STUDY I. 



37 



and commonalty, into papifls and huguenots, into 

 foldiers and flaves ; the Moralift, into the avari- 

 cious, the hypocritical, the debauched, the proud; 

 the Tragic Poet, into tyrants and their viâiims ; 

 the Comic, into drolls and buffoons ; the Phyfi- 

 cian, into the pituitous, the bilious, the phlegma- 

 tic. They are univerfally exhibited as fubjefts of 

 averfion, of hatred, or of contempt : Man has been 

 univerfally differed, and now nothing is flievvn of 

 him but the carcafe. Thus the mafter- piece of 

 Creation, like every thing elfe in Nature, has been 

 degraded by our learning. 



I do not mean to affirm, however, that from 

 fuch partial means, no ufeful difcovery has pro- 

 ceeded : but all thefe circles, within which we 

 circumfcribe the Supreme Power, far from deter- 

 mining it's bounds, only mark the limits of human 

 genius. We accuftom ourfelves to crowd all our 

 own ideas into that narrow fpace, and difnoneftly 

 to rejed: all that does not accord with them. We 

 3.0: the part of the tyrant of Sicily, who fitted the 

 unhappy traveller to his bed of iron : he violently 

 ilretched, to the length of the bed, the limbs of 

 thofe who were fhorter, and cut fliort the limbs 

 of thofe who were longer. It is thus we apply all 

 the operations of Nature to our pitiful methods, 

 in order to reduce the whole to one common ftan- 

 dard. 



D 3 Hurried 



