Irresolution and Procrastination in all a Man’s Affairs, are the natural Effects of being addicted to Pleasure:  Dishonour to the Gentleman and Bankruptcy to the Trader, are the Portion of either whose chief Purpose of Life is Delight.  The chief Cause that this Pursuit has been in all Ages received with so much Quarter from the soberer Part of Mankind, has been that some Men of great Talents have sacrificed themselves to it:  The shining Qualities of such People have given a Beauty to whatever they were engaged in, and a Mixture of Wit has recommended Madness.  For let any Man who knows what it is to have passed much Time in a Series of Jollity, Mirth, Wit, or humourous Entertainments, look back at what he was all that while a doing, and he will find that he has been at one Instant sharp to some Man he is sorry to have offended, impertinent to some one it was Cruelty to treat with such Freedom, ungracefully noisy at such a Time, unskilfully open at such a Time, unmercifully calumnious at such a Time; and from the whole Course of his applauded Satisfactions, unable in the end to recollect any Circumstance which can add to the Enjoyment of his own Mind alone, or which he would put his Character upon with other Men.  Thus it is with those who are best made for becoming Pleasures; but how monstrous is it in the generality of Mankind who pretend this Way, without Genius or Inclination towards it?  The Scene then is wild to an Extravagance:  this is as if Fools should mimick Madmen.  Pleasure of this Kind is the intemperate Meals and loud Jollities of the common Rate of Country Gentlemen, whose Practice and Way of Enjoyment is to put an End as fast as they can to that little Particle of Reason they have when they are sober:  These Men of Wit and Pleasure dispatch their Senses as fast as possible by drinking till they cannot taste, smoaking till they cannot see, and roaring till they cannot hear.

T.

* * * * *

No. 152.  Friday, August 24, 1711.  Steele.

      [Greek (transliterated): 

      Ohiae per phyll_on geneae toiaede kai andr_on].

      Hom.  ‘Il.’ 6, v. 146.

There is no sort of People whose Conversation is so pleasant as that of military Men, who derive their Courage and Magnanimity from Thought and Reflection.  The many Adventures which attend their Way of Life makes their Conversation so full of Incidents, and gives them so frank an Air in speaking of what they have been Witnesses of, that no Company can be more amiable than that of Men of Sense who are Soldiers.  There is a certain irregular Way in their Narrations or Discourse, which has something more warm and pleasing than we meet with among Men who are used to adjust and methodize their Thoughts.

I was this Evening walking in the Fields with my Friend Captain SENTRY, and I could not, from the many Relations which I drew him into of what passed when he was in the Service, forbear expressing my Wonder, that the Fear of Death, which we, the rest of Mankind, arm ourselves against with so much Contemplation, Reason and Philosophy, should appear so little in Camps, that common Men march into open Breaches, meet opposite Battalions, not only without Reluctance but with Alacrity.  My Friend answered what I said in the following manner: