48 



DR. R. ANGUS SMITH ON ANCIENT AND 



Or the whole passage from Cowper's Homer — (Pope slurs 

 it over): — 



" Bright blast-averting sulphur. Nurse, bring fire 

 That I may fumigate my walls ; then bid 

 Penelope with her attendants down, 

 And summon all the women of her train. 

 But Euryclea thus, his nurse, replied : — 

 My son, thou hast well said, yet firat I will 

 Serve thee with vest and mantle. Stand not here 

 In thy own palace, clothed with tatters foul 

 And beggarly ; she will abhor the sight. 

 Then answer thus, Ulysses wise returned : — 

 Not so ; bring fire for fumigation first : 

 He said ; nor Euryclea his loved nurse 

 Longer delayed, but sulphur brought and fire, 

 When he with purifying steams himself 

 Visited every part, the banquet room, 

 The vestibule, the court." 



I adduce this as a contrast to the opinions of a man of the 

 17th century, certainly not the most ignorant, for Sir Kenelm 

 Digby was a man of some observation, although of more 

 imagination, and reasons on the "strange subtlety of little 

 bodies which issue forth from living bodies, by means of 

 which our dogs in England will pursue the scent of a man's 

 foot, or of a beast's, many miles." This is in a " Discourse 

 made in a solemn assembly of nobles and learned men, at 

 Montpellier in France ;" and shows the strange rational and 

 irrational channels in which men's thoughts even then ran. 

 In this last he runs down coals, which were getting into use 

 in London — 



" The soot from the coals dirties tapestries, clothes on the hedges, 

 &c." " It has a great quantity of volatile oil, very sharp." Also — 

 " We find that the most neat and polished silver plate, exposed to 

 the air, becomes in a short time livid and foul ; which proceeds from 

 no other cause than those black atoms (the true colour of putrefaction) 

 which stick unto them." 



