to be removed by a second; and soe it is in the regiment of health. Habits of eating, drinking, and other corporeal pleasures, being once established by frequent usage, are with great difficulty superseded by others that are more salutiferous; which difficulty is exaggerated by the wellknown propenserress of youthful natures to food of a sapid or high-flavoured quality, to liquors that are potent or saccharine, and to pleasures of all kinds that are violent. The foundation, or plattform, therefore, of the art of life, must have been laid, I will not saye in the craddle, but certainly in the nursery of children, by judicious parents, and wise preceptors; who, by inclining their pupills to the uncontaminated use of what our physcians verie strangely call the non-naturals, doé fortify and secure that Magna Charta of human happiness, so pithily abridged by the poet, "Mens sana in corpore sano." "Butter and honey shall hee eat, (sayeth the prophet of the Messiah,) that hee may know to distinguish the good from the evill;" and certain it is, that as in the stomach are placed, and still more adjoining unto it, so many nerves of exquisite sensibility and sympathy, with the whole frame of man, soe every cause of ill coction or indigestion, must therein disturb the intellectual functions, and produce moral pravities never to be removed afterward by the power of humane reason. Now in this, (not to speak of the grand re ward that is to be looked for from the virtue of temperance,) wee may observe true Epicurism; since, even in our sensual dayes, the strength of delight is in its seldomness, and its abasement and destruction in its frequency. and satiety. Healthful and temperate poverty, hath the start of nauseating luxury; and the honest well-earned appetite of excercise finds in one wholesome dish the sum of the far-fetched dainties of Lucullus. Is it not also to bee credited, that by due observance of the rules of temperance, and the regiment of our passions, humane life may not only be rendered much more rationall and delightfull, but moreover greatly prolonged, to a term (perhaps) of which at present wee have no conception? From Hippocrates, Galen, Celsus, Avicenna, and all who have written most sagaciously and experimentally upon the diseases of the human body, wee learn, that ill-congested food, in the stomach and viscera, are the predisposing causes of disease, and of death itself, as the consequence of the former. And may wee not humbly conjecture, that the impetus of the blood, and other humours, especially of the former, (as at this time most curiously set forth by that most acute and indefatigable physician, William Harvey,) may bee greatly increased by the frequent and violent affections of ungoverned passions, which are notoriously produced by excess, both in eating and in drinking? And may wee not assert, with a great degree of confidence, drawn from general observation, and from the annals of the world, that continued temperance, wholesome exercitation of body, and pleasing equable occupation of the understanding; or an absence of disagreeable emotions, when the faculties of the soul are not employed, doe verily prolong humane life to an extraordinary extent? And I think it worthy to bee noted, that the greatest part of men, who have attained to an extraordinary age, have been in their youth temperate, and in their manhood and old age delightfully and uniformly employed; so as to obviate or prevent this desultory impetus of the blood and humours, whereupon wee humbly establish our conjecture. Hippocrates, the observer of his own wise apothegms, attained the age of 104, though exposed to the continual hazards of attending the infectious diseased. Galen equalled Hippocrates in this goodly senectude. By Pliny wee are told that Asclepiades, a physician of Persia, reached the wonderful age of an hundred and fifty. In the chronicle of Eusebius wee find the age of Sophocles, the tragoedian, to have been one hundred and thirty; Democritus the philosopher lived to an age equal to that of Hippocrates and Galen; and yet, what are these to Epimenides of Crete? who, according to Theopompus, a historian of unblemished reputation, lived to be upwards of one hundred and fifty-seven. Wee know also from Pliny, that Euphranor gave lectures to his scholars after he was an hundred years old; and to come to our own times, and conclude this enumeration, the truly learned George Buchanan informs us of a poor man, whose name was Laurence Hutland, in the Orkney isles of Scotland, who reached the age of an hundred and seventy. Curiosity hath given occasion to sundry enumerations of the most aged persons, who have lived in various countries and periods of history; by examining which, it will evidently appear, that there is reason to be convinced of the principles whereupon wee conceive longevity and happiness to depend. Fragments of Lord Bacon, continued. **** IT may be sayed that the marvellous age of Piatski, duke of the Poles, and of some other potentates, belyeth what I advance concerning health and longevity by temperance; but it is to bee duely pondered, that Piatski and others, who are introduced in impugnation of the thesis, were trained in rusticity, or certainly in simplicity of manners and consuetude, and therefore by no means to bee brought in opposition to my argument. That health is exceedingly promoted by temperance, and an equable flow of the spirits, is remarkably sett forth in the lives of the ancient pedagogues. Gorgias, the master of Isocrates, lived to bee 104. The year before his death some one demanded, in his school, how hee had been able to support soe long the tedious and oppressive burden of old age? to which the sophist replyed, "That hee regretted nothing hee had done, and felt nothing of which hee could reasonably complain. My youth, (sayed hee,) cannot accuse mee, nor can I accuse mine old age." Isocrates, his scholar, in the ninety-fourth year of his age, published a book, and survived that publication four years; in all which time hee betrayed not the least failure, either in memory or in judgement; but as hee had long lived, soe hee died, with the reputation of being the most eloquent man in Greece *. Xenophilus, an eminent Pythogorean philosopher, taught a numerous train of scholars, till hee arrived at the age of 105; and even then enjoyed a very perfect state of health, and retained his abilities to the last. In the luxurious age of Augustus, Lucius Volusius escaped all the fatal consequences of intemperance, by a life dedicated to agriculture and contemplation. Illustrious in his retirement, and though possessed of great opulence, never obnoxious even to the bloody * Plutarch in vit. Isocrat. |