No. XCII.
That man must be an incorrigible fool, who does not, occasionally, like the Vicar of Wakefield, find himself growing weary of being always wise. In this sense, there are few men of sixty winters, who have not been guilty of being over-wise—of assuming, at some period of their lives, the port and majesty of the bird of Minerva—of exercising that talent, for silence and solemnity, ascribed by the French nobleman, as More relates, in his travels, to the English nation. A man, thus protected—dipped, as it were, in the waters of Lethe, usque ad calcem—is truly a pleasant fellow. There is no such thing as getting hold of him—there he is, conservative as a tortoise, unguibus retractis. He seems to think the exchange of intellectual commodities, entirely out of the question; he will have none of your folly, and he holds up his own superlative wisdom, as a cow, of consummate resolution, holds up her milk. If society were thus composed, what a concert of voices there would be, in unison with Job’s—we would not live alway. Life would be no other, than a long funeral procession—the dead burying the dead. I am decidedly in favor of a cheerful philosophy. Jeremy Taylor says, that, “the slightest going off from a man’s natural temper is a species of drunkenness.” There are some men, certainly, who seem to think, that total abstinence, from every species of merriment, is a wholesome preparative, for a residence in Paradise. The Preacher saith of laughter, it is mad, and of mirth, what doeth it? But in the very next chapter, he declares, there is a time to dance and a time to sing. We are told in the book of Proverbs, that a merry heart doeth good, like a medicine.
There has probably seldom been a wiser man than Democritus of Abdera, who was called the laughing philosopher; and of whom Seneca says, in his work De Ira, ii. c. 10, Democritum aiunt nunquam sine risu in publico fuisse; adeo nihil illi videbatur serium eorum, quæ serio gerebantur: Democritus never appeared in public, without laughter in his countenance; so that nothing seemed to affect him seriously, however much so it might affect the rest of mankind.—The Abderites, with some exceptions, thought him mad; or, in Beattie’s words, when describing his minstrel boy—
“Some deem’d him wondrous wise, and some believ’d him mad.”
These Abderites, who were, notoriously, the most stupid of the Thracians, looked upon Democritus precisely as the miserable monks, about Oxford, looked upon Roger Bacon, in the thirteenth century—they believed him a magician, or a madman.
To laugh and grow fat is a proverb. Whether Democritus grew fat or not, I am unable to say; but he died at a great age, having passed one hundred years; and he died cheerfully, as he had lived temperately. Lucretius says of him, lib. iii. v. 1052—
“Sponte sua letho caput obvius obtulit ipse.”
The tendency of his philosophy was to ensure longevity. The grand aim and end of it all were comprehended, in one word, ευφυμια, or the enjoyment of a tranquil state of mind.
There is much good-natured wisdom, in the command, and in the axiom of Horace—
“Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem
Dulce est desipere in loco”—