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How little do we know of the tragic ending of these poor unhappy Pantomimists' lives. Their names even have not been handed down to us, and they, like probably many more with whose quips and quiddities we have laughed at with infinite zest, have long since gone "to that bourne from whence no traveller returns," and perhaps, "unwept, unhonoured, and unsung."
But though they are ignorant of the artificial contexture of the least insect, they vaunt however, and brag that they know all things, when indeed they are unable to construe the mechanism of their own body: nay, when they are so purblind as not to be able to see a stone's cast before them, yet they shall be as sharp-sighted as possible in spying-out ideas, universals separate forms, first matters, quiddities, formalities, and a hundred such like niceties, so diminutively small, that were not their eyes extremely magnifying, all the art of optics could never make them discernible.
"Out on them!" she said. "So many learned men to set their wits against one poor woman!" And she heartily rejoiced when they came to no decision, and the Pope was appealed to. As to understanding all the explanations that Ambrose brought from time to time, she called them quirks and quiddities, and left them to her father and Tibble to discuss in their chimney corners.
He had despised in his younger years the thing called philosophy in the Universities, and did all that lay in his power to prevent those societies of men instituted to improve human reason from depraving it by their quiddities, their horrors of the vacuum, their substantial forms, and all those impertinent terms which not only ignorance had rendered venerable, but which had been made sacred by their being ridiculously blended with religion.
"No more of your doctoring for me!" cried the grum Esther; "no more of your quiddities in a healthy family, say I! Here was I doing well, only a little out of sorts with over instructing the young, and you dos'd me with a drug that hangs about my tongue, like a pound weight on a humming-bird's wing!"
"In that case it would be rather awkward for her," said the doctor. "She would die with you in the eye of the law" and here he branched off into rather a fantastical discourse on the oddities and quiddities of the law and lawyers, against whom he seemed to have a great grudge. "But, Dr. Hull, what can I do about it?" said Miss Ludington, as he quieted down. "Excuse me. About what?"
In fact, he was to feel what, as Malone says, Lord Auchinleck had all along told his son, that it would cost him much more trouble to hide his ignorance of Scotch and English law than to shew his knowledge. He feared his own deficiencies in 'the forms, quirks and quiddities, which he saw could be learned only by early habit.
But if you desire to take a man's part in this grand world around you, you must leap off your shadow, and never think about thinking, as the new Olympian has it. Let quiddities alone, they are dry-bone vampires, that drain you of your blood without growing fatter themselves."
It is an abuse; remove these thornie quiddities of Logike, whereby our life can no whit be amended, and betake our selves to the simple discourses of Philosophy; know how to chuse and fitly to make use of them: they are much more easie to be conceived than one of Bocace his tales. A childe comming from nurse is more capable of them, than he is to learne to read or write.
He had in the course of the evening recited "near upon five hundred extempore macaronic verses; composed and executed an oratorio and opera" upon a piano without strings, namely the center-table; drawn "an entirely original view of Nantasket Beach"; made a temperance address; and given vent to "innumerable jests, jokes, puns, oddities, quiddities and nothings," interrupted by his own laughter and that of his hearers.
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