CANTO III. MANIFESTO. ARGUMENT. The Poet now, with Discord's clarion, Proves that we ought to hang the Tractors BUT if you cannot find some one, As bold as Attila the Hunn, T'attack the conjuring tractoring noddy, Collect a host of our profession, But first, in flaming MANIFESTO, (To let John bull and all the rest know, Why we should on these fellows trample, And make the rogues a sad example) Say to the public all you can say, Say to the public all you can say, In crows and infants, dogs and horses: 67 67 In crows and infants, dogs and horses. These are among the patients whose cures are attested in Perkins's publication, in which he has introduced them to show that his Tractors do not cure by an influence on the imagination. The fallacy of any deductions, drawn from such cases, in favour of the Tractors, will be apparent from the following most learned and elaborate investigation of the subject. There are no animals in existence, I shall incontestibly prove, that are more susceptible of impressions from imagination, than those abovementioned. Tell how their minds-but here you old men To begin with the crow. Strong mental faculties ever indicate a vivid imagination; and what being, except Minerva's beauty the owl, is more renowned for such faculties, than the crow.Who does not know that he will smell gun-powder three miles, if it be in a gun, and he imagine it be intended for his destruction? These emblems of sagacity, besides fetching and carrying like a 'spaniel,' and talking, as well or better than Colonel Kelly's parrot, (which by the bye I suspect to have been a crow) are, as Edwards assures us in his Natural History' sorts of wood and trees.' the planters of all I observed,' says he, very busy at their a great quantity of crows work. I went out of my way on purpose to 'view their labour, and I found they were plant" ing a grove of oaks.' Vol. V. Pref. xxxv. These genuises always can tell, and always have told, since the days of Virgil, the approach of rain. That poet says, 'Tum Cornix plena pluviam vocat improba voce.' They can likewise tell when bad news is coming, as we learn from the same writer, 'Sæpe sinistra cava prædixit ab ilice Cornix." Now I beg leave to know what mortal can do more? and to suppose a crow not blessed with those more brilliant parts, under which imagina For graduates at horses' college, tion is classed, is to do them a singular injustice, which I shall certainly resent on every occasion. Now as to infants. Whoever has been in the way of an acquaintance with some of the more musical sort of these little gentry, (like my seven last darlings for instance) and has been serenaded with the dulcet sonatas of their warbling strains, will not be disposed to deny their powers on the imagination of others. I have known the delusion practised so effectually by these young conjurors, that I have myself imagined my head was actually aching most violently, even on the point of cracking open; but on going beyond the reach of their magic spell, that is, out of hearing, my head has been as free from pain as it necessarily must be at this moment while I am penning this lucid performance. Now I maintain it to be most unphilosophical, and totally opposite to certain new principles in ethics, which I shall establish in a future publication, to suppose that infants should be able to impart either pleasure or pain, by operating on the imagination, and not themselves possess a large share of that imagination, by the aid of which they operate to so much effect upon others. 6 Next come dogs. Dr. Shaw, in his Zoology,' Vol. I. p. 289, informs us, that a dog belonging 'to a nobleman of the Medici family, always ' attended his masters table, changed the plates ' for him, carried him his wine in a glass placed on a salver, without spilling the smallest drop.' The celebrated Leibnitz mentions another a sub That though imagination cures, 6 ject of the Elector of Saxony, who could discourse in an intelligible manner,' especially on tea, 'coffee, and chocolate;' whether in Greek, Latin, German, or English, however, he has not stated; but Dr. Shaw, alluding to the same dog, says, undoubtedly under the influence of prejudice, he was somewhat of a truant, and did not willingly ' exert his talents, being rather pressed into the 'service of literature.' Indeed our greatest naturalists assure us, that this animal is far before the human species in every ennobling quality. Buffon makes man a very devil compared with the dog; and had he come directly to the point, I presume he would have told us that the dog is one link above man in the great chain from the fossil to the angel. 'Without the dog,' says Buffon, how could man have been able to tame and reduce other animals ' into slavery? To preserve his own safety, it ' was necessary to make friends among those ani'mals whom he found capable of attachment. The 'fruit of associating with the dog was the conquest ' and the peaceable possession of the earth. The dog will always preserve his empire. He reigns at the head of a flock, and makes himself better understood than the voice of the shepherd,' (well he might, for it appears he is more knowing, more powerful, and more just.) Safety, order, and 'discipline, are the fruits of his vigilance and activity. They are a people submitted to his ma M 6 |