[150] See the amusing scene of the gourmand Canon Sedillo and Dr. Sangrado, who had been called in to the gouty and fever-stricken patient: “‘Pray, what is your ordinary diet?’ [asks the physician.] ‘My usual food,’ replied the Canon, ‘is broth and juicy meat.’ ‘Broth and juicy meat!’ cried the doctor, alarmed. ‘I do not wonder to find you sick; such dainty dishes are poisoned pleasures and snares that luxury spreads for mankind, so as to ruin them the more effectually.... What an irregularity is here! what a frightful regimen! You ought to have been dead long ago. How old are you, pray?’ ‘I am in my sixty-ninth year,’ replied the Canon. ‘Exactly,’ said the physician; ‘an early old age is always the fruits of intemperance. If you had drunk nothing else than pure water all your life, and had been satisfied with simple nourishment—such as boiled apples, for example—you would not now be tormented with the gout, and all your limbs would perform their functions with ease. I do not despair, however, of setting you to rights, provided that you be wholly resigned to my directions.’” (Adventures of Gil Blas, ii., 2.) We may comment upon the satire of the novelist (for so it was intended), that irony or sarcasm is a legitimate and powerful weapon when directed against falsehood; that there was, and is, only too much in the practice and principles of the profession open to ridicule; but that the attempted ridicule of the better living does not redound to the penetration or good sense of the satirist.
[151] Compare the similar thoughts of the Latin poet, Metam. xv.
[152] Autumn. Read the verses which immediately follow, describing, with profound pathos, the sufferings and anguish of the hunted Deer and Hare.
[153] Summer.
[154] Observations on Man, II., 3.
[155] Quam vehementes haberent tirunculi impetus primos ad optima quæque si quis exhortaretur, si quis impelleret! The general failure Seneca traces partly to the fault of the schoolmasters, who prefer to instil into the minds of their pupils a knowledge of words rather than of things—of dialectics rather than of dietetics (nos docent disputare non vivere), and partly to the fault of parents who expect a head in place of a heart training. (See Letters to Lucilius, cviii.) Quis doctores docebit?
[156] An instance of the common confusion of thought and logic. The too obvious fact that a large proportion of animals are carnivorous neither proves nor justifies the carnivorousness of the human species. The real question is, is the human race originally frugivorous or carnivorous? Is it allied to the Tiger or to the Ape?
[157] “Who is this female personification ‘Nature’? What are ‘her principles,’ and where does she reside?” asks Ritson quoting this passage.
[158] The World. No. 190, as quoted by Ritson.
[159] Persian poets of the tenth and thirteenth centuries of our era.