It
is the great privilege of poverty to be happy unenvied, to be healthful
without physick, and secure without a guard; to obtain from the bounty
of nature, what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the
help of artists and attendants, of flatterers and spies.
But it will be found upon a nearer view, that they who extol the
happiness of poverty, do not mean the same state with those who deplore
its miseries. Poets have their imaginations filled with ideas of
magnificence; and being accustomed to contemplate the downfall of
empires, or to contrive forms of lamentations, for monarchs in distress,
rank all the classes of mankind in a state of poverty, who make no
approaches to the dignity of crowns. To be poor, in the epick language,
is only not to command the wealth of nations, nor to have fleets and
armies in pay.
Vanity has perhaps contributed to this impropriety of style. He that
wishes to become a philosopher at a cheap rate, easily gratifies his
ambition by submitting to poverty when he does not feel it, and by
boasting his contempt of riches when he has already more than he enjoys.
He who would shew the extent of his views, and grandeur of his
conceptions, or discover his acquaintance with splendour and
magnificence, may talk like Cowley, of an humble station and quiet
obscurity, of the paucity of nature's wants, and the inconveniencies of
superfluity, and at last, like him, limit his desires to five hundred
pounds a year; a fortune, indeed, not exuberant, when we compare it with
the expenses of pride and luxury, but to which it little becomes a
philosopher to affix the name of poverty, since no man can, with any
propriety, be termed poor, who does not see the greater part of mankind
richer than himself.
Pages:
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643