And by a shock of electricity,
(I tell the truth without duplicity)

'Rose on swift wheels the MoON's refulgent car, Circling the solar orb, a sister star,

'Dimpled with vales with shining hills emboss'd, And roll'd round earth her airless realms of frost.'

No man will say in this case,

Parturiunt montes nascitur ridiculus mus.

The reaction, at the moment of explosion, of that mass of matter which now composes our moon, is the cause of the obliquity of the polar axis to the poles of the ecliptic, according to Dr. Darwin; though Milton says,

Angels turn'd askance

The poles of earth twice ten degrees and more: From the sun's axle, they with labour push'd * Oblique the centric globe.'

Whether an explosion similar to that, so beautifully described by Dr. Darwin, from the north side of the equator, would not set all right, and a new era be announced, which will be, like that of old, when

Spring

'Perpetual smil'd on earth, with vernal flowers, " Equal in days and nights".

is a problem worth the attention of our modern philosophers. But at any rate, I Dr. Caustic will, positively, try the experiment.

i ze vitca of Endor

ze overs x el surrender!

raws rull many a magic circle,

Now stamps, and foams, and swears nieherc❜le! As and Candia us ̊d to mutter once,

Just 25

her Damen gave her utterance!

Now tells each trembling bed-rid zany
Territic tales of one Galvani;

How Frankiin kept, to make folks wonder,

A warehouse full of bottled thunder!

Thus Shakspeare's Macbeth's wicked witches
Even carry'd matters to such pitches,
Ia hoity-toity midnight revel,

The old hags almost rais'd the devil!

sect. Should any person be so uncivil and Lareasonable as to start the objection to this logic, that with the same propriety all medicines might also be supposed to produce their effects, br an action on the mind, I particularly advise (provided such person be a noted coward) that you challenge him or her to a duel: but if, on the contrary, he or she be a terrible Mac Namara

And now our tragic-comic actors
Torment a pair of wooden Tractors;
All which, with many things they more did,
In Haygarth's book you'll find recorded.

like fellow, modestly reply that it was all a joke,
and you hope there was no offence.

62 You, who don't value being hung.

I trust, gentlemen, you will not startle at my supposing a willingness among some of your honourable body to submit to this operation. You must believe enough of predestination to know that a man who is born to be hung can never be drown'd; and a little serious consideration will therefore shew that, as the event must happen, it might as well be submitted to first as last.

I did (what won't again be soon done)
E'en fairly knock the man in the moon down! 32

Could tell how Nature works her matters

In making brutes and human creatures:
Gave long, detail'd, authentic histories,
Of all that lady's nameless mysteries.

Now as to my 'rain and thunder' I have only to inform your worships that I have a wife, and she is the very essence of a Xantippe, the yoke-fellow of Socrates. You well remember the observation of that sage, when she supplied him with a vast quantity of those articles, purporting, that after such violent peals of thunder a shower of rain must necessarily follow.

32 E'en fairly knock the man in the moon down!

This notable exploit I think to be a very great improvement on electrical experiments made by a number of renowned French and English philosophers. [See Priestley's History of Electricity, page 94.] But for this, with many other matters equally interesting and magnipotent, I must refer the inquisitive to the Appendix of my Fool's Cap Folio Volume, on the Tadpolian Discovery. It may, however, be necessary, in order to shew the extent to which I have surpassed those philosophers, just to state, that the Frenchmen communicated the shock only about two miles and an half, and our own countrymen, with the present bishop of Landaff (Watson) at their head, only about four miles and an half.

I learnt these from as nice a rabbit
As naturalist could wish to nab at. 33
With toads and tadpoles made as many
Experiments as Spallanzani. 34

33 As naturalist could wish to nab at.

Such a gentleman as he who honoured the Royal Society with that most interesting communication in the Philosophical Transactions, vol. lxxxvii. p. 197.

I cannot express the degree of my contempt for an obscure ignoramus, who, in a scurvy pamphlet called 'Pursuits of Literature,' has endeavoured to bespatter the above gentleman, and cast an obloquy on certain useful and diverting experiments by him instituted. I trust I need say nothing more to shew the great impudence and folly of this scribler, than to simply adduce his own most absurd and unreasonable comments. 'Surely to 'sit calmly, and watch with an impure, inhuman, ' and unhallowed curiosity, the progress of the 'desires, and the extinction of the natural passions of devoted animals, after such mutilations and experiments, is a practice useless, wicked, 'degrading, and barbarous.'

34 Experiments as Spallanzani.

I have been the more solicitous to eulogize this great Philosopher, that I might thereby establish my own reputation as a polite and fashionable wriFor thus I implicitly follow the laudable example of most of the truly gentlemen literati in Europe, who have vied with each other in doling out the incense of their admiration at the altar of

ter.