Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/183

Rh of arts and sciences whatsoever, and in what language you please. These you distil in balneo mariæ infusing quintessence of poppy Q. S. together with three pints of lethe, to be had from the apothecaries. You cleanse away carefully the sordes and caput mortuum, letting all that is volatile evaporate. You preserve only the first running, which is again to be distilled seventeen times, till what remains will amount to about two drams. This you keep in a glass vial hermetically sealed, for one and twenty days. Then you begin your catholick treatise, taking every morning fasting, first shaking the vial, three drops of this elixir, snuffing it strongly up your nose. It will dilate itself about the brain (where there is any) in fourteen minutes, and you immediately perceive in your head an infinite number of abstracts, summaries, compendiums, extracts, collections, medullas, excerpta quædams, florilegias, and the like, all disposed into great order, and reducible upon paper.

I must needs own, it was by the assistance of this arcanum, that I, though otherwise impar, have adventured upon so daring an attempt, never achieved or undertaken before, but by a certain author called Homer; in whom, though otherwise a person not without some abilities, and for an ancient, of a tolerable genius, I have discovered many gross errours, which are not to be forgiven his very ashes, if by chance any of them are left. For whereas we are assured, he designed his work for a complete body of all knowledge, human, divine, political, and Rh