Poems on various subjects; with some essays in prose, letters to correspondents, &c., and a treatise on health : dedicated to Charles Boyle, Lord Viscount Dungarvan / By Samuel Bowden.

  • Bowden, Samuel, active 1733-1761.
Date:
1754
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Poems on various subjects; with some essays in prose, letters to correspondents, &c., and a treatise on health : dedicated to Charles Boyle, Lord Viscount Dungarvan / By Samuel Bowden. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/58 (page 348)
    [ 34** ] (hooting, wreflling, &c. are now reckon’d too robufi and clownijfh for the modifh effeminacy s, and genteel refinements of the modern gentlemen of taffe and pleafure. Tho’ they were the healthy amufements of people of the firft rank, for fortune, parts, and wil- dom, amongft our anceftors ; they are now rank’d amongft bear-garden recreations, and ruftic paftimes, at country villages and rural wakes. This is juftly fatyriz’d by Drjden— Our wife forefathers liv'd on fimple food, Toil ftrung their nerves, toil purify'd their bloody But we their fonsy a pamper'd race of men> &c. But thefe gentlemen of elegant tafte, and falfe plea¬ fure, need no other rebuke or chaftifement, than that which is the common refult of their licentious life, and voluptuous unnatural indulgencys, which are di- feafe, fhort life, and all the gloomy train of ills which attend a weak (late of nerves, and hypocondriacal depreffions; the gout, the fcurvy, the gravel, or dropfy, to whofe company I leave them. All the diforders which are incident to the hu¬ man frame, may admit of two general divifions, and are either original, and hereditary, or artificial, and acquir’d. The chief bafis and foundation of health confifts in a natural found (late of folids, or what is