Complete Works of Edward Young, page 101
Eusebius, though liberal to the demands of nature, rank and duty, starves vice, caprice, and folly. These (the great cormorants of gold) he sends begging to their doors; they, as old intimates, welcome and embrace them all; and if they have not thrice the fortune of Eusebius, must soon be beggars themselves. While he, with one half they sink in a debauch, lifts beggars (beggars, I mean, from fortune, not from folly) into the real comforts of life.
He, too, has his amusements; but not such as deaden, but revive; such as recover the relaxed tone of application, re-animate to new effort; and thus are essential, though pausing, parts of noble, well-judging industry. He starts not at a masquerade; nor thinks cards the books of the devil. But thinks all our diversions like long books, that were better epitomized; or, like the books of the Sybil, which, as they were lessened in number, rose in their price.
He, as well as they, has his parks, gardens, grottoes, cascades, statues, paintings, &c., but enjoys them more; not because his are better than theirs, but because he is better than they. His paintings have beauties unborrowed from the pencil; and his statues in his eyes appear, like Pygmalion’s, to live; though mere marble in theirs. His all-animating joy within gives graces to art and smiles to nature, invisible to common eyes. Objects of sense and imagination, for their greater power of pleasing, are indebted to the goodness of his heart For as the sun is itself the most glorious of objects, and makes all others shine, so virtue itself is the greatest of pleasures, and of all other pleasures redoubles the delight.
He, and they, though they both value riches, yet entertain widely different opinions about them. He considers a great fortune as his being put, by a kind Providence, into its honourable commission for doing much good. They consider it as a privilege, or at least as an excuse, for the contrary. He, surveying his ample arcades and lofty domes, rejoices more in what benefits others, than what aggrandizes himself; rejoices more in considering how many mouths he has fed, than in considering how many eyes he has drawn. He triumphs in reflecting to what numbers he has been enabled, by the Divine indulgence, to turn, without a miracle, those stones into bread. They, from their huge Babel-like buildings, contract a Babel-like pride, which turns, with regard to those beneath them, their hearts into stone. Such men, in effect, build downward, are the more ignoble (that is, the lower) for their height.
He thinks that heaven’s rich donations imply in them some transfer to the public: they think they imply a transfer of the public homage to themselves. Instead of imagining his grandeur to be a demand on the public for its homage, he looks on it as the public’s demand on him for bounty and patronage, of which he has erected such proud promises; and by them raised so just an expectation. He thinks that their riches (how strangely soever it may sound) run them in debt; and that not to benefit, is to defraud.
His humility is equal to his magnificence; and as magnificence with humility speaks more regard for others than himself, it escapes envy, and insures general applause. Their pride defeats their magnificence, and robs it of that applause which is its single aim; for it is a great authority which tells us, that “pride is a tree which eats up its own fruit.”
He knows (what they consider not) that splendid superiorities cannot be neutral, with regard to the characters of those who possess them; that, therefore, men possess them at their peril; that they must degrade, if they do not exalt, them; that Heaven, which, in spite of different ranks, levels happiness, designed it as the peculiar curse of the great (if they deserve it) to be lessened by grandeur, and illustriously disgraced; that if apes and crocodiles, men hurtful or ridiculous, inhabit superb piles, they must despair of being worshipped; though but through vain and keen appetite for public incense, they never had been built.
You see in how many points these men fall short of Eusebius in pleasure from expense; which, notwithstanding, is an article on which they pique themselves not a little. And give me leave to subjoin one more particular, which will affect them less than the former, though it ought to affect them most of all: his wealth has subterranean channels; blesses unseen, and costs the relieved neither blushes nor thanks. Not one prison have they opened; not one tear have they dried, which might speak in their favour when their own begin to flow. The sorrows we have relieved are the surest support in our own. The best that can be said of their expenses, is, that they are an unwilling encomium on those of your friend.
Sensual, of all our pleasures, are the meanest; how low must a soul celestial stoop for them! Yet these, our thirsty spunges of sensuality, who suck up every drop of it, in or out of their way, though they take up the dirt with it, prefer to all the rest. And in these, if in any, they will venture to dispute his superiority. But for reasons, some already mentioned, more most obvious, he is their superior nor in these. In pleasures intellectual, how far are they behind him! and then the moral, they are all his own. It is one of their minute and meagre pleasures, professedly to decline them: and these are the supreme. Moral pleasures, though faintly, (in this imperfect state,) yet truly, taste of heaven; and, what is more, insure that heaven of which they taste. And what an inestimable superiority is this! He that can think of death undismayed,
Extremumque diem vitae inter munera ponit, — Lu.
has more enjoyment, even in distress, than they in triumph, with every vain amusement turning reason out of doors, lest it should wound them with one whisper of the grave. On how many melancholy occasions in life should we be glad of an asylum to which to fly! How should we be transported with a thought that had infallible comfort in it! And that thought can be but one; and that one, it is the constant aim, labour, nay, boast, of these wise men to destroy.
Eusebius’s love of pleasure is equal to theirs: whence, then, this vast inequality of happiness? He commands his pleasures, some he cultivates, some admits cautiously, others sends blushing away. Their pleasures domineer, scout them away on vilest errands; bid them throw their patrimony in the dirt of prostitution or debauch; or dungeon them in midnight dens of fraud and destruction; and command them to whirl it away with a losing card, or stamp it to nothing with a desperate dye. What scaffolds of fatal execution are those guilty boards, where moments determine on fortunes for life, and rage and distraction threaten ruin eternal?
From this thraldom to their pleasures, this wretched impotence of heart, it is that while he has but one, and that a most gracious, Master, they have as many tyrants as there are follies and vices in the world. Ten times a day they change their Pharaoh: and why? Because his wages are so poor. They have it, indeed, in their power to change their master, but not to break their chain.
The Romans once pretended that they had a golden shield which fell from heaven: to secure it from theft, they laid it up among eleven others made of brass. This expedient had been unnecessary against their wisdom. They run away by choice with the eleven counterfeits; with a multitude of false ineffectual pleasures, and leave the celestial, as of no value, to men of less understanding. Virtue, the delight of Eusebius, is a celestial shield against every evil of human life. Their pleasures are rather swords, that pierce them through with many sorrows.
The contrast how strong! Their pleasures die in fruition, and are remembered with regret. His survive the present actual enjoyment, and are as sweet in retrospect as in hand. Theirs lessen on repetition, his increase. Theirs create and aggravate calamities; his avert most, and alleviate the rest. Theirs hasten death, and heighten its horror: his owe their perfection to his final hour, after having heightened and lengthened all the blessings of life. And what a wretch is that happiness, and what an idiot that wisdom, that can offer no comfort in the days of darkness, and the hours of death! In a word, their wretched joys flourish like dismal weeping willows watered by a ditch; poor the figure they make; flux and obscene the ground on which they stand: his flourish like cedars of Libanus from the fountains of heaven, and are rooted in a rock; the rock of his salvation.
It is this superior ground on which he stands which imparts that inimitable sweetness of air, aspect, and deportment, which marks him, among multitudes of the gayest, for the gay. They, like things gilt, have much to show, much more to hide, are all darkness within. He, like a diamond, is transparent, and shines at heart He looks as if virtue, according to the wish of some sages, was at last become visible, and shone through him; in person, not precept, making a visit to mankind, and man is mended by looking on him.
Now please, sir, to observe to what an astonishing degree that intellectual darkness, mentioned in my former letter, prevails in these men, that would outshine all the world. What is their chief boast? Why this, that they make the most of this life. Whereas the very fundamental difference between them and Eusebius is, that they make nothing of this world, because they design to make their all of it. He makes much of this world, because he holds it as little; because ever having the sentiments, without the terrors, of a death-bed, he never cuts off this life from the thoughts of the next; but sees his whole existence in one unbroken thread extended before him.
But, before I dismiss your friend Eusebius, (though he has made you a very long visit,)? must take notice of one particular more. These gentlemen pique themselves on their epitome of all virtue and religion, benevolence: if they had it, it would confute most I have said, and make them very happy; for it may stand as a general maxim, that men are happy in proportion to their good-will; nor is it strange, that to the greatest duty should, by nature, belong the greatest reward. But their title to this virtue is not clear. The reason they so loudly pretend to it is, because they know they have it not. The weakest side of a citadel is to be defended most. Eusebius, on his principles, must have universal good-will. Self-love obliges him to it, and his own happy state of mind inclines him the same way: for all are most kind to others, when most easy and pleased with themselves. On their principles, that this world is all, or, at least, all they will concern themselves about, self-love obliges them to the contrary; and their uneasiness in themselves seconds that obligation: so that you may as well expect to find an angel among the dissolute as a friend. And, indeed, can any expect that they should love them better than their own souls? Yet that would they do, if they cared for them at all. But, instead of endeavouring to prove what needs no proof, I shall present you with the picture of one of these great lovers of all mankind, if you will promise not to cut his throat; which picture, better than a Demosthenes, will prove my point. You will know whom I mean when I tell you, that he is enamoured of the charms, and deep in the mysteries, of play. That is, he is so fond of riches, (which a good judge tells us, Nemo bonus unquam concupivit [Sallust]) of riches is he so over-fond, that he is quite miserable if denied a daily chance of being stripped to beggary. Greater professions of friendship can no man make than this arch-promiser: greater proofs of the contrary can no man give. He never did a favour that proved barren to his own designs, but he sent a curse after it. All his kindnesses are artificial flies; if nothing is caught, they are pocketed again. “Hook him, or hang him,” is a favourite maxim of his own coining. He smiles, indeed, with great complacency on a crowded levee of devoted friends, with no less than on a hand of good cards. And his hope from both is just the same; that is, so to play them off as to win his game. That done, if interest or humour bids, he throws them aside as a foul pack, and calls for new, to shuffle, and cheat, and play tricks with, as before. He considers fools as trumps, with which he is sure to win. If there are no fools to be taken in, he makes a pretty good hand of it with a knave of the right suit. If he is so unlucky as not to be blessed with either, he gives out, and, for that time, plays no more: for, without a good hand, a bad heart is insupportable. But prosperity soothes remorse, and lays conscience asleep. This is one who knows the world; which generally means, one that knows not God. He never thought of that great, final stake, with regard to which he that honestly but desires it is sure to win; and he that plays foul the most dexterously, is sure to be undone. Such is Avidienus, such is that good man, who, as freely as eat his meal, could lay down his life for his friend.
But, in excuse for such men, I must own that, for such as place their all here, there can be no shadow of social happiness, but from deceiving, or being deceived. From deceiving, and so finding some account in their villany; or from being deceived, and so finding some account in their folly. For real friendship amongst them is impossible: and, indeed, to hope a friend in any man that is not truly his own friend, is absurd. From this account it is evident, that the chief fountain of happiness is dried up in their hearts.
A wretch, almost smothered with all the reputed means of happiness, would of all objects be the most ridiculous, were it not the most melancholy too. Diogenes went about the city of Athens begging to the statues; being asked the reason, he said, “He was learning to bear a repulse.” These gentlemen should learn the same lesson; no statue can be deafer than most of their pursuits, when they ask real pleasure of them.
These are the men, who, while Providence lays the reins of free-will on their wanton necks, rush headlong into even unimportunate temptations. But when it shall put its hook in their nose, and its bridle in their jaws; when it shall drag them into the condition of your unhappy friend; or, worse, when the tattered, convulsed body shall be shaking out an unwilling soul, loath to leave it for a still worse habitation; then, O what a change! It places full before me the last hours of that noble youth I mentioned above: last hours full of anguish! how fit to be remembered by those that wish peace to their own!
This is the funeral to which, in my first letter, I promised to invite your sister Sempronia, and her gay admirers; Sempronia, who delights psallere et cantare elegantius quam necesse est probae. And what invitation more kind than that for which she may thank me for ever, when other entertainments end? If they have their wine, this has its nectar; its cup of salvation, pressed from that Vine whose leaves heal the nations, and whose swelling clusters teem with eternal bliss. Funeral solemnities are more for the sake of the living than the dead. What a trifle that honour they receive from them, to the benefit we may reap from that affecting scene!
O, sir, how affecting! It is still before my eyes. That wretched youth dies again! Again I am smitten with his death. It wounds me even in remembrance: what, then, the scene itself! No words can paint it; no time efface it: I meet it in my dreams; I shall bear it to my grave.
I am about to represent to you the last hours of a person of high birth and high spirit; of great parts and strong passions, every way accomplished, nor least in iniquity. His unkind treatment was the death of a most amiable wife; and his great extravagance, in effect, disinherited his only child.
But to my point. The dead-bed of a profligate is next in horror to that abyss to which it leads. It has the most of hell that is visible on earth. And he that has seen it, has more than faith to confirm him in his creed. I see it now; for who can forget it? Are there in it no flames and furies? — You know not, then, what a scared imagination can figure, what a guilty heart can feel. How dismal is it! The two great enemies of soul and body, sickness and sin, sink and confound his friends, silence and darken the shocking scene. Sickness excludes the light of heaven; and sin, its blessed hope. O double darkness! more than Egyptian! acutely to be felt!
How unlike those illuminated revels of which he was the soul! Did this poor, pallid, scarce-animated mass dictate in the cabinet of pleasure, pronounce the fashion, and teach the gayest to be gay? Are these the trophies of his Paphian conquests? these the triumphs to be bought with heaven? Is this he who smote all their hearts with envy at his pre-eminence in guilt? See how he lies a sad, deserted outcast, on a narrow isthmus between time and eternity! for he is scarce alive. Lashed and overwhelmed on one side by the sense of sin; on the other, by the dread of punishment! beyond the reach of human help, and in despair of Divine!
His dissipated fortune, impoverished babe, and murdered wife, lie heavy on him: the ghost of his murdered time, (for now no more is left,) all stained with folly, and gashed with vice, haunts his distracted thought. Conscience, which long had slept, awakes like a giant refreshed with wine; lays waste all his former thoughts and desires; and, like a long-deposed, now victorious, prince, on his bleeding heart, imposes, inflicts its own. Its late soft whispers are thunder in his ears; and all means of grace rejected, exploded, ridiculed, is the bolt that strikes him dead, — dead even to the thoughts of death. In deeper distress, despair of life is forgot. He lies a wretched wreck of man on the shore of eternity, and the next breath he draws blows him off into ruin.
The greatest profligate is, at least, a momentary saint at such a sight: for this is a sight which plucks off the mask of folly, strips her of her gay disguise, which glittered in the false lights of this world’s mummery, and makes her appear to be folly to the greatest fool.
How think we then? Is not the death bed of a profligate the most natural and powerful antidote for the poison of his example! Heals not the bruised scorpion the wound it gave! Intends not Heaven, that, struck with the terrors of such an exit, we should provide comfort for our own? Would not he who departs obdurate from it continue adamant, though one rose from the dead? For such a scene partly draws aside the curtain that divides time from futurity; and, in some measure, gives to sight that tremendous, of which we only had the feeble report before.
