NEXT ESSAY
Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam
Jungere si velit, et varias inducere plumas,
Undique collatis membris, ut turpiter atrum
Desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne;
Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici?
Credite, Pisones, isti tabulae, fore librum
Persimilem, cujus, velut aegri somnia, vanae
Fingentur species.
HOR., Ars Poet. 1.
If in a picture, Piso, you should see
A handsome woman with a fish's tail,
Or a man's head upon a horse's neck,
Or limbs of beasts, of the most different kinds,
Cover'd with feathers of all sorts of birds, -
Would you not laugh, and think the painter mad?
Trust me, that book is as ridiculous
Whose incoherent style, like sick men's dreams,
Varies all shapes, and mixes all extremes.
ROSCOMMON.
It is very hard for the mind to disengage itself from a subject in
which it has been long employed. The thoughts will be rising of
themselves from time to time, though we give them no encouragement:
as the tossings and fluctuations of the sea continue several hours
after the winds are laid.
It is to this that I impute my last night's dream or vision, which
formed into one continued allegory the several schemes of wit,
whether false, mixed, or true, that have been the subject of my late
papers.
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