Headlong Hall | Page 9

any
given distance of time from the moment of my first immersion."
Mr Foster was preparing to reply, when the first dinner-bell rang, and
he immediately commenced a precipitate return towards the house;
followed by his two companions, who both admitted that he was now
leading the way to at least a temporary period of physical amelioration:
"but, alas!" added Mr Escot, after a moment's reflection, "Epulae
NOCUERE repostae![4.3]"
CHAPTER V
The Dinner
The sun was now terminating his diurnal course, and the lights were
glittering on the festal board. When the ladies had retired, and the
Burgundy had taken two or three tours of the table, the following
conversation took place:--
Squire Headlong. Push about the bottle: Mr Escot, it stands with you.
No heeltaps. As to skylight, liberty-hall.
Mr Mac Laurel. Really, Squire Headlong, this is the vara nectar itsel.
Ye hae saretainly discovered the tarrestrial paradise, but it flows wi' a
better leecor than milk an' honey.
The Reverend Doctor Gaster. Hem! Mr Mac Laurel! there is a degree
of profaneness in that observation, which I should not have looked for
in so staunch a supporter of church and state. Milk and honey was the
pure food of the antediluvian patriarchs, who knew not the use of the
grape, happily for them.--(Tossing off a bumper of Burgundy.)
Mr Escot. Happy, indeed! The first inhabitants of the world knew not

the use either of wine or animal food; it is, therefore, by no means
incredible that they lived to the age of several centuries, free from war,
and commerce, and arbitrary government, and every other species of
desolating wickedness. But man was then a very different animal to
what he now is: he had not the faculty of speech; he was not
encumbered with clothes; he lived in the open air; his first step out of
which, as Hamlet truly observes, is into his grave[5.1]. His first
dwellings, of course, were the hollows of trees and rocks. In process of
time he began to build: thence grew villages; thence grew cities.
Luxury, oppression, poverty, misery, and disease kept pace with the
progress of his pretended improvements, till, from a free, strong,
healthy, peaceful animal, he has become a weak, distempered, cruel,
carnivorous slave.
The Reverend Doctor Gaster. Your doctrine is orthodox, in so far as
you assert that the original man was not encumbered with clothes, and
that he lived in the open air; but, as to the faculty of speech, that, it is
certain, he had, for the authority of Moses----
Mr Escot. Of course, sir, I do not presume to dissent from the very
exalted authority of that most enlightened astronomer and profound
cosmogonist, who had, moreover, the advantage of being inspired; but
when I indulge myself with a ramble in the fields of speculation, and
attempt to deduce what is probable and rational from the sources of
analysis, experience, and comparison, I confess I am too often apt to
lose sight of the doctrines of that great fountain of theological and
geological philosophy.
Squire Headlong. Push about the bottle.
Mr Foster. Do you suppose the mere animal life of a wild man, living
on acorns, and sleeping on the ground, comparable in felicity to that of
a Newton, ranging through unlimited space, and penetrating into the
arcana of universal motion--to that of a Locke, unravelling the labyrinth
of mind--to that of a Lavoisier, detecting the minutest combinations of
matter, and reducing all nature to its elements--to that of a Shakespeare,
piercing and developing the springs of passion--or of a Milton,
identifying himself, as it were, with the beings of an invisible world?

Mr Escot. You suppose extreme cases: but, on the score of happiness,
what comparison can you make between the tranquil being of the wild
man of the woods and the wretched and turbulent existence of Milton,
the victim of persecution, poverty, blindness, and neglect? The records
of literature demonstrate that Happiness and Intelligence are seldom
sisters. Even if it were otherwise, it would prove nothing. The many are
always sacrificed to the few. Where one man advances, hundreds
retrograde; and the balance is always in favour of universal
deterioration.
Mr Foster. Virtue is independent of external circumstances. The
exalted understanding looks into the truth of things, and, in its own
peaceful contemplations, rises superior to the world. No philosopher
would resign his mental acquisitions for the purchase of any terrestrial
good.
Mr Escot. In other words, no man whatever would resign his identity,
which is nothing more than the consciousness of his perceptions, as the
price of any acquisition. But every man, without exception, would
willingly effect a very material change in his relative situation to other
individuals. Unluckily for the rest of your argument, the understanding
of literary people is for the most part