This danger is no mere chimera.

May they for ever remain uninterrupted by the devastating chimeras of their neighbours; and if they seek reform, may it be moderate and permanent, acceded to reason, and not extorted by violence!Yours, &c. September 2, 1792.

In proof of this assertion, it will be sufficient to give a slight sketch of the different views and opinions of the gold-makers, Rosicrucians, manufacturers of astralian salts, drops of life, and tinctures of gold, hunters after the philosopher's stone, and other equally absurd chimera.

Hence the reality of Mathematical Knowledge I doubt not but it will be easily granted, that the knowledge we have of mathematical truths is not only certain, but real knowledge; and not the bare empty vision of vain, insignificant chimeras of the brain: and yet, if we will consider, we shall find that it is only of our own ideas.

Poor Godwin, who had come, in the bonhommie and candour of his nature, to hear what new light had broken in upon his old friend, was obliged to quit the field, and slunk away after an exulting taunt thrown out at "such fanciful chimeras as a golden mountain or a perfect man."

Whose drossy thoughts, drying the feeble brain, Corrupts the sense, deludes the intellect, And in the soul's fair table falsely graves Whole squadrons of fantastical chimeras And thousand vain imaginations, Making some think their heads as big as horses, Some that th'are dead, some that th'are turn'd to wolves, As now it makes him think himself all glass.

With ease such fond chimeras we pursue, As fancy frames for fancy to subdue: 160 But when ourselves to action we betake, It shuns the mint like gold that chemists make.

I recollected myself before I had disclosed the grotesque and infernal chimera that haunts me.

And there can be no doubt that he has dispelled the horrible chimera, that the same man can be thoroughly malignant or mean in his moral nature and thoroughly beneficent or exalted in his intellectual nature.

We are sorry that, by inserting some of his essays, we have filled the head of this petty writer with idle chimeras of applause, laurels and immortality, nor suspected the bad effect of our regard for him, till we saw, in the postscript to one of his papers, a wild prediction of the honours to be paid him by future ages.

Hence the reality of Mathematical Knowledge I doubt not but it will be easily granted, that the knowledge we have of mathematical truths is not only certain, but real knowledge; and not the bare empty vision of vain, insignificant chimeras of the brain: and yet, if we will consider, we shall find that it is only of our own ideas.

Its roots strike deep in that strange element in human nature which dreads whatsoever is weird and uncanny in common experiences, and sees strange portents and dire chimeras in all that is unexplainable to the senses.

The philosophical chimeras of Paoli soon vanished before a piece of crushing news.

He was cruising, however, in a region of enchantment, in which pleasing chimeras started up at every step, exercising by turns a power over his imagination.

Duelling is the vilest of all egotism, treating the public, who has a claim to all my powers and exertions, as if it were nothing, and myself, or rather an unintelligible chimera I annex to myself, as if it were entitled to my exclusive attention.

Conscience, that dull chimera of the schools, A learned imposition upon fools, Thou, Dryden, art not silenced with such stuff, Egad thy conscience has been large enough.