read, till he had finished not less than a whole page, of which, when he awoke, he retained no recollection.

Shakespeare gives us several wise hygiènic maxims, or rules for good health, equal in truth and value with anything that science can teach us. First we have the important functions of the stomach in the animal economy accurately sketched in the fable of the belly and the members; the stomach thus replies to the rebellious limbs, referring to the processes of assimulation and excretion::

MENENIUS. True it is, my incorporate friends, quoth he,
That I receive the general food at first

Which you do live upon and fit it is;
Because I am the storehouse and the shop
Of the whole body: But if you do remember,
I send it through the rivers of your blood,

Even to the court, the heart-to the seat o' the brain;
And through the cranks and offices of man,

The strongest nerves, and small inferior veins,
From me receive that natural competency
Whereby they live.

This is the very sum of hygienic teaching, and few readers there are but can call to mind a personal illustration.

The influence of the mind on the digestive organs is thus

glanced at, when the poet makes Henry VIII., in giving Wolsey the schedule of his ill-gotten wealth, say—

Read o'er this,

And after, this; and then to breakfast, with

What appetite you may.

Nor is the "green and yellow melancholy" of her who "never told her love" to be regarded as a metaphorical or poetic fiction. NERISSA. For aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.

FLAMINIUS.

Merchant of Venice, i., 2.

This slave

Unto his honour, has my lord's meat in him;
Why should it thrive, and turn to nutriment,
When he is turn'd to poison?

O, may diseases only work upon't!

And, when he is sick to death, let not that part of nature
Which my lord paid for, be of any power

To expel sickness, but prolong his hour!

Timon of Athens, iii., 1.

The nutriment which Lucullus had received at Timon's hospitable table is here considered as forming a large portion of his animal system. It is well known that the particles of the human frame are in a slow state of flux; Bernouilli calculates that the body of a man of eighty years of age, has been completely renovated about twenty-four times.

POMPEY. Tie up the libertine in a field of feasts,
Keep his brain fuming; Epicurean cooks,
Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite;

That sleep and feeding may prorogue

Even till a Lethe'd dullness.

Antony and Cleopatra, ii., 1.

If we wish to rest in peace and dream of happiness, the state of the stomach above all should be attended to; if the food be difficult of digestion, an undue degree of acidity will be produced, which, acting upon the peculiar sensibility of the lining membrane of the stomach, and secondarily upon the brain, will produce many evil disturbances to both body and mind. "An overloaded stomach," says Mr. L. Parker, "causes similar effects, but in a different way; it acts chiefly by irritating

the heart, and quickening the circulation; and if the conjecture of an ingenious physiologist be true, that only a certain number of pulsations are allotted to every man, we should be most anxiously watchful how we suffered moral impression or bodily affections, over which we had any control, to accelerate the actions of the heart. If we wish, therefore, to have pleasant dreams, the body should be slightly fatigued, the pulse should be quiet, the mind calm, the skin cool, and the stomach nearly empty. We should then not need a 'pillow of hops' to woo us to repose. We shall not have to think of the sounding rain, the murmur of bees, the meandering river, the waving corn, or the restless ocean. We shall not have then to exclaim, 'I cannot win thee, sleep, by any stealth;' but our slumbers will be light and protracted."

To make our appetites more keen

With eager compounds we our palates urge.

How often is the wealthy epicure tempted to exclaim with King Henry

Will Fortune never come with both hands full?

She either gives a stomach and no food-
Such are the poor, in health; or else a feast,

And takes away the stomach--such are the rich,
That have abundance, and enjoy it not.

King Henry IV., Part II., iv., 4.

In drinking, Shakespeare inculcates moderation in the use

of spirituous or fermented liquors :—

Good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used.

Othello, ii., 3.

Othello, ii., 3.

Every inordinate cup is unbless'd, and the ingredient is a devil.

In my youth I never did apply hot and rebellious liquors to my blood. As You Like It, ii., 3.

It hath pleased the devil, drunkenness, to give place to the devil, wrath. Othello, ii., 3.

One draught above heat makes him a fool; the second mads him; and

a third drowns him.

Twelfth Night, i., 5.

The benefit of early rising is thus facetiously touched on :

SIR TOBY BELCH. Аpproach, Sir Andrew; not to be a-bed after midnight, is to be up betimes; and diluculo surgere* thou know'st

SIR ANDREW AGUECHEEK. Nay, by my troth, I know not: but I know, to be up late, is to be up late.

SIR TOBY. A false conclusion; I hate it as an unfilled can. To be up after midnight, and to go to bed then, is early; so that, to go to bed after midnight, is to go to bed betimes. Do not they say our lives consist of the four elements?

SIR ANDREW. 'Faith, so they say; but I think it rather consists of eating and drinking.

I

SIR TOBY. Thou art a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink. Marian, say! -a stoop of wine!

Twelfth Night, ii., 3.

That too much exercise of the mind, too much thought and study, is injurious to the body, is constantly seen in the lean, pale, shrivelled aspect of hard students :

CESAR. Let me have men about me that are fat;

Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.
ANTONY. Fear him not, Cæsar, he's not dangerous;
He is a noble Roman, and well given.

CESAR. Would he were fatter-But I fear him not:
Yet if my name were liable to fear,

I do not know the man I should avoid

So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much;
He is a great observer, and he looks

Quite through the deeds of men; he loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;
Seldom he smiles; and smiles in such a sort,
As if he mock'd himself, and scorn'd his spirit
That could be mov'd to smile at any thing.
Such men as he be never at heart's ease,

Whiles they behold a greater than themselves;
And therefore are they very dangerous.

Julius Caesar, i., 2.

Warburton observes that the ancients thought that immoderate laughter was caused by the bigness of the spleen:

Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd,

His glassy essence,-like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,

As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.

Measure for Measure, ii., 2.

Shakespeare here regards laughter as a merely mortal passion, and supposes the angels to be without that spleen, or organ of laughter, so large in man; and adds, that if they had it they would find such great cause to exert it, from the fantastic tricks men daily play, that they would laugh themselves out of their immortality; a phrase of the same import as ours, "I shall laugh myself to death." In the Scriptures, God is figuratively said "to laugh his enemies to scorn."

In conformity to ancient supposition, Shakespeare frequently mentions the liver as the seat of love and valour :—

ROSALIND. This way will I take upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep's heart, that there shall not be one spot of love in it. As You Like It, iii., 2.

If ever love had interest in his liver.

Much Ado About Nothing, iv., 1.

BIRON. This is the liver vein, which makes flesh a deity.

Richard III., Act iv., 4.

Macbeth.

KING R. White-liver'd runagate, what doth he there?

A white-livered lown.

In The Merchant of Venice (iii., 2), cowards are said to have livers as white as milk; and in Much Ado About Nothing (v., 1, 3), an effeminate timid man is called a milk-sop.

"Leave those precepts to the white-livered Hylotes."

S. Gosson's School of Abuse, 1579.

Steevens quotes an old Latin distich:

"Cor ardet, pulmo loquitor, fel commovet, iras;
Splen ridere facit, cogit amare jecur."

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