1 7 9 - • 0'^ -xoonns. 1 3 1 



ON THE EARTH WORM. 



Sir, To the" Eila-jr of the Bee, 



It is with great judgement tliat from your excellent 

 Miscellany you seem to have excluded metaphysi- 

 ca'l disquisitions and theological controversy. These 

 subjects, instead of improving the taste, and humani- 

 zing the mind, could serve no other end than to per- 

 plex the understandings of those to whom it is your 

 laudable object to communicate useful information, 

 and to excite, perhaps, the angry pafsions of your 

 more learned rea^lers. When I expreis myself in this 

 manner, I am entitled to the credit of postponing my 

 own amusement to general utility ; for from the age 

 of sixteen, metaphysics have been my favourite study. 

 But though I would not, for my gratiiication, wifli 

 you to fill your pages with ontological distinctions, 

 and abstruse reasonings, which to men, not early ini- 

 tiated in such studies, convey no ideas whatever, there 

 are yet topics, intimately connected with metaphysics, 

 which I think might be treated in such a manner, as 

 to add to the public stock of useful knowledge. The 

 metaphysician, whose aim is the discovery of truth, 

 and not the propagation of paradoxes, cannot hope to 

 obtain Iiis purpose without some previous knowledge 

 of natural history and the principles of anatomy. It 



form tJie bails of every exc;!!eit literary acquirement. I vvlfh not, hovv- 

 e\«r, that th'« in.luleence 1j.ouI3 be misconstrued. Let young men nev^r 

 forget that jus; criiicism is in a peculiar manner the province of age int 

 Ac lierary repuhlic. There are abunl.-nce of other departments in which 

 the young candidate for litscary fame may exercise his ingenuity, with a 

 atiuch better prospect of succifi, jf. A. 



VOL. viii. S t 



