42
“COINCIDENCES. Hume and Dryden,” The Port Folio, vol. 2 [series 5] (July 1816), p. 126.
Anonymous
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The sly sarcasm of Hume against the clergy, seems quite in character, but it is not original. He says, in note i. to the first volume, “the ambition of the clergy can often be satisfied only by promoting ignorance and superstition, and implicit faith, and pious frauds; and having got what Archimedes only wanted (namely, another world on which he could fix his engine) no wonder they move this world at their pleasure.”
In Dryden’s Don Sebastian, Dorax thus addresses the Musti:
Content you with monopolizing Heav’n,
And let this little hanging ball alone;
For, give you but a foot of conscience there,
And you, like Archimedes, toss the globe.