This was an adventure indeed unlooked for, and perfectly undesigned by
me; though I was not so past the merry part of life, as to forget how
to behave, when a fop so blinded by his appetite should not know an old
woman from a young. I did not indeed look so old as I was by ten or
twelve years; yet I was not a young wench of seventeen, and it was easy
enough to be distinguished. There is nothing so absurd, so surfeiting,
so ridiculous, as a man heated by wine in his head, and wicked gust in
his inclination together; he is in the possession of two devils at
once, and can no more govern himself by his reason than a mill can
grind without water; his vice tramples upon all that was in him that
had any good in it, if any such thing there was; nay, his very sense is
blinded by its own rage, and he acts absurdities even in his views;
such a drinking more, when he is drunk already; picking up a common
woman, without regard to what she is or who she is, whether sound or
rotten, clean or unclean, whether ugly or handsome, whether old or
young, and so blinded as not really to distinguish. Such a man is
worse than a lunatic; prompted by his vicious, corrupted head, he no
more knows what he is doing than this wretch of mine knew when I picked
his pocket of his watch and his purse of gold.
These are the men of whom Solomon says, 'They go like an ox to the
slaughter, till a dart strikes through their liver'; an admirable
description, by the way, of the foul disease, which is a poisonous
deadly contagion mingling with the blood, whose centre or foundation is
in the liver; from whence, by the swift circulation of the whole mass,
that dreadful nauseous plague strikes immediately through his liver,
and his spirits are infected, his vitals stabbed through as with a dart.
It is true this poor unguarded wretch was in no danger from me, though
I was greatly apprehensive at first of what danger I might be in from
him; but he was really to be pitied in one respect, that he seemed to
be a good sort of man in himself; a gentleman that had no harm in his
design; a man of sense, and of a fine behaviour, a comely handsome
person, a sober solid countenance, a charming beautiful face, and
everything that could be agreeable; only had unhappily had some drink
the night before, had not been in bed, as he told me when we were
together; was hot, and his blood fired with wine, and in that condition
his reason, as it were asleep, had given him up.