames, exalts, and ravishes the soul;
Now tender, plantive, sweet almost to pain,
In Love dissolves you! now in sprightly strains
Breathes a gay rapture thro' your thrilling breast;
Or melts the heart with airs divinely sad;
Or

Book IV. ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH. 147
Or wakes to horror the tremendous strings.
Such was the bard, whose heavenly strains of old
Appeas'd the Fiend of melancholy Saul.
Such was, if old and heathen fame say true,
The man who bade the Theban domes ascend,
And tam'd the savage nations with his song;
And such the Thracian, whose harmonious lyre,
Tun'd to soft woe, made all the mountains weep;
Sooth'd even the inexorable powers of Hell,
And half redeem'd his lost Eurydice.
Music exalt each Joy, allays each Grief,
Expels Diseases, softens every Pain,
Subdues the rage of Poison and the Plague;
And hence the wife of ancient days ador'd
One Power of Physic, Melody, and Song.
FINIS.