Page:The whole familiar colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.djvu/409

THE EPICUREAN. 405 the gripes, dizziness, a bad name, decay of memory, vomiting, loss of appetite, and the palsy, would Epicurus himself think this was u pleasure worth seeking after] Sp. He would say it were to be shunned rather. He. When young men by whoring, as it commonly falls out, get the pox, which, by way of extenuation, they call the common garden gout, by which they are so often brought to death's door iii their life-time, and carry about a dead carcase, do they not epicurise gloriously? Sp. Yes, if coming often to the powdering tub be doing so. He. But now, suppose the pain and pleasure to be equal, would you be willing to bear the pain of the toothache as long as the pleasure of whoring or a drunken bout lasted 1 ? Sp. In truth, I had rather go without both, for to buy pleasure with pain is penance without gain. In this case, in my opinion, an utter avoXyco'/a, which Cicero calls an indolency, is much better. He. Bilt besides that, the titillation of unlawful pleasure, as it is much less than the pain it brings, so it is of shorter continuance. But when a man has once got the pox he is plagued with it all his life-time, and forced to suffer a sort of death a great many times over before his time comes to die. Sp. Epicurus himself would not own such persons for his disciples. He. Poverty is commonly the attendant of luxury, and that is a miserable and heavy burden to bear ; and a palsy, weakness of the nerves, sore eyes, and the pox, the consequents of immoderate venery ; and this is not all neither. Is it not a notable way of merchandising, to purchase a pleasure, neither real, solid, nor of long continuance, with s > many evils, greater and longer-lasting 1 Sp. If there were nothing of pain in the matter, I should think him a foolish trader who should barter jewels for bits of glass. He. And will you not say the same of them that lose the real enjoyments of the mind for the counterfeit pleasures of the body 1 ? Sp. Indeed, I think so.

lie. But let us come closer to the matter. Suppose that neither a fever nor poverty sjjould always accompany luxury ; nor a pox, nor palsy, whoring ; yet a guilty conscience, that you allow to be by far more wretched, is the inseparable companion of unlawful pleasure. tip. Nay, sometimes it goes before it, and galls the mind in the very fruition of it. But there are some, perhaps, you will say, that have no feeling in their conscience. He. Such are the more miserable; for who would not rather feel his pain, than have his body so stupefied as to have no sense of feeling ? But as some persons in their youth, by the exorbitancy of their lusts, are as it were drunk, and habituated to them, and like a callous grown insensible of their calamity ; yet when they come to old age, besides the innumerable evils they have treasured up in the time of their past life, death, the inevitable fate of mankind, starr ; them in the face with a terrible aspect ; and then the conscience is so mi:ch the more tormenting, by how much the more stupefied it has been all their life before. Then the soul is awakened, whether it will or no; old age, which of itself is a melancholy thing, as being obnoxious to many incommodities of nature ; how much more miserable and wretched is it, if a guilty conscience adds to its infelicity? Entertain- ments, club feasts, balls, amours, concerts of music, and those things that are delightful to them when young, will be burdensome to them when old.

Old age has nothing to support itself with, but the remembrance