Some with high forage, and luxuriant ease, Indulge the veteran ox; but wiser thou, From the bald mountain or the barren downs, Expect the focks 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 cranim'd. Not all the culinary arts can tame, To wholesome food, the abominable growth Of reft 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 flippery wiles. The woo'd embrace
Chuse leaner vianer viands, ye whose jovial make Too fast the gunimy nutriment imbibes: Chufe fober meals; and rouse to active life Your cumbrous clay; nor on th' infeebling down, Irresolute, protract the morning hours. But let the man whose bones are thinly clad, With chearful ease and fucculent repast Improve his flender habit. Each extreme From the blest incan of sanity departs.
Taught by experience soon you may difcern What pleases, what offends. Avoid the cates That lull the ficken'd appetite too long; Or heave with fev'rish fluthings all the face, Burn in the palms, and parch the roughning tongue; Or much diminish or too much increase 'Th' expence, which nature's wife economy, Without or waste or avarice, maintains.
He justly observes that every creature, except man, is directed by instinct to its proper aliment. This is so true, that their inftinct has often been of the utmost consequence to those who have failed in quest of countries undiscover'd, where they never attempt to eat any fruits which the
birds have not fed on. But man, voluptuous man, says our author, feeds with all the commoners of nature, and
Is by superior faculties misled; Mifled 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 wifer will the jaded appetite ! Is this for pleasure? Learn a juster talte; And know that temperance is true luxury.
Would you long the sweets of health enjoy
Or husband pleasure; at one impious meal Exhaust not half the bounties of the year, Of every 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 tafte With caution fruits you never tried before. For want of use the kindest aliment Sometimes offends; while custom tames the rage Of poison to mild amity with life.
He then points out the mischiefs that attend eating to excess, even of any aliment, and advises us to observe the calls of nature, but not so as to eat too freely after long abstinence.
When hunger calls, obey; nor often wait 'Till hunger sharpen to corrofive pain : For the keen appetite will feaft beyond What nature well can bear; and one extreme Ne'er without danger meets its own reverse. Too greedily th' exhausted veins absorb The recent chyle, and load enfeebled powers Oft to th' extinction of the vital flame. To the pale cities, by the firm-fet fiege And fainine humbled, may this verse be borne; And hear, ye hardiest sons that Albion breeds Long toss'd and famish'd on the wintry main;
The war shook off, or hospitable shore Attain'd, with temperance bear the shock of joy; Nor crown with festive rites th' auspicious day; Such feaft might prove more fatal than the waves, Than war or famine.
But tho' the extremes of eating, or of fafting, are to be avoided, it is imprudent to confine the stomach always to the same exact portion; for, as he observes,
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.
He then speaks of the regimen necessary to be observed in the several seasons of the year, and recommends in the summer the tender vegetable brood, with the cool moist viands of the dairy; but tells us that
Pale humid winter loves the generous board, The male 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 th' invigorated 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 learn, with wife humanity, to check The luft of blood. Now pregnant earth commits A various offspring to th' indulgent sky: Now bounteous nature feeds with lavish hand The prone creation; yields what once fuffic'd
Their dainty sovereign, when the world was young; Ere yet the barb'rous thirst of blood had seiz'd The human breast. Each rolling month matures The food that suits it most, so does each clime.
This passage is, I think, very beautiful, as also is the following introduction to his precepts for drinking water, and the subsequent lines concerning the choice, and proper use of that element.
Now come, ye Naiads, to the fountains lead; Now let me wander thro' your gelid reign. I burn to view th' enthusiastic wilds By mortal else untrod. I hear the din Of waters thundring o'er the ruin'd cliffs. With holy reverence 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 founding 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.
The task remains to fing Your gifts, (so Paon, so the powers of health Command) to praise your crystal 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. Oh! could those worthies from the world of Gods Return to visit their degenerate fons,
How would they scorn the joys of modern time, With all our art and toil improv'd to pain!
Learn temperance, friends; and hear without disdain The choice of water. Thus the * Coan sage Opin'd, and thus the learn'd of ev'ry school. What least of foreign principles partakes Is best: The lightest then; what bears the touch Of fire the least, and soonest mounts in air; The most infipid; the most void of smell. Such the rude mountain from his horrid sides Pours down; such waters in the fandy vale For ever boil, alike of winter frosts And summer's heat secure.
And this subject of water-drinking he concludes with some observations, on the proper use of other liquors, which are drawn from nature and experience. His reflection also on the nature of fermented liquors, and their tendency to resist putrefaction, and of consequence to retard digeftion, is very just and philofophical.
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' infipid stream; tho' golden Ceres yields A more voluptuous, a more sprightly draught; Perhaps more active. Wine unmix'd, and all The gluey floods that from the vex'd abyss Of fermentation spring; with spirit fraught, And furious with intoxicating fire, Retard concoction, and preferve unthaw'd Th' embody'd mass. You see what countless years, Embalm'd in fiery quintescence of wine, The puny wonders of the reptile world, Maintain their texture, and unchang'd remain.
Mean time, I would not always dread the bowl, Nor every trespass shun. The feverish strife, Rous'd by the rare debauch, subdues, expels The loit'ring crudities that burthen life; And, like a torrent full and rapid, clears
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