You never can profit, unless you digest it;

And monkeys and men, from the north to the south,

Can only digest what they put in their mouth.

Much more might be said, if I chose to enlarge,

But I’d rather proceed to the rest of my charge.

To accuse me of mischief, and tax me with stealing,

Is really a want of all sense and all feeling,

Since Nature, who ripens the figs and the grapes,

Is no nearer kindred to man than to apes;

And the fair teeming Earth, our bountiful mother,