Minervam narrat Homerus, poetarum princeps, inter bellantium turmas Diomedi apparuiffe; oculorumque caliginem, ut bellantes Deos ab hominibus poffet difcernere, discuffiffe. Quod figmentum Plato in Alcibiade Secundo, p. 150, tom. ii. nihil interpretatur quam rationem ipfam, quæ, difcuffa caligine qua quifque tenetur, animum fæcibus purgat, ut mala bonave poffit propius contemplari.

SANCTII MINERVA.

BRITISH SYNONYMY.

MADNESS, INSANITY, LUNACY, PHRENZY, MENTAL DERANGEMENT, DISORDERED

SPIRITS, DISTRACTION.

THESE

HESE words, even in common converfation are among well-bred people nicely and cautiously tised-with much reflection too, although to a foreign ear they may poffibly found as if fynonymous.-Yet Italians in particular should recollect, that their own Cicero is much of the fame opinion with our Johnson, who fays that were we to fpeak rigorously, perhaps no human mind is exactly in its right state; because there is no man whose imagination does not fometimes predominate over his reafon; no man

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who

who can regulate his attention wholly by his will, and whofe ideas will come and go at his command; no man in whose mind airy notions do not fometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of fober probability. All power of fancy over reason is a degree of INSANITY; but while this power is fuch as we can controul and reprefs, it is not vifible to others, or confidered as any proof of MENTAL DERANGEMENT: nor can we justly pronounce it MADNESS, till it becomes ungovernable, and influences apparently the fpeech or action of the perfon in queftion. Qui fit adfectus (says the Roman orator,) eum dominum effe rerum fuarum vetant duodecim tabulæ. Itaque non eft fcriptum fi INSANUS, fed fi FURIOSUS effe incipit.-For it appears that the laws of the twelve tables confidered it as poffible enough -and fo it is no doubt that people may go through the common forms of life, and

its stated duties too, in many cafes without being confidered as out of their minds at all; yet, to the penetrating eye of Willis, or philofophical arrangements of Arnold, would foon betray fymptoms of DISORDERED SPI~ RITS. A friend once told me in confidence, that for two years he durft not ever eat an apple, for fear it should make him drunk'; but as he took care to affign no reason for his forbearance, and as no man is much folicited to eat apples, the oddity escaped no tice; and would not have been known at this hour, but that he told me many years after he had recovered his fenfes to perfec tion, and told it as an inftance of concealed INSANITY. The famous Christopher Smart, who was both a wit and a scholar, and vi fited as fuch while under confinement for MADNESS, Would never have had a commiffion of LUNACY taken out against him, had he managed with equal ingenuityfor Smart's melancholy fhewed itself only in

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a preternatural excitement to prayer, which he held it as a duty not to controul or reprefs-taking au pied de la lettre our bleffed Saviour's injunction to pray without ceafing.

So that beginning by regular addresses at ftated times to the Almighty, he went on to call his friends from their dinners, or beds, or places of recreation, whenever that impulfe towards prayer preffed upon his mind. In every other transaction of life no man's wits could be more regular than those of Smart; for this prevalence of one idea pertinaciously keeping the first place in his head, had in no sense except what immediately related to itself, perverted his judgment at all his opinions were unchanged as before, nor did he feem more likely to fall into a state of DISTRACTION than any other man; lefs fo perhaps, as he calmed every ftart of violent paffion by prayer. Now, had this eminently unhappy patient been equally feized by the precept of pray