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says little, thinks less, and does nothing at all, faith: but he's a man of great eftate, and values nobody.

Aim. A fportfman, I fuppofe? Bon. Yes, he's a man of pleasure; he plays at whift, aud fmokes his pipe eightand-forty hours together fometimes. Aim. truly!-and A fine sportsman, truly! — and married, you fay?

Bon. Ay; and to a curious woman, Sir, -But he's my landlord, and fo a man, you know, would not- Sir, my humble fervice to you. [Drinks.]-Tho' I value not a farthing what he can do to me; I pay him his rent at quarter-day; I have a good running trade; I have but one daughter, and I can give her matter for that.

but no

Aim. You're very happy, Mr. Boniface: pray what other company in town?

have you

Bon. A power of fine ladies; and then we have the French officers.

Aim. O that's right, you have a good many of those gentlemen: pray how do you like their company?

Bon. So well, as the faying is, that I could wish we had as many more of 'em. They're full of money, and pay double for every thing they have. They know, Sir, that we paid good round taxes for the making of 'em; and fo they are willing to reimburse us a little: one of 'em lodges in my houfe. [Bell rings.]-I beg your worship's pardon-I'll wait on you in half

a minute.

§ 23. Endeavour to please, and you can

fcarcely fail to please.

The means of pleafing vary according to time, place, and perfon; but the general rule is the trite one. Endeavour to please, and you will infallibly pleafe to a certain degree; conftantly fhew a defire to pleafe, and you will engage people's felf-love in your intereft; a moft powerful advocate. This, as indeed almost every thing elfe, depends on attention.

Be therefore attentive to the most trifling thing that paffes where you are; have, as the vulgar phrafe is, your eyes and your ears always about you. It is a very foolifh, though a very common faying, "I

really did not mind it," or, " I was thinking of quite another thing at that "time." The proper anfwer to fuch ingenious excufes, and which admits of no reply, is, Why did you not mind it? you was prefent when it was faid or done. Oh!

but you may fay, you was thinking of quite another thing: if fo, why was you not in quite another place proper for that important other thing, which you fay you was thinking of? But you will fay perhaps, that the company was fo filly, that it did not deferve your attention: that, I am fure, is the faying of a filly man; for a man of fenfe knows that there is no company fo filly, that fome ufe may not be made of it by attention.

This is

Let your addrefs, when you first come into company, be modeft, but without the leaft bashfulness or theepishness; steady, without impudence; and unembarraffed, as if you were in your own room. a difficult point to hit, and therefore deferves great attention; nothing but a long ufage in the world, and in the best company, can poffibly give it.

A young man, without knowledge of the world, when he first goes into a fashionable company, where most are his fuperiors, is commonly either annihilated by bashfulness, or, if he rouses and lafhes himfelf up to what he only thinks a modeft affurance, he runs into impudence and abfurdity, and confequently offends instead of pleafing. Have always, as much as you can, that gentlenefs of manners, which never fails to make favourable impreffions, provided it be equally free from an infipid fmile, or a pert fmirk.

Carefully avoid an argumentative and difputative turn, which too many people have, and fome even value themselves upon, in company; and, when your opinion differs from others, maintain it only with modefty, calmnefs, and gentleness; but never be eager, loud, or clamorous; and, when you find your antagonist beginning to grow warm, put an end to the difpute by fome genteel ftroke of humour. For, take it for granted, if the two best friends in the world difpute with eagerness upon the most trifling fubject imaginable, they will, for the time, find a momentary alienation from each other. Difputes upon any fubject are a fort of trial of the understanding, and must end in the mortification of one or other of the difputants. hand, I am far from meaning that you fhould give an univerfal affent to all that you hear faid in company; fuch an affent would be mean, and in fome cafes criminal; but blame with indulgence, and correct with gentleness.

On the other

Always look people in the face when you fpeak to them; the not doing it is thought

to

to imply confcious guilt; befides that, you lofe the advantage of obferving by their countenances, what impreffion your difcourfe makes upon them. In order to know people's real fentiments, I truft much more to my eyes than to my ears; for they can fay whatever they have a mind I fhould hear; but they can feldom help looking what they have no intention that I fhould

know,

If you have not command enough over yourself to conquer your humours, as I am fure every rational creature may have, never go into company while the fit of illhumour is upon you. Instead of company's diverting you in thofe moments, you will difpleafe, and probably fhock them; and you will part worse friends than you met: but whenever you find in yourfelf a dif pofition to fullennefs, contradiction, or teftinefs, it will be in vain to feek for a cure abroad. Stay at home; let your humour ferment and work itself off. Cheerfulness and good-humour are of all qualifications the most amiable in company; for, though they do not neceffarily imply good-nature and good-breeding, they reprefent them, at leaft, very well, and that is all that is required in mixt company.

I have indeed known fome very ill-natured people, who were very good-humoured in company; but I never knew any one generally ill-humoured in company, who was not effentially ill-natured. When there is no malevolence in the heart, there is always a cheerfulness and eafe in the countenance and manners. By good humour and cheerfulness, I am far from meaning noify mirth and loud peals of laughter, which are the diftinguishing characteristics. of the vulgar and of the ill-bred, whofe mirth is a kind of ftorm. Obferve it, the vulgar often laugh, but never smile; whereas, well-bred people often fmile, but feldom laugh. A witty thing never excited laughter; it pleafes only the mind, and never diftorts the countenance: a glaring abfurdity, a blunder, a filly accident, and thofe things that are generally called comical, may excite a laugh, though never a loud nor a long one, among well-bred people.

Sudden paffion is called short-lived madnefs: it is a madness indeed, but the fits of it return fo often in choleric people, that it may well be called a continual madnefs. Should you happen to be of this unfortunate difpofition, make it your conftant Atudy to subdue, or, at leaft, to check it;

when you find your choler rifing, refolv neither to fpeak to, nor answer the perfon who excites it; but ftay till you find it fubfiding, and then fpeak deliberately. Endeavour to be cool and fteady upon all occafions; the advantages of fuch a fteady calmnefs are innumerable, and would be too tedious to relate. It may be acquired by care and reflection; if it could not, that reafon which diftinguishes men from brutes would be given us to very little purpose: as a proof of this, I never faw, and scarcely ever heard of a Quaker in a paffion. In truth, there is in that fect a decorum and decency, and an amiable fimplicity, that I know in no other. Chefterfield.

§ 24. A Dialogue between M. APICIUS and DARTENEUF.

Darteneuf. Alas! poor Apicius-I pity thee much, for not having lived in my age and my country. How many good difhes have I eat in England, that were unknown at Rome in thy days!

Apicius. Keep your pity for yourselfhow many good dishes have I eat in Rome, the knowledge of which has been loft in thefe latter degenerate days! the fat paps of a fow, the livers of fcari, the brains of phenicopters, and the tripotanum, which confifted of three forts of fish for which you have no names, the lupus marinus, the myxo, and the murænus,

Darteneuf. I thought the muræna had been our lamprey. We have excellent ones in the Severn.

Apicius. No:-the muræna was a faltwater fish, and kept in ponds into which the fea was admitted.

Darteneuf. Why then I dare fay our lampreys are better. Did you ever eat any of them potted or ftewed?

Apicius. I was never in Britain. Your country then was too barbarous for me to go thither. I fhould have been afraid that the Britons would have eat me.

Darteneuf. I am forry for you, very forry: for if you never were in Britain, you never eat the best oysters in the whole world.

Apicius. Pardon me, Sir, Sandyour wich oysters were brought to Rome in my time.

Darteneuf. They could not be fresh: they were good for nothing there:- You fhould have come to Sandwich to eat them: it is a fhame for you that you did not. An epicure talk of danger when he is in fearch of a dainty! did not Leander swim

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you

Darteneuf. There was fome fenfe in that: by why did you not alfo make a voyage to Sandwich? Had tafted thofe oyfters in their perfection, you would never have come back: you would have eat till you burst.

Apicius. I wish I had :-It would have been better than poifoning myself, as I did, becaufe, when I came to make up my accounts, I found I had not much above the poor fum of fourfcore thoufand pounds left, which would not afford me a table to keep me from ftarving.

Darteneuf. Afum of fourfcore thoufand pounds not keep you from starving! would I had had it! I should not have spent it in twenty years, though I had kept the beft table in London, fuppofing I had made no other expence.

Apicius. Alas, poor man! this fhews that you English have no idea of the lux. ury that reigned in our tables. Before I died, I had spent in my kitchen 807,2917. 135. 4d.

Darteneuf. I do not believe a word of it: there is an error in the account.

Apicius. Why, the establishment of Lucullus for his fuppers in the Apollo, I mean for every fupper he eat in the room which he called by that name, was 5000 drachms, which is in your money 16141.

11 s. 8 d.

Darteneuf. Would I had fupped with him there! But is there no blunder in thefe calculations?

Apicius. Afk your learned men that.-I count as they tell me.-But perhaps you may think that these feafts were only made by great men, like Lucullus, who had plundered all Afia to help him in his houfekeeping. What will you fay when I tell you, that the player fopus had one difh that coft him 6000 feftertia, that is, 4843. 40s. English.

Darteneuf. What will I fay! why, that I pity poor Cibber and Booth; and that, if I had known this when I was alive, I fhould

have hanged myself for vexation that I did not live in those days.

Apicius. Well you might, well you might. -You do not know what eating is. You never could know it. Nothing less than the wealth of the Roman empire is fufficient to enable a man to keep a good table. Our players were richer by far than

your princes.

Darteneuf. Oh that I had but lived in the bleffed reign of Caligula, or of Vitellius, or of Heliogabalus, and had been admitted to the honour of dining with their flaves!

Apicius. Ay, there you touch me. - I am miferable that I died before their good times. They carried the glories of their table much farther than the beft eaters of the age that I lived in. Vitellius fpent in eating and drinking, within one year, what would amount in your money to above feven millions two hundred thousand pounds. He told me fo himself in a converfation I had with him not long ago. And the others you mentioned did not fall fhort of his royal magnificence.

Darteneuf. These indeed were great princes. But what affects me most is the difh of that player, that d――d fellow Efopus. I cannot bear to think of his having lived fo much better than I. Pray, of what ingredients might the dish he paid fo much for confift?

Apicius. Chiefly of finging birds. It was that which fo greatly enhanced the price.,

Darteneuf. Of finging birds! choak him-I never eat but one, which I ftole from a lady of my acquaintance, and all London was in an uproar about it, as if I had ftolen and roafted a child. But, upon recollection, I begin to doubt whether I have fo much reafon to envy Æfopus; for the finging bird which I eat was no better in its tafte than a fat lark or a thrush: it was not fo good as a wheatear or becafigue; and therefore I fufpect that all the luxury you have bragged of was nothing but vanity and foolish expence. It was like that of the fon of fopus, who diffolved pearls in vinegar, and drank them at fupper. I will be d-d, if a haunch of venifon, and my favourite ham-pye, were not much better dishes than any at the table of Vitellius himself. I do not find that you had ever any good foups, without which no man of talte can poffibly dine. The rabbits in Italy are not fit to eat; and what is better than the wing of one of our Eng3 G4

lifh

lith wild rabbits? I have been told that
you had no turkies. The mutton in Italy
is very ill-flavoured; and as for
your boars
roafted whole, I defpife them; they were
only fit to be ferved up to the mob at a
corporation feaft, or election dinner. A
fmall barbecued hog is worth a hundred
of them; and a good collar of Shrewsbury
brawn is a much better difh.

Apicius. If you had fome kinds of meat that we wanted, yet our cookery muft have been greatly fuperior to yours. Our cooks were to excellent, that they could give to hog's flesh the taste of all other meats.

Darteneuf. I fhould not have liked their d-d imitations. You might as easily have impofed on a good connoiffeur the copy of a fine picture for the original. Our cooks, on the contrary, give to all other meats a rich flavour of bacon, without destroying that which makes the diftinction of one from another. I have not the least doubt that out effence of hams is a much better fauce than any that ever was used by the ancients. We have a hundred ragouts, the compofition of which exceeds all defcription. Had yours been as good, you could not have lolled, as you did, upon couches, while you were eating; they wou'd have made you fit up and attend to your business. Then you had a cuftom of hearing things read to you while you were at fupper. This fhews you were not fo well entertained as we are with our meat. For my own part, when I was at table, I could mind nothing elfe: I neither heard, faw, nor fpoke: I only fmelt and tafted. But the worst of all is, that you had no wine fit to be named with good claret or Burgundy, or Champagne, or old hock, or Tokay. You boafted much of your Falernam; but I have tafted the Lachrymæ Chrifti, and other wines that grow upon the fame coaft, not one of which would I drink above a glass or two of if you would give me the kingdom of Naples. You boiled your wines, and mixed water with them, which fhews that in themselves they were not fit to drink.

Apicius. I am afraid you beat us in wines, not to mention your cyder, perry, and beer, of all which I have heard great fame from fome English with whom I have talked; and their report has been confirmed by the teftimony of their neighbours who have travelled into England. Wonderful things have been alfo faid to me of a liquor called punch.

Darteneuf. Ay-to have died without

There is

tafting that is unhappy indeed!
rum-punch and arrack-punch; it is hard
to fay which is beft: but Jupiter would
have given his nectar for either of them,
upon my word and honour.

Apicius. The thought of it puts me into a fever with thirst. From whence do you get your arrack and your rum?

Darteneuf. Why, from the East and West Indies, which you knew nothing of. That is enough to decide the difpute. Your trade to the East Indies was very far fhort of what we carry on, and the West Indies were not discovered. What a new world

of good things for eating and drinking has Columbus opened to us! Think of that, and defpair.

Apicius. I cannot indeed but lament my ill fate, that America was not found before I was born. It tortures me when I hear of chocolate, pine-apples, and twenty other fine meats or fine fruits produced there, which I have never tafted. What an advantage it is to you, that all your sweetmeats, tarts, cakes, and other delicacies of that nature, are fweetened with fugar inftead of honey, which we were obliged to make ufe of for want of that plant! but what grieves me moft is, that I never eat a turtle; they tell me that it is abfolutely the best of all foods.

Darieneuf. Yes, I have heard the Americans fay fo-but I never eat any; for, in my time, they were not brought over to England.

Apicius. Never eat any turtle! how didst thou dare to accufe me of not going to Sandwich to eat oyfters, and didst not thyfelf take a trip to America to riot on turtles? but know, wretched man, that I am informed they are now as plentiful in England as fturgeon. There are turtleboats that go regularly to London and Bristol from the West Indies. I have just feen a fat alderman, who died in London laft week of a furfeit he got at a turtle feast in that city.

Darteneuf, What does he fay? Does he tell you that turtle is better than venifon?

Apicius. He fays there was a haunch of venifon untouched, while every mouth was employed on the turtle; that he ate till he fell asleep in his chair; and, that the food was fo wholefome he thould not have died, if he had not unluckily caught cold in his fleep, which stopped his perfpiration, and hurt his digeftion.

Darteneuf.. Alas! how imperfect is hu

man

man felicity! I lived in an age when the pleasure of eating was thought to be carried to its highest perfection in England and France; and yet a turtle feaft is a novelty to me! Would it be impoffible, do you think, to obtain leave from Pluto of going back for one day, juft to tafte of that food? I would promile to kill myself by the quantity I would eat before the next morning.

Apicius. You have forgot, Sir, that you have no body: that which you had has been rotten a great while ago; and you can never return to the earth with another, unless Pythagoras carries you thither to animate that of a hog. But comfort yourself, that, as you have eat dainties which I never tafted, fo the next generation will eat some unknown to the present. New discoveries will be made, and new delicacies brought from other parts of the world. We must both be philofophers. We must be thankful for the good things we have had, and not grudge others better, if they fall to their fhare. Confider that, after all, we could but have eat as much as our ftomachs would hold, and that we did every day of our lives.-But fee, who comes hither? I think it is Mercury.

Mercury. Gentlemen, I must tell you that I have stood near you invifible, and heard your difcourfe; a privilege which we deities ufe when we pleafe. Attend therefore to a difcovery which I fhall make to you, relating to the fubject upon which you were talking. I know two men, one of whom lived in ancient, and the other in modern times, that had more pleasure in eating than either of you ever had in your

lives.

Apicius. One of thefe, I prefume, was a Sybarite, and the other a French gentleman fettled in the West Indies.

Mercury. No; one was a Spartan foldier, and the other an English farmer.-I fee you both look aftonished; but what I tell you is truth. The foldier never eat his black broth till the exercises, to which by their difcipline the Spartan troops were obliged, had got him fuch an appetite, that he could have gnawed a bone like a dog. The farmer was out at the tail of his plough, or fome other wholesome labour, from morning till night; and when he came home his wife dreffed him a piece of good beef, or a fine barn-door fowl and a pudding, for his dinner, which he eat much more ravenously, and confequently with a great deal more relish and pleasure, than

you did your tripotanum or your ham- -pye. Your ftomachs were always foovercharged, that I question if ever you felt real hunger, or eat one meal in twenty years without forcing your appetites, which makes all things infipid. I tell you therefore again, that the foldier and the farmer had much more of the joy of eating than you.

Darteneuf. This is more mortifying than not to have shared a turtle feaft. I

fear indeed we have been in quite a wrong fyftem, and never had any true notions of pleasure.

Apicius. It is a fad thing not to know what good living is before one is dead. I with, Mercury, you had taught me your art of cookery in my life-time, or held your tongue about it here.

Dialogues of the Dead.

§ 25. Scene between IAGO and CASSIO, in which CASSI0 regrets his Folly in getting drunk.

lago. What are you hurt, Lieute

nant?

Caf.
Iago.

Paft all furgery.
Marry, Heav'n forbid !

Caf. Reputation, reputation, reputation! Oh I have loft my reputation! I have loft the immortal part of myfelf, and what remains is beftial. My reputation!. Iago, my reputation

lago. As I am an honeft man, I thought you had received fome bodily wound: there is more fenfe in that, than in reputation. Reputation is an idle and moft falfe impofition: cft got without meri:, and loft without deferving. What, man!-there are ways to recover the general again. Sue to him, and he's your's.

Caf. I will rather fue to be defpis'd. --Drunk! and fquabble! fwagger! fwear! and difcourfe fuftian with one's own fhadow! Oh thou invincible spirit of wine! if thou haft no name to be known by, let us call thee Devil.

Iago. What was he that you followed with your fword? what had he done to you?

Caf. I know not. Iago. Is't poffible?

Caf. I remember a mafs of things, but nothing diftinctly; a quarrel, but nothing wherefore. Oh, that men fhould put an enemy in their mouths to fteal away their brains! that we should with joy, pleasance, revel, and applaufe, transform ourselves into beafts!

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