Flim-Flams!

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PREFACES As a banter on the hermetic philosophy, this furnishes a curious history of the extravagancies of the human mind, were it merely imaginary, it would be worth nothing at all Dr. Johnson on the Hek.mippus Redivivui of Dr. Campbell. in all ages have been suddenly quieted, and frightened into their...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PREFACES As a banter on the hermetic philosophy, this furnishes a curious history of the extravagancies of the human mind, were it merely imaginary, it would be worth nothing at all Dr. Johnson on the Hek.mippus Redivivui of Dr. Campbell. in all ages have been suddenly quieted, and frightened into their senses by some terrifying nursery word. With the French 'tis a toup-garou; and with us, among a variety of nick-names, it is a bugaboo, or raw-head and bloody bones, and, to chapter{{Section 4recur to a more ancient authority, the Romans had their Manducus. I feel a laudable desire that no one should consider my Uncle (whose unhappy life I am about to write) as a philosophical Manducus?I consider him as a peerless character, the Sir Charles Grandison, or the Amadis de Gaul of the world of scientific romance- All had been great about him had his Head not proved too small and therefore, though I hold him out as an example, he may also be considered as a warning He fell a victim to the deliramenta doctrinee; the wild speculations of the learned Is it for me ridere and deridere ? I record adventures more true Manducus was a name given by the Romans to certain extravagant figures, or actors, to divert some, and to frighten others. They wore a whitened face, bloated cheeks, a gaping mouth, and long sharp teeth, with which they kept up a strange rattling noise. Juvenal (Sat. III. v. 174.) tells us that children were much afraid of them, though even lying on the bosom of their mother than credible; modern historians practise the reverse, but they write more for their own, than their reader's profit. Mine is a narrative of the sufferings of Science; the disasters of universal Curiosity; and the small . profits arising from certain Experiments on air and ...