[40] "Since 575 years appear to be the period of the comet that caused the deluge, what a learned friend who was the occasion of my examination of this matter, suggests, will deserve to be considered; viz. Whether the story of the phoenix, that celebrated emblem of the resurrection in Christian antiquity, (that it returns once after five centuries, and goes to the altar and city of the sun, and is there burnt; and another arises out of its ashes, and carries away the remains of the former; &c.) be not an allegorical representation of this comet, which returns once after five centuries, and goes down to the sun, and is there vehemently heated, and its outward regions dissolved; yet that it flies off again, and carries away what remains after that terrible burning; &c. and whether the _conflagration_ and renovation of things, which some such comet may bring on the earth, be not hereby prefigured, I will not here be positive: but I own, that I do not know of any solution of this famous piece of mythology and hieroglyphics, as this seems to be, that can be compared with it." _Ibid._ p. 196. [41] "'Tis here foretold [by Esdras] that there should be _signs in the woman_; and before all others this prediction has been verified in the famous _rabbet-woman of Surrey_, in the days of King George I.--This story has been so unjustly laughed out of countenance, that I must distinctly give my reasons for believing it to be true, and alleging it here as the fulfilling of this ancient prophecy before us.--1st. The man-midwife, Mr. Howard of Godalmin in Surrey, a person of very great honesty, skill and reputation in his profession, attested it.--It was believed by King George to be real; and it was also believed by my old friends the Speaker and Mr. Samuel Collet, as they told me themselves, and was generally by sober persons in the neighbourhood. Nay Mr. Molyneux, the Prince's Secretary, a very inquisitive person, and my very worthy friend, assured me he had at first so great a diffidence in the truth of the fact, and was so little biassed by the other believers, even by the King himself, that he would not be satisfied till he was permitted both to see and feel the rabbet, _in that very passage, whence we all come into this world_." Whiston's _Memoirs_, vol. ii. p. 110. [42] "The incumbrances of fortune were shaken from his mind as _dew-drops from the lion's mane_." Johnson's _Preface to his edition of Shakespeare_.