human
Can you write a poem for me in the style of Adam Mickiewicz?
assistant
Sure, here's a poem in the style of Adam Mickiewicz:
  Unde hominum pecudumque genus, vitæque volantum,
Et quæ marmoreo fert monstra sub æquore pontus?
Igneus est illis vigor, & cælestis origo.
believes, in which the progressive course of time presented them.
improve by Reproduction 295. Have all arisen from Microscopic
Impress'd on Nature by the GREAT FIRST CAUSE,
Say, MUSE! how rose from elemental strife
Organic forms, and kindled into life;
How Love and Sympathy with potent charm
Warm the cold heart, the lifted hand disarm;
Allure with pleasures, and alarm with pains,
And bind Society in golden chains.
Four past eventful Ages then recite,
And give the fifth, new-born of Time, to light;
The silken tissue of their joys disclose,
Swell with deep chords the murmur of their woes;
Their laws, their labours, and their loves proclaim,
And chant their virtues to the trump of Fame.
IMMORTAL LOVE! who ere the morn of Time,
On wings outstretch'd, o'er Chaos hung sublime;
Warm'd into life the bursting egg of Night,
And gave young Nature to admiring Light!--
YOU! whose wide arms, in soft embraces hurl'd
Round the vast frame, connect the whirling world!
Whether immers'd in day, the Sun your throne,
You gird the planets in your silver zone;
Or warm, descending on ethereal wing,
The Earth's cold bosom with the beams of spring;
Press drop to drop, to atom atom bind,
Link sex to sex, or rivet mind to mind;
Attend my song!--With rosy lips rehearse,
And with your polish'd arrows write my verse!--
So shall my lines soft-rolling eyes engage,
And snow-white fingers turn the volant page;
The smiles of Beauty all my toils repay,
And youths and virgins chant the living lay.
By angels guarded, and by prophets sung,
Wav'd o'er the east in purple pride unfurl'd,
And rock'd the golden cradle of the World;
Four sparkling currents lav'd with wandering tides
Their velvet avenues, and flowery sides;
On sun-bright lawns unclad the Graces stray'd,
And guiltless Cupids haunted every glade;
Till the fair Bride, forbidden shades among,
Heard unalarm'd the Tempter's serpent-tongue;
Eyed the sweet fruit, the mandate disobey'd,
And her fond Lord with sweeter smiles betray'd.
Conscious awhile with throbbing heart he strove,
Spread his wide arms, and barter'd life for love!--
Now rocks on rocks, in savage grandeur roll'd,
Steep above steep, the blasted plains infold;
The incumbent crags eternal tempest shrouds,
And livid light'nings cleave the lambent clouds;
Round the firm base loud-howling whirlwinds blow,
And sands in burning eddies dance below.
possess Europe and a part of Asia and of Africa, appear to
have descended from one family; and to have had their origin
near the banks of the Mediterranean, as probably in Syria,
the site of Paradise, according to the Mosaic history. This
seems highly probable from the similarity of the structure of
the languages of these nations, and from their early
possession of similar religions, customs, and arts, as well
as from the most ancient histories extant. The two former of
these may be collected from Lord Monboddo's learned work on
the Origin of Language, and from Mr. Bryant's curious account
The use of iron tools, of the bow and arrow, of earthen
vessels to boil water in, of wheels for carriages, and the
arts of cultivating wheat, of coagulating milk for cheese,
and of spinning vegetable fibres for clothing, have been
known in all European countries, as long as their histories
have existed; besides the similarity of the texture of their
languages, and of many words in them; thus the word sack is
said to mean a bag in all of them, as [Greek: sakkon] in
Greek, saccus in Latin, sacco in Italian, sac in French, and
sack in English and German.
Other families of mankind, nevertheless, appear to have
arisen in other parts of the habitable earth, as the language
of the Chinese is said not to resemble those of this part of
the world in any respect. And the inhabitants of the islands
of the South-Sea had neither the use of iron tools nor of the
bow, nor of wheels, nor of spinning, nor had learned to
coagulate milk, or to boil water, though the domestication of
fire seems to have been the first great discovery that
distinguished mankind from the bestial inhabitants of the
Hence ye profane!--the warring winds exclude
Unhallow'd throngs, that press with footstep rude;
But court the Muse's train with milder skies,
And call with softer voice the good and wise.
--Charm'd at her touch the opening wall divides,
And rocks of crystal form the polish'd sides;
Through the bright arch the Loves and Graces tread,
Innocuous thunders murmuring o'er their head;
View their fair features in the walls of glass;
Leave with impatient step the circling bourn,
And hear behind the closing rocks return.
HERE, high in air, unconscious of the storm.
Thy temple, NATURE, rears it's mystic form;
From earth to heav'n, unwrought by mortal toil,
Towers the vast fabric on the desert soil;
O'er many a league the ponderous domes extend.
And deep in earth the ribbed vaults descend;
A thousand jasper steps with circling sweep
Lead the slow votary up the winding steep;
Ten thousand piers, now join'd and now aloof,
Bear on their branching arms the fretted roof.
Unnumber'd ailes connect unnumber'd halls,
And sacred symbols crowd the pictur'd walls;
With pencil rude forgotten days design,
And arts, or empires, live in every line.
While chain'd reluctant on the marble ground,
Indignant TIME reclines, by Sculpture bound;
And sternly bending o'er a scroll unroll'd,
Inscribes the future with his style of gold.
--So erst, when PROTEUS on the briny shore,
New forms assum'd of eagle, pard, or boar;
The wise ATRIDES bound in sea-weed thongs
The changeful god amid his scaly throngs;
Till in deep tones his opening lips at last
Reluctant told the future and the past.
mankind, in the early ages of society, to the imitative arts
of painting, carving, statuary, and the casting of figures in
metals, seems to have preceded the discovery of letters; and
to have been used as a written language to convey
intelligence to their distant friends, or to transmit to
posterity the history of themselves, or of their discoveries.
Hence the origin of the hieroglyphic figures which crowded
the walls of the temples of antiquity; many of which may be
seen in the tablet of Isis in the works of Montfaucon; and
some of them are still used in the sciences of chemistry and
astronomy, as the characters for the metals and planets, and
the figures of animals on the celestial globe.]
that Proteus was the name of a hieroglyphic figure
representing Time; whose form was perpetually changing, and
who could discover the past events of the world, and predict
the future. Herodotus does not doubt but that Proteus was an
of all things, and the most ancient of the gods; and adds,
that he keeps the keys of Nature, _Danet's Dict._, all which
might well accord with a figure representing Time.]
HERE o'er piazza'd courts, and long arcades,
The bowers of PLEASURE root their waving shades;
Shed o'er the pansied moss a checker'd gloom,
Bend with new fruits, with flow'rs successive bloom.
Pleas'd, their light limbs on beds of roses press'd,
In slight undress recumbent Beauties rest;
On tiptoe steps surrounding Graces move,
And gay Desires expand their wings above.
HERE young DIONE arms her quiver'd Loves,
Schools her bright Nymphs, and practises her doves;
Calls round her laughing eyes in playful turns,
The glance that lightens, and the smile that burns;
Her dimpling cheeks with transient blushes dies,
Heaves her white bosom with seductive sighs;
Or moulds with rosy lips the magic words,
That bind the heart in adamantine cords.
Behind in twilight gloom with scowling mien
The demon PAIN, convokes his court unseen;
Whips, fetters, flames, pourtray'd on sculptur'd stone,
In dread festoons, adorn his ebon throne;
Each side a cohort of diseases stands,
And shudd'ring Fever leads the ghastly bands;
O'er all Despair expands his raven wings,
And guilt-stain'd Conscience darts a thousand stings.
Deep-whelm'd beneath, in vast sepulchral caves,
OBLIVION dwells amid unlabell'd graves;
The storied tomb, the laurell'd bust o'erturns,
And shakes their ashes from the mould'ring urns.--
No vernal zephyr breathes, no sunbeams cheer,
Nor song, nor simper, ever enters here;
O'er the green floor, and round the dew-damp wall,
The slimy snail, and bloated lizard crawl;
While on white heaps of intermingled bones
The muse of MELANCHOLY sits and moans;
Showers her cold tears o'er Beauty's early wreck,
Spreads her pale arms, and bends her marble neck.
So in rude rocks, beside the Ægean wave,
TROPHONIUS scoop'd his sorrow-sacred cave;
Unbarr'd to pilgrim feet the brazen door,
And the sad sage returning smil'd no more.
that prophecies of evil events were uttered from the cave of
Trophonius; but the allegorical story, that whoever entered
this cavern were never again seen to smile, seems to have
been designed to warn the contemplative from considering too
much the dark side of nature. Thus an ancient poet is said to
have written a poem on the miseries of the world, and to have
thence become so unhappy as to destroy himself. When we
reflect on the perpetual destruction of organic life, we
should also recollect, that it is perpetually renewed in
other forms by the same materials, and thus the sum total of
the happiness of the world continues undiminished; and that a
philosopher may thus smile again on turning his eyes from the
coffins of nature to her cradles.]
SHRIN'D in the midst majestic NATURE stands,
Extends o'er earth and sea her hundred hands;
Tower upon tower her beamy forehead crests,
And births unnumber'd milk her hundred breasts;
Drawn round her brows a lucid veil depends,
O'er her fine waist the purfled woof descends;
Her stately limbs the gather'd folds surround,
And spread their golden selvage on the ground.
into Greece along with most of the other early arts and
religions of Europe. They seem to have consisted of scenical
representations of the philosophy and religion of those
times, which had previously been painted in hieroglyphic
figures to perpetuate them before the discovery of letters;
and are well explained in Dr. Warburton's divine legation of
Moses; who believes with great probability, that Virgil in
the sixth book of the Æneid has described a part of these
mysteries in his account of the Elysian fields.
In the first part of this scenery was represented Death, and
the destruction of all things; as mentioned in the note on
the Portland Vase in the Botanic Garden. Next the marriage of
Cupid and Psyche seems to have shown the reproduction of
living nature; and afterwards the procession of torches,
which is said to have constituted a part of the mysteries,
probably signified the return of light, and the resuscitation
of all things.
Lastly, the histories of illustrious persons of the early
ages seem to have been enacted; who were first represented by
hieroglyphic figures, and afterwards became the gods and
dignified pantomime be contrived, even in this age, as might
strike the spectators with awe, and at the same time explain
many philosophical truths by adapted imagery, and thus both
amuse and instruct?]
From this first altar fam'd ELEUSIS stole
Her secret symbols and her mystic scroll;
With pious fraud in after ages rear'd
Her gorgeous temple, and the gods rever'd.
--First in dim pomp before the astonish'd throng,
Silence, and Night, and Chaos, stalk'd along;
Dread scenes of Death, in nodding sables dress'd,
Froze the broad eye, and thrill'd the unbreathing breast.
Then the young Spring, with winged Zephyr, leads
The queen of Beauty to the blossom'd meads;
Charm'd in her train admiring Hymen moves,
And tiptoe Graces hand in hand with Loves.
Next, while on pausing step the masked mimes
Enact the triumphs of forgotten times,
Conceal from vulgar throngs the mystic truth,
Or charm with Wisdom's lore the initiate youth;
Each shifting scene, some patriot hero trod,
Some sainted beauty, or some saviour god.
And crimson dew-drops trembled on the lawn;
Blaz'd high in air the temple's golden vanes,
And dancing shadows veer'd upon the plains.--
Long trains of virgins from the sacred grove,
Pair after pair, in bright procession move,
With flower-fill'd baskets round the altar throng,
Or swing their censers, as they wind along.
The fair URANIA leads the blushing bands,
Presents their offerings with unsullied hands;
Pleas'd to their dazzled eyes in part unshrouds
The goddess-form;--the rest is hid in clouds.
"PRIESTESS OF NATURE! while with pious awe
Thy votary bends, the mystic veil withdraw;
Charm after charm, succession bright, display,
And give the GODDESS to adoring day!
So kneeling realms shall own the Power divine,
And heaven and earth pour incense on her shrine.
"Oh grant the MUSE with pausing step to press
Each sun-bright avenue, and green recess;
Led by thy hand survey the trophied walls,
The statued galleries, and the pictur'd halls;
Scan the proud pyramid, and arch sublime,
Earth-canker'd urn, medallion green with time,
Stern busts of Gods, with helmed heroes mix'd,
And Beauty's radiant forms, that smile betwixt.
painting has appeared in the early state of all societies
before the invention of the alphabet. Thus when the Spanish
adventurers, under Cortez, invaded America, intelligence of
their debarkation and movements was daily transmitted to
hieroglyphics. The antiquity of statuary appears from the
metals from the golden calf of Aaron; and that of carving in
wood from the idols or household gods, which Rachel stole
from her father Laban, and hid beneath her garments as she
sat upon the straw. Gen. c. xxxi. v. 34.]
"Waked by thy voice, transmuted by thy wand,
Their lips shall open, and their arms expand;
The love-lost lady, and the warrior slain,
Leap from their tombs, and sigh or fight again.
--So when ill-fated ORPHEUS tuned to woe
His potent lyre, and sought the realms below;
Charm'd into life unreal forms respir'd,
And list'ning shades the dulcet notes admir'd.--
"LOVE led the Sage through Death's tremendous porch,
Cheer'd with his smile, and lighted with his torch;--
Hell's triple Dog his playful jaws expands,
Fawns round the GOD, and licks his baby hands;
In wondering groups the shadowy nations throng,
And sigh or simper, as he steps along;
Sad swains, and nymphs forlorn, on Lethe's brink,
Hug their past sorrows, and refuse to drink;
Night's dazzled Empress feels the golden flame
Play round her breast, and melt her frozen frame;
Charms with soft words, and sooths with amorous wiles,
Her iron-hearted Lord,--and PLUTO smiles.--
His trembling Bride the Bard triumphant led
From the pale mansions of the astonish'd dead;
Gave the fair phantom to admiring light,--
Ah, soon again to tread irremeable night!"
taken from the figures on the Barbarini, or Portland Vase,
where Eros, or Divine Love, with his torch precedes the manes
through the gates of Death, and reverting his smiling
countenance invites him into the Elysian fields.]
from a painting of the descent of Orpheus, by a celebrated
Parisian artist.]
Waves the fair Hierophant, and moves along.--
High plumes, that bending shade her amber hair,
Nod, as she steps, their silver leaves in air;
Bright chains of pearl, with golden buckles brac'd,
Clasp her white neck, and zone her slender waist;
Thin folds of silk in soft meanders wind
Down her fine form, and undulate behind;
The purple border, on the pavement roll'd,
Swells in the gale, and spreads its fringe of gold.
"FIRST, if you can, celestial Guide! disclose
From what fair fountain mortal life arose,
Whence the fine nerve to move and feel assign'd,
Contractile fibre, and ethereal mind:
"How Love and Sympathy the bosom warm,
Allure with pleasure, and with pain alarm,
With soft affections weave the social plan,
And charm the listening Savage into Man."
"GOD THE FIRST CAUSE!--in this terrene abode
Young Nature lisps, she is the child of GOD.
From embryon births her changeful forms improve,
Grow, as they live, and strengthen as they move.
A Jove principium, musæ! Jovis omnia plena.
In him we live, and move, and have our being.
production and increase of the strata of limestone from the
shells of aquatic animals; and of all those incumbent on them
from the recrements of vegetables and of terrestrial animals,
are now well understood from our improved knowledge of
geology; and show, that the solid parts of the globe are
gradually enlarging, and consequently that it is young; as
the fluid parts are not yet all converted into solid ones.
Add to this, that some parts of the earth and its inhabitants
appear younger than others; thus the greater height of the
mountains of America seems to show that continent to be less
ancient than Europe, Asia, and Africa; as their summits have
been less washed away, and the wild animals of America, as
the tigers and crocodiles, are said to be less perfect in
respect to their size and strength; which would show them to
be still in a state of infancy, or of progressive
improvement. Lastly, the progress of mankind in arts and
sciences, which continues slowly to extend, and to increase,
seems to evince the youth of human society; whilst the
unchanging state of the societies of some insects, as of the
bee, wasp, and ant, which is usually ascribed to instinct,
seems to evince the longer existence, and greater maturity of
those societies. The juvenility of the earth shows, that it
has had a beginning or birth, and is a strong natural
argument evincing the existence of a cause of its production,
that is of the Deity.]
"Ere Time began, from flaming Chaos hurl'd
Rose the bright spheres, which form the circling world;
Earths from each sun with quick explosions burst,
And second planets issued from the first.
Then, whilst the sea at their coeval birth,
Surge over surge, involv'd the shoreless earth;
Nurs'd by warm sun-beams in primeval caves
Organic Life began beneath the waves.
"First HEAT from chemic dissolution springs,
And gives to matter its eccentric wings;
With strong REPULSION parts the exploding mass,
Melts into lymph, or kindles into gas.
ATTRACTION next, as earth or air subsides,
The ponderous atoms from the light divides,
Approaching parts with quick embrace combines,
Swells into spheres, and lengthens into lines.
Last, as fine goads the gluten-threads excite,
Cords grapple cords, and webs with webs unite;
And quick CONTRACTION with ethereal flame
Lights into life the fibre-woven frame.--
Hence without parent by spontaneous birth
Rise the first specks of animated earth;
From Nature's womb the plant or insect swims,
And buds or breathes, with microscopic limbs.
heat is an ethereal fluid, in which all things are immersed,
and which constitutes the general power of repulsion; as
appears in explosions which are produced by the sudden
evolution of combined heat, and by the expansion of all
bodies by the slower diffusion of it in its uncombined state.
Without heat all the matter of the world would be condensed
into a point by the power of attraction; and neither fluidity
nor life could exist. There are also particular powers of
repulsion, as those of magnetism and electricity, and of
chemistry, such as oil and water; which last may be as
numerous as the particular attractions which constitute
chemical affinities; and may both of them exist as
atmospheres round the individual particles of matter; see
Botanic Garden, Vol. I. additional note VII. on elementary
may be divided into general attraction, which is called
gravity; and into particular attraction, which is termed
chemical affinity. As nothing can act where it does not
exist, the power of gravity must be conceived as extending
from the sun to the planets, occupying that immense space;
and may therefore be considered as an ethereal fluid, though
not cognizable by our senses like heat, light, and
electricity.
Particular attraction, or chemical affinity, must likewise
occupy the spaces between the particles of matter which they
cause to approach each other. The power of gravity may
therefore be called the general attractive ether, and the
matter of heat may be called the general repulsive ether;
which constitute the two great agents in the changes of
inanimate matter.]
contraction, which exists in organized bodies, and
distinguishes life from inanimation, appears to consist of an
ethereal fluid which resides in the brain and nerves of
living bodies, and is expended in the act of shortening their
fibres. The attractive and repulsive ethers require only the
vicinity of bodies for the exertion of their activity, but
the contractive ether requires at first the contact of a goad
or stimulus, which appears to draw it off from the
contracting fibre, and to excite the sensorial power of
irritation. These contractions of animal fibres are
afterwards excited or repeated by the sensorial powers of
sensation, volition, or association, as explained at large in
There seems nothing more wonderful in the ether of
contraction producing the shortening of a fibre, than in the
ether of attraction causing two bodies to approach each
other. The former indeed seems in some measure to resemble
the latter, as it probably occasions the minute particles of
the fibre to approach into absolute or adhesive contact, by
withdrawing from them their repulsive atmospheres; whereas
the latter seems only to cause particles of matter to
approach into what is popularly called contact, like the
particles of fluids; but which are only in the vicinity of
each other, and still retain their repulsive atmospheres, as
may be seen in riding through shallow water by the number of
minute globules of it thrown up by the horses feet, which
roll far on its surface; and by the difficulty with which
small globules of mercury poured on the surface of a quantity
of it can be made to unite with it.]
"IN earth, sea, air, around, below, above,
Life's subtle woof in Nature's loom is wove;
Points glued to points a living line extends,
Touch'd by some goad approach the bending ends;
Rings join to rings, and irritated tubes
Clasp with young lips the nutrient globes or cubes;
And urged by appetencies new select,
Imbibe, retain, digest, secrete, eject.
In branching cones the living web expands,
Lymphatic ducts, and convoluted glands;
Aortal tubes propel the nascent blood,
And lengthening veins absorb the refluent flood;
Leaves, lungs, and gills, the vital ether breathe
On earth's green surface, or the waves beneath.
So Life's first powers arrest the winds and floods,
To bones convert them, or to shells, or woods;
Stretch the vast beds of argil, lime, and sand,
And from diminish'd oceans form the land!
an artery or vein may be considered as a cone, though each
distinct division of it is a cylinder. It is probable that
the amount of the areas of all the small branches from one
trunk may equal that of the trunk, otherwise the velocity of
the blood would be greater in some parts than in others,
which probably only exists when a part is compressed or
inflamed.]
the arterial impulse appears to cease, after having propelled
the blood through the capillary vessels; whence the venous
circulation is owing to the extremities of the veins
absorbing the blood, as those of the lymphatics absorb the
fluids. The great force of absorption is well elucidated by
Dr. Hales's experiment on the rise of the sap-juice in a
vine-stump; see Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XXIII.]
of the solid parts of the globe by the recrements of organic
bodies, as limestone rocks from shells and bones, and the
beds of clay, marl, coals, from decomposed woods, is now well
known to those who have attended to modern geology; and Dr.
Halley, and others, have endeavoured to show, with great
probability, that the ocean has decreased in quantity during
the short time which human history has existed. Whence it
appears, that the exertions of vegetable and animal life
convert the fluid parts of the globe into solid ones; which
is probably effected by combining the matter of heat with the
other elements, instead of suffering it to remain simply
diffused amongst them, which is a curious conjecture, and
deserves further investigation.]
"Next the long nerves unite their silver train,
And young SENSATION permeates the brain;
Through each new sense the keen emotions dart,
Flush the young cheek, and swell the throbbing heart.
From pain and pleasure quick VOLITIONS rise,
Lift the strong arm, or point the inquiring eyes;
With Reason's light bewilder'd Man direct,
And right and wrong with balance nice detect.
Last in thick swarms ASSOCIATIONS spring,
Thoughts join to thoughts, to motions motions cling;
Whence in long trains of catenation flow
Imagined joy, and voluntary woe.
volition consist in an affection of the central part of the
sensorium, or of the whole of it; and hence cannot exist till
the nerves are united in the brain. The motions of a limb of
any animal cut from the body, are therefore owing to
irritation, not to sensation or to volition. For the
definitions of irritation, sensation, volition, and
association, see additional Note II.]
"So, view'd through crystal spheres in drops saline,
Quick-shooting salts in chemic forms combine;
Or Mucor-stems, a vegetative tribe,
Spread their fine roots, the tremulous wave imbibe.
Next to our wondering eyes the focus brings
Self-moving lines, and animated rings;
First Monas moves, an unconnected point,
Plays round the drop without a limb or joint;
Then Vibrio waves, with capillary eels,
And Vorticella whirls her living wheels;
While insect Proteus sports with changeful form
Through the bright tide, a globe, a cube, a worm.
Last o'er the field the Mite enormous swims,
Swells his red heart, and writhes his giant limbs.
early state is properly a microscopic vegetable, and is
spontaneously produced on the scum of all decomposing organic
matter. The Monas is a moving speck, the Vibrio an undulating
wire, the Proteus perpetually changes its shape, and the
Vorticella has wheels about its mouth, with which it makes an
eddy, and is supposed thus to draw into its throat invisible
animalcules. These names are from Linneus and Muller; see
Was born and nurs'd in Ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing.
was originally covered with water, as appears from some of
its highest mountains, consisting of shells cemented together
by a solution of part of them, as the limestone rocks of the
Alps; Ferber's Travels. It must be therefore concluded, that
animal life began beneath the sea.
Nor is this unanalogous to what still occurs, as all
quadrupeds and mankind in their embryon state are aquatic
animals; and thus may be said to resemble gnats and frogs.
The fetus in the uterus has an organ called the placenta, the
fine extremities of the vessels of which permeate the
arteries of the uterus, and the blood of the fetus becomes
thus oxygenated from the passing stream of the maternal
arterial blood; exactly as is done by the gills of fish from
the stream of water, which they occasion to pass through
them.
But the chicken in the egg possesses a kind of aerial
respiration, since the extremities of its placental vessels
terminate on a membranous bag, which contains air, at the
broad end of the egg; and in this the chick in the egg
differs from the fetus in the womb, as there is in the egg no
circulating maternal blood for the insertion of the
extremities of its respiratory vessels, and in this also I
suspect that the eggs of birds differ from the spawn of fish;
which latter is immersed in water, and which has probably the
extremities of its respiratory organ inserted into the soft
membrane which covers it, and is in contact with the water.]
"Thus the tall Oak, the giant of the wood,
Which bears Britannia's thunders on the flood;
The Whale, unmeasured monster of the main,
The lordly Lion, monarch of the plain,
The Eagle soaring in the realms of air,
Whose eye undazzled drinks the solar glare,
Imperious man, who rules the bestial crowd,
Of language, reason, and reflection proud,
With brow erect who scorns this earthy sod,
And styles himself the image of his God;
Arose from rudiments of form and sense,
An embryon point, or microscopic ens!
"Now in vast shoals beneath the brineless tide,
On earth's firm crust testaceous tribes reside;
Age after age expands the peopled plain,
The tenants perish, but their cells remain;
Whence coral walls and sparry hills ascend
From pole to pole, and round the line extend.
that all vegetables and animals arose from such a small
beginning, as a living point or living fibre, are detailed in
Zoonomia, Sect. XXXIX. 4. 8. on Generation.]
has been gradually accumulating, being washed down into it
from the recrements of animal and vegetable bodies, the sea
must originally have been as fresh as river water; and as it
is not saturated with salt, must become annually saline. The
sea-water about our island contains at this time from about
one twenty-eighth to one thirtieth part of sea salt, and
about one eightieth of magnesian salt; Brownrigg on Salt.]
structure of the earth is given in Botanic Garden, Vol. I.
Additional Notes, XVI. XVIII. XIX. XX. XXIII. XXIV.]
"Next when imprison'd fires in central caves
Burst the firm earth, and drank the headlong waves;
And, as new airs with dread explosion swell,
Form'd lava-isles, and continents of shell;
Pil'd rocks on rocks, on mountains mountains raised,
And high in heaven the first volcanoes blazed;
In countless swarms an insect-myriad moves
From sea-fan gardens, and from coral groves;
Leaves the cold caverns of the deep, and creeps
On shelving shores, or climbs on rocky steeps.
As in dry air the sea-born stranger roves,
Each muscle quickens, and each sense improves;
Cold gills aquatic form respiring lungs,
And sounds aerial flow from slimy tongues.
Note III.]
continents were raised above the primeval ocean, great
numbers of the most simple animals would attempt to seek food
at the edges or shores of the new land, and might thence
gradually become amphibious; as is now seen in the frog, who
changes from an aquatic animal to an amphibious one; and in
the gnat, which changes from a natant to a volant state.
At the same time new microscopic animalcules would
immediately commence wherever there was warmth and moisture,
and some organic matter, that might induce putridity. Those
situated on dry land, and immersed in dry air, may gradually
acquire new powers to preserve their existence; and by
innumerable successive reproductions for some thousands, or
perhaps millions of ages, may at length have produced many of
the vegetable and animal inhabitants which now people the
earth.
As innumerable shell-fish must have existed a long time
beneath the ocean, before the calcareous mountains were
produced and elevated; it is also probable, that many of the
insect tribes, or less complicate animals, existed long
before the quadrupeds or more complicate ones, which in some
measure accords with the theory of Linneus in respect to the
vegetable world; who thinks, that all the plants now extant
arose from the conjunction and reproduction of about sixty
different vegetables, from which he constitutes his natural
orders.
As the blood of animals in the air becomes more oxygenated in
their lungs, than that of animals in water by their gills; it
becomes of a more scarlet colour, and from its greater
stimulus the sensorium seems to produce quicker motions and
finer sensations; and as water is a much better vehicle for
vibrations or sounds than air, the fish, even when dying in
pain, are mute in the atmosphere, though it is probable that
in the water they may utter sounds to be heard at a
considerable distance. See on this subject, Botanic Garden,
"So Trapa rooted in pellucid tides,
In countless threads her breathing leaves divides,
Waves her bright tresses in the watery mass,
And drinks with gelid gills the vital gas;
Then broader leaves in shadowy files advance,
Spread o'er the crystal flood their green expanse;
And, as in air the adherent dew exhales,
Court the warm sun, and breathe ethereal gales.
this plant grow under water, and are divided into minute
capillary ramifications; while the upper leaves are broad and
round, and have air bladders in their footstalks to support
them above the surface of the water. As the aerial leaves of
vegetables do the office of lungs, by exposing a large
surface of vessels with their contained fluids to the
influence of the air; so these aquatic leaves answer a
similar purpose like the gills of fish, and perhaps gain from
water a similar material. As the material thus necessary to
life seems to be more easily acquired from air than from
water, the subaquatic leaves of this plant and of sisymbrium,
oenanthe, ranunculus aquatilis, water crow-foot, and some
others, are cut into fine divisions to increase the surface,
whilst those above water are undivided; see Botanic Garden,
Few of the water plants of this country are used for
economical purposes, but the ranunculus fluviatilis may be
worth cultivation; as on the borders of the river Avon, near
Ringwood, the cottagers cut this plant every morning in
boats, almost all the year round, to feed their cows, which
appear in good condition, and give a due quantity of milk;
see a paper from Dr. Pultney in the Transactions of the
"So still the Tadpole cleaves the watery vale
With balanc'd fins, and undulating tail;
New lungs and limbs proclaim his second birth,
Breathe the dry air, and bound upon the earth.
So from deep lakes the dread Musquito springs,
Drinks the soft breeze, and dries his tender wings,
In twinkling squadrons cuts his airy way,
Dips his red trunk in blood, and man his prey.
of the tadpole from an aquatic animal into an aerial one is
abundantly curious, when first it is hatched from the spawn
by the warmth of the season, it resembles a fish; it
afterwards puts forth legs, and resembles a lizard; and
finally losing its tail, and acquiring lungs instead of
gills, becomes an aerial quadruped.
The rana temporaria of Linneus lives in the water in spring,
and on the land in summer, and catches flies. Of the rana
paradoxa the larva or tadpole is as large as the frog, and
dwells in Surinam, whence the mistake of Merian and of Seba,
who call it a frog fish. The esculent frog is green, with
three yellow lines from the mouth to the anus; the back
transversely gibbous, the hinder feet palmated; its more
frequent croaking in the evenings is said to foretell rain.
Linnei Syst. Nat. Art. rana.
Linneus asserts in his introduction to the class Amphibia,
that frogs are so nearly allied to lizards, lizards to
serpents, and serpents to fish, that the boundaries of these
orders can scarcely be ascertained.]
Additional Note IV.]
"So still the Diodons, amphibious tribe,
With two-fold lungs the sea or air imbibe;
Allied to fish, the lizard cleaves the flood
With one-cell'd heart, and dark frigescent blood;
Half-reasoning Beavers long-unbreathing dart
Through Erie's waves with perforated heart;
With gills and lungs respiring Lampreys steer,
Kiss the rude rocks, and suck till they adhere;
The lazy Remora's inhaling lips,
With gills pulmonic breathes the enormous Whale,
And spouts aquatic columns to the gale;
Sports on the shining wave at noontide hours,
And shifting rainbows crest the rising showers.
latitude are only seen in the mornings or evenings, when the
sun is not much more than forty-two degrees high. In the more
northern latitudes, where the meridian sun is not more than
forty-two degrees high, they are also visible at noon.]
"So erst, ere rose the science to record
In letter'd syllables the volant word;
Whence chemic arts, disclosed in pictured lines,
Liv'd to mankind by hieroglyphic signs;
And clustering stars, pourtray'd on mimic spheres,
Assumed the forms of lions, bulls, and bears;
Rose young DIONE from the shoreless main;
Type of organic Nature! source of bliss!
Emerging Beauty from the vast abyss!
Sublime on Chaos borne, the Goddess stood,
And smiled enchantment on the troubled flood;
The warring elements to peace restored,
And young Reflection wondered and adored."
Note VI.]
figure of Venus rising from the sea supported on a shell by
two tritons, as well as that of Hercules armed with a club,
appear to be remains of the most remote antiquity. As the
former is devoid of grace, and of the pictorial art of
design, as one half of the group exactly resembles the other;
and as that of Hercules is armed with a club, which was the
first weapon.
The Venus seems to have represented the beauty of organic
Nature rising from the sea, and afterwards became simply an
emblem of ideal beauty; while the figure of Adonis was
probably designed to represent the more abstracted idea of
life or animation. Some of these hieroglyphic designs seem to
philosophers, and to have outlived all written language; and
still constitute the symbols, by which painters and poets
give form and animation to abstracted ideas, as to those of
strength and beauty in the above instances.]
Now paused the Nymph,--The Muse responsive cries,
Sweet admiration sparkling in her eyes,
"Drawn by your pencil, by your hand unfurl'd,
Bright shines the tablet of the dawning world;
Amazed the Sea's prolific depths I view,
And VENUS rising from the waves in YOU!
"Still Nature's births enclosed in egg or seed
From the tall forest to the lowly weed,
Her beaux and beauties, butterflies and worms,
Rise from aquatic to aerial forms.
Thus in the womb the nascent infant laves
Its natant form in the circumfluent waves;
With perforated heart unbreathing swims,
Awakes and stretches all its recent limbs;
With gills placental seeks the arterial flood,
And drinks pure ether from its Mother's blood.
Erewhile the landed Stranger bursts his way,
From the warm wave emerging into day;
Feels the chill blast, and piercing light, and tries
His tender lungs, and rolls his dazzled eyes;
Gives to the passing gale his curling hair,
And steps a dry inhabitant of air.
six months of gestation, the embryon probably sleeps, as it
seems to have no use for voluntary power; it then seems to
awake, and to stretch its limbs, and change its posture in
some degree, which is termed quickening.]
adheres to any side of the uterus in natural gestation, or of
any other cavity in extra-uterine gestation; the extremities
of its arteries and veins probably permeate the arteries of
the mother, and absorb from thence through their fine coats
the oxygen of the mother's blood; hence when the placenta is
withdrawn, the side of the uterus, where it adhered, bleeds;
but not the extremities of its own vessels.]
pupillaris described by modern anatomists guards the tender
retina from too much light; the young infant nevertheless
seems to feel the presence of it by its frequently moving its
eyes, before it can distinguish common objects.]
"Creative Nile, as taught in ancient song,
So charm'd to life his animated throng;
O'er his wide realms the slow-subsiding flood
Left the rich treasures of organic mud;
While with quick growth young Vegetation yields
Her blushing orchards, and her waving fields;
Pomona's hand replenish'd Plenty's horn,
And Ceres laugh'd amid her seas of corn.--
Bird, beast, and reptile, spring from sudden birth,
Raise their new forms, half-animal, half-earth;
The roaring lion shakes his tawny mane,
His struggling limbs still rooted in the plain;
With flapping wings assurgent eagles toil
To rend their talons from the adhesive soil;
The impatient serpent lifts his crested head,
And drags his train unfinish'd from the bed.--
As Warmth and Moisture blend their magic spells,
And brood with mingling wings the slimy dells;
Contractile earths in sentient forms arrange,
And Life triumphant stays their chemic change."
In eodem corpore sæpe
Altera pars vivit; rudis est pars altera tellus.
Quippe ubi temperiem sumpsêre humorque calorque,
Concipiunt; & ab his oriuntur, cuncta duobus.
This story from Ovid of the production of animals from the
probably a poetical account of the opinions of the magi or
priests of that country; showing that the simplest animations
were spontaneously produced like chemical combinations, but
were distinguished from the latter by their perpetual
improvement by the power of reproduction, first by solitary,
and then by sexual generation; whereas the products of
natural chemistry are only enlarged by accretion, or purified
by filtration.]
Then hand in hand along the waving glades
The virgin Sisters pass beneath the shades;
Ascend the winding steps with pausing march,
And seek the Portico's susurrant arch;
Whose sculptur'd architrave on columns borne
Drinks the first blushes of the rising morn,
Whose fretted roof an ample shield displays,
And guards the Beauties from meridian rays.
While on light step enamour'd Zephyr springs,
And fans their glowing features with his wings,
Imbibes the fragrance of the vernal flowers,
And speeds with kisses sweet the dancing Hours.
Urania, leaning with unstudied grace,
Rests her white elbow on a column's base;
Awhile reflecting takes her silent stand,
Her fair cheek press'd upon her lily hand;
Then, as awaking from ideal trance,
On the smooth floor her pausing steps advance,
Waves high her arm, upturns her lucid eyes,
Marks the wide scenes of ocean, earth, and skies;
And leads, meandering as it rolls along
Through Nature's walks, the shining stream of Song.
First her sweet voice in plaintive accents chains
The Muse's ear with fascinating strains;
Reverts awhile to elemental strife,
The change of form, and brevity of life;
Then tells how potent Love with torch sublime
Relights the glimmering lamp, and conquers Time.
--The polish'd walls reflect her rosy smiles,
And sweet-ton'd echoes talk along the ailes.
degenerate 167. Gout, Mania, Scrofula, Consumption 177. Time and
Warm but to cool, and active but to rest!--
The age-worn fibres goaded to contract,
By repetition palsied, cease to act;
When Time's cold hands the languid senses seize,
Chill the dull nerves, the lingering currents freeze;
Organic matter, unreclaim'd by Life,
Reverts to elements by chemic strife.
Thus Heat evolv'd from some fermenting mass
Expands the kindling atoms into gas;
Which sink ere long in cold concentric rings,
Condensed, on Gravity's descending wings.
few in all ages have complained of the brevity of life,
lamenting that mankind are not allowed time sufficient to
cultivate science, or to improve their intellect. Hippocrates
introduces his celebrated aphorisms with this idea; "Life is
short, science long, opportunities of knowledge rare,
experiments fallacious, and reasoning difficult."--A
melancholy reflection to philosophers!]
food, which enlarge and invigorate the body from infancy to
the meridian of life, and then nourish it for some years
unimpaired, should at length gradually cease to do so, and
the debility of age and death supervene, would be liable to
surprise us if we were not in the daily habit of observing
it; and is a circumstance which has not yet been well
understood.
Before mankind introduced civil society, old age did not
exist in the world, nor other lingering diseases; as all
living creatures, as soon as they became too feeble to defend
themselves, were slain and eaten by others, except the young
broods, who were defended by their mother; and hence the
animal world existed uniformly in its greatest strength and
perfection; see Additional Note VII.]
"But REPRODUCTION with ethereal fires
New Life rekindles, ere the first expires;
Calls up renascent Youth, ere tottering age
Quits the dull scene, and gives him to the stage;
Bids on his cheek the rose of beauty blow,
And binds the wreaths of pleasure round his brow;
With finer links the vital chain extends,
And the long line of Being never ends.
"Self-moving Engines by unbending springs
May walk on earth, or flap their mimic wings;
In tubes of glass mercurial columns rise,
Or sink, obedient to the incumbent skies;
Or, as they touch the figured scale, repeat
The nice gradations of circumfluent heat.
But REPRODUCTION, when the perfect Elf
Forms from fine glands another like itself,
Gives the true character of life and sense,
And parts the organic from the chemic Ens.--
Where milder skies protect the nascent brood,
And earth's warm bosom yields salubrious food;
Each new Descendant with superior powers
Of sense and motion speeds the transient hours;
Braves every season, tenants every clime,
And Nature rises on the wings of Time.
"As LIFE discordant elements arrests,
Rejects the noxious, and the pure digests;
Combines with Heat the fluctuating mass,
And gives a while solidity to gas;
Organic forms with chemic changes strive,
Live but to die, and die but to revive!
Immortal matter braves the transient storm,
Mounts from the wreck, unchanging but in form.--
on line 248 of the first Canto, that much of the aerial and
liquid parts of the terraqueous globe was converted by the
powers of life into solid matter; and that this was effected
by the combination of the fluid, heat, with other elementary
bodies by the appetencies and propensities of the parts of
living matter to unite with each other. But when these
appetencies and propensities of the parts of organic matter
to unite with each other cease, the chemical affinities of
attraction and the aptitude to be attracted, and of repulsion
and the aptitude to be repelled, succeed, and reduce much of
the solid matters back to the condition of elements; which
seems to be effected by the matter of heat being again set at
liberty, which was combined with other matters by the powers
of life; and thus by its diffusion the solid bodies return
into liquid ones or into gasses, as occurs in the processes
of fermentation, putrefaction, sublimation, and calcination.
Whence solidity appears to be produced in consequence of the
diminution of heat, as the condensation of steam into water,
and the consolidation of water into ice, or by the
combination of heat with bodies, as with the materials of
gunpowder before its explosion.]
of the forms of matter seems to have struck the philosophers
of great antiquity; the system of transmigration taught by
Pythagoras, in which the souls of men were supposed after
death to animate the bodies of a variety of animals, appears
to have arisen from this source. He had observed the
perpetual changes of organic matter from one creature to
another, and concluded, that the vivifying spirit must attend
"So, as the sages of the East record
In sacred symbol, or unletter'd word;
Emblem of Life, to change eternal doom'd,
The beauteous form of fair ADONIS bloom'd.--
On Syrian hills the graceful Hunter slain
Dyed with his gushing blood the shuddering plain;
And, slow-descending to the Elysian shade,
A while with PROSERPINE reluctant stray'd;
Soon from the yawning grave the bursting clay
Restor'd the Beauty to delighted day;
Array'd in youth's resuscitated charms,
And young DIONE woo'd him to her arms.--
Pleased for a while the assurgent youth above
Relights the golden lamp of life and love;
Ah, soon again to leave the cheerful light,
And sink alternate to the realms of night.
Venus rising from the sea seems to have represented the
Beauty of organic Nature; which the philosophers of that
country, the magi, appear to have discovered to have been
elevated by earthquakes from the primeval ocean. But the
hieroglyphic figure of Adonis seems to have signified the
spirit of animation or life, which was perpetually wooed or
courted by organic matter, and which perished and revived
alternately. Afterwards the fable of Adonis seems to have
given origin to the first religion promising a resurrection
from the dead; whence his funeral and return to life were
of which Ezekiel complains as idolatrous, accusing the women
of Israel of lamenting over Thammus; which St. Cyril
interprets to be Adonis, in his Commentaries on Isaiah;
Danet's Diction.]
Leaves the cold organ, and the mass dissolves;
The Reproductions of the living Ens
From sires to sons, unknown to sex, commence.
New buds and bulbs the living fibre shoots
On lengthening branches, and protruding roots;
Or on the father's side from bursting glands
The adhering young its nascent form expands;
In branching lines the parent-trunk adorns,
And parts ere long like plumage, hairs, or horns.
"So the lone Truffle, lodged beneath the earth,
Shoots from paternal roots the tuberous birth;
No stamen-males ascend, and breathe above,
No seed-born offspring lives by female love.
From each young tree, for future buds design'd
Organic drops exsude beneath the rind;
While these with appetencies nice invite,
And those with apt propensities unite;
New embryon fibrils round the trunk combine
With quick embrace, and form the living line:
Whose plume and rootlet at their early birth
Seek the dry air, or pierce the humid earth.
This plant never rises above the earth, is propagated without
seed by its roots only, and seems to require no light.
Perhaps many other fungi are generated without seed by their
roots only, and without light, and approach on the last
account to animal nature.]
Additional Note VIII.]
"So safe in waves prolific Volvox dwells,
And five descendants crowd his lucid cells;
So the male Polypus parental swims,
And branching infants bristle all his limbs;
So the lone Tænia, as he grows, prolongs
His flatten'd form with young adherent throngs;
Unknown to sex the pregnant oyster swells,
And coral-insects build their radiate shells;
Parturient Sires caress their infant train,
And heaven-born STORGE weaves the social chain;
Successive births her tender cares combine,
And soft affections live along the line.
dwells in the lakes of Europe, is transparent, and bears
within it children and grandchildren to the fifth generation;
fusca of Linneus dwell in our ditches and rivers under
aquatic plants; these animals have been shown by ingenious
observers to revive after having been dried, to be restored
when mutilated, to be multiplied by dividing them, and
propagated from portions of them, parts of different ones to
unite, to be turned inside outwards and yet live, and to be
propagated by seeds, to produce bulbs, and vegetate by
branches. Syst. Nat.]
the intestines of animals, and grows old at one extremity,
producing an infinite series of young ones at the other; the
separate joints have been called Gourd-worms, each of which
possesses a mouth of its own, and organs of digestion. Syst.
in the European oceans, frequent at the tables of the
luxurious, a living repast! New-born oysters swim swiftly by
an undulating movement of fins thrust out a little way from
their shells. Syst. Nat. But they do not afterwards change
their place during their whole lives, and are capable of no
other movement but that of opening the shell a little way:
whence Professor Beckman observes, that their offspring is
probably produced without maternal organs; and that those,
who speak of male and female oysters, must be mistaken: Phil.
Magaz. March 1800. It is also observed by H. I. le Beck, that
on nice inspection of the Pearl oysters in the gulf of Manar,
he could observe no distinction of sexes. Nicholson's
of the Madrepora of Linneus consists of one or more star-like
cells; a congeries of which form rocks beneath the sea; the
animal which constructs it is termed Medusa; and as it
adheres to its calcareous cavity, and thence cannot travel to
its neighbours, is probably without sex. I observed great
masses of the limestone in Shropshire, which is brought to
Newport, to consist of the cells of these animals.]
Note IX.]
"On angel-wings the GODDESS FORM descends,
Round her fond broods her silver arms she bends;
White streams of milk her tumid bosom swell,
And on her lips ambrosial kisses dwell.
Light joys on twinkling feet before her dance
With playful nod, and momentary glance;
Behind, attendant on the pansied plain,
Young PSYCHE treads with CUPID in her train.
Their genial powers to nourish or defend;
No nutrient streams from Beauty's orbs improve
These orphan babes of solitary love;
Birth after birth the line unchanging runs,
And fathers live transmitted in their sons;
Each passing year beholds the unvarying kinds,
The same their manners, and the same their minds.
Till, as erelong successive buds decay,
And insect-shoals successive pass away,
Increasing wants the pregnant parents vex
With the fond wish to form a softer sex;
Whose milky rills with pure ambrosial food
Might charm and cherish their expected brood.
The potent wish in the productive hour
Calls to its aid Imagination's power,
O'er embryon throngs with mystic charm presides,
And sex from sex the nascent world divides,
With soft affections warms the callow trains,
And gives to laughing Love his nymphs and swains;
Whose mingling virtues interweave at length
The mother's beauty with the father's strength.
raised from seed die annually, and are succeeded by new buds
by solitary reproduction; which are larger or more perfect
for several successive years, and then they produce sexual
flowers, which are succeeded by seminal reproduction. The
same occurs in bulbous rooted plants raised from seed; they
die annually, and produce others rather more perfect than the
parent for several years, and then produce sexual flowers.
The Aphis is in a similar manner hatched from an egg in the
vernal months, and produces a viviparous offspring without
sexual intercourse for nine or ten successive generations;
and then the progeny is both male and female, which cohabit,
and from these new females are produced eggs, which endure
the winter; the same process probably occurs in many other
insects.]
the similarity of the progeny to the parent, and the sex of
it, are produced by the power of imagination, is treated of
in Zoonomia. Sect. 39. 6. 3. It is not to be understood, that
the first living fibres, which are to form an animal, are
produced by imagination, with any similarity of form to the
future animal; but with appetencies or propensities, which
shall produce by accretion of parts the similarity of form
and feature, or of sex, corresponding with the imagination of
the father.]
which have been adduced to show, that mankind and quadrupeds
were formerly in an hermaphrodite state, are first deduced
from the present existence of breasts and nipples in all the
males; which latter swell on titillation like those of the
females, and which are said to contain a milky fluid at their
birth; and it is affirmed, that some men have given milk to
their children in desert countries, where the mother has
perished; as the male pigeon is said to give a kind of milk
from his stomach along with the regurgitated food, to the
young doves, as mentioned in Additional Note IX. on Storge.
Secondly, from the apparent progress of many animals to
greater perfection, as in some insects, as the flies with two
wings, termed Diptera; which have rudiments of two other
wings, called halteres, or poisers; and in many flowers which
have rudiments of new stamina, or filaments without anthers
on them. See Botanic Garden, Vol. II. Curcuma, Note, and the
Note on l. 204 of Canto I. of this work. It has been supposed
by some, that mankind were formerly quadrupeds as well as
hermaphrodites; and that some parts of the body are not yet
so convenient to an erect attitude as to a horizontal one; as
the fundus of the bladder in an erect posture is not exactly
over the insertion of the urethra; whence it is seldom
completely evacuated, and thus renders mankind more subject
to the stone, than if he had preserved his horizontality:
these philosophers, with Buffon and Helvetius, seem to
imagine, that mankind arose from one family of monkeys on the
banks of the Mediterranean; who accidentally had learned to
use the adductor pollicis, or that strong muscle which
constitutes the ball of the thumb, and draws the point of it
to meet the points of the fingers; which common monkeys do
not; and that this muscle gradually increased in size,
strength, and activity, in successive generations; and by
this improved use of the sense of touch, that monkeys
acquired clear ideas, and gradually became men.
Perhaps all the productions of nature are in their progress
to greater perfection! an idea countenanced by modern
discoveries and deductions concerning the progressive
formation of the solid parts of the terraqueous globe, and
consonant to the dignity of the Creator of all things.]
"So tulip-bulbs emerging from the seed,
Year after year unknown to sex proceed;
Erewhile the stamens and the styles display
Their petal-curtains, and adorn the day;
The beaux and beauties in each blossom glow
With wedded joy, or amatorial woe.
Unmarried Aphides prolific prove
For nine successions uninform'd of love;
New sexes next with softer passions spring,
Breathe the fond vow, and woo with quivering wing.
"So erst in Paradise creation's LORD,
As the first leaves of holy writ record,
From Adam's rib, who press'd the flowery grove,
And dreamt delighted of untasted love,
To cheer and charm his solitary mind,
Form'd a new sex, the MOTHER OF MANKIND.
--Buoy'd on light step the Beauty seem'd to swim,
And stretch'd alternate every pliant limb;
Pleased on Euphrates' velvet margin stood,
And view'd her playful image in the flood;
Own'd the fine flame of love, as life began,
And smiled enchantment on adoring Man.
Down her white neck and o'er her bosom roll'd,
Flow'd in sweet negligence her locks of gold;
Round her fine form the dim transparence play'd,
And show'd the beauties, that it seem'd to shade.
--Enamour'd ADAM gaz'd with fond surprise,
And drank delicious passion from her eyes;
Felt the new thrill of young Desire, and press'd
The graceful Virgin to his glowing breast.--
The conscious Fair betrays her soft alarms,
Sinks with warm blush into his closing arms,
Yields to his fond caress with wanton play,
And sweet, reluctant, amorous, delay.
Nurs'd in her womb, the solitary breeds;
No Mother's care their early steps directs,
Warms in her bosom, with her wings protects;
The clime unkind, or noxious food instills
To embryon nerves hereditary ills;
The feeble births acquired diseases chase,
Till Death extinguish the degenerate race.
"So grafted trees with shadowy summits rise,
Spread their fair blossoms, and perfume the skies;
Till canker taints the vegetable blood,
Mines round the bark, and feeds upon the wood.
So, years successive, from perennial roots
The wire or bulb with lessen'd vigour shoots;
Till curled leaves, or barren flowers, betray
A waning lineage, verging to decay;
Or till, amended by connubial powers,
Rise seedling progenies from sexual flowers.
observed that those apple and pear trees, which had been
propagated for above a century by ingraftment were now so
unhealthy, as not to be worth cultivation. I have suspected
the diseases of potatoes attended with the curled leaf, and
of strawberry plants attended with barren flowers, to be
owing to their having been too long raised from roots, or by
solitary reproduction, and not from seeds, or sexual
reproduction, and to have thence acquired those hereditary
diseases.]
"E'en where unmix'd the breed, in sexual tribes
Parental taints the nascent babe imbibes;
Eternal war the Gout and Mania wage
With fierce uncheck'd hereditary rage;
Sad Beauty's form foul Scrofula surrounds
With bones distorted, and putrescent wounds;
And, fell Consumption! thy unerring dart
Wets its broad wing in Youth's reluctant heart.
... Hæret lateri lethalis arundo.
"With pausing step, at night's refulgent noon,
Beneath the sparkling stars, and lucid moon,
Plung'd in the shade of some religious tower,
The slow bell counting the departed hour,
O'er gaping tombs where shed umbrageous Yews
On mouldering bones their cold unwholesome dews;
While low aerial voices whisper round,
And moondrawn spectres dance upon the ground;
Poetic MELANCHOLY loves to tread,
And bend in silence o'er the countless Dead;
Marks with loud sobs infantine Sorrows rave,
And wring their pale hands o'er their Mother's grave;
Hears on the new-turn'd sod with gestures wild
The kneeling Beauty call her buried child;
Upbraid with timorous accents Heaven's decrees,
And with sad sighs augment the passing breeze.
'Stern Time,' She cries, 'receives from Nature's womb
Her beauteous births, and bears them to the tomb;
Calls all her sons from earth's remotest bourn,
And from the closing portals none return!'
And her white bosom heaved with silent sighs;
With her the MUSE laments the sum of things,
And hides her sorrows with her meeting wings;
Long o'er the wrecks of lovely Life they weep,
Then pleased reflect, "to die is but to sleep;"
From Nature's coffins to her cradles turn,
Smile with young joy, with new affection burn.
And now the Muse, with mortal woes impress'd,
Thus the fair Hierophant again address'd.
--"Ah me! celestial Guide, thy words impart
Ills undeserved, that rend the nascent heart!
O, Goddess, say, if brighter scenes improve
Air-breathing tribes, and births of sexual love?"--
The smiling Fair obeys the inquiring Muse,
And in sweet tones her grateful task pursues.
"Now on broad pinions from the realms above
Descending CUPID seeks the Cyprian grove;
To his wide arms enamour'd PSYCHE springs,
And clasps her lover with aurelian wings.
A purple sash across HIS shoulder bends,
And fringed with gold the quiver'd shafts suspends;
The bending bow obeys the silken string,
And, as he steps, the silver arrows ring.
Thin folds of gauze with dim transparence flow
O'er HER fair forehead, and her neck of snow;
The winding woof her graceful limbs surrounds,
Swells in the breeze, and sweeps the velvet grounds;
As hand in hand along the flowery meads
His blushing bride the quiver'd hero leads;
Charm'd round their heads pursuing Zephyrs throng,
And scatter roses, as they move along;
Bright beams of Spring in soft effusion play,
And halcyon Hours invite them on their way.
ancient emblem of the soul after death as rising from the
tomb of its former state, and becoming a winged inhabitant of
air from an insect creeping upon earth. At length the wings
only were given to a beautiful nymph under the name of
Psyche, which is the greek word for the soul, and also became
afterwards to signify a butterfly probably from the
popularity of this allegory. Many allegorical designs of
Cupid or Love warming a butterfly or the Soul with his torch
may be seen in Spence's Polymetis, and a beautiful one of
their marriage in Bryant's Mythology; from which this
description is in part taken.]
"Delighted HYMEN hears their whisper'd vows,
And binds his chaplets round their polish'd brows,
Guides to his altar, ties the flowery bands,
And as they kneel, unites their willing hands.
'Behold, he cries, Earth! Ocean! Air above,
'All forms of Life shall this fond Pair delight,
'And sex to sex the willing world unite;
'Shed their sweet smiles in Earth's unsocial bowers,
'Fan with soft gales, and gild with brighter hours;
'Fill Pleasure's chalice unalloy'd with pain,
'And give SOCIETY his golden chain.'
"Now young DESIRES, on purple pinions borne,
Mount the warm gales of Manhood's rising morn;
With softer fires through virgin bosoms dart,
Flush the pale cheek, and goad the tender heart.
Ere the weak powers of transient Life decay,
And Heaven's ethereal image melts away;
LOVE with nice touch renews the organic frame,
Forms a young Ens, another and the same;
Gives from his rosy lips the vital breath,
And parries with his hand the shafts of death;
While BEAUTY broods with angel wings unfurl'd
O'er nascent life, and saves the sinking world.
Alma Venus! per te quoniam genus omne animantum
Concipitur, visitque exortum lumina coeli.
"HENCE on green leaves the sexual Pleasures dwell,
And Loves and Beauties crowd the blossom's bell;
The wakeful Anther in his silken bed
O'er the pleased Stigma bows his waxen head;
With meeting lips and mingling smiles they sup
Ambrosial dewdrops from the nectar'd cup;
Or buoy'd in air the plumy Lover springs,
And seeks his panting bride on Hymen-wings.
stigmas of flowers are probably nourished by the honey, which
is secreted by the honey-gland called by Linneus the nectary;
and possess greater sensibility or animation than other parts
of the plant. The corol of the flower appears to be a
respiratory organ belonging to these anthers and stigmas for
the purpose of further oxygenating the vegetable blood for
the production of the anther dust and of this honey, which is
also exposed to the air in its receptacle or honey-cup;
which, I suppose, to be necessary for its further
oxygenation, as in many flowers so complicate an apparatus is
formed for its protection from insects, as in aconitum,
delphinium, larkspur, lonicera, woodbine; and because the
corol and nectary fall along with the anthers and stigmas,
when the pericarp is impregnated.
Dr. B. S. Barton in the American Transactions has lately
shown, that the honey collected from some plants is
intoxicating and poisonous to men, as from rhododendron,
azalea, and datura; and from some other plants that it is
hurtful to the bees which collect it; and that from some
flowers it is so injurious or disagreeable, that they do not
collect it, as from the fritillaria or crown imperial of this
country.]
"The Stamen males, with appetencies just,
Produce a formative prolific dust;
With apt propensities, the Styles recluse
Secrete a formative prolific juice;
These in the pericarp erewhile arrive,
Rush to each other, and embrace alive.
--Form'd by new powers progressive parts succeed,
Join in one whole, and swell into a seed.
productions by chemical affinity one set of particles must
possess the power of attraction, and the other the aptitude
to be attracted, as when iron approaches a magnet; so when
animal particles unite, whether in digestion or reproduction,
some of them must possess an appetite to unite, and others a
propensity to be united. The former of these are secreted by
the anthers from the vegetable blood, and the latter by the
styles or pericarp; see the Additional Note VIII. on
"So in fond swarms the living Anthers shine
Of bright Vallisner on the wavy Rhine;
Break from their stems, and on the liquid glass
Surround the admiring stigmas as they pass;
The love-sick Beauties lift their essenced brows,
Sigh to the Cyprian queen their secret vows,
Like watchful Hero feel their soft alarms,
And clasp their floating lovers in their arms.
class of dioecia. The flowers of the male plant are produced
under water, and as soon as their farina or dust is mature,
they detach themselves from the plant, rise to the surface
and continue to flourish, and are wafted by the air or borne
by the current to the female flowers. In this they resemble
those tribes of insects, where the males at certain seasons
acquire wings, but not the females, as ants, coccus,
lampyris, phalæna, brumata, lichanella; Botanic Garden, Vol.
"Hence the male Ants their gauzy wings unfold,
And young Lampyris waves his plumes of gold;
The Glow-Worm sparkles with impassion'd light
On each green bank, and charms the eye of night;
While new desires the painted Snail perplex,
And twofold love unites the double sex.
some seasons so luminous, that M. Merian says, that by
putting two of them under a glass, she was able to draw her
figures of them by night. Whether the light of this and of
other insects be caused by their amatorial passion, and thus
assists them to find each other; or is caused by respiration,
which is so analogous to combustion; or to a tendency to
putridity, as in dead fish and rotten wood, is still to be
investigated; see Botanic Garden, Vol. I. Additional Note
"Hence, when the Morus in Italia's lands
To spring's warm beam its timid leaf expands;
The Silk-Worm broods in countless tribes above
Crop the green treasure, uninform'd of love;
Erewhile the changeful worm with circling head
Weaves the nice curtains of his silken bed;
Web within web involves his larva form,
Alike secured from sunshine and from storm;
For twelve long days He dreams of blossom'd groves,
Untasted honey, and ideal loves;
Wakes from his trance, alarm'd with young Desire,
Finds his new sex, and feels ecstatic fire;
From flower to flower with honey'd lip he springs,
And seeks his velvet loves on silver wings.
butterflies seem to pass from a reptile leaf-eating state,
and to acquire wings to flit in air, with a proboscis to gain
honey for their food along with their organs of reproduction,
solely for the purpose of propagating their species by sexual
intercourse, as they die when that is completed. By the use
of their wings they have access to each other on different
branches or on different vegetables, and by living upon honey
probably acquire a higher degree of animation, and thus seem
to resemble the anthers of flowers, which probably are
supported by honey only, and thence acquire greater
sensibility; see Note on Vallisneria, l. 280 of this Canto.
A naturalist, who had studied this subject, thought it not
impossible that the first insects were the anthers and
stigmas of flowers, which had by some means loosened
themselves from their parent plant, like the male flowers of
vallisneria, and that other insects in process of time had
been formed from these, some acquiring wings, others fins,
and others claws, from their ceaseless efforts to procure
food or to secure themselves from injury. He contends, that
none of these changes are more incomprehensible than the
transformation of caterpillars into butterflies; see Botanic
Garden, Vol. I. Additional Note XXXIX.]
Blasts the sweet flowers of Pleasure not his own,
Rolls his wild eyes, and through the shuddering grove
Pursues the steps of unsuspecting Love;
Or drives o'er rattling plains his iron car,
Flings his red torch, and lights the flames of war.
Here Cocks heroic burn with rival rage,
And Quails with Quails in doubtful fight engage;
Of armed heels and bristling plumage proud,
They sound the insulting clarion shrill and loud,
With rustling pinions meet, and swelling chests,
And seize with closing beaks their bleeding crests;
Rise on quick wing above the struggling foe,
And aim in air the death-devoting blow.
There the hoarse stag his croaking rival scorns,
And butts and parries with his branching horns;
Contending Boars with tusk enamell'd strike,
And guard with shoulder-shield the blow oblique;
While female bands attend in mute surprise,
And view the victor with admiring eyes.--
one part of the animal world has consisted in the desire of
the exclusive possession of the females; and these have
acquired weapons to combat each other for this purpose, as
the very thick shield-like horny skin on the shoulder of the
boar is a defence only against animals of his own species,
who strike obliquely upwards, nor are his tushes for other
purposes, except to defend himself, as he is not naturally a
carnivorous animal. So the horns of the stag are sharp to
offend his adversary, but are branched for the purpose of
parrying or receiving the thrusts of horns similar to his
own, and have therefore been formed for the purpose of
combating other stags for the exclusive possession of the
females, who are observed, like the ladies in the times of
chivalry, to attend the car of the victor.
The birds, which do not carry food to their young, and do not
therefore marry, are armed with spurs for the purpose of
fighting for the exclusive possession of the females, as
cocks and quails. It is certain that these weapons are not
provided for their defence against other adversaries, because
the females of these species are without this armour;
"So Knight on Knight, recorded in romance,
Urged the proud steed, and couch'd the extended lance;
He, whose dread prowess with resistless force,
O'erthrew the opposing warrior and his horse,
Bless'd, as the golden guerdon of his toils,
Bow'd to the Beauty, and receiv'd her smiles.
"So when fair HELEN with ill-fated charms,
By PARIS wooed, provoked the world to arms,
Left her vindictive Lord to sigh in vain
For broken vows, lost love, and cold disdain;
Fired at his wrongs, associate to destroy
The realms unjust of proud adulterous Troy,
Unnumber'd Heroes braved the dubious fight,
And sunk lamented to the shades of night.
"Now vows connubial chain the plighted pair,
And join paternal with maternal care;
The married birds with nice selection cull
Soft thistle-down, gray moss, and scattered wool,
Line the secluded nest with feathery rings,
Meet with fond bills, and woo with fluttering wings.
Week after week, regardless of her food,
The incumbent Linnet warms her future brood;
Each spotted egg with ivory lips she turns,
Day after day with fond expectance burns,
Hears the young prisoner chirping in his cell,
And breaks in hemispheres the obdurate shell.
Loud trills sweet Philomel his tender strain,
Charms his fond bride, and wakes his infant train;
Perch'd on the circling moss, the listening throng
Wave their young wings, and whisper to the song.
the unexperienced and untaught bird to its egg, which induces
it to sit days and weeks upon it to warm the enclosed
embryon, is a matter of great difficulty to explain; See
Additional Note IX. on Storge. Concerning the fabrication of
their nests, see Zoonomia, Sect. XVI. 13. on instinct.]
at the broad end of an incubated egg gradually extends its
edges along the sides of the shell, as the chick enlarges,
but is at the same time applied closer to the internal
surface of the shell; when the time of hatching approaches
the chick is liable to break this air-bag with its beak, and
thence begin to breathe and to chirp; at this time the edges
of the enlarged air-bag extend so as to cover internally one
hemisphere of the egg; and as one half of the external shell
is thus moist, and the other half dry, as soon as the mother
hearing the chick chirp, or the chick itself wanting
respirable air, strikes the egg, about its equatorial line,
it breaks into two hemispheres, and liberates the prisoner.]
circumstance is mentioned by Kircherus de Musurgia, in his
Chapter de Lusciniis. "That the young nightingales, that are
hatched under other birds, never sing till they are
instructed by the company of other nightingales." And
Johnston affirms, that the nightingales that visit Scotland,
have not the same harmony as those of Italy, (Pennant's
Zoology, octavo, p. 255), which would lead us to suspect,
that the singing of birds, like human music, is an artificial
language rather than a natural expression of passion.]
"The Lion-King forgets his savage pride,
And courts with playful paws his tawny bride;
The listening Tiger hears with kindling flame
The love-lorn night-call of his brinded dame.
Despotic LOVE dissolves the bestial war,
Bends their proud necks, and joins them to his car;
Shakes o'er the obedient pairs his silken thong,
And goads the humble, or restrains the strong.--
Slow roll the silver wheels,--in beauty's pride
Celestial PSYCHE blushing by his side.--
The lordly Bull behind and warrior Horse
With voice of thunder shake the echoing course,
Chain'd to the car with herds domestic move,
And swell the triumph of despotic LOVE.
"Pleased as they pass along the breezy shore
In twinkling shoals the scaly realms adore,
Move on quick fin with undulating train,
Or lift their slimy foreheads from the main.
High o'er their heads on pinions broad display'd
The feather'd nations shed a floating shade;
Pair after pair enamour'd shoot along,
And trill in air the gay impassion'd song.
With busy hum in playful swarms around
Emerging insects leave the peopled ground,
Rise in dark clouds, and borne in airy rings
Sport round the car, and wave their golden wings.
Admiring Fawns pursue on dancing hoof,
And bashful Dryads peep from shades aloof;
Emerging Nereids rise from coral cells,
Enamour'd Tritons sound their twisted shells;
From sparkling founts enchanted Naiads move,
And swell the triumph of despotic LOVE.
fish seem to be chiefly used to poise them; as they turn upon
their backs immediately when killed, the air-bladder assists
them perhaps to rise or descend by its possessing the power
to condense the air in it by muscular contraction; and it is
possible, that at great depths in the ocean the air in this
receptacle may by the great pressure of the incumbent water
become condensed into so small a space, as to cease to be
useful to the animal, which was possibly the cause of the
death of Mr. Day in his diving ship. See note on Ulva, Botan.
The progressive motion of fish beneath the water is produced
principally by the undulation of their tails. One oblique
plain of a part of the tail on the right side of the fish
strikes the water at the same time that another oblique plain
strikes it on the left side, hence in respect to moving to
the right or left these percussions of the water counteract
each other, but they coincide in respect to the progression
of the fish; this power seems to be better applied to push
forwards a body in water, than the oars of boats, as the
particles of water recede from the stroke of the oar, whence
the comparative power acquired is but as the difference of
velocity between the striking oar and the receding water. So
a ship moves swifter with an oblique wind, than with a wind
of the same velocity exactly behind it; and the common
windmill sail placed obliquely to the wind is more powerful
than one which directly recedes from it. Might not some
machinery resembling the tails of fish be placed behind a
boat, so as to be moved with greater effect than common oars,
by the force of wind or steam, or perhaps by hand?]
progressive motion of birds in the air is principally
performed by the movement of their wings, and not by that of
their tails as in fish. The bird is supported in an element
so much lighter than itself by the resistance of the air as
it moves horizontally against the oblique plain made by its
breast, expanded tail and wings, when they are at rest; the
change of this obliquity also assists it to rise, and even
directs its descent, though this is owing principally to its
specific gravity, but it is in all situations kept upright or
balanced by its wings.
As the support of the bird in the air, as well as its
progression, is performed by the motion of the wings; these
require strong muscles as are seen on the breasts of
partridges. Whence all attempts of men to fly by wings
applied to the weak muscles of their arms have been
ineffectual; but it is not certain whether light machinery so
contrived as to be moved by their feet, might not enable them
to fly a little way, though not so as to answer any useful
purpose.]
"Delighted Flora, gazing from afar,
Greets with mute homage the triumphal car;
On silvery slippers steps with bosom bare,
Bends her white knee, and bows her auburn hair;
Calls to her purple heaths, and blushing bowers,
Bursts her green gems, and opens all her flowers;
O'er the bright Pair a shower of roses sheds,
And crowns with wreathes of hyacinth their heads.--
--Slow roll the silver wheels with snowdrops deck'd,
And primrose bands the cedar spokes connect;
Round the fine pole the twisting woodbine clings,
And knots of jasmine clasp the bending springs;
Bright daisy links the velvet harness chain,
And rings of violets join each silken rein;
Festoon'd behind, the snow-white lilies bend,
And tulip-tassels on each side depend.
--Slow rolls the car,--the enamour'd Flowers exhale
Their treasured sweets, and whisper to the gale;
Their ravelled buds, and wrinkled cups unfold,
Nod their green stems, and wave their bells of gold;
Breathe their soft sighs from each enchanted grove,
"ONWARD with march sublime in saffron robe
Young HYMEN steps, and traverses the globe;
O'er burning sands, and snow-clad mountains, treads,
Blue fields of air, and ocean's briny beds;
Flings from his radiant torch celestial light
O'er Day's wide concave, and illumes the Night.
With dulcet eloquence his tuneful tongue
Convokes and captivates the Fair and Young;
His golden lamp with ray ethereal dyes
The blushing cheek, and lights the laughing eyes;
With secret flames the virgin's bosom warms,
And lights the impatient bridegroom to her arms;
With lovely life all Nature's frame inspires,
And, as they sink, rekindles all her fires."
Gazed on her train with sympathetic smile.
'Beware of Love! she cried, ye Nymphs, and hear
'His twanging bowstring with alarmed ear;
'Fly the first whisper of the distant dart,
'Or shield with adamant the fluttering heart;
'To secret shades, ye Virgin trains, retire,
'And in your bosoms guard the vestal fire.'
--The obedient Beauties hear her words, advised,
And bow with laugh repress'd, and smile chastised.
violent actions of laughter, and of the difficulty of
restraining them, is a curious subject of inquiry. When pain
afflicts us, which we cannot avoid, we learn to relieve it by
great voluntary exertions, as in grinning, holding the
breath, or screaming; now the pleasurable sensation, which
excites laughter, arises for a time so high as to change its
name, and become a painful one; and we excite the convulsive
motions of the respiratory muscles to relieve this pain. We
are however unwilling to lose the pleasure, and presently put
a stop to this exertion; and immediately the pleasure recurs,
and again as instantly rises into pain. Which is further
explained in Zoonomia, Sect. 34. 1. 4. When this pleasurable
sensation rises into a painful one, and the customs of
society will not permit us to laugh aloud, some other violent
voluntary exertion is used instead of it to alleviate the
smile has generally been ascribed to inexplicable instinct,
but may be deduced from our early associations of actions and
ideas. In the act of sucking, the lips of the infant are
closed round the nipple of its mother, till it has filled its
stomach, and the pleasure of digesting this grateful food
succeeds; then the sphincter of the mouth, fatigued by the
continued action of sucking, is relaxed; and the antagonist
muscles of the face gently acting, produce the smile of
pleasure, which is thus during our lives associated with
gentle pleasure, which is further explained in Zoonomia,
Now at her nod the Nymphs attendant bring
Translucent water from the bubbling spring;
In crystal cups the waves salubrious shine,
Unstain'd untainted with immodest wine.
Next, where emerging from its ancient roots
Its widening boughs the Tree of Knowledge shoots;
Pluck'd with nice choice before the Muse they placed
The now no longer interdicted taste.
Awhile they sit, from higher cares released,
And pleased partake the intellectual feast.
Of good and ill they spoke, effect and cause,
Celestial agencies, and Nature's laws.
So when angelic Forms to Syria sent
Sat in the cedar shade by ABRAHAM'S tent;
A spacious bowl the admiring Patriarch fills
With dulcet water from the scanty rills;
Sweet fruits and kernels gathers from his hoard,
With milk and butter piles the plenteous board;
While on the heated hearth his Consort bakes
Fine flour well kneaded in unleaven'd cakes.
The Guests ethereal quaff the lucid flood,
Smile on their hosts, and taste terrestrial food;
And while from seraph-lips sweet converse springs,
Lave their fair feet, and close their silver wings.
The graceful HIEROPHANT, and winged MUSE;
Onward they step around the stately piles,
O'er porcelain floors, through laqueated ailes,
Eye Nature's lofty and her lowly seats,
Her gorgeous palaces, and green retreats,
Pervade her labyrinths with unerring tread,
And leave for future guests a guiding thread.
First with fond gaze blue fields of air they sweep,
Or pierce the briny chambers of the deep;
Earth's burning line, and icy poles explore,
Her fertile surface, and her caves of ore;
Or mark how Oxygen with Azote-Gas
Plays round the globe in one aerial mass,
Or fused with Hydrogen in ceaseless flow
Forms the wide waves, which foam and roll below.
surrounds us, is composed of twenty-seven parts of oxygen gas
and seventy-three of azote or nitrogen gas, which are simply
diffused together, but which, when combined, become nitrous
acid. Water consists of eighty-six parts oxygen, and fourteen
parts of hydrogen or inflammable air, in a state of
combination. It is also probable, that much oxygen enters the
composition of glass; as those materials which promote
vitrification, contain so much of it, as minium and
manganese; and that glass is hence a solid acid in the
temperature of our atmosphere, as water is a fluid one.]
Next with illumined hands through prisms bright
Pleased they untwist the sevenfold threads of light;
Or, bent in pencils by the lens, convey
To one bright point the silver hairs of Day.
Then mark how two electric streams conspire
To form the resinous and vitreous fire;
Beneath the waves the fierce Gymnotus arm,
And give Torpedo his benumbing charm;
Or, through Galvanic chain-work as they pass,
Convert the kindling water into gas.
of some philosophers, that the electric ether consists of two
kinds of fluids diffused together or combined; which are
commonly known by the terms of positive and negative
electricity, but are by these electricians called vitreous
and resinous electricity. The electric shocks given by the
torpedo and by the gymnotus, are supposed to be similar to
those of the Galvanic pile, as they are produced in water.
Which water is decomposed by the Galvanic pile and converted
into oxygen and hydrogen gas; see Additional Note XII.
The magnetic ether may also be supposed to consist of two
fluids, one of which attracts the needle, and the other
repels it; and, perhaps, chemical affinities, and gravitation
itself, may consist of two kinds of ether surrounding the
particles of bodies, and may thence attract at one distance
and repel at another; as appears when two insulated
electrised balls are approached to each other, or when two
small globules of mercury are pressed together.]
How at the poles opposing Ethers dwell,
Attract the quivering needle, or repel.
How Gravitation by immortal laws
Surrounding matter to a centre draws;
How Heat, pervading oceans, airs, and lands,
With force uncheck'd the mighty mass expands;
And last how born in elemental strife
Beam'd the first spark, and lighten'd into Life.
Now in sweet tones the inquiring Muse express'd
Her ardent wish; and thus the Fair address'd.
"Priestess of Nature! whose exploring sight
Pierces the realms of Chaos and of Night;
Of space unmeasured marks the first and last,
Of endless time the present, future, past;
Immortal Guide! O, now with accents kind
Give to my ear the progress of the Mind.
How loves, and tastes, and sympathies commence
From evanescent notices of sense?
How from the yielding touch and rolling eyes
The piles immense of human science rise?--
With mind gigantic steps the puny Elf,
And weighs and measures all things but himself!"
The indulgent Beauty hears the grateful Muse,
Smiles on her pupil, and her task renews.
Attentive Nymphs in sparkling squadrons throng,
And choral Virgins listen to the song;
Pleased Fawns and Naiads crowd in silent rings,
And hovering Cupids stretch their purple wings.
Urged by appulses from without, commence;
With these exertions pain or pleasure springs,
And forms perceptions of external things.
Thus, when illumined by the solar beams,
Yon waving woods, green lawns, and sparkling streams,
In one bright point by rays converging lie
Plann'd on the moving tablet of the eye;
The mind obeys the silver goads of light,
And IRRITATION moves the nerves of sight.
exertion or change of some extreme part of the sensorium
residing in the muscles or organs of sense in consequence of
the appulses of external bodies. The word perception includes
both the action of the organ of sense in consequence of the
impact of external objects and our attention to that action;
that is, it expresses both the motion of the organ of sense,
or idea, and the pain or pleasure that succeeds or
accompanies it. Irritative ideas are those which are preceded
by irritation, which is excited by objects external to the
organs of sense: as the idea of that tree, which either I
attend to, or which I shun in walking near it without
attention. In the former case it is termed perception, in the
latter it is termed simply an irritative idea.]
"These acts repeated rise from joys or pains,
And swell Imagination's flowing trains;
So in dread dreams amid the silent night
Grim spectre-forms the shuddering sense affright;
Or Beauty's idol-image, as it moves,
Charms the closed eye with graces, smiles, and loves;
Each passing form the pausing heart delights,
And young SENSATION every nerve excites.
exertion or change of the central parts of the sensorium or
of the whole of it, _beginning_ at some of those extreme
parts of it which reside in the muscles or organs of sense.
Sensitive ideas are those which are preceded by the sensation
of pleasure or pain, are termed Imagination, and constitute
our dreams and reveries.]
"Oft from sensation quick VOLITION springs,
When pleasure thrills us, or when anguish stings;
Hence Recollection calls with voice sublime
Immersed ideas from the wrecks of Time,
With potent charm in lucid trains displays
Eventful stories of forgotten days.
Hence Reason's efforts good with ill contrast,
Compare the present, future, and the past;
Each passing moment, unobserved restrain
The wild discordancies of Fancy's train;
But leave uncheck'd the Night's ideal streams,
Or, sacred Muses! your meridian dreams.
exertion or change of the central parts of the sensorium, or
of the whole of it _terminating_ in some of those extreme
parts of it which reside in the muscles and organs of sense.
The vulgar use of the word _memory_ is too unlimited for our
purpose: those ideas which we voluntarily recall are here
termed ideas of _recollection_, as when we will to repeat the
alphabet backwards. And those ideas which are suggested to us
by preceding ideas are here termed ideas of _suggestion_, as
whilst we repeat the alphabet in the usual order; when by
habits previously acquired B is suggested by A, and C by B,
without any effort of deliberation. Reasoning is that
operation of the sensorium by which we excite two or many
tribes of ideas, and then reexcite the ideas in which they
differ or correspond. If we determine this difference, it is
called judgment; if we in vain endeavour to determine it, it
is called doubting.
If we reexcite the ideas in which they differ, it is called
distinguishing. If we reexcite those in which they
correspond, it is called comparing.]
hours, we perpetually compare the passing trains of our ideas
with the known system of nature, and reject those which are
incongruous with it; this is explained in Zoonomia, Sect.
sleep, the faculty of volition ceases to act, and in
consequence the uncompared trains of ideas become incongruous
and form the farrago of our dreams; in which we never
experience any surprise, or sense of novelty.]
"And last Suggestion's mystic power describes
Ideal hosts arranged in trains or tribes.
So when the Nymph with volant finger rings
Her dulcet harp, and shakes the sounding strings;
As with soft voice she trills the enamour'd song,
Successive notes, unwill'd, the strain prolong;
The transient trains ASSOCIATION steers,
And sweet vibrations charm the astonish'd ears.
exertion or change of some extreme part of the sensorium
residing in the muscles and organs of sense in consequence of
some antecedent or attendant fibrous contractions. Associate
ideas, therefore, are those which are preceded by other ideas
or muscular motions, without the intervention of irritation,
sensation, or volition between them; these are also termed
ideas of suggestion.]
"ON rapid feet o'er hills, and plains, and rocks,
Speed the scared leveret and rapacious fox;
On rapid pinions cleave the fields above
The hawk descending, and escaping dove;
With nicer nostril track the tainted ground
The hungry vulture, and the prowling hound;
Converge reflected light with nicer eye
The midnight owl, and microscopic fly;
With finer ear pursue their nightly course
The listening lion, and the alarmed horse.
"The branching forehead with diverging horns
Crests the bold bull, the jealous stag adorns;
Fierce rival boars with side-long fury wield
The pointed tusk, and guard with shoulder-shield;
Bounds the dread tiger o'er the affrighted heath
Arm'd with sharp talons, and resistless teeth;
The pouncing eagle bears in clinched claws
The struggling lamb, and rends with ivory jaws;
The tropic eel, electric in his ire,
Alarms the waves with unextinguish'd fire;
The fly of night illumes his airy way,
And seeks with lucid lamp his sleeping prey;
Fierce on his foe the poisoning serpent springs,
And insect armies dart their venom'd stings.
peculiarities of the shapes of animals which distinguish them
from each other, are enumerated in Zoonomia, Sect. XXXIX. 4.
formed from similar living fibres, and are varied by
reproduction. Many of these parts of animals are there shown
to have arisen from their three great desires of lust,
hunger, and security.]
"Proud Man alone in wailing weakness born,
No horns protect him, and no plumes adorn;
No finer powers of nostril, ear, or eye,
Teach the young Reasoner to pursue or fly.--
Nerved with fine touch above the bestial throngs,
The hand, first gift of Heaven! to man belongs;
Untipt with claws the circling fingers close,
With rival points the bending thumbs oppose,
Trace the nice lines of Form with sense refined,
And clear ideas charm the thinking mind.
Whence the fine organs of the touch impart
Ideal figure, source of every art;
Time, motion, number, sunshine or the storm,
But mark varieties in Nature's _form_.
human species in some of their sensations are much inferior
to animals, yet the accuracy of the sense of touch, which
they possess in so eminent a degree, gives them a great
superiority of understanding; as is well observed by the
ingenious Mr. Buffon. The extremities of other animals
terminate in horns, and hoofs, and claws, very unfit for the
sensation of touch; whilst the human hand is finely adapted
to encompass its object with this organ of sense. Those
animals who have clavicles or collar-bones, and thence use
their forefeet like hands, as cats, squirrels, monkeys, are
more ingenious than other quadrupeds, except the elephant,
who has a fine sense at the extremity of his proboscis; and
many insects from the possessing finer organs of touch have
greater ingenuity, as spiders, bees, wasps.]
idea of solidity is excited a part of the extensive organ of
touch is compressed by some external body, and this part of
the sensorium so compressed exactly resembles in figure the
figure of the body that compressed it. Hence when we acquire
the idea of solidity, we acquire at the same time the idea of
figure; and this idea of figure, or motion of a part of the
organ of touch, exactly resembles in its figure the figure of
the body that occasions it; and thus exactly acquaints us
with this property of the external world.
Now, as the whole universe with all its parts possesses a
certain form or figure, if any part of it moves, that form or
figure of the whole is varied. Hence, as motion is no other
than a perpetual variation of figure, our idea of motion is
also a real resemblance of the motion that produced it.
Hence arises the certainty of the mathematical sciences, as
they explain these properties of bodies, which are exactly
resembled by our ideas of them, whilst we are obliged to
collect almost all our other knowledge from experiment; that
is, by observing the effects exerted by one body upon
another.]
"Slow could the tangent organ wander o'er
The rock-built mountain, and the winding shore;
No apt ideas could the pigmy mite,
Or embryon emmet to the touch excite;
But as each mass the solar ray reflects,
The eye's clear glass the transient beams collects;
Bends to their focal point the rays that swerve,
And paints the living image on the nerve.
So in some village-barn, or festive hall
The spheric lens illumes the whiten'd wall;
O'er the bright field successive figures fleet,
And motley shadows dance along the sheet.--
Symbol of solid forms is colour'd light,
And the mute language of the touch is sight.
observe a difference of colour, or of shade, in the
prominences and depressions of objects, and that those shades
uniformly vary when the sense of touch observes any
variation. Hence when the retina becomes stimulated by
colours or shades of light in a certain form, as in a
circular spot, we know by experience that this is a sign that
a tangible body is before us; and that its figure is
resembled by the miniature figure of the part of the organ of
vision that is thus stimulated.
Here whilst the stimulated part of the retina resembles
exactly the visible figure of the whole in miniature, the
various kinds of stimuli from different colours mark the
visible figures of the minuter parts; and by habit we
instantly recall the tangible figures.
So that though our visible ideas resemble in miniature the
outline of the figure of coloured bodies, in other respects
they serve only as a language, which by acquired associations
introduce the tangible ideas of bodies. Hence it is, that
this sense is so readily deceived by the art of the painter
to our amusement and instruction. The reader will find much
very curious knowledge on this subject in Bishop Berkeley's
Essay on Vision, a work of great ingenuity.]
"HENCE in Life's portico starts young Surprise
With step retreating, and expanded eyes;
The virgin, Novelty, whose radiant train
Soars o'er the clouds, or sinks beneath the main,
With sweetly-mutable seductive charms
Thrills the young sense, the tender heart alarms.
Then Curiosity with tracing hands
And meeting lips the lines of form demands,
Buoy'd on light step, o'er ocean, earth, and sky,
Rolls the bright mirror of her restless eye.
While in wild groups tumultuous Passions stand,
And Lust and Hunger head the Motley band;
Then Love and Rage succeed, and Hope and Fear;
And nameless Vices close the gloomy rear;
Or young Philanthropy with voice divine
Convokes the adoring Youth to Virtue's shrine;
Who with raised eye and pointing finger leads
To truths celestial, and immortal deeds.
occasioned by the sudden interruption of the usual trains of
our ideas by any violent stimulus from external objects, as
from the unexpected discharge of a pistol, and hence does not
exist in our dreams, because our external senses are closed
or inirritable. The fetus in the womb must experience many
sensations, as of resistance, figure, fluidity, warmth,
motion, rest, exertion, taste; and must consequently possess
trains both of waking and sleeping ideas. Surprise must
therefore be strongly excited at its nativity, as those
trains of ideas must instantly be dissevered by the sudden
and violent sensations occasioned by the dry and cold
atmosphere, the hardness of external bodies, light, sound,
and odours; which are accompanied with pleasure or pain
according to their quantity or intensity.
As some of these sensations become familiar by repetition,
other objects not previously attended to present themselves,
and produce the idea of novelty, which is a less degree of
surprise, and like that is not perceived in our dreams,
though for another reason; because in sleep we possess no
voluntary power to compare our trains of ideas with our
previous knowledge of nature, and do not therefore perceive
their difference by intuitive analogy from what usually
occurs.
As the novelty of our ideas is generally attended with
pleasurable sensation, from this arises Curiosity, or a
desire of examining a variety of objects, hoping to find
novelty, and the pleasure consequent to this degree of
surprise; see Additional Note VII. 3.]
small bodies into their mouths, when they are satiated with
food, as well as when they are hungry, not with design to
taste them, but use their lips as an organ of touch to
distinguish the shape of them. Puppies, whose toes are
terminated with nails, and who do not much use their forefeet
as hands, seem to have no other means of acquiring a
knowledge of the forms of external bodies, and are therefore
perpetually playing with things by taking them between their
The clear ideas furnish'd by the hands;
Beauty's fine forms attract our wondering eyes,
And soft alarms the pausing heart surprise.
Warm from its cell the tender infant born
Feels the cold chill of Life's aerial morn;
Seeks with spread hands the bosoms velvet orbs,
With closing lips the milky fount absorbs;
And, as compress'd the dulcet streams distil,
Drinks warmth and fragrance from the living rill;
Eyes with mute rapture every waving line,
Prints with adoring kiss the Paphian shrine,
And learns erelong, the perfect form confess'd,
IDEAL BEAUTY from its Mother's breast.
beautiful lines are copied from Mr. Bilsborrow's Address
prefixed to Zoonomia, and are translated from that work;
distinguished from the animal passion of that name, with
which it is frequently accompanied, consists in the desire or
sensation of beholding, embracing, and saluting a beautiful
object.
The characteristic of beauty therefore is that it is the
object of love; and though many other objects are in common
language called beautiful, yet they are only called so
metaphorically, and ought to be termed agreeable. A Grecian
temple may give us the pleasurable idea of sublimity, a
Gothic temple may give us the pleasurable idea of variety,
and a modern house the pleasurable idea of utility; music and
poetry may inspire our love by association of ideas; but none
of these, except metaphorically, can be termed beautiful, as
we have no wish to embrace or salute them.
Our perception of beauty consists in our recognition by the
sense of vision of those objects, first, which have before
inspired our love by the pleasure, which they have afforded
to many of our senses; as to our sense of warmth, of touch,
of smell, of taste, hunger and thirst; and, secondly, which
bear any analogy of form to such objects.]
"Now on swift wheels descending like a star
Alights young EROS from his radiant car;
On angel-wings attendant Graces move,
And hail the God of SENTIMENTAL LOVE.
Earth at his feet extends her flowery bed,
And bends her silver blossoms round his head;
Dark clouds dissolve, the warring winds subside.
And smiling ocean calms his tossing tide,
O'er the bright morn meridian lustres play,
And Heaven salutes him with a flood of day.
deities of Love belonging to the heathen mythology, the one
said to be celestial, and the other terrestrial. Aristophanes
says, "Sable-winged Night produced an egg, from which sprung
up like a blossom Eros, the lovely, the desirable, with his
glossy golden wings." See Botanic Garden, Canto I. l. 412.
Note. The other deity of Love, Cupido, seems of much later
date, as he is not mentioned in the works of Homer, where
there were so many apt situations to have introduced him.]
Te, Dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila coeli,
Adventumque tuum; tibi suaves dædala tellus
Submittit flores; tibi rident æquora ponti;
Placatumque nitet diffuso lumine coelum.
"Warm as the sun-beam, pure as driven snows,
The enamour'd GOD for young DIONE glows;
Drops the still tear, with sweet attention sighs,
And woos the Goddess with adoring eyes;
Marks her white neck beneath the gauze's fold,
Her ivory shoulders, and her locks of gold;
Drinks with mute ecstacy the transient glow,
Which warms and tints her bosom's rising snow.
With holy kisses wanders o'er her charms,
And clasps the Beauty in Platonic arms;
Or if the dewy hands of Sleep, unbid,
O'er her blue eye-balls close the lovely lid,
Watches each nascent smile, and fleeting grace,
That plays in day-dreams o'er her blushing face;
Counts the fine mazes of the curls, that break
Round her fair ear, and shade her damask cheek;
Drinks the pure fragrance of her breath, and sips
With tenderest touch the roses of her lips;--
O'er female hearts with chaste seduction reigns,
And binds SOCIETY in silken chains.
The bending woodlands, or the winding shores,
Hills, whose green sides with soft protuberance rise,
Or the blue concave of the vaulted skies;--
Or scans with nicer gaze the pearly swell
Of spiral volutes round the twisted shell;
Or undulating sweep, whose graceful turns
Bound the smooth surface of Etrurian urns,
When on fine forms the waving lines impress'd
Give the nice curves, which swell the female breast;
The countless joys the tender Mother pours
Round the soft cradle of our infant hours,
In lively trains of unextinct delight
Rise in our bosoms _recognized by sight_;
Fond Fancy's eye recalls the form divine,
And TASTE sits smiling upon Beauty's shrine.
after it is born into this cold world, is applied to its
mother's bosom; its sense of perceiving warmth is first
agreeably affected; next its sense of smell is delighted with
the odour of her milk; then its taste is gratified by the
flavour of it; afterwards the appetites of hunger and of
thirst afford pleasure by the possession of their objects,
and by the subsequent digestion of the aliment; and lastly,
the sense of touch is delighted by the softness and
smoothness of the milky fountain, the source of such variety
of happiness.
All these various kinds of pleasure at length become
associated with the form of the mother's breast; which the
infant embraces with its hands, presses with its lips, and
watches with its eyes; and thus acquires more accurate ideas
of the form of its mother's bosom, than of the odour and
flavour or warmth, which it perceives by its other senses.
And hence at our maturer years, when any object of vision is
presented to us, which by its waving or spiral lines bears
any similitude to the form of the female bosom, whether it be
found in a landscape with soft gradations of rising and
descending surface, or in the forms of some antique vases, or
in other works of the pencil or the chisel, we feel a general
glow of delight, which seems to influence all our senses; and
if the object be not too large, we experience an attraction
to embrace it with our arms, and to salute it with our lips,
as we did in our early infancy the bosom of our mother. And
thus we find, according to the ingenious idea of Hogarth,
that the waving lines of beauty were originally taken from
the temple of Venus.]
And stretch their shadows o'er the shuddering sand;
Or where high rocks o'er ocean's dashing floods
Wave high in air their panoply of woods;
Admiring TASTE delights to stray beneath
With eye uplifted, and forgets to breathe;
Or, as aloft his daring footsteps climb,
Crests their high summits with his arm sublime.
have been generally divided into the beautiful, the sublime,
and the new; and lately to these have been added the
picturesque. The beautiful so well explained in Hogarth's
analysis of beauty, consists of curved lines and smooth
surfaces, as expressed in the preceding note; any object
larger than usual, as a very large temple or a very large
mountain, gives us the idea of sublimity; with which is often
confounded the terrific, and the melancholic: what is now
termed picturesque includes objects, which are principally
neither sublime nor beautiful, but which by their variety and
intricacy joined with a due degree of regularity or
uniformity convey to the mind an agreeable sentiment of
novelty. Many other agreeable sentiments may be excited by
visible objects, thus to the sublime and beautiful may be
added the terrific, tragic, melancholic, artless, &c. while
novelty superinduces a charm upon them all. See Additional
Note XIII.]
"Where mouldering columns mark the lingering wreck
The prostrate obelisk, or shatter'd dome,
Uprooted pedestal, and yawning tomb,
On loitering steps reflective TASTE surveys
With folded arms and sympathetic gaze;
Charm'd with poetic Melancholy treads
O'er ruin'd towns and desolated meads;
Or rides sublime on Time's expanded wings,
And views the fate of ever-changing things.
arising from the contemplation of the ruins of ancient
grandeur or of ancient happiness, and here termed poetic
melancholy, arises from a combination of the painful idea of
sorrow with the pleasurable idea of the grandeur or happiness
of past times; and becomes very interesting to us by fixing
our attention more strongly on that grandeur and happiness,
as the passion of Pity mentioned in the succeeding note is a
combination of the painful idea of sorrow with the
pleasurable one of beauty, or of virtue.]
"When Beauty's streaming eyes her woes express,
Or Virtue braves unmerited distress;
Love sighs in sympathy, with pain combined,
And new-born Pity charms the kindred mind;
The enamour'd Sorrow every cheek bedews,
And TASTE impassion'd woos the tragic Muse.
with the scenical representations of Tragedy, which draw
tears from our eyes, has been variously explained by
different writers. The same distressful circumstance
attending an ugly or wicked person affects us with grief or
disgust; but when distress occurs to a beauteous or virtuous
person, the pleasurable idea of beauty or of virtue becomes
mixed with the painful one of sorrow and the passion of Pity
is produced, which is a combination of love or esteem with
sorrow; and becomes highly interesting to us by fixing our
attention more intensely on the beauteous or virtuous person.
Other distressful scenes have been supposed to give pleasure
to the spectator from exciting a comparative idea of his own
happiness, as when a shipwreck is viewed by a person safe on
shore, as mentioned by Lucretius, L. 3. But these dreadful
situations belong rather to the terrible, or the horrid, than
to the tragic; and may be objects of curiosity from their
novelty, but not of Taste, and must suggest much more pain
than pleasure.]
"The rush-thatch'd cottage on the purple moor,
Where ruddy children frolic round the door,
The moss-grown antlers of the aged oak,
The shaggy locks that fringe the colt unbroke,
The bearded goat with nimble eyes, that glare
Through the long tissue of his hoary hair;--
As with quick foot he climbs some ruin'd wall,
And crops the ivy, which prevents its fall;--
With rural charms the tranquil mind delight,
And form a picture to the admiring sight.
While TASTE with pleasure bends his eye surprised
In modern days at Nature unchastised.
vicinity, and even in the cultivated parts of the country we
rarely see undisguised nature; the fields are ploughed, the
meadows mown, the shrubs planted in rows for hedges, the
trees deprived of their lower branches, and the animals, as
horses, dogs, and sheep, are mutilated in respect to their
tails or ears; such is the useful or ill-employed activity of
mankind! all which alterations add to the formality of the
soil, plants, trees, or animals; whence when natural objects
are occasionally presented to us, as an uncultivated forest
and its wild inhabitants, we are not only amused with greater
variety of form, but are at the same time enchanted by the
charm of novelty, which is a less degree of Surprise, already
spoken of in note on l. 145 of this Canto.]
"The GENIUS-FORM, on silver slippers born,
With fairer dew-drops gems the rising morn;
Sheds o'er meridian skies a softer light,
And decks with brighter pearls the brow of night;
With finer blush the vernal blossom glows,
With sweeter breath enamour'd Zephyr blows,
The limpid streams with gentler murmurs pass,
And gayer colours tinge the watery glass,
Charm'd round his steps along the enchanted groves
Flit the fine forms of Beauties, Graces, Loves.
When Rest accumulates sensorial power,
The impatient Senses, goaded to contract,
Forge new ideas, changing as they act;
And, in long streams dissever'd, or concrete
In countless tribes, the fleeting forms repeat.
Which rise excited in Volition's trains,
Or link the sparkling rings of Fancy's chains;
Or, as they flow from each translucent source,
Pursue Association's endless course.
of the spirit of animation, when those parts of the system
rest, which are usually in motion, produces a disagreeable
sensation. Whence the pain of cold and of hunger, and the
irksomeness of a continued attitude, and of an indolent life:
and hence the propensity to action in those confined animals,
which have been accustomed to activity, as is seen in the
motions of a squirrel in a cage; which uses perpetual
exertion to exhaust a part of its accumulated sensorial
power. This is one source of our general propensity to
action; another perhaps arises from our curiosity or
expectation of novelty mentioned in the note on l. 145. of
this canto.
But the immediate cause of our propensity to imitation above
that of other animals arises from the greater facility, with
which by the sense of touch we acquire the ideas of the
outlines of objects, and afterwards in consequence by the
sense of sight; this seems to have been observed by
Aristotle, who calls man, "the imitative animal;" see
Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XXII.]
"Hence when the inquiring hands with contact fine
Trace on hard forms the circumscribing line;
Which then the language of the rolling eyes
From distant scenes of earth and heaven supplies;
Those clear ideas of the touch and sight
Rouse the quick sense to anguish or delight;
Whence the fine power of IMITATION springs,
And apes the outlines of external things;
With ceaseless action to the world imparts
All moral virtues, languages, and arts.
First the charm'd Mind mechanic powers collects,
Means for some end, and causes of effects;
Then learns from other Minds their joys and fears,
Contagious smiles and sympathetic tears.
this canto l. 453 on sympathy; and l. 331 on language; and
the subsequent lines on the arts of painting and
architecture.]
"What one fine stimulated Sense discerns,
Another Sense by IMITATION learns.--
So in the graceful dance the step sublime
Learns from the ear the concordance of Time.
So, when the pen of some young artist prints
Recumbent Nymphs in TITIAN'S living tints;
The glowing limb, fair cheek, and flowing hair,
Respiring bosom, and seductive air,
He justly copies with enamour'd sigh
From Beauty's image pictured on his eye.
of touch or of sight, which is stimulated into action by a
tangible or visible object, must resemble in figure at least
the figure of that object, as it thus constitutes an idea; it
may be said to imitate the figure of that object; and thus
imitation may be esteemed coeval with the existence both of
man and other animals: but this would confound perception
with imitation; which latter is better defined from the
actions of one sense copying those of another.]
"Thus when great ANGELO in wondering Rome
Fix'd the vast pillars of Saint Peter's dome,
Rear'd rocks on rocks sublime, and hung on high
A new Pantheon in the affrighted sky.
Each massy pier, now join'd and now aloof,
The figured architraves, and vaulted roof,
Ailes, whose broad curves gigantic ribs sustain,
Where holy echoes chant the adoring strain;
The central altar, sacred to the Lord,
Admired by Sages, and by Saints ador'd,
Whose brazen canopy ascends sublime
On spiral columns unafraid of Time,
Were first by Fancy in ethereal dyes
Plann'd on the rolling tablets of his eyes;
And his true hand with imitation fine
Traced from his Retina the grand design.
this propensity to imitation has not been deduced from any
known principle; when any action presents itself to the view
of a child, as of whetting a knife, or threading a needle;
the parts of this action in respect of time, motion, figure,
are imitated by parts of the retina of his eye; to perform
this action therefore with his hands is easier to him than to
invent any new action; because it consists in repeating with
another set of fibres, viz. with the moving muscles, what he
had just performed by some parts of the retina; just as in
dancing we transfer the times of the motions from the actions
of the auditory nerves to the muscles of the limbs. Imitation
therefore consists of repetition, which is the easiest kind
of animal action; as the ideas or motions become presently
associated together; which adds to the facility of their
production; as shown in Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XXII. 2.
It should be added, that as our ideas, when we perceive
external objects, are believed to consist in the actions of
the immediate organs of sense in consequence of the stimulus
of those objects; so when we think of external objects, our
ideas are believed to consist in the repetitions of the
actions of the immediate organs of sense, excited by the
other sensorial powers of volition, sensation, or
association.]
"The Muse of MIMICRY in every age
With silent language charms the attentive stage;
The Monarch's stately step, and tragic pause,
The Hero bleeding in his country's cause,
O'er her fond child the dying Mother's tears,
The Lover's ardor, and the Virgin's fears;
Bounds on the scene, and peeps behind her mask,
The Punch and Harlequin, and graver throng,
That shake the theatre with dance and song,
With endless trains of Angers, Loves, and Mirths,
Owe to the Muse of Mimicry their births.
pleasure received from the drawings of flowers finely
finished, or of portraits, is derived from their imitation or
resemblance of the objects or persons which they represent.
The same occurs in the pleasure we receive from mimicry on
the stage; we are surprised at the accuracy of its enacted
resemblance. Some part of the pleasure received from
architecture, as when we contemplate the internal structure
of gothic temples, as of King's College chapel in Cambridge,
or of Lincoln Cathedral, may arise also from their imitation
or resemblance of those superb avenues of large trees, which
were formerly appropriated to religious ceremonies.]
"Hence to clear images of form belong
The sculptor's statue, and the poet's song,
The painter's landscape, and the builder's plan,
And IMITATION marks the mind of Man.
instances of one part of the animal system imitating another
part of it, as in some contagious diseases; and also of some
animals imitating each other, are given in Zoonomia, Vol. I.
Sect. XXII. 3. To which may be added, that this propensity to
imitation not only appears in the actions of children, but in
all the customs and fashions of the world; many thousands
tread in the beaten paths of others, who precede or accompany
them, for one who traverses regions of his own discovery.]
The astonish'd Intellect to rage or love;
Associate tribes of fibrous motions rise,
Flush the red cheek, or light the laughing eyes.
Whence ever-active Imitation finds
The ideal trains, that pass in kindred minds;
Her mimic arts associate thoughts excite
And the first LANGUAGE enters at the sight.
ways by which we become acquainted with the passions of
others: first, by having observed the effects of them, as of
fear or anger, on our own bodies, we know at sight when
others are under the influence of these affections. So
children long before they can speak, or understand the
language of their parents, may be frightened by an angry
countenance, or soothed by smiles and blandishments.
Secondly, when we put ourselves into the attitude that any
passion naturally occasions, we soon in some degree acquire
that passion; hence when those that scold indulge themselves
in loud oaths and violent actions of the arms, they increase
their anger by the mode of expressing themselves; and, on the
contrary, the counterfeited smile of pleasure in disagreeable
company soon brings along with it a portion of the reality,
as is well illustrated by Mr. Burke. (Essay on the Sublime
These are natural signs by which we understand each other,
and on this slender basis is built all human language. For
without some natural signs no artificial ones could have been
invented or understood, as is very ingeniously observed by
Dr. Reid. (Inquiry into the Human Mind.)]
"Thus jealous quails or village-cocks inspect
Each other's necks with stiffen'd plumes erect;
Smit with the wordless eloquence, they know
The rival passion of the threatening foe.
So when the famish'd wolves at midnight howl,
Fell serpents hiss, or fierce hyenas growl;
Indignant Lions rear their bristling mail,
And lash their sides with undulating tail.
Or when the Savage-Man with clenched fist
Parades, the scowling champion of the list;
With brandish'd arms, and eyes that roll to know
Where first to fix the meditated blow;
Association's mystic power combines
Internal passions with external signs.
Of viewless thought in bird, and beast, and man;
And still the stage by mimic art displays
Historic pantomime in modern days;
And hence the enthusiast orator affords
Force to the feebler eloquence of words.
"Thus the first LANGUAGE, when we frown'd or smiled,
Rose from the cradle, Imitation's child;
Next to each thought associate sound accords,
And forms the dulcet symphony of words;
The tongue, the lips articulate; the throat
With soft vibration modulates the note;
Love, pity, war, the shout, the song, the prayer
Form quick concussions of elastic air.
"Hence the first accents bear in airy rings
The vocal symbols of ideal things,
Name each nice change appulsive powers supply
To the quick sense of touch, or ear or eye.
Or in fine traits abstracted forms suggest
Or, as within reflex ideas move,
Trace the light steps of Reason, Rage, or Love.
The next new sounds adjunctive thoughts recite,
As hard, odorous, tuneful, sweet, or white.
The next the fleeting images select
Of action, suffering, causes and effect;
Or mark existence, with the march sublime
O'er earth and ocean of recording TIME.
originally the signs or names of individual ideas; but in all
known languages many of them by changing their terminations
express more than one idea, as in the cases of nouns, and the
moods and tenses of verbs. Thus a whip suggests a single idea
of that instrument; but "to whip," suggests an idea of
action, joined with that of the instrument, and is then
called a verb; and "to be whipped," suggests an idea of being
acted upon or suffering. Thus in most languages two ideas are
suggested by one word by changing its termination; as amor,
love; amare, to love; amari, to be loved.
Nouns are the names of the ideas of things, first as they are
received by the stimulus of objects, or as they are
afterwards repeated; secondly, they are names of more
abstracted ideas, which do not suggest at the same time the
external objects, by which they were originally excited; or
thirdly, of the operations of our minds, which are termed
reflex ideas by metaphysical writers; or lastly, they are the
names of our ideas of parts or properties of objects; and are
termed by grammarians nouns adjective.
Verbs are also in reality names of our ideas of things, or
nouns, with the addition of another idea to them, as of
acting or suffering; or of more than one other annexed idea,
as of time, and also of existence. These with the numerous
abbreviations, so well illustrated by Mr. Horne Tooke in his
Diversions of Purley, make up the general theory of language,
which consists of the symbols of ideas represented by vocal
or written words; or by parts of those words, as their
terminations; or by their disposition in respect to their
order or succession; as further explained in Additional Note
"The GIANT FORM on Nature's centre stands,
And waves in ether his unnumber'd hands;
Whirls the bright planets in their silver spheres,
And the vast sun round other systems steers;
Till the last trump amid the thunder's roar
Sound the dread Sentence "TIME SHALL BE NO MORE!"
"Last steps Abbreviation, bold and strong,
And leads the volant trains of words along;
With sweet loquacity to HERMES springs,
And decks his forehead and his feet with wings.
With other minds to interchange the thought;
And sound, the symbol of the sense, explains
In parted links the long ideal trains;
From clear conceptions of external things
The facile power of Recollection springs.
successive trains of the motions, or changes of figure, of
the extremities of the nerves of one or more of our senses,
as of the optic or auditory nerves; these successive trains
of motion, or configuration, are in common life divided into
many links, to each of which a word or name is given, and it
is called an idea. This chain of ideas may be broken into
more or fewer links, or divided in different parts of it, by
the customs of different people. Whence the meanings of the
words of one language cannot always be exactly expressed by
those of another; and hence the acquirement of different
languages in their infancy may affect the modes of thinking
and reasoning of whole nations, or of different classes of
society; as the words of them do not accurately suggest the
same ideas, or parts of ideal trains; a circumstance which
has not been sufficiently analysed.]
"Whence REASON'S empire o'er the world presides,
And man from brute, and man from man divides;
Compares and measures by imagined lines
Ellipses, circles, tangents, angles, sines;
Repeats with nice libration, and decrees
In what each differs, and in what agrees;
With quick Volitions unfatigued selects
Means for some end, and causes of effects;
All human science worth the name imparts,
And builds on Nature's base the works of Arts.
the use of the voluntary power, which is owing to the
possession of the clear ideas acquired by our superior sense
of touch, and afterwards of vision, distinguishes man from
brutes, and has given him the empire of the world, with the
power of improving nature by the exertions of art.
Reasoning is that operation of the sensorium by which we
excite two or many tribes of ideas, and then reexcite the
ideas in which they differ or correspond. If we determine
this difference, it is called judgment; if we in vain
endeavour to determine it, it is called doubting.
If we reexcite the ideas in which they differ, it is called
distinguishing. If we reexcite those in which they
correspond, it is called comparing.]
"The Wasp, fine architect, surrounds his domes
With paper-foliage, and suspends his combs;
Secured from frost the Bee industrious dwells,
And fills for winter all her waxen cells;
The cunning Spider with adhesive line
Weaves his firm net immeasurably fine;
The Wren, when embryon eggs her cares engross,
Seeks the soft down, and lines the cradling moss;
Conscious of change the Silkworm-Nymphs begin
Attach'd to leaves their gluten-threads to spin;
Then round and round they weave with circling heads
Sphere within Sphere, and form their silken beds.
--Say, did these fine volitions first commence
From clear ideas of the tangent sense;
From sires to sons by imitation caught,
Or did they rise in some primeval site
Of larva-gnat, or microscopic mite;
And with instructive foresight still await
On each vicissitude of insect-state?--
Wise to the present, nor to future blind,
They link the reasoning reptile to mankind!
--Stoop, selfish Pride! survey thy kindred forms,
Thy brother Emmets, and thy sister Worms!
which possess a better sense of touch are, in general, more
ingenious than others. Those which have claviculæ, or
collar-bones, and thence use the forefeet as hands, as the
monkey, squirrel, rat, are more ingenious in seizing their
prey or escaping from danger. And the ingenuity of the
elephant appears to arise from the sense of touch at the
extremity of his proboscis, which has a prominence on one
side of its cavity like a thumb to close against the other
side of it, by which I have seen him readily pick up a
shilling which was thrown amongst the straw he stood upon.
Hence the excellence of the sense of touch in many insects
seems to have given them wonderful ingenuity so as to equal
or even excel mankind in some of their arts and discoveries;
many of which may have been acquired in situations previous
to their present ones, as the great globe itself, and all
that it inhabit, appear to be in a perpetual state of
mutation and improvement; see Additional Note IX.]
"Thy potent acts, VOLITION, still attend
The means of pleasure to secure the end;
To express his wishes and his wants design'd
Language, the _means_, distinguishes Mankind;
For _future_ works in Art's ingenious schools
His hands unwearied form and finish tools;
He toils for money _future_ bliss to share,
And shouts to Heaven his mercenary prayer.
Sweet Hope delights him, frowning Fear alarms,
And Vice and Virtue court him to their arms.
observed, how much the superior accuracy of our sense of
touch contributes to increase our knowledge; but it is the
greater energy and activity of the power of volition, that
marks mankind, and has given them the empire of the world.
There is a criterion by which we may distinguish our
voluntary acts or thoughts from those that are excited by our
sensations: "The former are always employed about the means
to acquire pleasurable objects, or to avoid painful ones;
while the latter are employed about the possession of those
that are already in our power."
The ideas and actions of brutes, like those of children, are
almost perpetually produced by their present pleasures or
their present pains; and they seldom busy themselves about
the _means_ of procuring future bliss, or of avoiding future
misery.
Whilst the acquiring of languages, the making of tools, and
the labouring for money, which are all only the _means_ of
procuring pleasure; and the praying to the Deity, as another
means to procure happiness, are characteristic of human
"Unenvied eminence, in Nature's plan
Rise the reflective faculties of Man!
Labour to Rest the thinking Few prefer!
Know but to mourn! and reason but to err!--
In Eden's groves, the cradle of the world,
Bloom'd a fair tree with mystic flowers unfurl'd;
On bending branches, as aloft it sprung,
Forbid to taste, the fruit of KNOWLEDGE hung;
Flow'd with sweet Innocence the tranquil hours,
And Love and Beauty warm'd the blissful bowers.
Till our deluded Parents pluck'd, erelong,
The tempting fruit, and gather'd Right and Wrong;
Whence Good and Evil, as in trains they pass,
Reflection imaged on her polish'd glass;
And Conscience felt, for blood by Hunger spilt,
The pains of shame, of sympathy, and guilt!
philosophers have believed that the acquisition of knowledge
diminishes the happiness of the possessor; an opinion which
seems to have been inculcated by the history of our first
parents, who are said to have become miserable from eating of
the tree of knowledge. But as the foresight and the power of
mankind are much increased by their voluntary exertions in
the acquirement of knowledge, they may undoubtedly avoid many
sources of evil, and procure many sources of good; and yet
possess the pleasures of sense, or of imagination, as
extensively as the brute or the savage.]
Turns her quick glance, and brandishes her hands,
With mimic acts associate thoughts excites,
And storms the soul with sorrows or delights;
Life's shadowy scenes are brighten'd and refin'd,
And soft emotions mark the feeling mind.
imitation arises what is generally understood by the word
sympathy, so well explained by Dr. Smith of Glasgow. Thus the
appearance of a cheerful countenance gives us pleasure, and
of a melancholy one makes us sorrowful. Yawning, and
sometimes vomiting, are thus propagated by sympathy; and some
people of delicate fibres, at the presence of a spectacle of
misery, have felt pain in the same parts of their bodies,
that were diseased or mangled in the object they saw.
The effect of this powerful agent in the moral world, is the
foundation of all our intellectual sympathies with the pains
and pleasures of others, and is in consequence the source of
all our virtues. For in what consists our sympathy with the
miseries or with the joys of our fellow creatures, but in an
involuntary excitation of ideas in some measure similar or
imitative of those which we believe to exist in the minds of
the persons whom we commiserate or congratulate!]
"The Seraph, SYMPATHY, from Heaven descends,
And bright o'er earth his beamy forehead bends;
On Man's cold heart celestial ardor flings,
And showers affection from his sparkling wings;
Rolls o'er the world his mild benignant eye,
Hears the lone murmur, drinks the whisper'd sigh;
Lifts the closed latch of pale Misfortune's door,
Opes the clench'd hand of Avarice to the poor,
Unbars the prison, liberates the slave,
Sheds his soft sorrows o'er the untimely grave,
Points with uplifted hand to realms above,
And charms the world with universal love.
"O'er the thrill'd frame his words assuasive steal,
And teach the selfish heart what others feel;
With sacred truth each erring thought control,
Bind sex to sex, and mingle soul with soul;
From heaven, He cried, descends the moral plan,
And gives Society to savage man.
"High on yon scroll, inscribed o'er Nature's shrine,
Live in bright characters the words divine.
--Winds! wide o'er earth the sacred law convey,
Ye Nations, hear it! and ye Kings, obey!
of Socrates "Know thyself," so celebrated by writers of
antiquity, and said by them to have descended from Heaven,
however wise it may be, seems to be rather of a selfish
nature; and the author of it might have added "Know also
other people." But the sacred maxims of the author of
Christianity, "Do as you would be done by," and "Love your
neighbour as yourself," include all our duties of benevolence
and morality; and, if sincerely obeyed by all nations, would
a thousandfold multiply the present happiness of mankind.]
"Unbreathing wonder hush'd the adoring throng,
Froze the broad eye, and chain'd the silent tongue;
Mute was the wail of Want, and Misery's cry,
And grateful Pity wiped her lucid eye;
Peace with sweet voice the Seraph-form address'd,
And Virtue clasp'd him to her throbbing breast."
And mingles with her words pathetic sighs.--
"How few, alas! in Nature's wide domains
The sacred charm of SYMPATHY restrains!
Uncheck'd desires from appetite commence,
And pure reflection yields to selfish sense!
--Blest is the Sage, who learn'd in Nature's laws
With nice distinction marks effect and cause;
Who views the insatiate Grave with eye sedate,
Nor fears thy voice, inexorable Fate!
Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas;
Quique metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum,
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari.
"WHEN War, the Demon, lifts his banner high,
And loud artillery rends the affrighted sky;
Swords clash with swords, on horses horses rush,
Man tramples man, and nations nations crush;
Death his vast sithe with sweep enormous wields,
And shuddering Pity quits the sanguine fields.
"The wolf, escorted by his milk-drawn dam,
Unknown to mercy, tears the guiltless lamb;
The towering eagle, darting from above,
Unfeeling rends the inoffensive dove;
The lamb and dove on living nature feed,
Crop the young herb, or crush the embryon seed.
Nor spares the loud owl in her dusky flight,
Smit with sweet notes, the minstrel of the night;
Nor spares, enamour'd of his radiant form,
The hungry nightingale the glowing worm;
Who with bright lamp alarms the midnight hour,
Climbs the green stem, and slays the sleeping flower.
Torva leæna lupum sequitur, lupus ipse capellam,
Florentem cytisum sequitur lasciva capella.
"Fell Oestrus buries in her rapid course
Her countless brood in stag, or bull, or horse;
Whose hungry larva eats its living way,
Hatch'd by the warmth, and issues into day.
The wing'd Ichneumon for her embryon young
Gores with sharp horn the caterpillar throng.
The cruel larva mines its silky course,
And tears the vitals of its fostering nurse.
While fierce Libellula with jaws of steel
Ingulfs an insect-province at a meal;
Contending bee-swarms rise on rustling wings,
And slay their thousands with envenom'd stings.
or sheep-fly: the larva lives in the bodies of cattle
throughout the whole winter; it is extracted from their backs
by an African bird called Buphaga. Adhering to the anus it
artfully introduces itself into the intestines of horses, and
becomes so numerous in their stomachs, as sometimes to
destroy them; it climbs into the nostrils of sheep and
calves, and producing a nest of young in a transparent
hydatide in the frontal sinus, occasions the vertigo or turn
of those animals. In Lapland it so attacks the rein deer that
the natives annually travel with the herds from the woods to
the mountains. Lin. Syst. Nat.]
seventy-seven species of the ichneumon fly, some of which
have a sting as long and some twice as long as their bodies.
Many of them insert their eggs into various caterpillars,
which when they are hatched seem for a time to prey on the
reservoir of silk in the backs of those animals designed for
their own use to spin a cord to support them, or a bag to
contain them, while they change from their larva form to a
butterfly; as I have seen in above fifty
cabbage-caterpillars. The ichneumon larva then makes its way
out of the caterpillar, and spins itself a small cocoon like
a silk worm; these cocoons are about the size of a small
pin's head, and I have seen about ten of them on each cabbage
caterpillar, which soon dies after their exclusion.
Other species of ichneumon insert their eggs into the aphis,
and into the larva of the aphidivorous fly: others into the
bedeguar of rose trees, and the gall-nuts of oaks; whence
those excrescences seem to be produced, as well as the
hydatides in the frontal sinus of sheep and calves by the
stimulus of the larvæ deposited in them.]
Dragon-fly is said to be a most voracious animal; Linneus
says in their perfect state they are the hawks to naked
winged flies; in their larva state they run beneath the
water, and are the cruel crocodiles of aquatic insects. Syst.
bee-swarms frequently attack weak hives, and in two or three
days destroy them and carry away their honey; this I once
prevented by removing the attacked hive after the first day's
battle to a distinct part of the garden. See Phytologia,
"Yes! smiling Flora drives her armed car
Through the thick ranks of vegetable war;
Herb, shrub, and tree, with strong emotions rise
For light and air, and battle in the skies;
Whose roots diverging with opposing toil
Contend below for moisture and for soil;
Round the tall Elm the flattering Ivies bend,
And strangle, as they clasp, their struggling friend;
Envenom'd dews from Mancinella flow,
And scald with caustic touch the tribes below;
Dense shadowy leaves on stems aspiring borne
With blight and mildew thin the realms of corn;
And insect hordes with restless tooth devour
The unfolded bud, and pierce the ravell'd flower.
"In ocean's pearly haunts, the waves beneath
Sits the grim monarch of insatiate Death;
The shark rapacious with descending blow
Darts on the scaly brood, that swims below;
The crawling crocodiles, beneath that move,
Arrest with rising jaw the tribes above;
With monstrous gape sepulchral whales devour
Shoals at a gulp, a million in an hour.
--Air, earth, and ocean, to astonish'd day
One scene of blood, one mighty tomb display!
From Hunger's arm the shafts of Death are hurl'd,
And one great Slaughter-house the warring world!
rows of sharp teeth within each other, which he can bend
downwards internally to admit larger prey, and raise to
prevent its return; his snout hangs so far over his mouth,
that he is necessitated to turn upon his back, when he takes
fish that swim over him, and hence seems peculiarly formed to
catch those that swim under him.]
lives chiefly at the bottom of the rivers, which he
frequents, he has the power of opening the upper jaw as well
as the under one, and thus with greater facility catches the
fish or water-fowl which swim over him.]
are an inferior order of animals fixed to the soil; and as
the locomotive animals prey upon them, or upon each other;
the world may indeed be said to be one great slaughter-house.
As the digested food of vegetables consists principally of
sugar, and from this is produced again their mucilage,
starch, and oil, and since animals are sustained by these
vegetable productions, it would seem that the sugar-making
process carried on in vegetable vessels was the great source
of life to all organized beings. And that if our improved
chemistry should ever discover the art of making sugar from
fossile or aerial matter without the assistance of
vegetation, food for animals would then become as plentiful
as water, and they might live upon the earth without preying
on each other, as thick as blades of grass, with no restraint
to their numbers but the want of local room.
It would seem that roots fixed in the earth and leaves
innumerable waving in the air were necessary for the
decomposition of water and air, and the conversion of them
into saccharine matter, which would have been not only
cumberous but totally incompatible with the locomotion of
animal bodies. For how could a man or quadruped have carried
on his head or back a forest of leaves, or have had long
branching lacteal or absorbent vessels terminating in the
earth? Animals therefore subsist on vegetables; that is they
take the matter so prepared, and have organs to prepare it
further for the purposes of higher animation and greater
sensibility.]
"THE brow of Man erect, with thought elate,
Ducks to the mandate of resistless fate;
Nor Love retains him, nor can Virtue save
Her sages, saints, or heroes from the grave.
While cold and hunger by defect oppress,
Repletion, heat, and labour by excess,
The whip, the sting, the spur, the fiery brand,
And, cursed Slavery! thy iron hand;
And led by Luxury Disease's trains,
Load human life with unextinguish'd pains.
system, which are in health excited into perpetual action,
give us pain, when they are not excited into action: thus
when the hands are for a time immersed in snow, an inaction
of the cutaneous capillaries is induced, as is seen from the
paleness of the skin, which is attended with the pain of
coldness. So the pain of hunger is probably produced by the
inaction of the muscular fibres of the stomach from the want
of the stimulus of food.
Thus those, who have used much voluntary exertion in their
early years, and have continued to do so, till the decline of
life commences, if they then lay aside their employment,
whether that of a minister of state, a general of an army, or
a merchant, or manufacturer; they cease to have their
faculties excited into their usual activity, and become
unhappy, I suppose from the too great accumulation of the
sensorial power of volition; which wants the accustomed
stimulus or motive to cause its expenditure.]
"Here laughs Ebriety more fell than arms,
And thins the nations with her fatal charms,
With Gout, and Hydrops groaning in her train,
And cold Debility, and grinning Pain,
With harlot's smiles deluded man salutes,
Revenging all his cruelties to brutes!
There the curst spells of Superstition blind,
And fix her fetters on the tortured mind;
She bids in dreams tormenting shapes appear,
With shrieks that shock Imagination's ear,
E'en o'er the grave a deeper shadow flings,
And maddening Conscience darts a thousand stings.
Sævior armis
Luxuria incubuit, victumque ulciscitur orbem.
preachers among the Methodists successfully inculcate the
fear of death and of Hell, and live luxuriously on the folly
generally most innocent and harmless people, who are then
liable to accuse themselves of the greatest imaginary crimes;
and have so much intellectual cowardice, that they dare not
reason about those things, which they are directed by their
priests to believe. Where this intellectual cowardice is
great, the voice of reason is ineffectual; but that of
ridicule may save many from these mad-making doctors, as the
farces of Mr. Foot; though it is too weak to cure those who
are already hallucinated.]
"There writhing Mania sits on Reason's throne,
Or Melancholy marks it for her own,
Sheds o'er the scene a voluntary gloom,
Requests oblivion, and demands the tomb.
And last Association's trains suggest
Ideal ills, that harrow up the breast,
Call for the dead from Time's o'erwhelming main,
And bid departed Sorrow live again.
the felicities of life may be divided into those which arise
in consequence of irritation, sensation, volition, and
association; and consist in the actions of the extremities of
the nerves of sense, which constitute our ideas; if they are
much more exerted than usual, or much less exerted than
usual, they occasion pain; as when the finger is burnt in a
candle; or when we go into a cold bath: while their natural
degree of exertion produces the pleasure of life or
existence. This pleasure is nevertheless increased, when the
system is stimulated into rather stronger action than usual,
as after a copious dinner, and at the beginning of
intoxication; and diminished, when it is only excited into
somewhat less activity than usual, which is termed ennui, or
irksomeness of life.]
of bodily pain occasioned by association of ideas. Every one
in his childhood has repeatedly bit a part of the glass or
earthen vessel, in which his food has been given him, and has
thence had a disagreeable sensation in his teeth, attended at
the same time with a jarring sound: and ever after, when such
a sound is accidentally produced, the disagreeable sensation
of the teeth follows by association of ideas; this is further
elucidated in Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XVI. 10.]
"Here ragged Avarice guards with bolted door
His useless treasures from the starving poor;
Loads the lorn hours with misery and care,
And lives a beggar to enrich his heir.
Unthinking crowds thy forms, Imposture, gull,
A Saint in sackcloth, or a Wolf in wool.
While mad with foolish fame, or drunk with power,
Ambition slays his thousands in an hour;
Demoniac Envy scowls with haggard mien,
And blights the bloom of other's joys, unseen;
Or wrathful Jealousy invades the grove,
And turns to night meridian beams of Love!
Cum furor haud dubius, cum sit manifesta phrenitis,
Ut locuples moriaris, egenti vivere fato.
clothing.]
"Here wide o'er earth impetuous waters sweep,
And fields and forests rush into the deep;
Or dread Volcano with explosion dire
Involves the mountains in a flood of fire;
Or yawning Earth with closing jaws inhumes
Unwarned nations, living in their tombs;
Or Famine seizes with her tiger-paw,
And swallows millions with unsated maw.
"There livid Pestilence in league with Dearth
Walks forth malignant o'er the shuddering earth,
Her rapid shafts with airs volcanic wings,
Or steeps in putrid vaults her venom'd stings.
Arrests the young in Beauty's vernal bloom,
And bears the innocuous strangers to the tomb!--
complaints, which are generally termed influenza, are
believed to arise from vapours thrown out from earthquakes in
such abundance as to affect large regions of the atmosphere,
see Botanic Garden, V. I. Canto IV. l. 65. while the diseases
properly termed contagious originate from the putrid effluvia
of decomposing animal or vegetable matter.]
"AND now, e'en I, whose verse reluctant sings
The changeful state of sublunary things,
Bend o'er Mortality with silent sighs,
And wipe the secret tear-drops from my eyes,
Hear through the night one universal groan,
And mourn unseen for evils not my own,
With restless limbs and throbbing heart complain,
Stretch'd on the rack of sentimental pain!
--Ah where can Sympathy reflecting find
One bright idea to console the mind?
One ray of light in this terrene abode
To prove to Man the Goodness of his GOD?"
taught in their early education to feel for all the
remediable evils, which they observe in others; but they
should at the same time be taught sufficient firmness of mind
not intirely to destroy their own happiness by their
sympathizing with too great sensibility with the numerous
irremediable evils, which exist in the present system of the
world: as by indulging that kind of melancholy they decrease
the sum total of public happiness; which is so far rather
reprehensible than commendable. See Plan for Female Education
by Dr. Darwin, Johnson, London, Sect. XVII.
This has been carried to great excess in the East by the
disciples of Confucius; the Gentoos during a famine in India
refused to eat the flesh of cows and of other animals to
satisfy their hunger, and save themselves from death. And at
other times they have been said to permit fleas and
musquitoes to feed upon them from this erroneous sympathy.]
Quick indignation darting from her eyes;
"When in soft tones the Muse lamenting sings,
And weighs with tremulous hand the sum of things;
She loads the scale in melancholy mood,
Presents the evil, but forgets the good.
But if the beam some firmer hand suspends,
And good and evil load the adverse ends;
With strong libration, where the Good abides,
Quick nods the beam, the ponderous gold subsides.
"HEAR, O ye Sons of Time! the powers of Life
Arrest the elements, and stay their strife;
From wandering atoms, ethers, airs, and gas,
By combination form the organic mass;
And,--as they seize, digest, secrete,--dispense
The bliss of Being to the vital Ens.
Hence in bright groups from IRRITATION rise
Young Pleasure's trains, and roll their azure eyes.
philosophers, who contended that the world was formed from
atoms, ascribed their combinations to certain immutable
properties received from the hand of the Creator, such as
general gravitation, chemical affinity, or animal appetency,
instead of ascribing them to a blind chance; the doctrine of
atoms, as constituting or composing the material world by the
variety of their combinations, so far from leading the mind
to atheism, would strengthen the demonstration of the
existence of a Deity, as the first cause of all things;
because the analogy resulting from our perpetual experience
of cause and effect would have thus been exemplified through
universal nature.]
"With fond delight we feel the potent charm,
When Zephyrs cool us, or when sun-beams warm;
With fond delight inhale the fragrant flowers,
Taste the sweet fruits, which bend the blushing bowers,
Admire the music of the vernal grove,
Or drink the raptures of delirious love.
"So with long gaze admiring eyes behold
The varied landscape all its lights unfold;
Huge rocks opposing o'er the stream project
Their naked bosoms, and the beams reflect;
Wave high in air their fringed crests of wood,
And checker'd shadows dance upon the flood;
Green sloping lawns construct the sidelong scene,
And guide the sparkling rill that winds between;
Conduct on murmuring wings the pausing gale,
And rural echoes talk along the vale;
Dim hills behind in pomp aerial rise,
Lift their blue tops, and melt into the skies.
feel on examining a fine landscape, is derived from various
sources; as first the excitement of the retina of the eye
into certain quantities of action; which when there is in the
optic nerve any accumulation of sensorial power, is always
agreeable. 2. When it is excited into such successive
actions, as relieve each other; as when a limb has been long
exerted in one direction, by stretching it in another; as
described in Zoonomia, Sect. XL. 6. on ocular spectra. 3. And
lastly by the associations of its parts with some agreeable
sentiments or tastes, as of sublimity, beauty, utility,
novelty; and the objects suggesting other sentiments, which
have lately been termed picturesque as mentioned in the note
to Canto III, l. 230 of this work. The two former of these
sources of pleasure arise from irritation, the last from
association.]
"So when by HANDEL tuned to measured sounds
The trumpet vibrates, or the drum rebounds;
Alarm'd we listen with ecstatic wonder
To mimic battles, or imagined thunder.
When the soft lute in sweet impassion'd strains
Of cruel nymphs or broken vows complains;
As on the breeze the fine vibration floats,
We drink delighted the melodious notes.
But when young Beauty on the realms above
Bends her bright eye, and trills the tones of love;
Seraphic sounds enchant this nether sphere;
And listening angels lean from Heaven to hear.
experience from music, is, like that from viewing a
landscape, derived from various sources; as first from the
excitement of the auditory nerve into certain quantities of
action, when there exists any accumulation of sensorial
power. 2. When the auditory nerve is exerted in such
successive actions as relieve each other, like stretching or
yawning, as described in Botanic Garden, Vol. II, Interlude
the third, these successions of sound are termed melody, and
their combinations harmony. 3. From the repetition of sounds
at certain intervals of time; as we hear them with greater
facility and accuracy, when we expect them; because they are
then excited by volition, as well as by irritation, or at
least the tympanum is then better adapted to assist their
production; hence the two musical times or bars; and hence
the rhimes in poetry give pleasure, as well as the measure of
the verse: and lastly the pleasure we receive from music,
arises from the associations of agreeable sentiments with
certain proportions, or repetitions, or quantities, or times
of sounds which have been previously acquired; as explained
in Zoonomia Vol. I. Sect. XVI. 10. and Sect. XXII. 2.]
"Next by SENSATION led, new joys commence
From the fine movements of the excited sense;
In swarms ideal urge their airy flight,
Adorn the day-scenes, and illume the night.
Her spells o'er all the hand of Fancy flings,
Gives form and substance to unreal things;
With fruits and foliage decks the barren waste,
And brightens Life with sentiment and taste;
Pleased o'er the level and the rule presides,
The painter's brush, the sculptor's chisel guides,
With ray ethereal lights the poet's fire,
Tunes the rude pipe, or strings the heroic lyre:
Charm'd round the nymph on frolic footsteps move
The angelic forms of Beauty, Grace, and Love.
"So dreams the Patriot, who indignant draws
The sword of vengeance in his Country's cause;
Bright for his brows unfading honours bloom,
Or kneeling Virgins weep around his tomb.
So holy transports in the cloister's shade
Play round thy toilet, visionary maid!
Charm'd o'er thy bed celestial voices sing,
And Seraphs hover on enamour'd wing.
"So HOWARD, MOIRA, BURDETT, sought the cells,
Where want, or woe, or guilt in darkness dwells;
With Pity's torch illumed the dread domains,
Wiped the wet eye, and eased the galling chains;
With Hope's bright blushes warm'd the midnight air,
And drove from earth the Demon of Despair.
Erewhile emerging from the caves of night
The Friends of Man ascended into light;
With soft assuasive eloquence address'd
The ear of Power to stay his stern behest;
At Mercy's call to stretch his arm and save
His tottering victims from the gaping grave.
These with sweet smiles Imagination greets,
For these she opens all her treasured sweets,
Strews round their couch, by Pity's hand combined,
Bright flowers of joy, the sunshine of the mind;
While Fame's loud trump with sounds applausive breathes
And Virtue crowns them with immortal wreathes.
"Thy acts, VOLITION, to the world impart
The plans of Science with the works of art;
Give to proud Reason her comparing power,
Warm every clime, and brighten every hour.
In Life's first cradle, ere the dawn began
Of young Society to polish man;
The staff that propp'd him, and the bow that arm'd,
The boat that bore him, and the shed that warm'd,
Fire, raiment, food, the ploughshare, and the sword,
Arose, VOLITION, at thy plastic word.
"By thee instructed, NEWTON'S eye sublime
Mark'd the bright periods of revolving time;
Explored in Nature's scenes the effect and cause,
And, charm'd, unravell'd all her latent laws.
Delighted HERSCHEL with reflected light
Pursues his radiant journey through the night;
Detects new guards, that roll their orbs afar
In lucid ringlets round the Georgian star.
"Inspired by thee, with scientific wand
Pleased ARCHIMEDES mark'd the figured sand;
Seized with mechanic grasp the approaching decks,
And shook the assailants from the inverted wrecks.
--Then cried the Sage, with grand effects elate,
And proud to save the Syracusian state;
While crowds exulting shout their noisy mirth,
'Give where to stand, and I will move the earth.'
So SAVERY guided his explosive steam
In iron cells to raise the balanced beam;
The Giant-form its ponderous mass uprears,
Descending nods and seems to shake the spheres.
orators seem to have spoken disrespectfully of the mechanic
philosophers. Cicero mentioning Archimedes, calls him
Homunculus e pulvere et radio, alluding to the custom of
drawing problems on the sand with a staff.]
applied the pressure of the atmosphere to raise water in
consequence of a vacuum previously produced by the
condensation of steam, though the Marquis of Worcester had
before proposed to use for this purpose the expansive power
of steam; see Botanic Garden, Vol. I. Canto I. l. 253.
"Led by VOLITION on the banks of Nile
Where bloom'd the waving flax on Delta's isle,
Pleased ISIS taught the fibrous stems to bind,
And part with hammers from the adhesive rind;
With locks of flax to deck the distaff-pole,
And whirl with graceful bend the dancing spole.
In level lines the length of woof to spread,
And dart the shuttle through the parting thread.
So ARKWRIGHT taught from Cotton-pods to cull,
And stretch in lines the vegetable wool;
With teeth of steel its fibre-knots unfurl'd,
And with the silver tissue clothed the world.
been first discovered on the banks of the Nile, and Isis to
have been the inventress of spinning and weaving.]
"Ages remote by thee, VOLITION, taught
Chain'd down in characters the winged thought;
With silent language mark'd the letter'd ground,
And gave to sight the evanescent sound.
Now, happier lot! enlighten'd realms possess
The learned labours of the immortal Press;
Nursed on whose lap the births of science thrive,
And rising Arts the wrecks of Time survive.
art of printing has had so great influence on human affairs,
that from thence may be dated a new æra in the history of
mankind. As by the diffusion of general knowledge, both of
the arts of taste and of useful sciences, the public mind has
become improved to so great a degree, that though new
impositions have been perpetually produced, the arts of
detecting them have improved with greater rapidity. Hence
since the introduction of printing, superstition has been
much lessened by the reformation of religion; and necromancy,
astrology, chiromancy, witchcraft, and vampyrism, have
vanished from all classes of society; though some are still
so weak in the present enlightened times as to believe in the
prodigies of animal magnetism, and of metallic tractors; by
this general diffusion of knowledge, if the liberty of the
press be preserved, mankind will not be liable in this part
of the world to sink into such abject slavery as exists at
this day in China.]
"Ye patriot heroes! in the glorious cause
Who call to Virtue's shrine the British youth,
And shake the senate with the voice of Truth;
Rouse the dull ear, the hoodwink'd eye unbind,
And give to energy the public mind;
While rival realms with blood unsated wage
Wide-wasting war with fell demoniac rage;
In every clime while army army meets,
And oceans groan beneath contending fleets;
Oh save, oh save, in this eventful hour
The tree of knowledge from the axe of power;
With fostering peace the suffering nations bless,
And guard the freedom of the immortal Press!
So shall your deathless fame from age to age
Survive recorded in the historic page;
And future bards with voice inspired prolong
Your sacred names immortalized in song.
"Thy power ASSOCIATION next affords
Ideal trains annex'd to volant words,
Conveys to listening ears the thought superb,
And gives to Language her expressive verb;
Which in one changeful sound suggests the fact
At once to be, to suffer, or to act;
And marks on rapid wing o'er every clime
The viewless flight of evanescent Time.
word, has been so called from its being the most expressive
term in all languages; as it suggests the ideas of existence,
action or suffering, and of time; see the Note on Canto III.
"Call'd by thy voice contiguous thoughts embrace
In endless streams arranged by Time or Place;
The Muse historic hence in every age
Gives to the world her _interesting_ page;
While in bright landscape from her moving pen
Rise the fine tints of manners and of men.
of associated ideas are divided by Mr. Hume into three
classes, which he has termed contiguity, causation, and
resemblance. Nor should we wonder to find them thus connected
together, since it is the business of our lives to dispose
them into these three classes; and we become valuable to
ourselves and our friends as we succeed in it. Those who have
combined an extensive class of ideas by the contiguity of
time or place, are men learned in the history of mankind, and
of the sciences they have cultivated. Those who have
connected a great class of ideas of resemblances, possess the
source of the ornaments of poetry and oratory, and of all
rational analogy. While those who have connected great
classes of ideas of causation, are furnished with the powers
of producing effects. These are the men of active wisdom who
lead armies to victory, and kingdoms to prosperity; or
discover and improve the sciences which meliorate and adorn
the condition of humanity.]
"Call'd by thy voice Resemblance next describes
Her sister-thoughts in lucid trains or tribes;
Whence pleased Imagination oft combines
By loose analogies her fair designs;
Each winning grace of polish'd wit bestows
To deck the Nymphs of Poetry and Prose.
wit to consist of an assemblage of ideas, brought together
with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any
resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant
pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy. To which Mr.
Addison adds, that these must occasion surprise as well as
delight; Spectator, Vol. I. No. LXII. See Note on Canto III.
l. 145. and Additional Note, VII. 3. Perhaps wit in the
extended use of the word may mean to express all kinds of
fine writing, as the word Taste is applied to all agreeable
visible objects, and thus wit may mean descriptive sublimity,
beauty, the pathetic, or ridiculous, but when used in the
confined sense, as by Mr. Locke and Mr. Addison as above, it
may probably be better defined a combination of ideas with
agreeable novelty, as this may be effected by opposition as
well as by resemblance.]
"Last, at thy potent nod, Effect and Cause
Walk hand in hand accordant to thy laws;
Rise at Volition's call, in groups combined,
Amuse, delight, instruct, and serve Mankind;
Bid raised in air the ponderous structure stand,
Or pour obedient rivers through the land;
With cars unnumber'd crowd the living streets,
Or people oceans with triumphant fleets.
"Thy magic touch imagined forms supplies
From colour'd light, the language of the eyes;
On Memory's page departed hours inscribes,
Sweet scenes of youth, and Pleasure's vanish'd tribes.
By thee ANTINOUS leads the dance sublime
On wavy step, and moves in measured time;
Charm'd round the Youth successive Graces throng,
And Ease conducts him, as he moves along;
Unbreathing crowds the floating form admire,
And Vestal bosoms feel forbidden fire.
"When rapp'd CECILIA breathes her matin vow,
And lifts to Heaven her fair adoring brow;
From her sweet lips, and rising bosom part
Impassion'd notes, that thrill the melting heart;
Tuned by thy hand the dulcet harp she rings,
And sounds responsive echo from the strings;
Bright scenes of bliss in trains suggested move,
And charm the world with melody and love.
Time's feeble children, lose the boon possess'd;
The goaded fibre ceases to obey,
And sense deserts the uncontractile clay;
While births unnumber'd, ere the parents die,
The hourly waste of lovely life supply;
And thus, alternating with death, fulfil
The silent mandates of the Almighty Will;
Whose hand unseen the works of nature dooms
By laws unknown--WHO GIVES, AND WHO RESUMES.
the inaptitude to motion from the inirritability of the
system, and the consequent want of fibrous contraction; see
Additional Note VII.]
"Each pregnant Oak ten thousand acorns forms
Profusely scatter'd by autumnal storms;
Ten thousand seeds each pregnant poppy sheds
Profusely scatter'd from its waving heads;
The countless Aphides, prolific tribe,
With greedy trunks the honey'd sap imbibe;
Swarm on each leaf with eggs or embryons big,
And pendent nations tenant every twig.
Amorous with double sex, the snail and worm,
Scoop'd in the soil, their cradling caverns form;
Heap their white eggs, secure from frost and floods,
And crowd their nurseries with uncounted broods.
Ere yet with wavy tail the tadpole swims,
Breathes with new lungs, or tries his nascent limbs;
Her countless shoals the amphibious frog forsakes,
And living islands float upon the lakes.
The migrant herring steers her myriad bands
From seas of ice to visit warmer strands;
Unfathom'd depths and climes unknown explores,
And covers with her spawn unmeasured shores.
--All these, increasing by successive birth,
Would each o'erpeople ocean, air, and earth.
plants in respect to seeds is often remarkable; from one root
in one summer the seeds of zea, maize, amount to 2000; of
inula, elecampane, to 3000; of helianthus, sunflower, to
buds. Buds, which are so many herbs, in one tree, the trunk
of which does not exceed a span in thickness, frequently
pucerons, or vine-fretters, are hatched from an egg in the
early spring, and are all called females, as they produce a
living offspring about once in a fortnight to the ninth
generation, which are also all of them females; then males
are also produced, and by their intercourse the females
become oviparous, and deposite their eggs on the branches, or
in the bark to be hatched in the ensuing spring.
This double mode of reproduction, so exactly resembling the
buds and seeds of trees, accounts for the wonderful increase
of this insect, which, according to Dr. Richardson, consists
of ten generations, and of fifty at an average in each
generation; so that the sum of fifty multiplied by fifty, and
that product again multiplied by fifty nine times, would give
the product of one egg only in countless millions; to which
must be added the innumerable eggs laid by the tenth
generation for the renovation of their progeny in the ensuing
with its fine proboscis the sap-vessels of vegetables without
any visible wound, and thus drinks the sap-juice, or
vegetable chyle, as it ascends. Hence on the twigs of trees
they stand with their heads downwards, as I have observed, to
acquire this ascending sap-juice with greater facility. The
honey-dew on the upper surface of leaves is evacuated by
these insects, as they hang on the underside of the leaves
above; when they take too much of this saccharine juice
during the vernal or midsummer sap-flow of most vegetables;
the black powder on leaves is also their excrement at other
times. The vegetable world seems to have escaped total
destruction from this insect by the number of flies, which in
their larva state prey upon them; and by the ichneumon fly,
which deposits its eggs in them. Some vegetables put forth
stiff bristles with points round their young shoots, as the
moss-rose, apparently to prevent the depredation of these
insects, so injurious to them by robbing them of their chyle
or nourishment.]
tadpole from a fish to a quadruped by his gradually putting
forth his limbs, and at length leaving the water, and
breathing the dry air, is a subject of great curiosity, as it
resembles so much the incipient state of all other
quadrupeds, and men, who are aquatic animals in the uterus,
and become aerial ones at their birth.]
"So human progenies, if unrestrain'd,
By climate friended, and by food sustain'd,
O'er seas and soils, prolific hordes! would spread
Erelong, and deluge their terraqueous bed;
But war, and pestilence, disease, and dearth,
Sweep the superfluous myriads from the earth.
Thus while new forms reviving tribes acquire
Each passing moment, as the old expire;
Like insects swarming in the noontide bower,
Rise into being, and exist an hour;
The births and deaths contend with equal strife,
And every pore of Nature teems with Life;
Which buds or breathes from Indus to the Poles,
And Earth's vast surface kindles, as it rolls!
besides the carbon, hydrogen, azote, and the oxygen and heat,
which are combined with them, require to be also immersed in
loose heat and loose oxygen to preserve their mutable
existence; and hence life only exists on or near the surface
of the earth; see Botan. Garden, Vol. I. Canto IV. l. 419.
L'organisation, le sentiment, le movement spontané, la vie,
n'existent qu'à la surface de la terre, et dans les lieux
exposés à la lumière. Traité de Chimie par M. Lavoisier, Tom.
"HENCE when a Monarch or a mushroom dies,
Awhile extinct the organic matter lies;
But, as a few short hours or years revolve,
Alchemic powers the changing mass dissolve;
Born to new life unnumber'd insects pant,
New buds surround the microscopic plant;
Whose embryon senses, and unwearied frames,
Feel finer goads, and blush with purer flames;
Renascent joys from irritation spring,
Stretch the long root, or wave the aurelian wing.
births of the larger insects, and the spontaneous productions
of the microscopic ones, every part of organic matter from
the recrements of dead vegetable or animal bodies, on or near
the surface of the earth, becomes again presently reanimated;
which by increasing the number and quantity of living
organizations, though many of them exist but for a short
time, adds to the sum total of terrestrial happiness.]
"When thus a squadron or an army yields,
And festering carnage loads the waves or fields;
When few from famines or from plagues survive,
Or earthquakes swallow half a realm alive;--
While Nature sinks in Time's destructive storms,
The wrecks of Death are but a change of forms;
Emerging matter from the grave returns,
Feels new desires, with new sensations burns;
With youth's first bloom a finer sense acquires,
And Loves and Pleasures fan the rising fires.--
Thus sainted PAUL, 'O Death!' exulting cries,
'Where is thy sting? O Grave! thy victories?'
Paul teaches the resurrection of the body in an incorruptible
and glorified state, with consciousness of its previous
existence; he therefore justly exults over the sting of
death, and the victory of the grave.]
"Immortal Happiness from realms deceased
Wakes, as from sleep, unlessen'd or increased;
Calls to the wise in accents loud and clear,
Sooths with sweet tones the sympathetic ear;
Informs and fires the revivescent clay,
And lights the dawn of Life's returning day.
the happiness of organized nature is probably increased
rather than diminished, when one large old animal dies, and
is converted into many thousand young ones; which are
produced or supported with their numerous progeny by the same
organic matter. Linneus asserts, that three of the flies,
called musca vomitoria, will consume the body of a dead
horse, as soon as a lion can; Syst. Nat.]
"So when Arabia's Bird, by age oppress'd,
Consumes delighted on his spicy nest;
A filial Phoenix from his ashes springs,
Crown'd with a star, on renovated wings;
Ascends exulting from his funeral flame,
And soars and shines, another and the same.
Phoenix rising from its own ashes with a star upon its head
seems to have been an hieroglyphic emblem of the destruction
and resuscitation of all things; see Botan. Garden, Vol. I.
"So erst the Sage with scientific truth
In Grecian temples taught the attentive youth;
With ceaseless change how restless atoms pass
From life to life, a transmigrating mass;
How the same organs, which to day compose
The poisonous henbane, or the fragrant rose,
May with to morrow's sun new forms compile,
Frown in the Hero, in the Beauty smile.
Whence drew the enlighten'd Sage the moral plan,
That man should ever be the friend of man;
Should eye with tenderness all living forms,
His brother-emmets, and his sister-worms.
the perpetual transmigration of matter from one body to
another, of all vegetables and animals, during their lives,
as well as after their deaths, was observed by Pythagoras;
which he afterwards applied to the soul, or spirit of
animation, and taught, that it passed from one animal to
another as a punishment for evil deeds, though without
consciousness of its previous existence; and from this
doctrine he inculcated a system of morality and benevolence,
as all creatures thus became related to each other.]
"HEAR, O ye Sons of Time! your final doom,
And read the characters, that mark your tomb:
The marble mountain, and the sparry steep,
Were built by myriad nations of the deep,--
Age after age, who form'd their spiral shells,
Their sea-fan gardens and their coral cells;
Till central fires with unextinguished sway
Raised the primeval islands into day;--
The sand-fill'd strata stretch'd from pole to pole;
Unmeasured beds of clay, and marl, and coal,
Black ore of manganese, the zinky stone,
And dusky steel on his magnetic throne,
In deep morass, or eminence superb,
Rose from the wrecks of animal or herb;
These from their elements by Life combined,
Form'd by digestion, and in glands refined,
Gave by their just excitement of the sense
The Bliss of Being to the vital Ens.
knowledge in Geology during the present century, owing to the
greater attention of philosophers to the situations of the
different materials, which compose the strata of the earth,
as well as to their chemical properties, it seems clearly to
appear, that the nucleus of the globe beneath the ocean
consisted of granite; and that on this the great beds of
limestone were formed from the shells of marine animals
during the innumerable primeval ages of the world; and that
whatever strata lie on these beds of limestone, or on the
granite, where the limestone does not cover it, were formed
after the elevation of islands and continents above the
surface of the sea by the recrements of vegetables and of
terrestrial animals; see on this subject Botanic Garden, Vol.
"Thus the tall mountains, that emboss the lands,
Huge isles of rock, and continents of sands,
Whose dim extent eludes the inquiring sight,
Shout round the globe, how Reproduction strives
With vanquish'd Death,--and Happiness survives;
How Life increasing peoples every clime,
And young renascent Nature conquers Time;
--And high in golden characters record
The immense munificence of NATURE'S LORD!--
referred to a few pages on this subject in Phytologia, Sect.
more at large; but it is probable that the most certain way
to estimate the happiness and misery of organic beings; as it
depends on the actions of the organs of sense, which
constitute ideas; or of the muscular fibres which perform
locomotion; would be to consider those actions, as they are
produced or excited by the four sensorial powers of
irritation, sensation, volition, and association. A small
volume on this subject by some ingenious writer, might not
only amuse, as an object of curiosity; but by showing the
world the immediate sources of their pains and pleasures
might teach the means to avoid the one, and to procure the
other, and thus contribute both ways to increase the sum
total of organic happiness.]
calcareous provinces, which form so great a part of the
terraqueous globe, and also whatever rests upon them, as
clay, marl, sand, and coal, were formed from the fluid
elements of heat, oxygen, azote, and hydrogen along with
carbon, phosphorus, and perhaps a few other substances, which
the science of chemistry has not yet decomposed; and gave the
pleasure of life to the animals and vegetables, which formed
them; and thus constitute monuments of the past happiness of
those organized beings. But as those remains of former life
are not again totally decomposed, or converted into their
original elements, they supply more copious food to the
succession of new animal or vegetable beings on their
surface; which consists of materials convertible into
nutriment with less labour or activity of the digestive
powers; and hence the quantity or number of organized bodies,
and their improvement in size, as well as their happiness,
has been continually increasing, along with the solid parts
of the globe; and will probably continue to increase, till
the whole terraqueous sphere, and all that inhabit it shall
dissolve by a general conflagration, and be again reduced to
their elements.
Thus all the suns, and the planets, which circle round them,
may again sink into one central chaos; and may again by
explosions produce a new world; which in process of time may
resemble the present one, and at length again undergo the
same catastrophe! these great events may be the result of the
immutable laws impressed on matter by the Great Cause of
"He gives and guides the sun's attractive force,
And steers the planets in their silver course;
With heat and light revives the golden day,
And breathes his spirit on organic clay;
With hand unseen directs the general cause
By firm immutable immortal laws."
Charm'd with her words the Muse astonish'd stands,
The Nymphs enraptured clasp their velvet hands;
Applausive thunder from the fane recoils,
And holy echoes peal along the ailes;
O'er NATURE'S shrine celestial lustres glow,
And lambent glories circle round her brow.
Demands the tribute of URANIA'S tongue;
Onward she steps, her fair associates calls
From leaf-wove avenues, and vaulted halls.
Fair virgin trains in bright procession move,
Trail their long robes, and whiten all the grove;
Pair after pair to Nature's temple sweep,
Thread the broad arch, ascend the winding steep;
Through brazen gates along susurrant ailes
Stream round their GODDESS the successive files;
Curve above curve to golden seats retire,
And star with beauty the refulgent quire.
AND first to HEAVEN the consecrated throng
With chant alternate pour the adoring song,
Swell the full hymn, now high, and now profound,
With sweet responsive symphony of sound.
Seen through their wiry harps, below, above,
Nods the fair brow, the twinkling fingers move;
Soft-warbling flutes the ruby lip commands,
And cymbals ring with high uplifted hands.
TO CHAOS next the notes melodious pass,
How suns exploded from the kindling mass,
Waved o'er the vast inane their tresses bright,
And charm'd young Nature's opening eyes with light.
Next from each sun how spheres reluctant burst,
And second planets issued from the first.
And then to EARTH descends the moral strain,
How isles, emerging from the shoreless main,
With sparkling streams and fruitful groves began,
And form'd a Paradise for mortal man.
Namque canebat uti magnum per inane coacta
Semina terrarumque, animæque, marisque fuissent;
Et liquidi simul ignis; ut his exordia primis
Omnia, et ipse tener mundi concreverit orbis.
Sublimer notes record CELESTIAL LOVE,
And high rewards in brighter climes above;
How Virtue's beams with mental charm engage
Youth's raptured eye, and warm the frost of age,
Gild with soft lustre Death's tremendous gloom,
And light the dreary chambers of the tomb.
How fell Remorse shall strike with venom'd dart,
Though mail'd in adamant, the guilty heart;
Fierce furies drag to pains and realms unknown
The blood-stain'd tyrant from his tottering throne.
By hands unseen are struck aerial wires,
And Angel-tongues are heard amid the quires;
From aile to aile the trembling concord floats,
And the wide roof returns the mingled notes,
Through each fine nerve the keen vibrations dart,
Pierce the charm'd ear, and thrill the echoing heart.--
MUTE the sweet voice, and still the quivering strings,
Now Silence hovers on unmoving wings.--
--Slow to the altar fair URANIA bends
Her graceful march, the sacred steps ascends,
High in the midst with blazing censer stands,
And scatters incense with illumined hands:
Thrice to the GODDESS bows with solemn pause,
With trembling awe the mystic veil withdraws,
And, meekly kneeling on the gorgeous shrine,
Lifts her ecstatic eyes to TRUTH DIVINE!
Hence without parent by spontaneous birth
Rise the first specks of animated earth.
_Prejudices against this doctrine._
A third prejudice against the existence of spontaneous vital
productions has been the supposed want of analogy; this has also
arisen from the expectation, that the larger or more complicated
weighed and nicely investigated before distinct credence is given
_Preliminary observations._
tulips, and the autumnal progeny of the aphis. See Phytologia.
larger and stronger in the second year than the first, and thus
_Experimental facts._
according to the warmth of the season, in the infusions of all
replete with animalcules in three or four days.
These microscopic animals are believed to possess a power of
viviparous, and produce at intervals a numerous progeny: animals
vegetable or animal matter, which is the mucor or mouldiness; the
difficult to conceive how the seeds of this mucor can float so
produced by this process of digestion; in which circumstance this
In vegetable nutrition the organic matter of dead animals, or
contact with it; in which this also differs from common chemical
processes.
conjunction.
reciprocal conjunction.
beneath the surface of the earth. Thus the particles, which form
caoutchouc, and some fossile bitumens, when drawn out to a great
bodies, are not yet understood; as the laws of the attraction of
putrefaction which will contract when extended, seems almost as
vorticella or wheel animal, which is found in rain water that has
degree of vitality, since this is done by more complicate animal
organs in the instances above mentioned.
The hydra of Linnæus, which dwells in the rivers of Europe under
There is therefore no absurdity in believing that the most simple
microscopic animals.
The green vegetable matter of Dr. Priestley, which is universally
Mr. Muller's classes consist of
*Naked, or not enclosed in a shell.
*Covered with a shell.
decompositions of organic matter, whether vegetable or animal, in
complicate animalcules by repeated reproductions. See Note VIII.
produced by the stagnation and incipient decomposition of those
produced in it can easily be observed by applying a drop to a
Next the long nerves unite their silver train,
And young Sensation permeates the brain.
possess a power of contraction. The circumstances attending the
contraction.
constitute sensation.
associability; in their active state they are termed as above
irritation, sensation, volition, association.
Irritation is an exertion or change of some extreme part of the
Sensation is an exertion or change of the central parts of the
Volition is an exertion or change of the central parts of the
Association is an exertion or change of some extreme part of the
Next when imprison'd fires in central caves
Burst the firm earth, and drank the headlong waves.
The great and repeated explosions of volcanoes are shown by Mr.
If the moon be supposed to have been thus thrown out of the great
So from deep lakes the dread musquito springs,
Drinks the soft breeze, and dries his tender wings.
It may be driven away by smoke, especially by that from inula
persons.
The gnats of this country are produced in greater numbers in some
So still the Diodons, amphibious tribe,
With twofold lungs the sea and air imbibe.
succeed in their employment.
In this circumstance of their possessing a one-celled heart, and
obtain the oxygen from it.
The leech, hirudo, and the remora, echeneis, adhere strongly to
So the glory, or halo, round the head is a part of the universal
class, order, genus, and species, with a description also of some
Wilkins's grand design of an universal language, which might
The age-worn fibres goaded to contract
By repetition palsied, cease to act.
excitability, which, though at first increased, is afterwards
Many of the motions of the organic system, which are necessary to
generally caused by the stimulus of blood in the lungs, or by the
arteries.
quantity of moisture to prevent rigidity: nothing seems so well
adapted to both these purposes as the use of the warm bath; and
It may be here observed in favour of bathing, that some fish are
render the system less excitable for a time till the quantity of
become stronger.
Hence it may be concluded, that the variations of the quantity of
patients than is met with in this country, as the lungs cannot be
produced by volition, sensation, or irritation; because they soon
But if a stimulus be repeated at uniform intervals of time, the
On this circumstance depends the easy motions of the fingers in
On the contrary, many animal motions by perpetual repetition are
energy, occasions them at length to become feeble, or to cease
entirely.
The effects of surprise and novelty must now be considered by the
examine by the voluntary efforts of intuitive analogy; or by
reasoning, which we attend to; and compare it with the usual
appearances of nature.
contributes to produce it.
Now by frequent repetition the surprise, incongruity, or novelty
sensation of pain or pleasure; and thus the sensorial power of
length cease; whence the debilities of age, and consequent death.
But Reproduction with ethereal fires
New life rekindles, ere the first expires.
acquired male and female organs.
Many microscopic animals, and some larger ones, as the hydra or
polypus, are propagated by splitting or dividing; and some still
potatoes; which is further treated of in Phytologia, Sect. VII.
combinations, whether for the purpose of nutrition or for
A similar mode of reproduction by the secretion of two kinds of
organic particles from the blood, and by depositing them either
The first mode of sexual reproduction seems to have been by the
purpose.
Afterwards the sexes seem to have been formed in vegetables as in
perfect, and at length produce a sexual progeny.
observation of M. Poupart, who thinks, that the number of
mentioned in Zoonomia, Sect. XXXIX. 6. 2.
And, lastly, the most perfect orders of animals are propagated by
The great Linneus having perceived the changes produced in the
spontaneous vitality.
structure, but with frequent additional improvements; which the
And Heaven-born STORGE weaves the social chain.
The Greek word Storge is used for the affection of parents to
These as well as many other animal facts, which are difficult to
placenta; and if a dead offspring occurs, I am told, that also is
destruction!
incolas." ANON.
length of time; whence by association a similar pleasure may be
Form'd a new sex, the mother of mankind.
The feeble births acquired diseases chase,
Till Death extinguish the degenerate race.
importance to detect the causes of these mutations.
diseases; but hereditary diseases are believed more to affect the
In respect to the sexual progeny of vegetables it has long been
sea-scurvy and occasional hæmorrhages evince the defect of venous
Then mark how two electric streams conspire
To form the resinous and vitreous fire.
fluid; which at first projected the planets from the sun, and I
suppose prevents their return to it; and which occasionally
The ethereal fluids, which constitute peculiar repulsions and
Thus the peculiar attractions and repulsions of the particles of
bodies, and the general ones of the masses of matter, perpetually
carbonic ones; but will not permeate those, which are termed
nonconductors, as air, glass, silk, resin, sulphur.
together when in contact; and occupy less space when united, than
mechanic theory.
gymnotus, and of Galvanism. Thus after having discharged a coated
repeatedly two or three times.
perfect conductor yet known.
communicating the accumulated electricity to the atmosphere.
strongly attracted to the plane.
consequently without friction; and thus the cork revolves in the
contrary direction.
towards the point in one case, and from it in the other.
So the electric fly, as it turns horizontally, recedes from the
The electric ethers may be separately accumulated by contact of
distance from the surface of a cushion.
accumulation of vitreous ether on one side of the glass is not so
metallic points of the prime conductor.
nonconductor between them.
previously had a communication with the earth, it will possess an
chemical explosions both light and heat are set at liberty, and
decompositions, as in other explosions: add to this that the same
through water, as mentioned above.
unrestrainable ethereal fluid yet unobserved, given out from this
inflammable substances, and fuses metals, or dissipates them in a
conducting body, to run into that vacuum by its attraction or
comprehended.
atmospheres; and which exists in different proportions round them
Where these spontaneous atmospheres of diffused electricity
surrounding two conducting bodies, as two pieces of silver, are
together, but without uniting.
In this experiment the electric atmospheres, which are nearly of
through them. Whence some conducting bodies admit the junction of
experiments discovered by Galvani, which have thence the name of
Hence those atmospheres of either kind of electric matter, which
accumulations of electricity seem to require the best of all
conductors, as animal nerves, to facilitate their passage.
conducting medium.
Hence it must appear, that the longer the Galvanic pile, or the
traced, when they are immersed in water in the vicinity of each
other, as when the copper sheathing of ships was held on by iron
nails. And hence another great operation of nature is probably
intervening cloths or papers are moistened with pure alcali, as a
tarnishes those of silver. Whence it would appear, that as by the
experiments.
It seems probable, that it is not the magnetic ether itself which
without emitting any other fluids previously combined with them.
Thirdly, The wonderful property of the magnetic ethers, when
separately accumulated on the ends of a needle, endeavouring to
chemical affinity when they approach, the one exploding, and then
But when an acid is mixed with a pure alcali a combination is
principally emitted, but an aerial one or gas; which may probably
sudden, bursts the vessels, or otherwise it passes slowly through
But where ethers only are concerned in an explosion, as the two
degree of putridity, and some living insects probably by their
respiration in transparent lungs, which is a kind of combustion.
But the two electric ethers are condensed by being brought into
matters, without either of them being combined with any other
resembles in every other circumstance, but in the manner of the
observed respecting the decomposition of other bodies; when their
operations may act in a similar manner; as the attractive and
attractions and repulsions, which so visibly exist in atmospheres
From the facts and observations above mentioned electricity and
magnetism consist each of them of two ethers, as the vitreous and
accompanying all these ethers permeate bodies of all kinds; it
different proportions in No. IX. of this note.
appears in the lighting of gunpowder, as well as in all other
combustion, the spark of fire applied dissolves the sulphur, and
explosion.
primary ones are drawn by them into each other's vicinity by the
masculine, or both with their feminine ethers, repel each other
reason why bodies have been supposed to repel at one distance and
distant from each other, as of the sun and planets, as I before
endeavoured to take one step further back into the mysteries of
Fond Fancy's eye recalls the form divine,
And Taste sits smiling upon Beauty's shrine.
perception above mentioned; the first is derived from a degree of
The source, from which is derived the pleasure of novelty, is a
metaphysical inquiry of great curiosity, and will on that account
objects of taste.
In its less degree surprise is generally agreeable, as it simply
degree of surprise; and by further experience the sentiment of
It should here be observed, that as the pleasure of novelty is
The repeated excitement of the same or similar ideas with certain
compositions of all the agreeable arts.
The repetitions of motions may be at first produced either by
volition, or by sensation, or by irritation, but they soon become
But besides these little circles of musical time, there are the
greater returning periods, and the still more distinct choruses;
which, like the rhimes at the end of verses, owe their beauty to
association and irritation, than by the latter singly.
This kind of pleasure arising from repetition, that is from the
facility and distinctness with which we perceive and understand
Where these repetitions of form, and reiterations of colour, are
produced in a picture or a natural landscape, in an agreeable
There is nevertheless, an excess of the repetition of the same or
A third source of pleasure arising from the inspection of visible
fibres of the retina into stronger action; on this account some
colours are seen more distinctly, and consequently more agreeably
From this curious coincidence, it has been proposed to produce a
agreeable ideas with them, must arise from our hearing some
proportions of sounds after others more easily, distinctly, or
This source of pleasure received from the melodious succession of
Hence where colours are required to be distinct, those which are
perception, which consists in our previous association of some
language, may be traced to similar sources.
colours; and that our idea of the solidity of the bodies, which
wanted separate from his other works.
object.
agreeably affected; next its sense of smell is delighted with the
softness and smoothness of the milky fountain, the source of such
Next to each thought associate sound accords,
And forms the dulcet symphony of words.
Ideas consist of synchronous motions or configurations of the
knowledge of it by developing another analogy of its constituent
The first class of words consists of those, which suggest but one
termination in the Greek and Latin languages suggest many other
expressed by prepositions.
This class of words includes the NOUNS SUBSTANTIVE, or names of
language.
Thus the word Domino, in the dative case, to the Lord, suggests
The accusative case, or Dominum, besides the primary idea implies
change of termination.
The vocative case of the Latin language, or Domine, besides the
The ablative case in the Latin language, as Domino, suggests a
prepositions in our language; which, as it suggests somewhat
Hence in the Latin language, besides the original or primary idea
latter of which has also four or five varieties. These nouns
Adjectives seem originally to have been derived from nouns
substantive, of which they express a quality, as a musky rose, a
beautiful lady, a stormy day. Some of them are formed from the
frequently only necessary to put a hyphen between two nouns
substantive for the purpose of converting the former one into an
In the Latin and Greek languages these adjectives possess a great
primary ideas of quality, and of their appertaining to some other
Mr. Locke observes, that languages consist principally of general
She let Concealment like a worm i' th' bud
Feed on her damask cheek.
Difficile emergunt, quorum virtutibus obstat
Res angusta domi.
Slow rises Worth by Poverty depress'd.
existence, but not a third idea of time; and in this respect
Nor do they resemble adjectives only in their suggesting but two
variations of termination, as in the active voice of it.
This kind of adjective suggests two primary ideas, like the
Verbs are therefore nouns, or names of intire ideas, with the
additional ideas of their mode of existence and of time; but the
construction; so the infinitive mood may be said to resemble the
substantive, and it is often used as a nominative case to another
In the Latin language the verb in its simplest form, except the
addition to the four primary ones.
languages, or transplanted from ancient ones; but that this has
Thus there may appear some difficulty in analyzing from what noun
abstracted idea of existence its real state, or actual resting,
participles alone, as I have eaten; or it is accompanied with the
participle of another verb, as I have been eating.
There is another word _will_ used in the same irregular manner to
The theory of the progressive production of language in the early
commencement of Society the names of the ideas of entire things,
As many of these nouns soon became general terms, as bird, beast,
Next to these names of the ideas of entire things, the words most
frequently used as an additional word, as wiser or more wise.
former kind are applied to substantives, and express a partial
similitude, these are applied to verbs and express a general
The perpetual chain of causes and effects, which constitute the
motions, or changing configurations, of the universe, are so
conveniently divided into active and passive, for expressing the
exertions or purposes of common life, that it became particularly
Besides the perpetual allusions to the active or passive state of
unnumbered wings to every limb of the God of Eloquence.
The tongue, the lips articulate; the throat
With soft vibration modulates the note.
Qu is kw, as quality is kwality.
SH is a simple sound, and wants a new character.
J French exists in our words confu_si_on, and conclusion, judge,
pigeon, and wants a character.
GL is dl, as Glove is pronounced by polite people dlove.
CL is tl, as Cloe is pronounced by polite speakers Tloe.
These sounds would all be nearly similar except in their being an
enunciation of the letters b, and d, and ga; or during the
pronunciation of the semivocal letters, v. z. j. and others in
sounding the liquid letters r and l; these sounds we shall term
narisonance.
consists of vibrations quicker than those formed by the larynx.
As all sound consists in the vibrations of the air, it may not be
Hence when a vacuum is formed in the atmosphere, the sides of the
Hence when a quick current of air is suddenly broken by any
intervening body, a vacuum is produced by the momentum of the
When a stream of air is blown on the edge of the aperture of an
vibrations of certain apertures of the mouth and nose, and are so
velocity; and lastly the very high notes made by the quickest
quickness of their vibrations.
_Mute and antesonant Consonants, and nasal Liquids._
B. If in the above situation of the lips a sound is previously
T. If the point of the tongue be applied to the forepart of the
previously produced in the mouth, the semisonant consonant D is
formed, which may begin or terminate a syllable.
N. If in the above situation of the tongue and palate a sound be
Ga. If in the above situation of the tongue and palate a sound be
NG. If in the above situation of the tongue and palate a sound be
narisonance, and have been called liquids by grammarians.
character as thus M.[TN: Upside down W.]
sonisibilant letter V is formed.
S. If the point of the tongue be appressed to the forepart of the
Z. If in the above situation of the tongue and palate a sound be
H. If the back part of the tongue be appressed to the pendulous
The sibilant and sonisibilant letters may be elongated in
R. If the point of the tongue be appressed to the forepart of the
formed.
_Four pairs of Vowels._
I pronounced like e in keel. If the point of the tongue by
O pronounced like oo, as in the word fool. If the lips by
approximation to each other, as in forming the letters P, B, M, W
O pronounced as in the word cold. If the aperture above described
Three mute consonants, P, T, K.
Three antesonant consonants, B, D, Ga.
Three narisonant liquids, M, N, NG.
Six sibilants, W German, F, Th, S, Sh, H.
Six sonisibilants, W, V, Th, Z, J French, Ch Spanish.
Two orisonant liquids, R, L.
Eight vowels, Aw, ah, a, e, i, y, oo, o.
To these thirty-one characters might perhaps be added one for the
F alone, or with a mark for sonisibilance, V.
Th alone, or with a mark for sonisibilance, Th.
forming the vowels, which were in the habit of being exerted in
accuracy, but not so as perfectly to satisfy myself.
subject for the purpose of improving shorthand; at that time I
harpsichord or forte piano, and perform the song as well as the
facilitate the acquisition of modern languages; which as science
ornaments of poetry.
looked for only in the simplest organic beings; supposed want of
beings; which are gradually enlarged and improved by it. III.
The larva lives chiefly in water; it may be driven away by smoke;
historical events; astrology an early superstition; universal
hermaphrodites. II. Sexual. III. Inferior vegetables and animals
Mosaic history of Paradise supposed by some to be an allegory;
originally of both sexes united.
Ideas; words the names or symbols of ideas. I. Conjunctions and
progressive production of language.
thirty-one letters; speaking figure.