[78] The otter or Sir Roger? Recast the sentence.
There is no kind of exercise which I would so recommend to my readers of both sexes as this of riding, as (120: 5) there is none which so much conduces to health, and is every way accommodated to the body, according to the idea which I have given of it. Dr. Sydenham is very lavish in its praises; and if the English reader will see the mechanical effects of it described at length, he may (10) find them in a book published not many years since, under the title of the _Medicina Gymnastica_.
For my own part, when I am in town, for want of these opportunities I exercise myself an hour every morning upon a dumb-bell that is placed in a corner of my room, (15) and pleases me the more because it does everything I require of it in the most profound silence. My landlady and her daughters are so well acquainted with my hours of exercise, that they never come into my room to disturb me whilst I am ringing. (20)
When I was some years younger than I am at present, I used to employ myself in a more laborious diversion, which I learned from a Latin treatise of exercises that is written with great erudition. It is there called the [Greek: skiomachia], or the fighting with a man's own shadow, and (25) consists in the brandishing of two short sticks grasped in each hand, and loaden with plugs of lead at either end. This opens the chest, exercises the limbs, and gives a man all the pleasure of boxing, without the blows. I could wish that several learned men would lay out that time which they employ in controversies and disputes about nothing, in this method of fighting with their own shadows. It might conduce very much to evaporate the spleen, which makes them uneasy[79] to the public as well as to (121: 5) themselves.
To conclude, as I am a compound of soul and body, I consider myself as obliged to a double scheme of duties, and think I have not fulfilled the business of the day when I do not thus employ the one in labour and exercise, (10) as well as the other in study and contemplation. L.
[No. 116. Friday, July 13, 1711. BUDGELL.]
----Vocat ingenti clamore Cithaeron, Taygetique canes.
Those who have searched into human nature observe that nothing so much shows the nobleness of the soul as that its felicity consists in action. Every man has such an active principle in him that he will find out something (15) to employ himself upon, in whatever place or state of life he is posted. I have heard of a gentleman who was under close confinement in the Bastile seven years; during which time he amused himself in scattering a few small pins about his chamber, gathering them up again, and placing them in different figures on the arm of a great chair. He often told his friends afterwards, that unless he had found out this piece of exercise, he verily believed (122: 5) he should have lost his senses.