Audax Iapeti genus Subductum, macies et nova febrium Terris incubuit cohors, Semotique prius tarda necessitas Lethi corripuit gradum. communicate his sensations, raised him above the level of his fellow animals. But the steps that have been taken are irrevocable. The whole of human science is comprised in one question:-How can the advantages of intellect and civilization be reconciled with the liberty and pure pleasures of natural life? How can we take the benefits, and reject the evils How plain a language is spoken by all this! Prome- of the system, which is now interwoven with all the theus (who represents the human race) effected some fibres of our being?-I believe that abstinence.from great change in the condition of his nature, and ap- animal food and spirituous liquors would in a great plied fire to culinary purposes; thus inventing an ex- measure capacitate us for the solution of this importpedient for screening from his disgust the horrors of ant question. the shambles. From this moment his vitals were It is true, that mental and bodily derangement is devoured by the vulture of disease. It consumed attributable in part to other deviations from rectitude his being in every shape of its lothesome and infinite and nature than those which concern diet. The misvariety, inducing the soul-quelling sinkings of prema- takes cherished by society respecting the connexion ture and violent death. All vice arose from the ruin of the sexes, whence the misery and diseases of unof healthful innocence. Tyranny, superstition, com- satisfied celibacy, unenjoying prostitution, and the merce, and inequality, were then first known, when premature arrival of puberty, necessarily spring; the reason vainly attempted to guide the wanderings of putrid atmosphere of crowded cities; the exhalations exacerbated passion. I conclude this part of the of chemical processes; the muffling of our bodies in subject with an extract from Mr. Newton's Defence superfluous apparel; the absurd treatment of infants: of Vegetable Regimen, from whom I have borrowed all these, and innumerable other causes, contribute this interpretation of the fable of Prometheus. their mite to the mass of human evil. "Making allowance for such transposition of the Comparative anatomy teaches us that man resemevents of the allegory as time might produce after bles frugivorous animals in every thing, and carnivorthe important truths were forgotten, which this por- ous in nothing; he has neither claws wherewith to tion of the ancient mythology was intended to trans- seize his prey, nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear mit, the drift of the fable seems to be this:-Man at the living fibre. A Mandarin of the first class, with his creation was endowed with the gift of perpetual nails two inches long, would probably find them alone youth; that is, he was not formed to be a sickly suf- inefficient to hold even a hare. After every subterfering creature as we now see him, but to enjoy fuge of gluttony, the bull must be degraded into the health, and to sink by slow degrees into the bosom ox, and the ram into the wether, by an unnatural of his parent earth, without disease or pain. Prome- and inhuman operation, that the flaccid fibre may theus first taught the use of animal food (primus offer a fainter resistance to rebellious nature. It is bovem occidit Prometheus) and of fire, with which only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culito render it more digestible and pleasing to the taste. nary preparation, that it is rendered susceptible of Jupiter, and the rest of the gods, foreseeing the con- mastication or digestion; and that the sight of its sequences of these inventions, were amused or irri- bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolertated at the short-sighted devices of the newly-formed able lothing and disgust. Let the advocate of animal creature, and left him to experience the sad effects food force himself to a decisive experiment on its of them. Thirst, the necessary concomitant of a fitness, and, as Plutarch recommends, tear a living flesh diet," (perhaps of all diet vitiated by culinary lamb with his teeth, and plunging his head into its preparation,) "ensued; water was resorted to, and vitals, slake his thirst with the streaming blood; when man forfeited the inestimable gift of health which he fresh from the deed of horror, let him revert to the had received from Heaven: he became diseased, the irresistible instincts of nature that would rise in judg partaker of a precarious existence, and no longer ment against it, and say, Nature formed me for such descended slowly to his grave."t work as this. Then, and then only, would he be consistent. But just disease to luxury succeeds, Man resembles no carnivorous animal. There is no exception, unless man be one, to the rule of herbivorous animals having cellulated colons. The orang-outang perfectly resembles man both Man, and the animals whom he has infected with in the order and number of his teeth. The orangnis society, or depraved by his dominion, are alone outang is the most anthropomorphous of the ape tribe, diseased. The wild hog, the mouflon, the bison, and all of which are strictly frugivorous. There is no the wolf, are perfectly exempt from malady, and in- other species of animals, which live on different food, variably die either from external violence, or natural in which this analogy exists. In many frugivorous old age. But the domestic hog, the sheep, the cow, animals, the canine teeth are more pointed and disand the dog, are subject to an incredible variety of tinct than those of man. The resemblance also of distempers; and, like the corrupters of their nature, the human stomach to that of the orang-outang, is have physicians who thrive upon their miseries. The greater than to that of any other animal. supereminence of man is like Satan's, a superemi- The intestines are also identical with those of hernence of pain; and the majority of his species, bivorous animals, which present a larger surface for doomed to penury, disease, and crime, have reason to absorption, and have ample and cellulated colons. curse the untoward event, that by enabling him to The cœcum also, though short, is larger than that of Plin. Nat. Hist., lib. vii. sect. 57. † Return to Nature. Cadell, 1811. Cuvier, Leçons d'Anat. Comp. tom. iii. page 169, 373, 448, 465, 480. Rees's Cyclopædia, article MAN. carnivorous animals; and even here the orang-outang eyes, and swollen veins, that alone can grasp the retains its accustomed similarity. knife of murder. The system of a simple diet promThe structure of the human frame then is that of ises no Utopian advantages. It is no mere reform of one fitted to a pure vegetable diet, in every essential legislation, whilst the furious passions and evil proparticular. It is true, that the reluctance to abstain pensities of the human heart, in which it had its from animal food, in those who have been long ac- origin, are still unassuaged. It strikes at the root of customed to its stimulus, is so great in some persons all evil, and is an experiment which may be tried of weak minds, as to be scarcely overcome; but this with success, not alone by nations, but by small sois far from bringing any argument in its favor. A cieties, families, and even individuals. In no case lamb, which was fed for some time on flesh by a has a return to vegetable diet produced the slightest ship's crew, refused its natural diet at the end of the injury; in most it has been attended with changes voyage. There are numerous instances of horses, undeniably beneficial. Should ever a physician be sheep, oxen, and even wood-pigeons, having been born with the genius of Locke, I am persuaded that taught to live upon flesh, until they have lothed their he might trace all bodily and mental derangements natural aliment. Young children evidently prefer to our unnatural habits, as clearly as that philosopher pastry, oranges, apples, and other fruit, to the flesh has traced all knowledge to sensation. What prolific of animals; until, by the gradual depravation of the sources of disease are not those mineral and vegetadigestive organs, the free use of vegetables has for a ble poisons that have been introduced for its extirpatime produced serious inconveniences; for a time, Ition! How many thousands have become murderers say, since there never was an instance wherein a and robbers, bigots and domestic tyrants, dissolute change from spirituous liquors and animal food to and abandoned adventurers, from the use of fervegetables and pure water, has failed ultimately to mented liquors! who, had they slaked their thirst invigorate the body, by rendering its juices bland only with pure water, would have lived but to dif and consentaneous, and to restore to the mind that fuse the happiness of their own unperverted feelings. cheerfulness and elasticity, which not one in fifty How many groundless opinions and absurd institutions possesses on the present system. A love of strong have not received a general sanction from the sot liquors is also with difficulty taught to infants. Al- tishness and intemperance of individuals! Who will most every one remembers the wry faces which the assert that, had the populace of Paris satisfied their first glass of port produced. Unsophisticated instinct hunger at the ever-furnished table of vegetable is invariably unerring; but to decide on the fitness nature, they would have lent their brutal suffrage to of animal food, from the perverted appetites which the proscription-list of Robespierre? Could a set of its constrained adoption produces, is to make the men, whose passions were not perverted by unnatu criminal a judge in his own cause it is even worse, ral stimuli, look with coolness on an auto da fè? Is it is appealing to the infatuated drunkard in a ques- it to be believed that a being of gentle feelings, tion of the salubrity of brandy. rising from his meal of roots, would take delight in What is the cause of morbid action in the animal sports of blood? Was Nero a man of temperate system? Not the air we breathe, for our fellow-deni- life? could you read calm health in his cheek, flushed zens of nature breathe the same uninjured; not the with ungovernable propensities of hatred for the water we drink, (if remote from the pollutions of human race? Did Muley Ismael's pulse beat evenly, man and his inventions,*) for the animals drink it too; was his skin transparent, did his eyes beam with not the earth we tread upon; not the unobscured healthfulness, and its invariable concomitants, cheersight of glorious nature, in the wood, the field, or the fulness and benignity? Though history has decided expanse of sky and ocean; nothing that we are or none of these questions, a child could not hesitate to do in common with the undiseased inhabitants of the answer in the negative. Surely the bile-suffused forest. Something then wherein we differ from them: cheek of Bonaparte, his wrinkled brow, and yellow our habit of altering our food by fire, so that our ap-eye, the ceaseless inquietude of his nervous system, petite is no longer a just criterion for the fitness of its speak no less plainly the character of his unresting gratification. Except in children, there remain no ambition than his murders and his victories. It is traces of that instinct which determines, in all other impossible, had Bonaparte descended from a race of animals, what aliment is natural or otherwise; and vegetable feeders, that he could have had either the so perfectly obliterated are they in the reasoning adults of our species, that it has become necessary to urge considerations drawn from comparative anatomy to prove that we are naturally frugivorous. inclination or the power to ascend the throne of the Bourbons. The desire of tyranny could scarcely be excited in the individual, the power to tyrannize would certainly not be delegated by a society neither Crime is madness. Madness is disease. Whenever frenzied by inebriation nor rendered impotent and the cause of disease shall be discovered, the root, irrational by disease. Pregnant indeed with inexfrom which all vice and misery have so long over- haustible calamity is the renunciation of instinct, as shadowed the globe, will lie bare to the ax. All the it concerns our physical nature; arithmetic cannot exertions of man, from that moment, may be consid- enumerate, nor reason perhaps suspect, the multituered as tending to the clear profit of his species. No dinous sources of disease in civilized life. Even sane mind in a sane body resolves upon a real common water, that apparently innoxious pabulum. crime. It is a man of violent passions, blood-shot when corrupted by the filth of populous cities, is a deadly and insidious destroyer.* Who can wonder *The necessity of resorting to some means of purifying that all the inducements held out by God himself in water, and the disease which arises from its adulteration the Bible to virtue should have been vainer than a in civilized countries, is sufficiently apparent.-See Dr. nurse's tale; and that those dogmas, by which he has LAMBE'S Reports on Cancer. I do not assert that the use there excited and justified the most ferocious propenof water is in itself unnatural, but that the unperverted palate would swallow no liquid capable of occasioning disease. * Lambe's Reports on Cancer. sities, should have alone been deemed essential; it is scarcely possible that abstinence from aliments whilst Christians are in the daily practice of all those demonstrably pernicious should not become univerhabits, which have infected with disease and crime, sal. In proportion to the number of proselytes, so not only the reprobate sons, but those favored chil- will be the weight of evidence; and when a thoudren of the common Father's love? Omnipotence sand persons can be produced, living on vegetables itself could not save them from the consequences of and distilled water, who have to dread no disease but this original and universal sin. old age, the world will be compelled to regard ani There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adop-mal flesh and fermented liquors as slow but certain tion of vegetable diet and pure water has not infalli- poisons. The change which would be produced by bly mitigated, wherever the experiment has been simpler habits on political economy is sufficiently refairly tried. Debility is gradually converted into markable. The monopolizing eater of animal flesh strength, disease into healthfulness; madness, in all would no longer destroy his constitution by devouring its hideous variety, from the ravings of the fettered an acre at a meal, and many loaves of bread would maniac, to the unaccountable irrationalities of ill cease to contribute to gout, madness and apoplexy, temper, that make a hell of domestic life, into a calm in the shape of a pint of porter, or a dram of gin, and considerate evenness of temper, that alone might when appeasing the long-protracted famine of the offer a certain pledge of the future moral reformation hard-working peasant's hungry babes. The quantity of of society. On a natural system of diet, old age nutritious vegetable matter, consumed in fattening the would be our last and our only malady; the term of carcass of an ox, would afford ten times the sustenance, our existence would be protracted; we should enjoy undepraving indeed, and incapable of generating dislife, and no longer preclude others from the enjoy- ease, if gathered immediately from the bosom of the ment of it; all sensational delights would be infi- earth. The most fertile districts of the habitable globe nitely more exquisite and perfect; the very sense of are now actually cultivated by men for animals, at a being would then be a continued pleasure, such as delay and waste of aliment absolutely incapable of we now feel it in some few and favored moments of calculation. It is only the wealthy that can, to any our youth. By all that is sacred in our hopes for great degree, even now, indulge the unnatural crathe human race, I conjure those who love happiness ving for dead flesh, and they pay for the greater and truth, to give a fair trial to the vegetable system. license of the privilege by subjection to supernuReasoning is surely superfluous on a subject whose merary diseases. Again, the spirit of the nation that merits an experience of six months would set for should take the lead in this great reform, would inever at rest. But it is only among the enlightened sensibly become agricultural; commerce, with all its and benevolent that so great a sacrifice of appetite vice, selfishness and corruption, would gradually deand prejudice can be expected, even though its ulti-cline; more natural habits would produce gentler mate excellence should not admit of dispute. It is manners, and the excessive complication of political found easier, by the short-sighted victims of disease, relations would be so far simplified, that every indito palliate their torments by medicine, than to pre-vidual might feel and understand why he loved his vent them by regimen. The vulgar of all ranks are in-country, and took a personal interest in its welfare. variably sensual and indocile; yet I cannot but feel myself persuaded, that when the benefits of vegetable diet are mathematically proved; when it is as clear, that those who live naturally are exempt from premature death, as that nine is not one, the most sottish of mankind will feel a preference to-Of what consequence would it be that they refused wards a long and tranquil, contrasted with a short and to take her woollen manufactures, when large and painful life. On an average, out of sixty persons, fertile tracts of the island ceased to be allotted to the four die in three years. Hopes are entertained that, waste of pasturage? On a natural system of diet, we in April 1814, a statement will be given, that sixty should require no spices from India; no wines from persons, all having lived more than three years on Portugal, Spain, France, or Madeira; none of those vegetables and pure water, are then in perfect health. multitudinous articles of luxury, for which every More than two years have now elapsed; not one of corner of the globe is rifled, and which are the causes them has died; no such example will be found in any of so much individual rivalship, such calamitous and sixty persons taken at random. Seventeen persons sanguinary national disputes. In the history of modof all ages (the families of Dr. Lamb and Mr. New-ern times, the avarice of commercial monopoly, no ton) have lived for seven years on this diet without less than the ambition of weak and wicked chiefs, a death, and almost without the slightest illness. Sure-seems to have fomented the universal discord, to ly, when we consider that some of these were infants, have added stubbornness to the mistakes of cabinets, and one a martyr to asthma now nearly subdued, we and indocility to the infatuation of the people. Let may challenge any seventeen persons taken at ran- it ever be remembered, that it is the direct influence dom in this city to exhibit a parallel case. Those of commerce to make the interval between the richwho have been excited to question the rectitude of est and the poorest man wider and more unconquerestablished habits of diet, by these loose remarks, able. Let it be remembered, that it is a foe to every should consult Mr. Newton's luminous and eloquent thing of real worth and excellence in the human essay.* character. The odious and disgusting aristocracy When these proofs come fairly before the world, of wealth is built upon the ruins of all that is good and are clearly seen by all who understand arithmetic, in chivalry or republicanism; and luxury is the forerunner of a barbarism scarce capable of cure. Is it impossible to realize a state of society, where all the "Return to Nature, or Defence of Vegetable Regimen." energies of man shall be directed to the production of his solid happiness? Certainly, if this advantage Cadell, 1811. How would England, for example, depend on the caprices of foreign rulers, if she contained within herself all the necessaries and despised whatever they possessed of the luxuries of life? How could they starve her into compliance with their views? (the object of all political speculation) be in any dram. Animal flesh, in its effects on the human degree attainable, it is attainable only by a commu- stomach, is analogous to a dram. It is similar to the nity, which holds out no factitious incentives to the kind, though differing in the degree, of its operation. avarice and ambition of the few, and which is inter- The proselyte to a pure diet must be warned to exnally organized for the liberty, security and comfort pect a temporary diminution of muscular strength. of the many. None must be intrusted with power The subtraction of a powerful stimulus will suffice (and money is the completest species of power) who to account for this event. But it is only temporary, do not stand pledged to use it exclusively for the and is succeeded by an equable capability for exergeneral benefit. But the use of animal flesh and tion, far surpassing his former various and fluctuating fermented liquors, directly militates with this equal- strength. Above all, he will acquire an easiness of ity of the rights of man. The peasant cannot gratify breathing, by which such exertion is performed, with these fashionable cravings without leaving his family a remarkable exemption from that painful and diffito starve. Without disease and war, those sweeping cult panting now felt by almost every one, after curtailers of population, pasturage would include a hastily climbing an ordinary mountain. He will be waste too great to be afforded. The labor requisite equally capable of bodily exertion, or mental applito support a family is far lighter than is usually cation, after as before his simple meal. He will feel supposed. The peasantry work, not only for them- none of the narcotic effects of ordinary diet. Irrita selves, but for the aristocracy, the army, and the man- bility, the direct consequence of exhausting stimuli, ufacturers. would yield to the power of natural and tranquil impulses. He will no longer pine under the lethargy of ennui, that unconquerable weariness of life, more The advantage of a reform in diet is obviously greater than that of any other. It strikes at the root of the evil. To remedy the abuses of legislation, to be dreaded than death itself. He will escape the before we annihilate the propensities by which they are produced, is to suppose, that by taking away the effect, the cause will cease to operate. But the efficacy of this system depends entirely on the proselytism of individuals, and grounds its merits, as a benefit to the community, upon the total change of the dietetic habits in its members. It proceeds securely from a number of particular cases to one that is universal, and has this advantage over the contrary mode, that one error does not invalidate all that has gone before. Let not too much however be expected from this system. The healthiest among us is not exempt from hereditary disease. The most symmetrical, athletic, and long-lived, is a being inexpressibly inferior to what he would have been, had not the unnatural habits of his ancestors accumulated for him a certain portion of malady and deformity. In the most per fect specimen of civilized man, something is still found wanting by the physiological critic. Can a return to nature, then, instantaneously eracidate predispositions that have been slowly taking root in the silence of innumerable ages?—Indubitably not. All that I contend for is, that from the moment of the relinquishing all unnatural habits, no new disease is generated and that the predisposition to hereditary maladies gradually perishes, for want of its accustomed supply. In cases of consumption, cancer, gout, asthma, and scrofula, such is the invariable tendency of a diet of vegetables and pure water. epidemic madness, which broods over its own injuri ous notions of the Deity, and "realizes the hell that priests and beldams feign." Every man forms as it were his god from his own character; to the divinity of one of simple habits, no offering would be more acceptable than the happiness of his creatures. He would be incapable of hating or persecuting others for the love of God. He will find, moreover, a system of simple diet to be a system of perfect epicurism. He will no longer be incessantly occupied in blunting and destroying those organs from which he expects his gratification. The pleasures of taste to be derived from a dinner of potatoes, beans, peas, turnips, lettuces, with a dessert of apples, gooseber ries, strawberries, currants, raspberries, and, in winter, oranges, apples and pears, is far greater than is supposed. Those who wait until they can eat this plain fare with the sauce of appetite will scarcely join with the hypocritical sensualist at a lord-mayor's feast, who declaims against the pleasures of the table. Solomon kept a thousand concubines, and owned in despair that all was vanity. The man whose happiness is constituted by the society of one amiable woman, would find some difficulty in sympathizing with the disappointment of this venerable debauchee. I address myself not only to the young enthusiast, the ardent devotee of truth and virtue, the pure and passionate moralist, yet unvitiated by the contagion of the world. He will embrace a pure system, from its abstract truth, its beauty, its simplicity, and its Those who may be induced by these emarks to promise of wide-extended benefit; unless custom has give the vegetable system a fair trial, should, in the turned poison into food, he will hate the brutal pleasfirst place, date the commencement of their practice ures of the chase by instinct; it will be a contem from the moment of their conviction. All depends plation full of horror and disappointment to his mind, upon breaking through a pernicious habit resolutely that beings capable of the gentlest and most admiraand at once. Dr. Trotter asserts, that no drunkard ble sympathies, should take delight in the deathwas ever reformed by gradually relinquishing his pangs and last convulsions of dying animals. The elderly man, whose youth has been poisoned by in * It has come under the author's experience, that some temperance, or who has lived with apparent moderaof the workmen on an embankment in North Wales, who, tion, and is afflicted with a variety of painful malain consequence of the inability of the proprietor to pay dies, would find his account in a beneficial change them, seldom received their wages, have supported large produced without the risk of poisonous medicines. families by cultivating small spots of sterile ground by The mother, to whom the perpetual restlessness moonlight. In the notes to Pratt's Poem, Bread of the of disease, and unaccountable deaths incident to Poor," is an account of an industrious laborer, who, by her children, are the causes of incurable unhap working in a small garden, before and after his day's task, attained to an enviable state of independence. + See Trotter on the Nervous Temperament. piness, would on this diet experience the satisfaction of beholding their perpetual health and natural playfulness. The most valuable lives are daily de- Οὐδεν γὰρ ἔοικε τὸ ἀνθρῶπου σῶμα των επὶ σαρκοφαγία stroyed by diseases, that it is dangerous to palliate γεγονότων, ού, χρωπότης χείλους, οὐκ ὀξύτης ὄνυχος οὐ and impossible to cure by medicine. How much τραχύτης ὀδόντων πρόσεστιν, οὐ κοιλίας ευτονία, καὶ πνέυlonger will man continue to pimp for the gluttony of ματος θερμότης, τρέψαι, καὶ κατεργάσασθαι δυνατὴ τό βαρύ death, his most insidious, implacable, and eternal καὶ κρεῶδες ; ἀλλ ̓ αὐτόθεν ἡ φύσις τῇ λειότητι των ὀδόντων, foe? καὶ τη σμικρότητι τοῦ σομάτος, καὶ τῇ μαλακότητι τῆς γλώσσης, καὶ τῇ προς πέψιν ἁμβλύτητι του πνέυματος, εξόμνυται τὴν σαρκοφαγιάν. Ει δε λεγείς πεφυκέναι σεαυτὸν ἐπὶ τοιαύτην ἐδώδην, ὅ βούγει φαγεῖν, πρῶτον αὐτός απόκτεινον. ἀλλ ̓ αὐτός, διὰ σεαυτοῦ μὴ χρησάμενος κοπίδῃ, μὴδὲ τυμπανῳ μὴδὲ πελέκει. ἀλλὰ ὡς λύκοι, καὶ ἄρκτοι, καὶ λεόνες αὐτοι ὡς ἐσφιούσι φονευούσιν, ἄνελε δήγματι βοῦν, ἢ σώματι σῦν, ἢ ἄρνα ἤ λαγὼον διάῤῥηξον, καὶ φάγε προσπεσὼν ἔπι ξῶντος ὡς ἐκεῖνα. ̓Αλλὰ δρακώντας ἀγριούς καλεῖτε καὶ παρδελέις καὶ λέοντας, αὐτοὶ δε μιαφονεῖτέ εἰς ὠμότητα καταλιπόντες ἐκεινοις οὐδέν. ἐκέινοις μέν ὁ φόνος τροφὴ, ἡμῖν δέ ἔψον δ ἐστίν. Οτι γάρ οὐκ ἔστιν ανθρώπῳ κατὰ φύσιν τό σαρκοφαγεῖν, πρῶτον μὲν ἀπὸ τῶν σωμάτων δηλοῦται τῆς κατασκευης, * See Mr. Newton's book. His children are the most beautiful and healthy creatures it is possible to conceive ; the girls are perfect models for a sculptor; their dispositions are also the most gentle and conciliating; the judi. cious treatment, which they experience in other points, may be a correlative cause of this. In the first five years of their life, of 18,000 children that are born, 7,500 die of various diseases; and how many more of those that sur· vive are not rendered miserable by maladies not immediately mortal? The quality and quantity of a woman's milk are materially injured by the use of dead flesh. In an island near Iceland, where no vegetables are to be got, the children invariably die of tetanus, before they are three weeks old, and the population is supplied from the main land. Sir G. MACKENZIE's Hist. of Iceland. See also Emile, chap. i. pages 53, 54, 56. Ημεῖς δὲ οὕτως εν τῳ μιαιφόνῳ τρυφῶμεν, ὥστε ὄψον τὸ κρέας προσαγορεύομεν, εἶτα ὄψων προς αυτό τὸ κρέας δέομεθα, ἀναμιγνύντες ἔλαιον, οἶνον, μέλι, γὰρον, ὄξος, ἡ δύσε μασι Συριακοῖς, ̓Αῤῥαβικοῖς, ὥσπερ ὄντως νεκρόν, ἐνταφιαξοντες. Καὶ γὰρ ὅτως αὐτων διαλυφέντων καὶ μαλαχφέντων καὶ τρόπον τινά κρευσαπέυντων ἔργον ἐστὶ τὴν πέψιν κρατῆσαι καὶ διακρατηθείσης δέ δεινάς βαοΰτητας ἐμποιεῖ καὶ νοσώδεις απεψιάς. Οὕτω τὸ πρῶτον ἄγριόν τι ξῶον ἐβρώθη καὶ κακοῦργον εἶτα ὄρνις τις ἢ ἰχθύς εἴλκυστο· καὶ γεύομενον, οὕτω καὶ προμελετῆσαν εν ἐκείνοις τὸ νικοῦν ἐπι βοῦν ἐργάτην ἦλθε, καὶ τὸ κοσμον πρόβατον παὶ τὸν οἰκουρον ἀλεκτρύονα· καὶ καταμικρὸν οὔτο τὴν ἀπληστιάν πονώσαντες, ἐπισφαγὰς ανθρωπῶν, καὶ φόνους καὶ πολέμους προῆλθεν. Πλουτ. περι της σαρκοφαλίας. Alastor; or the Spirit of Solitude. Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quærebam quid amarem amans amare. PREFACE. embodies his own imaginations unites all of wonderful, or wise, or beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover could depicture. The intellectual faculties, the imagination, the functions of sense, have their respective requisitions on the sympathy of corTHE poem entitled "Alastor," may be considered as responding powers in other human beings. The Poet allegorical of one of the most interesting situations is represented as uniting these requisitions, and atof the human mind. It represents a youth of uncor- taching them to a single image. He seeks in vain rupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by for a prototype of his conception. Blasted by his an imagination inflamed and purified through fami- disappointment, he descends to an untimely grave. liarity with all that is excellent and majestic, to the The picture is not barren of instruction to actual contemplation of the universe. He drinks deep of men. The Poet's self-centred seclusion was avenged the fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him The magnificence and beauty of the external world to speedy ruin. But that power which strikes the sinks profoundly into the frame of his conceptions, luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and and affords to their modifications a variety not to be extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a perexhausted, So long as it is possible for his desires ception of its influences, dooms to a slow and poisonto point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, ous decay those meaner spirits that dare to abjure its he is joyous, and tranquil, and self-possessed. But dominion. Their destiny is more abject and inglorithe period arrives when these objects cease to suf-ous, as their delinquency is more contemptible and fice. His mind is at length suddenly awakened, and pernicious. They who, deluded by no generous erthirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to ror, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowitself. He images to himself the being whom he ledge, duped by no illustrious superstition, loving loves conversant with speculations of the sublimest nothing on this earth, and cherishing no hopes beand most perfect natures, the vision in which he yond, yet keep aloof from sympathies with their kind |