s, who have treated the gratification
of human appetites with contempt, have, among other instances, insisted
very strongly on that satiety which is so apt to overtake them even in
the very act of enjoyment. And here they more particularly deserve
our attention, as most of them may be supposed to speak from their own
experience, and very probably gave us their lessons with a full stomach.
Thus hunger and thirst, whatever delight they may afford while we are
eating and drinking, pass both away from us with the plate and the cup;
and though we should imitate the Romans, if, indeed, they were such dull
beasts, which I can scarce believe, to unload the belly like a dung-pot,
in order to fill it again with another load, yet would the pleasure be
so considerably lessened that it would scarce repay us the trouble of
purchasing it with swallowing a basin of camomile tea. A second haunch
of venison, or a second dose of turtle, would hardly allure a city
glutton with its smell. Even the celebrated Jew himself, when well
filled with calipash and calipee, goes contentedly home to tell his
money, and expects no more pleasure from his throat during the
next twenty-four hours. Hence I suppose Dr. South took that elegant
comparison of the joys of a speculative man to the solemn silence of an
Archimedes over a problem, and those of a glutton to the stillness of a
sow at her wash. A simile which, if it became the pulpit at all, could
only become it in the afternoon. Whereas in those potations which the
mind seems to enjoy, rather than the bodily appetite, there is happily
no such satiety; but the more a man drinks, the more he desires; as if,
like Mark Anthony in Dryden, his appetite increased with feeding, and
this to such an immoderate degree, ut nullus sit desiderio aut pudor
aut modus. Hence, as with the gang of Captain Ulysses, ensues so total
a transformation, that the man no more continues what he was. Perhaps
he ceases for a time to be at all; or, though he may retain the same
outward form and figure he had before, yet is his nobler part, as we are
taught to call it, so changed, that, instead of being the same man,
he scarce remembers what he was a few hours before. And this
transformation, being once obtained, is so easily preserved by the same
potations, which induced no satiety, that the captain in vain sends or
goes in quest of his crew. They know him no longer; or, if they do,
they acknowledge not his power, having indeed as e