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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,

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.

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!

L

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

* Hippocrates.

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