The only common-places of his memory are his meals;
and if you ask him at what time an event happened, he considers whether
he heard it after a dinner of turbot or venison. He knows, indeed, that
those who value themselves upon sense, learning, or piety, speak of him
with contempt; but he considers them as wretches, envious or ignorant,
who do not know his happiness, or wish to supplant him; and declares to
his friends, that he is fully satisfied with his own conduct, since he
has fed every day on twenty dishes, and yet doubled his estate.
No. 207. TUESDAY, MARCH 10, 1752.
_Solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne
Peccet ad extremum ridendus.--_ HOR. Lib. i. Ep. i. 8.
The voice of reason cries with winning force,
Loose from the rapid car your aged horse,
Lest, in the race derided, left behind,
He drag his jaded limbs, and burst his wind. FRANCIS.
Such is the emptiness of human enjoyment, that we are always impatient
of the present. Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by
disgust; and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage
may be applied to every other course of life, that its two days of
happiness are the first and the last.
Few moments are more pleasing than those in which the mind is concerting
measures for a new undertaking.
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