One word more:—they who have loved infants with most tenderness are in the province of the neck of the uterus and of the ovaries. By some unaccountable oversight the inference has been overlooked. There is therefore a Grand Woman also! It is not good for man to be alone, not even for the Grand Man. I have found a wife for him! The discovery, for it is a discovery, is at least equal in importance to any in the eight quarto volumes of the Arcana Cœlestia, and entitles me to be ranked with Swedenborg himself; if, indeed, as I modestly beg leave to hint, the honour of having perfected his discoveries and finished his system, be not fairly my due.[14]
[10] The author seems to have looked for no other account of Swedenborg than what his ignorant believers could furnish. At the age of twenty he published a collection of Latin poems under the title of Ludus Heliconius, sive Carmina Miscellanea quæ variis in locis cecinit, &c. Charles XII. valued him for his scientific knowledge, and profited by it. He took him with him to the siege of Frederickshall; the roads were impassable for artillery, and Swedenborg made a canal, cutting through mountains and raising valleys, by which his battering pieces were conveyed. He was a great favourite with Charles, and deservedly so; for it is said that no person, except Linnæus, ever did so much in so short a time. In all the North of Europe he was held in the highest estimation, till, in the year 1743, he abandoned science to print his waking dreams, and become the founder of a new church.
Swedenborg died at London in 1772, and after lying in state was buried at the Swedish church near Radcliffe Highway.—Tr.
What if Earth
Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein
Each to other like, more than on Earth is thought?
Milton.—Tr.
[12] And to receive the superfluous and impure uncleannesses which are cast out from the whole work.—Tr.