Note (23) — CANTO THIRD.

“Temperance, cleanliness, and abstinence, have greater power over the soul and body than most in our days imagine. Some of the ancients have delivered it as a maxim, ‘That none could understand God and his works, and enjoy perfect health and long life, but those that abstain from flesh, wine, and vices, bounding their desires according to the ends and necessities of nature.’ Most men will in words confess, that there is no blessing this world affords comparable to health, yet rarely do any of them value it as they ought to do, till they feel the want of it. To him that has obtained this goodly gift, the meanest food, even bread and water, are most pleasant, and all sorts of labor and exercise delightful. But the contrary makes all things nauseous and distasteful. What are full-spread tables, riches, and honors, to him that is tormented with distempers? Happy it were, if men did but use the tenth part of the care and diligence to perserve their minds and bodies in health, as they do to procure riches, which serve them chiefly to procure those dainties and superfluities which generate disease, and are the causes of many other evils, there being but few men that know how to use riches as they ought. As little and as mean food and drink, will maintain a lord in perfect health as the poorest peasant. But, alas! the momentary pleasures of the appetite entice most people to exceed the bounds of necessity or convenience, and many are seduced by a false opinion of nature, childishly imagining that the richer the food, and the more they consume, the more they shall be strengthened thereby. But experience proves the reverse; for the persons who accustom themselves to the richest compound food, and most cordial drinks, are uniformly the most infirm and diseased. People much mistake in supposing, that, so long as the appetite desires and the pleasure of eating continues strong, they may eat on without damage to their health. The truth is, this is one of the chief reasons why men are gluttons; and there is little difficulty in temperance, save only in this particular; it being somewhat hard for a healthy man to give off eating in the midst of the pleasure he receives by it, especially when meats by art are made on purpose, not only to prolong the appetite, but also to delight it. Varieties of food are always dangerous, if great care and temperance be not observed. He that limits his desire by wisdom, and has the understanding both of the quality and the quantity, may eat of sundry sorts of food at once; but the ignorant and unwise very rarely do it without prejudice to their health.” (Tryon’s Way to Health, Long Life, and Happiness, London, 1691, pp. 41, 42, 43.)

The same very ingenious writer remarks, page 137, “If you will be so habituated and wedded to your unhealthy customs, that you, ask not whether nature be weak and impotent, then you may mix your food with all the varieties that the East and West Indies produce; you may make your drink as strong and cordial as you wish; you may wrap yourselves at night in beds of down; and when it is nine or ten o’clock in the morning, look that you have a good, rousing fire in your chambers, and breakfast ready; and two or three hours afterwards, let a plentiful dinner of varieties be made ready, with strong and inflaming liquors. This is the trade that many thousands of this nation pursue, as if they studied to bring diseases upon themselves, and dig their graves with their own teeth; for, in the midst of all their affluence, wherein they esteem themselves happy, they are yet most miserable.”