Note 41 — CANTO I. OURSELF!

Destroy good doctor Burnet’s crust.

We should be able to make much more rapid progress in our sublime flights of poetry, were we not under the necessity of dismounting from our Pegasus every ten paces, in order to give your worships a heist, and thus enable your ponderosities, like Mr Pope’s “slugs,” to keep up with us. It is a thousand to one if any one of your college has ever heard of Dr Burnet, of earth-manufacturing memory. But it is absolutely necessary that you should know something of Dr Burnet’s theory before you can comprehend the stanza to which this note has reference. You will, therefore, shut up this, my volume, and per fas aut nefas obtain possession of Dr Burnet’s theory of the earth’s formation; and when you have diligently drudged through that treatise, we will again take you in tow, and permit you to accompany us, but non passibus equis, till our muse salutes you with procul! O procul! &c.