Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/305

Rh : and the same inconveniency will affect landlords in the value of their rents.

That the use of the said glasses will oblige cooks and cook-maids to study opticks and astronomy, in order to know the due distance of the said focuses or fires, and to adjust the position of their glasses to the several altitudes of the sun, varying according to the hours of the day, and the seasons of the year; which studies, at these years, will be highly troublesome to the said cooks and cook-maids, not to say any thing of the utter incapacity of some of them to go through with such difficult arts; or (which is still a greater inconvenience) it will throw the whole art of cookery into the hands of astronomers and glassgrinders, persons utterly unskilled in other parts of that profession, to the great detriment of the health of his majesty's good subjects.

That it is known by experience, that meat roasted with sunbeams is extremely unwholesome; witness several that have died suddenly after eating the provisions of the said catoptrical victuallers; forasmuch as the sunbeams taken inwardly render the humours too hot and adust, occasion great sweatings, and dry up the rectual moisture.

That sunbeams taken inwardly shed a malignant influence upon the brain by their natural tendency toward the moon; and produce madness and distraction at the time of the full moon. That the constant use of so great quantities of this inward light, will occasion the growth of quakerism, to the danger of the church; and of poetry, to the danger of the state.

That the influences of the constellations, through which the sun passes, will with his beams be veyed