Stuck fast to their ancient opinions.
Till a method the pious men find,
Which ne’er had occur’d to your dull wits.
Of making sky-lights to the mind,
By boring the body with bullets.
Like Waller, with process so droll,
To illume an old clod-pated noddy;
They thought they might burnish the soul,
By beating a hole in the body.
I have read of a great mathematician, who was uncommonly stupid till about the age of twenty, when he accidentally pitched head first into a deep Well, fractured his skull, and it became necessary to trepan him. After the operation it was immediately evident that his wit was much improved, and he soon became a prodigy of intellect. Whether this alteration was caused by “new light let in through chinks,” the trapanning chisel had made, or whether the texture and position of the brain were materially changed for the better in consequence of the jar and contusion of the fall, I shall leave to some future Lavater, or any other gentleman, who can gauge the capacity of a statesman, or a barrel of porter, with equal facility, to determine.