Good Humour and Nature.

1. A man advanced in years that thinks fit to look back upon his former life, and calls that only life which was passed with satisfaction and enjoyment, excluding all parts which were not pleasant to him, will find himself very young, if not in his infancy. Sickness, ill-humour, and idleness, will have robbed him of a great share of that space we ordinarily call our life.

2. It is therefore the duty of every man that would be true to himself, to obtain, if possible, a disposition to be pleased, and place himself in a constant aptitude for the satisfaction of his being. Instead of this, you hardly see a man who is not uneasy in proportion to his advancement in the arts of life.

3. An affected delicacy is the common improvement we meet with in these who pretend to be refined above others: they do not aim at true pleasure themselves, but turn their thoughts upon observing the false pleasures of other men. Such people are valetudinarians in society, and they should no more come into company than a sick man should come into the air.

4. If a man is too weak to bear what is a refreshment to men in health, he must still keep his chamber. When any one in Sir Roger's company complains he is out of order, he immediately calls for some posset drink for him; for which reason that sort of people, who are ever bewailing their constitutions in other places, are the cheerfulest imaginable when he is present.

5. It is a wonderful thing that so many, and they not reckoned absurd, shall entertain those with whom they converse, by giving them the history of their pains and aches; and imagine such narrations their quota of the conversation. This is, of all others, the-meanest help to discourse, and a man must not think at all, or think himself very insignificant, when he finds an account of his head ache answered by another asking, what news in the last mail?

6. Mutual good humour is a dress we ought to appear in wherever we meet, and we should make no mention of what concerns ourselves, without it be of matters wherein our friends ought to rejoice: but indeed there are crowds of people who put themselves in no method of pleasing themselves or others; such are those whom we usually call indolent persons.

7. Indolence is, methinks, an intermediate state between pleasure and pain, and very much unbecoming any part of our life after we are out of the nurse's arms. Such an aversion to labour creates a constant weariness, and one would think should make existence itself a burden.

8. The indolent man descends from the dignity of his nature, and makes that being which was rational, merely vegetative; his life consists only in the mere increase and decay of a body, which, with relation to the rest of the world, might as well have been uninformed, as the habitation of a reasonable mind.

9. Of this kind is the life of that extraordinary couple, Harry Tersett and his lady. Harry was, in the days of his celibacy, one of those pert creatures who have much vivacity and little understanding; Mrs. Rebecca Quickly, whom he married, had all that the fire of youth and a lively manner could do towards making an agreeable woman.

10. These two people of seeming merit fell into each other's arms; and passion being sated, and no reason or good sense in either to succeed it, their life is now at a stand; their meals are insipid, and time tedious; their fortune has placed them above care, and their loss of taste reduced them below diversion.

11. When we talk of these as instances of inexistence, we do not mean, that in order to live it is necessary we should always be in jovial crews, or crowned with chaplets of roses, as the merry fellows among the ancients are described; but it is intended by considering these contraries to pleasure, indolence and too much delicacy, to shew that it is prudent to preserve a disposition in ourselves, to receive a certain delight in all we hear and see.

12. This portable quality of good-humour seasons all the parts and occurrences we meet with; in such a manner, that there are no moments lost; but they all pass with so much satisfaction, that the heaviest of loads (when it is a load) that of time, is never felt by us.

13. Varilas has this quality to the highest perfection, and communicates it wherever he appears: the sad, the merry, the severe, the melancholy, shew a new cheerfulness when he comes amongst them. At the same time no one can repeat any thing that Varilas has ever said that deserves repetition; but the man has that innate goodness of temper, that he is welcome to every body, because every man thinks he is so to him.

14. He does not seem to contribute any thing to the mirth of the company; and yet upon reflection you find it all happened by his being there. I thought it was whimsically said of a gentleman, That if Varilas had wit, it would be the best wit in the world. It is certain when a well corrected lively imagination and good-breeding are added to a sweet disposition, they qualify it to be one of the greatest blessings, as well as pleasures of life.

15. Men would come into company with ten times the pleasure they do, if they were sure of bearing nothing which should shock them, as well as expected what would please them. When we know every person that is spoken of is represented by one who has no ill-will, and every thing that is mentioned described by one that is apt to set it in the best light, the entertainment must be delicate, because the cook has nothing bought to his hand, but what is the most excellent in its kind.

16. Beautiful pictures are the entertainments of pure minds, and deformities of the corrupted. It is a degree towards the life of angels, when we enjoy conversation wherein there is nothing present but in its excellence; and a degree towards that of demons, wherein nothing is shewn but in its degeneracy.

SPECTATOR, Vol. II. No. 100.