Mercier, in “L'an deux mille quatre cents quarante” seriously maintains the doctrines of the Metempsychosis, and J. D'Israeli says there is no system so simple, and so little repugnant to the understanding.
One of the best epigrams affixed to the statue of Pasquin was the following upon Paul III,
Ut canerent data multa olim sunt vatibus æra
Ut taceam quantum tu mihi, Paule, dabis?
Milton in Paradise Lost, has this passage,
——when the scourge
Inexorably, and the torturing hour
Call us to penance.
Gray, in his Ode to Adversity, has
Thou tamer of the human breast
Whose iron scourge, and torturing hour
The bad affright.