The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 1: Miscellaneous ProseLamb, Charles
General
The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 1: Miscellaneous Prose
Lamb, Charles
English literature
Life will now become a flat, prosaic routine of matter-of-fact, and
sleep itself, erst so prolific of numerical configurations and
mysterious stimulants to lottery adventure, will be disfurnished of its
figures and figments. People will cease to harp upon the one lucky
number suggested in a dream, and which forms the exception, while they
are scrupulously silent upon the ten thousand falsified dreams which
constitute the rule. Morpheus will stifle Cocker with a handful of
poppies, and our pillows will be no longer haunted by the book of
numbers.
And who, too, shall maintain the art and mystery of puffing in all its
pristine glory when the lottery professors shall have abandoned its
cultivation? They were the first, as they will assuredly be the last,
who fully developed the resources of that ingenious art; who cajoled and
decoyed the most suspicious and wary reader into a perusal of their
advertisements by devices of endless variety and cunning: who baited
their lurking schemes with midnight murders, ghost stories, crim-cons,
bon-mots, balloons, dreadful catastrophes, and every diversity of joy
and sorrow to catch newspaper-gudgeons. Ought not such talents to be
encouraged? Verily the abolitionists have much to answer for!
And now, having established the felicity of all those who gained
imaginary prizes, let us proceed to show that the equally numerous class
who were presented with real blanks, have not less reason to consider
themselves happy. Most of us have cause to be thankful for that which is
bestowed, but we have all, probably, reason to be still more grateful
for that which is withheld, and more especially for our being denied the
sudden possession of riches. In the Litany indeed, we call upon the Lord
to deliver us "in all time of our wealth;" but how few of us are sincere
in deprecating such a calamity! Massinger's Luke, and Ben Jonson's Sir
Epicure Mammon, and Pope's Sir Balaam, and our own daily observation,
might convince us that the devil "now tempts by making rich, not making
poor." We may read in the Guardian a circumstantial account of a man who
was utterly ruined by gaining a capital prize:--we may recollect what
Dr. Johnson said to Garrick, when the latter was making a display of his
wealth at Hampton Court,--"Ah, David! David! these are the things that
make a death-bed terrible;"--we may recall the Scripture declaration, as
to the difficulty a rich man finds in entering into the Kingdom of
Heaven, and combining all these denunciations against opulence, let us
heartily congratulate one another upon our lucky escape from the
calamity of a twenty or thirty thousand pound prize! The fox in the
fable, who accused the unattainable grapes of sourness, was more of a
philosopher than we are generally willing to allow. He was an adept in
that species of moral alchemy, which turns every thing to gold, and
converts disappointment itself into a ground of resignation and
content.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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