That of these two luminaries so much of their irradiations are suffered
from time to time to shine down upon us, as he, whose infinite wisdom
which dispenses every thing in exact weight and measure, knows will
just serve to light us on our way in this night of our obscurity; so
that your reverences and worships now find out, nor is it a moment
longer in my power to conceal it from you, That the fervent wish in
your behalf with which I set out, was no more than the first
insinuating _How d’ye_ of a caressing prefacer, stifling his reader, as
a lover sometimes does a coy mistress, into silence. For alas! could
this effusion of light have been as easily procured, as the exordium
wished it—I tremble to think how many thousands for it, of benighted
travellers (in the learned sciences at least) must have groped and
blundered on in the dark, all the nights of their lives——running their
heads against posts, and knocking out their brains without ever getting
to their journies end;——some falling with their noses perpendicularly
into sinks——others horizontally with their tails into kennels. Here one
half of a learned profession tilting full but against the other half of
it, and then tumbling and rolling one over the other in the dirt like
hogs.—Here the brethren of another profession, who should have run in
opposition to each other, flying on the contrary like a flock of wild
geese, all in a row the same way.—What confusion!—what
mistakes!——fiddlers and painters judging by their eyes and
ears—admirable!—trusting to the passions excited—in an air sung, or a
story painted to the heart——instead of measuring them by a quadrant.
In the fore-ground of this picture, a _statesman_ turning the political
wheel, like a brute, the wrong way round——_against_ the stream of
corruption—by Heaven!——instead of _with_ it.
In this corner, a son of the divine _Esculapius_, writing a book
against predestination; perhaps worse—feeling his patient’s pulse,
instead of his apothecary’s——a brother of the Faculty in the
back-ground upon his knees in tears—drawing the curtains of a mangled
victim to beg his forgiveness;—offering a fee—instead of taking one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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