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not ready to acknowledge the superior, 

 though, to him, less interesting beauty of 

 other women, whose persons differed in 

 every respect from that of the object of 

 his passion ? I have as little found, that 

 the partiality we feel for our own species, 

 has made us think it a standard for beauty 

 in other objects ; on the contran r , we are 

 perpetually borrowing images from other 

 animals, for the purpose of conveying a 

 higher idea of beauty, or of character: 

 the eye of the eagle, the dove, the ox, are 

 used to express keenness, mildness, or 

 fulness ; the neck of a beautiful woman is 

 compared to that of a swan ; and number- 

 less comparisons are drawn from animate 

 and inanimate objects, in order to heighten 

 the idea of human beauty. On the other 

 hand, when a compliment is to be paid to 

 an animal, it is drawn from the more ac- 

 knowledged source of human superiority ; 

 as " the half-reasoning elephant'' in Pope; 

 and Rinaldo's famous horse Bajardo, of 

 whom Ariosto says, avea intelletto 



44 umano." — But I see we are just arrived 



