e observations, and a wary reasoning by analogy in
that kind of argumentative process, which Suidas calls dialectick
induction--that I draw and set up this position as most true and
veritable;

That of these two luminaries so much of their irradiations are suffered
from time to time to shine down upon us, as he, whose infinite wisdom
which dispenses every thing in exact weight and measure, knows will just
serve to light us on our way in this night of our obscurity; so that
your reverences and worships now find out, nor is it a moment longer in
my power to conceal it from you, That the fervent wish in your behalf
with which I set out, was no more than the first insinuating How d'ye of
a caressing prefacer, stifling his reader, as a lover sometimes does a
coy mistress, into silence. For alas! could this effusion of light have
been as easily procured, as the exordium wished it--I tremble to think
how many thousands for it, of benighted travellers (in the learned
sciences at least) must have groped and blundered on in the dark,
all the nights of their lives--running their heads against posts,
and knocking out their brains without ever getting to their journies
end;--some falling with their noses perpendicularly into sinks--others
horizontally with their tails into kennels. Here one half of a learned
profession tilting full but against the other half of it, and then
tumbling and rolling one over the other in the dirt like hogs.--Here
the brethren of another profession, who should have run in opposition to
each other, flying on the contrary like a flock of wild geese, all in
a row the same way.--What confusion!--what mistakes!--fiddlers and
painters judging by their eyes and ears--admirable!--trusting to
the passions excited--in an air sung, or a story painted to the
heart--instead of measuring them by a quadrant.

In the fore-ground of this picture, a statesman turning the political
wheel, like a brute, the wrong way round--against the stream of
corruption--by Heaven!--instead of with it.

In this corner, a son of the divine Esculapius, writing a book against
predestination; perhaps worse--feeling his patient's pulse, instead of
his apothecary's--a brother of the Faculty in the back-ground upon his
knees in tears--drawing the curtains of a mangled victim to beg his
forgiveness;--offering a fee--instead of taking one.

In that spacious Hall, a coalition of the gown, from all the bars of
it, driving a damn'd, dirty, vexati