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and theft. In all other cases, particularly in those for debt, it is proposed that this, like the other courts of Whitehall and St. James's, may be held a place of privilege. And whereas it has been found, that an obligation to satisfy paltry creditors has been a discouragement to men of letters, if any person of quality or others shall send for any poet or critic of this society to any remote quarter of the town, the said poet or critic shall freely pass and repass without being liable to an arrest.

11. The forementioned scheme in its several regulations may be supported by profits arising from every third-night throughout the year. And as it would be hard to suppose that so many persons could live without any food (though from the former course of their lives, a very little will be deemed sufficient) the masters of calculation will, we believe, agree, that out of those profits, the said persons might be subsisted in a sober and decent manner. We will venture to affirm further, that not only the proper magazines of thunder and lightning, but paint, diet-drinks, spitting-pots, and all other necessaries of life, may in like manner fairly be provided for.

12. If some of the articles may at first view seem liable to objections, particularly those that give so vast a power to the Council of Six (which

is indeed larger than any entrusted to the great officers of state) this may be obviated by swearing those six persons of his majesty's privy council, and obliging them to pass every thing of moment previously at that most honourable board.

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AMONG all the inquiries which have been pursued by the curious and inquisitive, there is none more worthy the search of a learned head, than the source from whence we derive those arts and sciences, which raise us so far above the vulgar, the countries in which they rose, and the channels by which they have been conveyed. As those who first brought them amongst us attained them by travelling into the remotest parts of the earth, I may boast of some advantages by the same means,

*This treatise on the origin of the sciences, from the monkeys in Æthiopia, was written by Mr. Pope, Dean Parnell, and Dr. Arbuthnot. Spence's Anec. p. 201. Singer's Ed..

The design of it was to ridicule such as build general assertions upon two or three loose quotations from the ancients. Ib. p. 168.

since I write this from the deserts of Æthiopia, from those plains of sand, which have buried the pride of invading armies, with my foot perhaps at this instant ten fathom over the grave of Cambyses; a solitude to which neither Pythagoras nor Apollonius ever penetrated.

It is universally agreed that arts and sciences were derived to us from the Egyptians and Indians; but from whom they first received them is yet a secret. The highest period of time to which the learned attempt to trace them, is the beginning of the Assyrian monarchy, when their inventors were worshipped as gods. It is therefore necessary to go backward into times even more remote, and to gain some knowledge of their history, from whatever dark and broken hints may any way found in ancient authors concerning them.

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Nor Troy nor Thebes were the first empires; we have mention, though not histories, of an earlier warlike people, called the Pygmæans. I cannot but persuade myself, from those accounts in Homer,* Aristotle, and others, of their history, wars, and revolutions, and from the very air in which those authors speak of them as of things known, that they were then a part of the study of the learned. And though all we directly hear is of their military achievements in the brave defence of their country, from the annual invasions of a powerful enemy; yet I cannot doubt but that

* Il. iii Hom.

they excelled as much in the arts of peaceful government, though there remain no traces of their civil institutions. Empires as great have been swallowed up in the wreck of time; and such sudden periods have been put to them as occasion a total ignorance of their story. And if I should conjecture that the like happened to this nation from a general extirpation of the people by those flocks of monstrous birds, wherewith antiquity agrees they were continually infested, it ought not to seem more incredible than that once the Baleares was wasted by rabbits, Smynthe* by mice, and of late Bermudas† almost depopulated by rats. Nothing is more natural to imagine, than that the few survivors of that empire retired into the depths of their deserts, where they lived undisturbed, till they were found out by Osiris, in his travels to instruct mankind.

"He met," says Diodorus,‡ "in Ethiopia, a sort of little satyrs, who were hairy one half of their body, and whose leader, Pan, accompanied him in his expedition for the civilizing of mankind." Now of this great personage Pan we have a very particular description in the ancient writers, who unanimously agree to represent him shaggy-bearded, hairy all over, half a man and half a beast, and walking erect with a staff (the posture in which his race do to this day appear among us); and since the chief thing to which he applied

*Eustat. in Hom. Iliad. i.

† Speed, in Bermudas. Diod. 1. i. c. 18.

VOL. VII.

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