Note 150 — XX. POPE. 1688–1744.

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.