Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/316

264 leviathan, or like bees in perpendicular swarm upon a tree, or like a carrion corrupted into vermin, still preserving the shape and figure of the mother animal: that all invention is formed by the morsure of two or more of these animals, upon certain capillary nerves, which proceed from thence, whereof three branches spread into the tongue, and two into the right hand. They hold also, that these animals are of a constitution extremely cold; that their food is the air we attract, their excrement phlegm; and that what we vulgarly call rheums, and colds, and distillations, is nothing else but an epidemical looseness, to which that little commonwealth is very subject, from the climate it lies under. Farther, that nothing less than a violent heat, can disentangle these creatures from their hamated station of life, or give them vigour and humour, to imprint the marks of their little teeth. That, if the morsure hexagonal, it produces poetry; the circular, gives eloquence: if the bite hath been conical, the person, whose nerve is so affected, shall be disposed to write upon politicks; and so of the rest.

I shall now discourse briefly, by what kind of practices the voice is best governed, toward the composition and improvement of the spirit; for, without a competent skill in tuning and toning each word, and syllable, and letter, to their due cadence, the whole operation is incomplete, misses entirely of its effect on the hearers, and puts the workman himself to continual pains for new supplies, without success. For, it is to be understood, that in the language of the spirit, cant and droning, supply the place of sense and reason; in the language of Rh