No 59. SATURDAY, JUNE 29. Non aliâ bibam Mercede. On these terms only will I dine, HORAT. Ir was my intention to have offered in this Paper such rules of hospitality as I thought might help to ascertain and fix its true character; but upon reflection it occured to me, that where there is the want of openness of heart and accuracy of feeling, rules could be of but little benefit, while they are necessarily bred in the mind where these requisites subsist. There is frequently a crossness in the decrees of nature, which maintains a pertinacious struggle with the dispositions of civilised life. Thus she continually withholds from the rich and lofty that liberal conformation of mind which is so essential to the dignity of their stations, while she lavishes her finest qualities on the children of obscurity and want. I look with no common compassion on those indigent souls which are poverty-struck amidst piles of riches, and, encumbered with their own magnificence, move heavily under the weight of their trappings and insignia; condemned, by an in-born obtuseness and contractedness of feeling, to be without grace in their gifts, or welcome in their hospitality; to be sordidly sumptuous, and penuriously prodigal. I have always thought that the worst qualities a dish can have is the sour taste of obligation; and he who lets it appear that his friendship and affection is typified in his table, makes his meat cost more to a spirited guest, than its price in the dearest market. This poor appreciation of friendship, was reprobated by Juvenal as common among his countrymen. "Fructus amicitiæ magnæ-cibus." And I fear the present age is not yet corrected of these illiberal notions. Friendship and a good dinner, though things perfectly consistent, cannot be representative of each other, and if friendship will not satisfy a man who comes hungry within our threshold, so neither are the demands of friendship to be paid with the hospitalities of our board. When I enter the house of one of these wealthy plebeians, I am almost frozen at the entrance; and, however magnificently furnished his parlour may be, however briskly his fire may burn, there is the gloom of a prison in my imagination; and when I place myself at table, I sit under the sword of Damocles, or, like the Governor of Barataria, amidst contraband delicacies. The real source of half the prodigality in the world, is not in the excess of generosity, or a constitutional negligence of mind, but in a contractedness of spirit, that cannot embrace the right and rational uses of wealth, and a certain disproportion between the man and his circumstances. Thus we should not be prodigal, if we knew how to be generous; and a man is frequently luxurious or ostentatious, for want of knowing how to be noble and hospitable. DEMADES is a person of great property, and has an undoubted share of good-nature; he looks on nothing with so much abhorrence as the character of a covetous man; and, rather than be thought to want hospitality, would make his whole neighbourhood swim in an ocean of Madeira. Nothing can be more costly than his furniture and his liveries; all his appointments are magnificent; and it is not easy to excel him in the splendour of his entertainments. But DEMADES makes but a sorry figure in the midst of all his profusion, with which he is evidently overstocked and encumbered: he lets you perceive in a moment how high he rates the honour he has done you, and takes especial care that no part of his magnificence shall escape your notice, which if it appear to dazzle you, he cannot help betraying the delight your embarrassment affords him, in a smile of exultation. As this sort of feeling in his guests is considered by him as the most unequivocal praise that can be offered to him, he is solicitous to produce it as often as possible, by playing off his grandeur before men of broken fortunes and blushing indigence. Thus it is a rule with him to propose a dozen sorts of wine to a man who, he knows, has never tasted but two, and is charmed with his perplexity of choice, and mistakes of pronunciation. His table, for the same reason, is filled with foreign dishes, " of exquisitest name," and of most ambiguous forms; and you might fancy yourself at supper with Lucullus, on fattened thrushes and the cranes of Malta. Most of his dishes have such formidable names, that few care to risk the ridicule of their host by venturing to ask for them; and if they name them rightly, it is ten to one but they blunder in eating them, which answers equally well to the facetious entertainer. If any thing is particularly rare and out of season, you are told how much it cost before you touch it, so that you eat with a sort of grudge, and with that feeling which disappoints the relish of the richest dainties. This ham was sent him from Westphalia; this pickle was prepared from the receipt of an Italian count; this wine was imported for him by the Spanish ambassador; the venison he killed himself; the pig was fed with chesnuts and apples. Every thing has its history: his potatoes are not common potatoes; they are the potatoes of DEMADES; they have an anecdote belonging to them -touch one and you will hear it. His apartments are replete with every imaginable contrivance for elegance and accommodation; but his manners render it plain that they are there, not for your convenience, but your admiration. Whatever you touch, taste, or use, you cannot forget for a moment who is its owner. Egotism, and a certain stamp of property and possession, accompany all his acts, and characterise all his phrases. My is a monosyllable never omitted, and always emphatic: thus it is my doors, my hinges, my coals, and my carpet. Touch his poker, and you will presently feel that it belongs to DEMADES. You may always know in what part of the room DEMADES is seated, without the trouble of looking for him; for, besides a magisterial cough, his voice is the loudest in the company; and if he moves, you are sure it is DEMADES, for some ceremony attends upon every act, that marks it for his own. He breathes with a certain emphasis; he has a motion more than any man present in using his handkerchief; there is a supererogatory flourish in his manner of drinking your health; his glass makes a turn or two extraordinary in its journey to his lips; and in seating himself in his chair, the toe of his right foot describes on the floor a semicircle with the other -that is to say, he does it with a swing that shows him to be the master of the house, and the chair to be his own. Thus altogether his entertainment is the grandest and the meanest, his viands the best and the worst in the world. I prefer a radish with Mr. Allworth. To complete my idea of true hospitality, I require three constituent qualities-generosity of spirit, delicacy of feeling, and a taste in the comfortable. The two first demand no explanation: those only can comprehend them who feel them, and their rules and criteria are supplied from nature and the heart alone. They have their shrines in some certain bosoms, where appropriate honours are paid them; where they are secretly adored with those rites and mysteries which no tongue can express, and which cannot be revealed to the vulgar and profane. I am persuaded, however, that these silent feelings of the breast have a more kindly growth in our own country than any where besides; and that there runs through English veins a fuller tide of sensibility, a more vigorous current of humanity, than foreign hearts can supply. When I regard the immensity of our philanthropical institutions, and the vastness of that capital which circulates in charitable uses, I look upon this systematic humanity as one of the great branches of our domestic commerce, as a staple article of British produce, and as a noble medium of circulation and employment peculiar to this generous country. In what respects the comfortable, no nation has ever enjoyed such lively and accurate ideas as the natives of this island. The word itself, as well as the idea, is peculiar to my countrymen, and only an Englishman has a perfect sense of the charm it expresses. In looking, however, for the origin of this pre-eminence, we shall meet with some check to the pride it suggests. It is the nature of melancholy minds to seek with earnestness all the relief and consolation which can be derived from exterior circumstances, and to borrow a colour by reflection from the objects about them, that may help to brighten the complexion of their thoughts. In that state too of dissatisfaction |