Which may be thus put into English:
Life's but a feast; and when we die
Horace would say, if he were by,
Friend, thou hast eat and drank enough,
'Tis time now to be marching off:
Then like a well-fed guest depart,
With cheerful looks, and ease at heart;
Bid all your friends good night, and say,
You've done the business of the day.
LESSONS ON THRIFT.
Published for general benefit, by a Member of the Save-all Club.
The caprice of men at different periods has delighted to make much of some darling qualities idolized as virtues, while others, which could not be mistaken for vices, have been tacitly scorned as only fit to occupy grovelling minds, and avert reproach from those who could not aspire to praise.
Among the latter we discover Frugality. What writer has ever thought of making his hero an economist? With a disposition to avoid unnecessary expense, it has long been assumed that a sordid and despicable parsimony must invariably be found, and the world has been accustomed to bestow its tenderest sympathies on the gay, florid, open-hearted rake, who having manifested a disposition to give, where he had nothing of his own to bestow, ruined those honest tradesmen who were credulous enough to trust him, and qualified himself for genteel society by visiting the King's Bench or the Fleet; while the man who disdained to be generous at the expense of others, who would not affect splendour which his means were inadequate to sustain, in fine, who denied himself enjoyments for which he could not honestly pay, has been treated with unsparing ridicule as a mean and pitiful plodder. Our citizens and traders have wisely joined to laugh this character out of countenance, and to applaud the swindling pleasantries of a profligate. Let them look to the effects of this—let them look to their legers, and see if they have not been merry at their own expense.
If there be any truth in the remark dropped by one of the greatest ornaments of British literature, that "it would be well if fewer possessed the superfluities, and more the comforts of life;" in times like the present, it is desirable that mankind should be weaned from the admiration of that which ought never to have been defended—that madness and dishonesty should no longer be depicted as the gracefully irregular flow of youthful gayety; and that the modest virtues which find a friend in the author of "Lessons on Thrift," should be recalled from that exile to which they were doomed by sordid dissipation and unreflecting folly.
But we must explain, as we proceed, to guard against mistake or representation. We do not wish to return to that enviable state, which we suppose some of our radical neighbours contemplate, when they talk of a "state of nature;" namely, that in which the first inhabitants of this island found themselves embowered in their native woods. We do not sigh for that economical simplicity which, according to Richard de Cirencester, made blue paint, applied to the human body, a substitute for clothing; nor do we even lift our voices against that most effeminate piece of luxury, as it was considered by some at the commencement of Queen Elizabeth's reign—the introduction of chimneys to houses. The votaries of luxury may think that, in the last instance, we make but a very slight concession; but the frightful effects of that departure from old English habits was once thought very alarming. We read in Hollingshed:—"Now have we many chimneys; and yet our tender limbs complain of rheums, catarrhs, and pozes; then had we none but reredosses, and our heads did never ache. For as the smoke in those days was supposed to be a sufficient hardening for the timber of the house, so it was reputed a far better medicine to keep the good man and his family from the quack or poze, wherewith, as then, very few were acquainted."
With all our reverence for economy, assuredly there are practitioners of the present day whom we would prefer to Dr. Smoke; even though calling in the former, we must submit to the inconvenience of offering a fee. We do not sigh for the return of those golden days, when our wise progenitors made the same aperture act the double part of a window and a chimney, and when a log of wood was considered an excellent pillow; but sometimes when our reluctant hands are a little embarrassed to find the expected fee, or our purses feel most awkwardly convenient for the pocket, after settling the lengthened bill, we do regret that those who prescribe for us, when indisposed, must at the same time prescribe for their own horses and carriages, and that the period is gone by when a sufferer could hope for relief from the pill of a pedestrian.