Which, snuff'd the nose up, makes wit brighter, And eke a dunce an airy writer. in real madness, as was unfortunately the case with Collins and Smart: Swift, Johnson, and Cowper, were not without dismal apprehensions of a similar fate. The wight, therefore, who wishes to secure to himself a sublunary immortality by dint of poetizing, and happens not to be poeta nascitur, must, like Doctor Caustick, in the present instance, seek a sort of cow-pock-like substitute for that legitimate rabies, which characterizes the true sons of Apollo. Although my own experiments with Dr. Beddoes's sublimating gas would not warrant me in pronouncing it superiour to the genuine, fresh-imported waters of Helicon, still I have no doubt but a person possessed, as Dr. Darwin expresses it, of a "temperament of increased irritability," or, as Dr. Brown would have it, whose animal machine was accommodated with a smaller quantity of "excitability," might receive astonishing benefits from the stimulus of this gaseous oxyd of nitrogen. Mature deliberation and sedulous investigation of this important subject have led me to conclude, that the benefits which result from inhaling this gas, have been more widely diffused than has been generally imagined, and not at all confined to those persons in whom it produced the singular effects detailed by Dr. Beddoes, in his ingenious pamphlet on a certain windy institution, entitled, "Notice," &c. Most of the sublime speculations of our modern system-mongers, from Dr. Burnet, who encompassed the earth with a crust, like the shell of a tortoise, and which, being unfortunately fractured, produced a Noah's flood, to Dr. Darwin, with his "omnia e conchis," have arisen from immoderate potations of this bewildering gas. This precious gas, sirs, is the pink With which great metaphysicians bind The chymick basis of an ens, A demi-animus, or mens, 5 But like some people's souls material! 15 That most renowned modern philosopher, metaphysician, theologian, &c. &c. Joseph Priestley, L. L. D. F. R.S. and other things, "Who as the demon of the day decrees Pursuits of Literature. Who " could reduce all things to acts The ghosts of defunct bodies fly," Hudibras. has made many wonderful discoveries in the world of spirits. From him we learn that "On the whole, the state of things is now such that it appears to be absolutely necessary to abandon the notion of a soul, if we would retain christianity at all. And happily the principles of it are as repugnant to that notion as those of any modern philosophy." Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit. Preface to the second edition, p. xxx. Again he informs us (idem, p. 99) "It will also, I think, be difficult to account for the A mongrel sort of mind, created separation of the soul from the body after death, unless the spiritual substance be supposed to be a proper constituent part of the solid mass which, like fixed air in bodies, is set loose when the rest of the mass is dissolved, by putrefaction, or otherwise. If putrefaction or total dissolution be the physical cause of this separation, is there not a good foundation for the practice of the Egyptians, who preserved the bodies of their friends as long as they possibly could, probably with a view of retaining their souls in them or near them?"!!!. This scheme of Doctor Priestley, however, which evolves souls from bodies, while the process of putrefaction is carrying on, although it is undoubtedly very ingenious, is, we are sorry to say, not very savoury, and we are not a little apprehensive that some wag will call it a stinking theory. 6 In chaos-quakes of Doctor Darwin. "We can have no idea” says this sage of sages, "of a natural power, which could project a sun out of chaos, except by comparing it to the explosion of earthquakes, owing to the sudden evolution of aqueous, or of other more elastick vapours; of the power of which, under immeasurable degrees of heat and compression, we are yet ignorant." Botanick Garden, Canto I. Now there can be no doubt but this same gas was manufactured in prodigious quantities, by the agency of "elastick vapours" and "immeasurable degrees of heat," and the explosions and combustions so poe That vital principle, which one As animals (so Darwin said) tically and philosophically described by Doctor Darwin as giving origin to the universe. 7 Prometheus plundered from the sun. Prometheus the son of Iapetus and brother of Atlas formed men of earth and water, and then stole from Apollo this very gas, or something very like it, for their principle of animation. (See Ovid's Metamorphoses.) Jupiter behaved very shabbily on the occasion, and, instead of rewarding him for his ingenuity, commanded Vulcan to bind him to Mount Caucasus with iron chains, and employed a vulture to prey upon his liver. Dr. Swift, who appears to have been as well acquainted with the court history, and green room anecdotes of the gods of those times as Ovid, or any of his predecessors, gives an account of the management of the arch thief on this occasion. Intelligencer, No. 14. 8 In Nile's organick mud were bred. "Creative Nile, as taught in ancient song But rose each generation, one key The roaring lion shakes his tawny mane, " In eodem corpore sæpe Altera pars vivit; rudis est pars altera tellus Ovid. Met. lib. i. 403. 9 To Adam, who was but a monkey. Lord Monboddo says, however, that our common progenitor was an oran outan, and congratulates the human race on his being a sort of an animal somewhat more elevated than the ape or monkey. However, the specifick difference between all these animals, of the Simia species, and man, is acknowledged to be so trifling that we shall make them synonimous; or at least take that liberty when it becomes convenient for the better manufacturing of our metre. For this we have a notable precedent in Butler. "A squire he had, whose name was Ralph, C |