HOw prettily has curious Nature painted this gawdy Fruit? Here is a green that Emeralds cannot, and Flora’s self might boast: And Pomona seems to have affected, in the fresh and lively Vermilion that adorns this smooth Rind, an Emulation at Rubies themselves, and to have aim’d at manifesting, That she can give her Vegetable productions, as Lovely, and Orient, though not as lasting, Colours as those that make Jewels pretious Stones; and if, upon the hearing the Praises this Scarlet deserves· her Blushes ennoble her own Cheeks with so Vivid a Colour· perhaps such a Livery of her Modesty might justifie her Pride. In a word, such pure and tempting Green and Red dye this same polish’d Skin, that our Vulgar boldness must be no longer question’d, for rendring that Fruit an Apple, that inveagled our first Parents: But though these winning Dyes delight me strangely, they are Food for my Eye alone, and not my Stomach; I have no Palate for Colours, and to rellish this Fruit well, and know whether it performs to the Taste what it promises to the Sight, and justifie that Platonick definition which styles Beauty the Lustre and Flower of Goodness; all this Gay out-side is cut and thrown away, and passes but for Parings. Thus in Opinions, though I look with Pleasure on that neat fashionable Dress, that smoother Pens so finely Cloath them with, and though I be delighted with the pretty and spruce Expressions, that Wit and Eloquence are wont to trick them up with; yet when I mean to examine their true Rellish, that, upon liking, I may make them mine, I still strip and devest them of all those flattering Ornaments (or cheating Disguises rather) which so often conceal or mis-represent their true and genuine Nature, and (before e’r I swallow them) after they have been admitted by the more delusible faculty we call Fancy, I make them pass the severer scrutiny of Reason.
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