Cellars and granaries in vain we fill,

With all the bounteous fummer's ftore, If the mind thirft and hunger ftill:

The poor rich man's emphatically poor [c]. Slaves to the things, we too much prize, We mafters grow of all that we defpife.

5.

A field of corn, a fountain, and a wood,
Is all the wealth by nature understood.
The monarch, on whom fertile Nile beftows

All which that grateful earth can bear,!
Deceives himself, if he fuppofe

That more than this falls to his fhare.
Whatever an estate does beyond this afford,
Is not a rent paid to the lord;

But is a tax illegal and unjust,
Exacted from it by the tyrant luft,

unnatural allusion, for the fake of introducing a quibble- the ftraights of poverty: the word, ftraights, meaning a narrow pass, like that of THERMOPYĻÆ, which the mall Laconic forces guarded against the waft Xerxean army; and distresses," or difficulties, such as men are put to, when they have to contend with POVERTY.

[c] The poor rich man's emphatically poor] We had this line above, p. 219. It feems to have been a favourite with the poet; as it is, indeed, a very fine one.

Much

Much will always wanting be,

To him who much defires, Thrice happy he To whom the wife indulgency of heaven,

With fparing hand, but just enough has given.

XXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

VIII.

The Dangers of an Honest Man in much Company,

IF twenty thousand [d] naked Ameri

cans were not able to refift the affaults

[d] If twenty thousand] There are fome very dark shades in the following picture of human life, or rather of the age in which the writer lived; which is not much to be wondered at, if that age be truly characterized by one, who had great experience of it →→

"Dark fhades become the portrait of our time; "Here weeps Misfortune, and here triumphs Crime." Waller,

Or, the true account of the matter may be only this: Virtue is, always, a little of a mifanthrope; and the pure virtue of Mr, Cowley, clouded by chagrin, and, perhaps, a conftitutional melancholy, could scarce fail of taking fomewhat too much of that character, Yet his good fenfe and good temper have generally kept him from any extravagance in the expretsion of it, except, perhaps, in this chapter,

of but twenty well-armed Spaniards, I fee little poffibility for one honeft man to defend himself against twenty thoufand knaves, who are all furnished cap à pié, with the defenfive arms of worldly prudence, and the offenfive too of craft and malice. He will find no lefs odds than this against him, if he have much to do in human affairs. The only advice therefore which I can give him is, to be fure not to venture his perfon any longer in the open campaign, to retreat and entrench himself, to ftop up all avenues, and draw up all bridges against so numer

ous an enemy,

The truth of it is, that a man in much bufinefs muft either make himself a knave, or elfe the world will make him a fool: and, if the injury went no farther than the being laught at, a wife man would content himself with the revenge of retaliation, but the cafe is much worse, for thefe civil cannibals too, as well as the wild ones, not only dance about fuch a

1

taken

taken stranger [e], but at last devour him. A fober man cannot get too foon out of drunken company, though they be never fo kind and merry among themselves; it is not unpleasant only, but dangerous to him..

Do ye wonder that a virtuous man fhould love to be alone? It is hard for him to be otherwife; he is fo, when he is among ten thousand: neither is the fo litude fo uncomfortable to be alone without any other creature, as it is to be alone in the midst of wild beafts. Man is to man all kind of beafts; a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a diffembling crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture. The civileft, methinks, of all nations, are those, whom we account the most barbarous; there is fome moderation and good-nature in the Toupinambaltians, who eat no men

[e]-a taken firanger] Taken, in the double fenfe of Jeized, and circumvented; that is, furprized by force, or fraud-Captus, in Latin, has the fame ambiguity.

but

but their enemies, whilft we learned and polite and Chriftian Europeans, like fo many pikes and fharks, prey upon every thing that we can swallow. It is the great boast of eloquence and philofophy, that they first congregated men difperfed, united them into focieties, and built up the houses and the walls of cities. I with, they could un ravel all they had woven; that we might have our woods and our innocence again, instead of our caftles and our policies. They have affembled many thousands of fcattered people into one body: it is true, they have done fo; they have brought them together into cities to cozen, and into armies to murder one another: they found them hunters and fishers of wild creatures; they have made them hunters and fishers of their brethren; they boaft to have reduced them to a state of peace, when the truth is, they have only taught them an art of war; they have framed, I must confefs, wholefome laws for the restraint of vice, but they raised first that devil, which now

they