d to
his cat, which, by repeated practice, he had taught to hold a candle in
its paw while he supped or read. Cecco desired to witness the
experiment, and came not unprepared for his purpose; when Dante's cat
was performing its part, Cecco, lifting up the lid of a pot which he had
filled with mice, the creature of art instantly showed the weakness of a
talent merely acquired, and dropping the candle, flew on the mice with
all its instinctive propensity. Dante was himself disconcerted; and it
was adjudged that the advocate for the occult principle of native
faculties had gained his cause.

To tell stories, however, is not to lay down principles, yet principles
may sometimes be concealed in stories.[298]

MEDICINE AND MORALS.

A stroke of personal ridicule is levelled at Dryden, when Bayes informs
us of his preparations for a course of study by a course of medicine!
"When I have a grand design," says he, "I ever take physic and let
blood; for when you would have pure swiftness of thought, and fiery
flights of fancy, you must have a care of the pensive part; in fine,
you must purge the belly!" Such was really the practice of the poet, as
Le Motte, who was a physician, informs us, and in his medical character
did not perceive that ridicule in the subject which the wits and most
readers unquestionably have enjoyed. The wits here were as cruel against
truth as against Dryden; for we must still consider this practice, to
use their own words, as "an excellent recipe for writing." Among other
philosophers, one of the most famous disputants of antiquity, Carneades,
was accustomed to take copious doses of white hellebore, a great
aperient, as a preparation to refute the dogmas of the stoics. "The
thing that gives me the highest spirits (it seems absurd, but true) is a
dose of salts; but one can't take them like champagne," said Lord Byron.
Dryden's practice was neither whimsical nor peculiar to the poet; he was
of a full habit, and, no doubt, had often found by experience the
beneficial effects without being aware of the cause, which is nothing
less than the reciprocal influence of mind and body.

This simple fact is, indeed, connected with one of the most important
inquiries in the history of man--the laws which regulate the invisible
union of the soul with the body: in a word, the inscrutable mystery of
our being!--a secret, but an undoubted intercourse, which probably must
ever elude our perceptions. The combination