第27章 THE VOYAGE(15)

What hath puzzled our physicians,and prevented them from setting this matter in the clearest light,is possibly one simple mistake,arising from a very excusable ignorance;that the passions of men are capable of swallowing food as well as their appetites;that the former,in feeding,resemble the state of those animals who chew the cud;and therefore,such men,in some sense,may be said to prey on themselves,and as it were to devour their own entrails.And hence ensues a meager aspect and thin habit of body,as surely as from what is called a consumption.Our farmer was one of these.He had no more passion than an I chthuofagus or Ethiopian fisher.He wished not for anything,thought not of anything;indeed,he scarce did anything or said anything.Here I cannot be understood strictly;for then I must describe a nonentity,whereas I would rob him of nothing but that free agency which is the cause of all the corruption and of all the misery of human nature.No man,indeed,ever did more than the farmer,for he was an absolute slave to labor all the week;but in truth,as my sagacious reader must have at first apprehended,when I said he resigned the care of the house to his wife,I meant more than I then expressed,even the house and all that belonged to it;for he was really a farmer only under the direction of his wife.In a word,so composed,so serene,so placid a countenance,I never saw;and he satisfied himself by answering to every question he was asked,"I don't know anything about it,sir;I leaves all that to my wife."Now,as a couple of this kind would,like two vessels of oil,have made no composition in life,and for want of all savor must have palled every taste;nature or fortune,or both of them,took care to provide a proper quantity of acid in the materials that formed the wife,and to render her a perfect helpmate for so tranquil a husband.She abounded in whatsoever he was defective;that is to say,in almost everything.She was indeed as vinegar to oil,or a brisk wind to a standing-pool,and preserved all from stagnation and corruption.

Quin the player,on taking a nice and severe survey of a fellow-comedian,burst forth into this exclamation:--"If that fellow be not a rogue,God Almighty doth not write a legible hand."Whether he guessed right or no is not worth my while to examine;certain it is that the latter,having wrought his features into a proper harmony to become the characters of Iago,Shylock,and others of the same cast,gave us a semblance of truth to the observation that was sufficient to confirm the wit of it.

Indeed,we may remark,in favor of the physiognomist,though the law has made him a rogue and vagabond,that Nature is seldom curious in her works within,without employing some little pains on the outside;and this more particularly in mischievous characters,in forming which,as Mr.Derham observes,in venomous insects,as the sting or saw of a wasp,she is sometimes wonderfully industrious.Now,when she hath thus completely armed our hero to carry on a war with man,she never fails of furnishing that innocent lambkin with some means of knowing his enemy,and foreseeing his designs.Thus she hath been observed to act in the case of a rattlesnake,which never meditates a human prey without giving warning of his approach.This observation will,I am convinced,hold most true,if applied to the most venomous individuals of human insects.A tyrant,a trickster,and a bully,generally wear the marks of their several dispositions in their countenances;so do the vixen,the shrew,the scold,and all other females of the like kind.But,perhaps,nature hath never afforded a stronger example of all this than in the case of Mrs.Francis.She was a short,squat woman;her head was closely joined to her shoulders,where it was fixed somewhat awry;every feature of her countenance was sharp and pointed;her face was furrowed with the smallpox;and her complexion,which seemed to be able to turn milk to curds,not a little resembled in color such milk as had already undergone that operation.She appeared,indeed,to have many symptoms of a deep jaundice in her look;but the strength and firmness of her voice overbalanced them all;the tone of this was a sharp treble at a distance,for I seldom heard it on the same floor,but was usually waked with it in the morning,and entertained with it almost continually through the whole day.

Though vocal be usually put in opposition to instrumental music,I question whether this might not be thought to partake of the nature of both;for she played on two instruments,which she seemed to keep for no other use from morning till night;these were two maids,or rather scolding-stocks,who,I suppose,by some means or other,earned their board,and she gave them their lodging gratis,or for no other service than to keep her lungs in constant exercise.