Go to!

You are a subtile nation, you physicians,

And grown the only cabinets in court!

B. JONSON.

The Doctor, who was charitable in all his opinions, used to account

and apologize for many of the errors of men, by what he called the

original sin of their constitution, using the term not theologically,

but in a physico-philosophical sense. What an old French physician

said concerning Charles VIII. was in entire accord with his

speculations,—_ce corps etoit composé de mauvais pâte, et de matiere

cathareuse._ Men of hard hearts and heavy intellect, he said, were

made of stony materials. For a drunkard, his qualifying censure

was,—“poor fellow! bibulous clay—bibulous clay!” Your light-brained,

light-hearted people, who are too giddy ever to be good, had not earth

enough, he said, in their composition. Those upon whose ungrateful

temper benefits were ill bestowed, and on whom the blessings of

fortune were thrown away, he excused by saying that they were made

from a sandy soil;—and for Mammon's muckworms,—their mould was taken

from the dunghill.

Mason the poet was a man of ill-natured politics, out of humour with

his country till the French Revolution startled him and brought him

into a better state of feeling. This however was not while the Doctor

lived, and till that time he could see nothing but tyranny and

injustice in the proceedings of the British Government, and nothing

but slavery and ruin to come for the nation. These opinions were the

effects of Whiggery[1] acting upon a sour stomach and a saturnine

constitution. To think ill of the present and augur worse of the

future has long been accounted a proof of patriotism among those who

by an illustrious antiphrasis call themselves patriots. “What the

Romans scorned to do after the battle of Cannæ,” said Lord Keeper

Finch in one of his solid and eloquent speeches, “what the Venetians

never did when they had lost all their _terra firma_, that men are now

taught to think a virtue and the sign of a wise and good man,

_desperare de Republica_: and all this in a time of as much justice

and peace at home, as good laws for the security of religion and

liberty, as good execution of these laws, as great plenty of trade and

commerce abroad, and as likely a conjuncture of affairs for the

continuance of these blessings to us, as ever nation prospered under.”

[Footnote 1: See Vol. IV. p. 375.]

The Doctor, when he spoke of this part of Mason's character, explained

it by saying that the elements had not been happily tempered in

him—“cold and dry, Sir!” and then he shook his head and knit his brow

with that sort of compassionate look which came naturally into his

countenance when he was questioned concerning a patient whose state

was unfavourable.

But though he believed that many of our sins and propensities are bred

in the bone, he disputed the other part of the proverb, and maintained

that they might be got out of the flesh. And then generalizing with a

rapidity worthy of Humboldt himself, he asserted that all political

evils in modern ages and civilized states were mainly owing to a

neglect of the medical art;—and that there would not, and could not be

so many distempers in the body politic, if the _primæ viæ_ were but

attended to with proper care; an opinion in which he was fortified by

the authority of Sir William Temple.

“I have observed the fate of _Campania_,” says that eminent statesman,

“determine contrary to all appearances, by the caution and conduct of

a General, which was attributed by those that knew him, to his age and

infirmities, rather than his own true qualities, acknowledged

otherwise to have been as great as most men of the age. I have seen

the counsels of a noble country grow bold, or timorous, according to

the fits of his good or ill-health that managed them, and the pulse of

the Government beat high with that of the Governor; and this unequal

conduct makes way for great accidents in the world. Nay, I have often

reflected upon the counsels and fortunes of the greatest monarchies

rising and decaying sensibly with the ages and healths of the Princes

and chief officers that governed them. And I remember one great

minister that confessed to me, when he fell into one of his usual fits

of the gout, he was no longer able to bend his mind or thought to any

public business, nor give audiences beyond two or three of his

domestics, though it were to save a kingdom; and that this proceeded

not from any violence of pain, but from a general languishing and

faintness of spirits, which made him in those fits think nothing worth

the trouble of one careful or solicitous thought. For the approaches,

or lurkings of the Gout, the Spleen, or the Scurvy, nay the very fumes

of indigestion, may indispose men to thought and to care, as well as

diseases of danger and pain. Thus accidents of health grow to be

accidents of State, and public constitutions come to depend in a great

measure upon those of particular men; which makes it perhaps seem

necessary in the choice of persons for great employments (at least

such as require constant application and pains) to consider their

bodies as well as their minds, and ages and health as well as their

abilities.”

Cervantes according to the Doctor clearly perceived this great truth,

and went farther than Sir W. Temple, for he perceived also the

practical application, though it was one of those truths which because

it might have been dangerous for him to propound them seriously, he

was fain to bring forward in a comic guise, leaving it for the wise to

discover his meaning, and for posterity to profit by it. He

knew—(_Daniel loquitur_) what did not Cervantes know?—that if Philip

II. had committed himself to the superintendence of a Physician

instead of a Father Confessor, many of the crimes and miseries by

which his reign is so infamously distinguished, might have been

prevented. A man of his sad spirit and melancholy complection to be

dieted upon fish the whole forty days of Lent, two days in the week

during the rest of the year, and on the eve of every holiday

besides,—what could be expected but atrabilious thoughts, and

cold-blooded resolutions? Therefore Cervantes appointed a Physician

over Sancho in his Baratarian government: the humour of the scene was

for all readers, the application for those who could penetrate beyond

the veil, the benefit for happier ages when the art of Government

should be better understood, and the science of medicine be raised to

its proper station in the state.

Shakespere intended to convey the same political lesson, when he said

“take physic pomp!” He used the word pomp instead of power,

cautiously, for in those days it was a perilous thing to meddle with

matters of state.

When the Philosopher Carneades undertook to confute Zeno the Stoic in

public argument, (still reader _Daniel loquitur_) how did he prepare

himself for the arduous disputation? by purging his head with

hellebore, to the intent that the corrupt humours which ascended

thither from the stomach should not disturb the seat of memory and

judgment, and obscure his intellectual perception. The theory, Sir,

was erroneous, but the principle is good. When we require best music

from the instrument, ought we not first to be careful that all its

parts are in good order, and if we find a string that jars, use our

endeavours for tuning it?

It may have been the jest of a satirist that Dryden considered stewed

prunes as the best means of putting his body into a state favourable

for heroic composition; but that odd person George Wither tells us of

himself that he usually watched and fasted when he composed, that his

spirit was lost if at such times he tasted meat or drink, and that if

he took a glass of wine he could not write a verse:—no wonder

therefore that his verses were for the most part in a weak and watery

vein.[2] Father Paul Sarpi had a still more extraordinary custom; it

is not to an enemy, but to his friend and admirers that we are

indebted for informing us with what care that excellent writer

attended to physical circumstance as affecting his intellectual

powers. For when he was either reading or writing, alone, “his

manner,” says Sir Henry Wotton, “was to sit fenced with a castle of

paper about his chair, and over head; for he was of our Lord of St.

Alban's opinion _that all air is predatory_, and especially hurtful

when the spirits are most employed.”

[Footnote 2: The Greek Proverb, adverted to by Horace in i. Epist.

xix., was in the Doctor's thoughts.

_ὓδωρ δὲ πίνων οὐδὲν ἂν τέκοι σοφόν._]

There should be a State Physician to the King, besides his Physicians

ordinary and extraordinary,—one whose sole business should be to watch

over the royal health as connected with the discharge of the royal

functions, a head keeper of the King's health.

For the same reason there ought to be a Physician for the Cabinet, a

Physician for the Privy Council, a Physician for the Bench of Bishops,

a Physician for the twelve Judges, two for the House of Lords, four

for the House of Commons, one for the Admiralty, one for the War

Office, one for the Directors of the East India Company, (there was no

Board of Controul in the Doctor's days, or he would certainly have

advised that a Physician should be placed upon that Establishment

also): one for the Lord Mayor, two for the Common Council, four for

the Livery. (He was speaking in the days of Wilkes and Liberty). How

much mischief, said he, might have been prevented by cupping the Lord

Mayor, blistering a few of the Aldermen, administering salts and manna

to lower the pulse of civic patriotism, and keeping the city orators

upon a low regimen for a week before every public meeting.

Then in the Cabinet what evils might be averted by administering

laxatives or corroborants as the case required.

In the Lords and Commons, by clearing away bile, evacuating ill

humours and occasionally by cutting for the simples.[3]

[Footnote 3: The probable origin of this Proverb is given in Grose's

Dictionary of the vulgar tongue.]

While men are what they are, weak, frail, inconstant, fallible,

peccable, sinful creatures,—it is in vain to hope that Peers and

Commoners will prepare themselves for the solemn exercise of their

legislative functions by fasting and prayer,—that so they may be

better fitted for retiring into themselves, and consulting upon

momentous questions the Urim and Thummim which God hath placed in the

breast of every man. But even as Laws are necessary for keeping men

within the limits of their duty when conscience fails, so in this case

it should be part of the law of Parliament that what its Members will

not do for themselves, the Physician should do for them. They should

go through a preparatory course of medicine before every session, and

be carefully attended as long as Parliament was sitting.

Traces of such a practice, as of many important and primeval truths,

are found among savages, from whom the Doctor was of opinion that much

might be learnt, if their customs were diligently observed and their

traditions carefully studied. In one of the bravest nations upon the

Mississippi, the warriors before they set out upon an expedition

always prepared themselves by taking the Medicine of War, which was an

emetic, about a gallon in quantity for each man, and to be swallowed

at one draught. There are other tribes in which the Beloved Women

prepare a beverage at the Physic Dance, and it is taken to wash away

sin.

Here said the Doctor are vestiges of early wisdom, probably

patriarchal and if so, revealed,—for he held that all needful

knowledge was imparted to man at his creation. And the truth of the

principle is shown in common language. There is often a philosophy in

popular expressions and forms of speech, which escapes notice, because

words are taken as they are uttered, at their current value and we

rest satisfied with their trivial acceptation. We take them in the

husk and the shell, but sometimes it is worth while to look for the

kernel. Do we not speak of _sound_ and orthodox opinions,—_sound_

principles, _sound_ learning? _mens sana in corpore sano._ A sound

mind is connected with a sound body, and sound and orthodox opinions

result from the sanity of both. Unsound opinions are diseased ones,

and therefore the factious, the heretical and the schismatic, ought to

be put under the care of a physician.

“I have read of a gentleman,” says Cotton Mather, “who had an humour

of making singular and fanciful expositions of scripture; but one

Doctor Sim gave him a dose of physic, which when it had wrought, the

gentleman became orthodox immediately and expounded at the old rate no

more.”

Thus as the accurate and moderate and erudite Mosheim informs us, the

French theologian Claude Pajon was of opinion that in order to produce

that amendment of the heart which is called regeneration, nothing more

is requisite than to put the body, if its habit is bad, into a sound

state by the power of physic, and having done this, than to set truth

and falsehood before the understanding, and virtue and vice before the

will, clearly and distinctly in their genuine colours, so as that

their nature and their properties may be fully apprehended. But the

Doctor thought that Pajon carried his theory too far, and ought to

have been physicked himself.

That learned and good man Barnabas Oley, the friend and biographer of

the saintly Herbert, kept within the bounds of discretion, when he

delivered an opinion of the same tendency. After showing what power is

exercised by art over nature, 1st. in inanimate materials, 2dly. in

vegetables, and 3dly. the largeness or latitude of its power over the

memory, the imagination and locomotive faculties of sensitive

creatures, he proceeds to the fourth rank, the rational, “which adds a

diadem of excellency to the three degrees above mentioned, being an

approach unto the nature angelical and divine.” “Now,” says he, “1st.

in as much as the human body partly agrees with the first rank of

materials inanimate, so can Art partly use it, as it uses them, to

frame (rather to modify the frame of) it into great variety; the head

thus, the nose so; and other ductile parts, as is seen and read, after

other fashions. 2. Art can do something to the Body answerable to what

Gardeners do to plants. If our Blessed Saviour's words (Matthew VI.

27.) deny all possibility of adding procerity or tallness to the

stature, yet as the Lord Verulam notes to make the Body dwarfish,

crook-shouldered (as some Persians did) to recover straightness, or

procure slenderness, is in the power of Art. But, 3. much more

considerable authority has it over the humours, either so to impel and

enrage them, that like furious streams they shall dash the Body (that

bottom wherein the precious Soul is embarked) against dangerous rocks,

or run it upon desperate sands; or so to attemper and tune them, that

they shall become like calm waters or harmonious instruments for

virtuous habits, introduced by wholesome moral precepts, to practise

upon. It is scarce credible what services the _Noble Science of

Physic_ may do unto Moral, (_yea to Grace and Christian_) virtue, by

prescribing diet to prevent, or medicine to allay the fervors and

eruptions of humours, of blood, and of that _irriguum concupiscentiæ_,

or _ὁ τροχὸς τῆς γενέσεως_, especially if these jewels, their recipes,

light into obedient ears. These helps of bettering nature, are within

her lowest and middle region of Diet and Medicine.”

A sensible woman of the Doctor's acquaintance, (the mother of a young

family) entered so far into his views upon this subject, that she

taught her children from their earliest childhood to consider

ill-humour as a disorder which was to be cured by physic. Accordingly

she had always small doses ready, and the little patients whenever it

was thought needful took rhubarb _for the crossness_. No punishment

was required. Peevishness or ill-temper and rhubarb were associated in

their minds always as cause and effect.

There are Divines who have thought that melancholy may with advantage

be treated in age, as fretfulness in this family was in childhood.

Timothy Rogers, who having been long afflicted with Trouble of Mind

and the Disease of Melancholy, wrote a discourse concerning both for

the use of his fellow sufferers, says of Melancholy, that “it does

generally indeed first begin at the body, and then conveys its venom

to the mind; and if any thing could be found that might keep the blood

and spirits in their due temper and motion, this would obstruct its

further progress, and in a great measure keep the soul clear. I

pretend not (he continues) to tell you what medicines are proper to

remove it, and I know of none, I leave you to advise with such as are

learned in the profession of Physic.” And then he quotes a passage

from “old Mr. Greenham's Comfort for afflicted Consciences.” “If a

Man,” saith old Mr. Greenham, “that is troubled in conscience come to

a Minister, it may be he will look all to the Soul and nothing to the

Body: if he come to a Physician he considereth the Body and neglecteth

the Soul. For my part, I would never have the Physician's counsel

despised, nor the labour of the Minister neglected: because the Soul

and Body dwelling together,—it is convenient, that as the Soul should

be cured by the Word, by Prayer, by Fasting, or by Comforting, so the

Body must be brought into some temperature by physic, and diet, by

harmless diversions and such like ways; providing always that it be so

done in the fear of God, as not to think by these ordinary means quite

to smother or evade our troubles, but to use them as preparatives,

whereby our Souls may be made more capable of the spiritual methods

which are to follow afterwards.”

But Timothy Bright, Doctor of Physic, is the person who had the most

profound reverence for the medical art. “No one,” he said, “should

touch so holy a thing that hath not passed the whole discipline of

liberal sciences, and washed himself pure and clean in the waters of

wisdom and understanding.” “O Timothy Bright, Timothy Bright,” said

the Doctor, “rightly wert thou called Timothy Bright, for thou wert a

Bright Timothy!” Nor art thou less deserving of praise, O Timothy

Bright, say I, for having published an abridgement of the Book of Acts

and Monuments of the Church, written by that Reverend Father Master

John Fox, and by thee thus reduced into a more accessible form,—for

such as either through want of leisure or ability, have not the use of

so necessary a history.

CHAPTER CCXXXVII.

MORE MALADIES THAN THE BEST PHYSICIANS CAN PREVENT BY REMEDIES.—THE

DOCTOR NOT GIVEN TO QUESTIONS, AND OF THE POCO-CURANTE SCHOOL AS TO

ALL THE POLITICS OF THE DAY.

A slight answer to an intricate and useless question is a fit cover to

such a dish; a cabbage leaf is good enough to cover a pot of

mushrooms.

JEREMY TAYLOR.

Yet in his serious moods the Doctor sadly confessed with that Sir

George, whom the Scotch ungratefully call Bloody Mackenzie, that “as

in the body natural, so likewise in the politic, Nature hath provided

more diseases than the best of Physicians can prevent by remedies.” He

knew that kingdoms as well as individuals have their agues and

calentures, are liable to plethora sometimes and otherwhiles to

atrophy, to fits of madness which no hellebore can cure, and to decay

and dissolution which no human endeavours can avert. With the maladies

of the State indeed he troubled himself not, for though a true-born

Englishman, he was as to all politics of the day, of the Poco-curante

school. But with those of the human frame his thoughts were

continually employed; it was his business to deal with them; his duty

and his earnest desire to heal them, under God's blessing, where

healing was humanly possible, or to alleviate them, when any thing

more than alleviation was beyond the power of human skill.

The origin of evil was a question upon which he never ventured. Here

too, he said with Sir George Mackenzie, “as I am not able by the

Jacob's Ladder of my merit to scale Heaven, so am I less able by the

Jacob's Staff of my private ability to take up the true altitude of

its mysteries:” and borrowing a play upon words from the same old

Essayist, he thought the brain had too little _pia mater_, which was

too curious in such inquiries. But the mysteries of his own profession

afforded “ample room and verge enough” for his speculations, however

wide and wild their excursions. Those mysteries are so many, so

momentous, and so inscrutable that he wondered not at any

superstitions which have been excogitated by bewildered imagination,

and implicitly followed by human weakness in its hopes and fears, its

bodily and its mental sufferings.

As little did he wonder at the theories advanced by men who were in

their days, the Seraphic and Angelic and Irrefragable Doctors of the

healing art:—the tartar of Paracelsus, the Blas and Gas of Van

Helmont, nor in later times at the animalcular hypotheses of Langius

and Paullinus; nor at the belief of elder nations, as the Jews, and of

savages every-where that all maladies are the immediate work of evil

spirits. But when he called to mind the frightful consequences to

which the belief of this opinion has led, the cruelties which have

been exercised, the crimes which have been perpetrated, the miseries

which have been inflicted and endured, it made him shudder at

perceiving that the most absurd error may produce the greatest

mischief to society, if it be accompanied with presumption, and if any

real or imaginary interest be connected with maintaining it.

The Doctor like his Master and benefactor Peter Hopkins, was of the

Poco-curante school in politics. He said that the Warwickshire

gentleman who was going out with his hounds when the two armies were

beginning to engage at Edge-hill, was not the worst Englishman who

took the field that day.

Local circumstances favoured this tendency to political indifference.

It was observed in the 34th Chapter of this Opus that one of the many

reasons for which our Philosopher thought Doncaster a very likeable

place of residence was that it sent no Members to Parliament. And

Yorkshire being too large a county for any of its great families to

engage lightly in contesting it, the Election fever however it might

rage in other towns or other parts of the county, never prevailed

there. But the constitution of the Doctor's mind secured him from all

excitement of this nature. Even in the days of Wilkes and Liberty,

when not a town in England escaped the general Influenza, he was not

in the slightest degree affected by it, nor did he ever take up the

Public Advertiser for the sake of one of Junius's Letters.

CHAPTER CCXXXVIII.

SIMONIDES.—FUNERAL POEMS.—UNFEELING OPINION IMPUTED TO THE GREEK POET,

AND EXPRESSED BY MALHERBE.—SENECA.—JEREMY TAYLOR AND THE DOCTOR ON

WHAT DEATH MIGHT HAVE BEEN, AND WERE MEN WHAT CHRISTIANITY WOULD MAKE

THEM, MIGHT BE.

_Intendale chi può; che non è stretto

Alcuno a creder pïu di quel che vuole._

ORLANDO INNAMORATO.

Among the lost works of antiquity, there are few poems which I should

so much rejoice in recovering, as those of Simonides. Landor has said

of him that he and Pindar wrote nothing bad; that his characteristics

were simplicity, brevity, tenderness, and an assiduous accuracy of

description. “If I were to mention,” he adds “what I fancy would give

an English reader the best idea of his manner, I should say, the book

of Ruth.”

One species of composition wherein he excelled was that which the

Dutch in their straight-forward way call _Lykzangen_ or _Lykdichten_,

but for which we have no appropriate name,—poems in commemoration of

the dead. Beautiful specimens are to be found in the poetry of all

countries, and this might be expected, threnodial being as natural as

amatory verse; and as the characteristic of the latter is passion with

little reflection, that of the former is, as naturally, to be at the

same time passionate and thoughtful.

Our own language was rich in such poems during the Elizabethan age,

and that which followed it. Of foreign poets none has in this

department exceeded Chiabrera.

There is a passage among the fragments of Simonides which is called by

his old editor consolatory, _παρηγορικόν_: but were it not for the

authority of Seneca, who undoubtedly was acquainted with the whole

poem, I should not easily be persuaded that so thoughtful, so pensive,

so moralizing a poet would, in any mood of mind have recommended such

consolation:

_Τοῦ μὲν θανόντος οὐκ ἄν ἐνθυμοίμεθα,

Εἴ τι φρονοῖμεν, πλεῖον ἡμέρας μιᾶς·_

let us not call to mind the dead, if we think of him at all, more than

a single day. Indeed I am not certain from what Seneca says, whether

the poet was speaking in his own, or in an assumed character, nor

whether he spoke seriously or satirically; or I cannot but suspect

that the passage would appear very differently, if we saw it in its

place. Malherbe gives the same sort of advice in his consolation to M.

du Périer upon the death of a daughter.

_Ne te lasse donc plus d'inutiles complaintes;

Mais sage à l'avenir,

Aime une ombre comme ombre, et des cendres éteintes

Eteins le souvenir;_

such a feeling is much more in character with a Frenchman than with

Simonides.

Seneca himself, Stoic though he was, gave no such advice, but

accounted the remembrance of his departed friends among his solemn

delights, not looking upon them as lost: “_mihi amicorum defunctorum

cogitatio dulcis ac blanda est; habui enim illos, tanquam amissurus;

amissi tanquam habeam._”

My venerable friend was not hardened by a profession, which has too

often the effect of blunting the feelings, even if it does not harden

the heart. His disposition and his happy education preserved him from

that injury; and as his religion taught him that death was not in

itself an evil,—that for him, and for those who believed with him, it

had no sting,—the subject was as familiar to his meditations as to his

professional practice. A speculation which Jeremy Taylor, without

insisting on it, offers to the consideration of inquisitive and modest

persons, appeared to him far more probable than the common opinion

which Milton expresses when he says that the fruit of the Forbidden

Tree brought death into the world. That, the Bishop argues, “which

_would have been_, had there been no sin, and that which _remains_

when the sin or guiltiness is gone, is not properly the punishment of

the sin. But dissolution of the soul and body should have been, if

Adam had not sinned; for the world would have been too little to have

entertained those myriads of men, which must, in all reason, have been

born from that blessing of ‘Increase and multiply,’ which was given at

the first creation: and to have confined mankind to the pleasures of

this world, in case he had not fallen, would have been a punishment of

his innocence: but however, it _might have been_, though God had not

been angry, and _shall still be_, even when the sin is taken off. The

proper consequent of this will be, that when the Apostle says ‘Death

came in by Sin,’ and that ‘Death is the wages of Sin,’ he primarily

and literally means the solemnities, and causes, and infelicities, and

untimeliness of temporal death; and not merely the dissolution, which

is directly no evil, but an inlet to a better state.”

As our friend agreed in this opinion with Bishop Taylor; and moreover

as he read in Scriptures that Enoch and Elijah had been translated

from this world without tasting of death; and as he deemed it probable

at least, that St. John, the beloved disciple, had been favoured with

a like exemption from the common lot, he thought that Asgill had been

hardly dealt with in being expelled from Parliament for his

“Argument,” that according to the Covenant of Eternal Life, revealed

in the Scriptures, man might be translated from hence, without passing

through death. The opinion Dr. Dove thought, might be enthusiastic,

the reasoning wild, the conclusion untenable, and the manner of the

book indecorous, or irreverent. But he had learnt that much, which

appears irreverent, and in reality is so, has not been irreverently

intended; and the opinion, although groundless, seemed to him any

thing rather than profane.

But the exemptions which are recorded in the Bible could not, in his

judgement be considered as showing what would have been the common lot

if our first parents had preserved their obedience. This he opined

would more probably have been euthanasy than translation; death, not

preceded by infirmity and decay, but as welcome, and perhaps as

voluntary as sleep.

Or possibly the transition from a corporeal to a spiritual,—or more

accurately in our imperfect language,—from an earthly to a celestial

state of being, might have been produced by some developement, some

formal mutation as visible, (adverting to a favourite fancy of his

own) as that which in the butterfly was made by the ancients their

emblem of immortality. Bishop Van Mildert shews us upon scriptural

authority that “the degree of perfection at which we may arrive has no

definite limits, but is to go on increasing as long as this state of

probation continues.” So in the paradisiacal, and possibly in the

millennial state, he thought, that with such an intellectual and moral

improvement, a corresponding organic evolution might keep pace; and

that as the child expands into man, so man might mature into Angel.

CHAPTER CCXXXIX.

THE DOCTOR DISSENTS FROM A PROPOSITION OF WARBURTON'S AND SHEWS IT TO

BE FALLACIOUS.—HUTCHINSON'S REMARKS ON THE POWERS OF BRUTES.—LORD

SHAFTESBURY QUOTED.—APOLLONIUS AND THE KING OF BABYLON.—DISTINCTION IN

THE TALMUD BETWEEN AN INNOCENT BEAST AND A VICIOUS ONE.—OPINION OF

ISAAC LA PEYRESC.—THE QUESTION DE ORIGINE ET NATURA ANIMARUM IN BRUTIS

AS BROUGHT BEFORE THE THEOLOGIANS OF SEVEN PROTESTANT ACADEMIES IN THE

YEAR 1635 BY DANIEL SENNERTUS.

_Toutes veritez ne sont pas bonnes à dire serieusement._

GOMGAM.

Warburton has argued that “from the _nature_ of any action morality

cannot arise, nor from its effects;—not from the first, because being

only reasonable or unreasonable, nothing follows but a fitness in

doing one, and an absurdity in doing the other;—not from the second,

because did the good or evil produced make the action _moral_, brutes

from whose actions proceed both good and evil, would have morality.”

But Warburton's proposition is fallacious, and his reasoning is

inconclusive; there is an essential difference between right and

wrong, upon which the moral law is founded; and in the _reductio ad

absurdum_ upon which he relies, there is no absurdity. The language of

the people is sometimes true to nature and philosophy when that of the

learned departs widely from the one, and is mistaken in the other.

When we call a beast vicious, we mean strictly what the word implies;

and if we never speak of one as virtuous, it is because man reserves

the praise of virtue to his own kind. The word good supplies its

place. A horse that has any vice in him is never called good.

“In this case alone it is,” says Lord Shaftesbury, “we call any

creature worthy or virtuous, when it can have the notion of a public

interest, and can attain the speculation or science of what is morally

good or ill, admirable or blameable, right or wrong. For though we may

vulgarly call a horse _vicious_, yet we never say of a good one, nor

of any mere beast, idiot, or changeling, though ever so good-natured,

that he is _worthy_ or _virtuous_.

“So that if a creature be generous, kind, constant, compassionate, yet

if he cannot reflect on what he himself does, or sees others do, so as

to take notice of what is _worthy_ or _honest_; and make that notice

or conception of _worth_ and _honesty_ to be an object of his

affection, he has not the character of being virtuous; for thus, and

no otherwise, he is capable of having a sense of right and wrong; a

sentiment or judgement of what is done through just, equal and good

affection, or the contrary.”

The Jews upon this subject agree with the common and natural opinion;

and the Talmud accordingly, when any mischief has been done by an

animal, distinguishes between an innocent beast and a vicious one, the

owner of an innocent one being required to pay only half the amount of

an injury thus, as it was deemed, casually incurred. There have been

cases in which the laws have considered a beast as guilty of a crime,

and amenable therefore to penal justice. In the year 1403 Simon de

Baudemont, Lieutenant at Meulont of Jhean Lord of Maintenon the

Bailiff of Mantes and Meulont, signed an attestation making known the

expences, which had been incurred in order to execute justice on a Sow

that had eaten a child. “For expences with the jail the charge was six

_sols_. Item, to the executioner who came from Paris to Meulont to put

the sentence in execution by the command of our Lord the Bailiff and

of the king's Attorney, 54 _sols_. Item, for the carriage that

conveyed her to execution, 6 _sols_. Item, for ropes to tie and haul

her up, 2 _sols_, 8 _deniers_. Item, for gloves 12 _deniers_;

amounting in the whole to 69 _sols_, 8 _deniers_.” It must be supposed

the Executioner insisted upon the gloves, as a point of honour, that

no one might reproach him with having sullied his hands by performing

upon such a subject.

When Apollonius was introduced to the King of Babylon, the King

invited him to sacrifice with him, for he was about to offer a Nisean

horse to the Sun, selected for its beauty and adorned with all pomp

for the occasion. But the Philosopher replied, “O King do you

sacrifice after your manner, and give me leave to sacrifice after

mine.” He then took frankincense, and prayed, saying, “O Sun, conduct

me so far as it seemeth good to me and to thee. And let me become

acquainted with virtuous men; but as for the wicked, let me neither

know them nor they me.” And throwing the frankincense in the fire he

observed the smoke, how it ascended and which way it bent, and just

touching the fire when it seemed that he had sacrificed enough, he

said to the King that he had performed the rites of his country, and

forthwith withdrew that he might have nothing to do with blood and

slaughter. Afterwards when the King took him where were many lions,

bears and panthers reserved for sport, invited him to go with him and

hunt them, Apollonius replied, “King, you should remember, that I did

not chuse to be present at your sacrifice, much less should I like to

see animals wounded, and by the pain of their wounds rendered more

ferocious than nature has made them.”

Isaac la Peyresc thought differently from the Talmudists and the

French Lawyers. He says, quoting the Apostle, _Ubi non est lex, neque

prævaricatio est._ Where ‘no law is, there is no transgression.’

_Prævaricatio autem eadem est, quæ transgressio legis: illa ipsa

proprie quæ peccatum imputationis labe infecit. Quod ut compingatur in

oculos: pecudes actualiter et materialiter eadem faciunt, quæ

transgrediuntur homines; incestant, rapiunt, occidunt; non erit tamen

uspiam adeo supinus qui dicat, pecudes peccare ad similitudinem

transgressionis hominum; quia pecudes quæ hæc peccant, sequuntur

tantum suam naturam et suam materiam; neque legum transgrediuntur

ullam, quia nulla eis data est cujus transgressione formetur in eis et

imputetur peccatum._

Yet it cannot be doubted that in such a case Peyresc himself,

disregarding his own arguments would have ordered the Sow to be put to

death.

This author derives _peccatum_ from _pecus_, for, says he, “as often

as a man wilfully departs from that right reason which constitutes him

man,—as often as under the impulse of that brute matter which he has

in common with beasts, he commits any action fitting in a beast, but

unworthy in man, so often he seems to fall below his own species, and

sink into that of a brute.” “_Latini nomen peccati mutuati sunt à

pecore. Quoties enim homo delirat à rectâ ratione illa quæ hominem

constituit; quoties impulsu materiæ suæ quam habet communem cum

brutis, quid agit dignum pecore, et indignum homine, toties cadere

videtur à specie suâ, et incidere in speciem pecoris sive bruti._”

_Pecunia_ is known to be derived from _Pecus_, wealth, of which money

is the representative, having originally consisted in cattle. As money

is proverbially the root of all evil, this etymological connection

might be remarkable enough to be deemed mysterious by those who are

fond of discovering mysteries in words.

“Brutes,” Hutchinson says, “are made in scripture objects to inculcate

the duties in society, and even emblems of spiritual and divine

perfections. Many of them are more strictly bound in pairs than is

common between men and women; many both males and females take greater

care and pains, and run greater risques for the education and defence

of their young, than any of our species. Many of them excel us in

instructing their young, so in policy, in industry, in mechanical arts

and operations. And there are other species among them, examples to

deter men from the vices in society.” “The power in brutes,” he says,

“is by the same agent as that in the body of man, and they are made of

the same species of dust; most of them are guided by what is called

instinct; some of them are tamed and disciplined and their powers made

serviceable to men, and all of them are subject to the immediate power

of God, when he pleases to direct them. Mechanism is carried so far in

them, that in the parts or degrees of sensation they excel man; that

by every one of their actions man might see the _ne plus ultra_ of

sense, and know how to distinguish the difference between them and the

decayed image in him, to value it accordingly, and excite a

proportionate zeal in him to recover the first perfections in that

image, and augment them to secure the pleasure of exercising them upon

the most desirable objects to all eternity.” So far so good, but this

once influential writer makes an erroneous conclusion when he says,

“if you allow anything farther than mechanism to Brutes, imagine that

they have souls, or think, or act the part of souls: you either begin

to think that you have no soul, or that it is, such as are in Brutes,

mortal.”

The question _de Origine et Naturâ Animarum in Brutis_ was brought

before the Theologians of seven Protestant Academies in the year 1635,

by Daniel Sennertus Professor of Medicine at Wittemberg, of whose

Institutes Sir Thomas Browne says to a student in that art, “assure

yourself that when you are a perfect master of them you will seldom

meet with any point in physic to which you will not be able to speak

like a man.” It was the opinion of this very learned professor that

what in scholastic language is called the _form_ of every perfect

thing, (distinguished from _figure,—forma est naturæ bonum, figura,

artis opus_) though it is not a soul, yet even in precious stones is

something altogether different from the four elements, and that every

soul, or living principle, is a certain quintessence; the wonderful

operations in plants, and the more wonderful actions of brute

creatures, far exceeding all power of the elements, had convinced him

of this. But for asserting it, Freitagius the medical Professor at

Groninghen attacked him fiercely as a blasphemer and a heretic.

Sennertus being then an old man was more moved by this outrage than

became one of his attainments and high character. So he laid the case

before the Universities of Leipsic, Rostock, Basle, Marpurg,

Konigsberg, Jena, Strasburg, and Altorff, and he requested their

opinion upon these two propositions, whether what he had affirmed,

that the souls of brute creatures had been created at first from

nothing by the Deity, and were not of an elementary nature, but of

something different, was blasphemous and heretical, or whether it were

not an ignorant opinion of his assailant, that brute animals consisted

wholly of elementary matter, both as to their body and soul?

They all answered the questions more or less at large, the Leipsic

Doctors saying _officii nostri duximus esse ut in timore Domini ea sub

diligentem disquisitionem vocaremus._ They saw nothing irreligious in

the opinion that God at the creation had formed the bodies of brutes

from elementary matter, and created their souls _ex nihilo_; after

which both were reproduced in the natural course of generation; these

souls however were not immortal, nor so separable from the matter with

which they were united, as to survive it, and exist without it, or

return again into their bodies; but when the animals died, the animal

soul died also. Thus the excellence of man was unimpaired, and the

privilege of the human soul remained inviolate, the prerogative of man

being that God had breathed into him the breath of life, whereby he

became a living soul. Thus they fully acquitted Sennertus of the

charge brought against him; and waiving any such direct condemnation

of his accuser as he had desired, condemned in strong terms the

insolent manner in which the accusation had been preferred.

The Theologians of Rostock replied more briefly. Dismissing at once

the charge of blasphemy and heresy as absurd, they treated the

question as purely philosophical, saying, “_Quod de elementari naturâ

animarum brutorum dicitur, de illo nostrum non est disserere.

Arbitramur, hæc non solum Philosophorum, sed et libertati, super his

modestè, veritatis inveniendæ studio, philosophantium permittenda;

quos nimium constringere, et unius hominis, Aristotelis, alteriusve,

velle alligare opinioni, pugnare videtur cum naturâ intellectus

humani, quem nulli opinioni servum Deus esse voluit._” Concerning the

second question, they were not willing, they said, to draw the saw of

contention with any one; “_Si tamen, quod sentimus dicendum est,

respondemus, illum qui cœlum et terram ex nihilo creavit, non eguisse

ullâ materiâ, ex quâ brutorum animas produceret; sed illi placuisse

iis quæ Moses recitat verbis compellare terram et aquam, et ad solius

Omnipotentis nutum et imperium, ex subjectis quæ compellârit, animas

emersisse._” This answer Sennertus obtained through his friend

Lauremberg the Horticulturist and Botanist, who advised him at the

same time to disregard all invidious attacks; “_Turbas tibi dari quòd

liberè philosophari satagis, id ipse nôsti, neque novum esse, neque

insolens, hâc ætate. Eandem tecum sortem experiuntur omnes eleganter

et solidè eruditi, quibus qui paria facere non valet, invidet et

oblatrat. Tu verò noli hoc nomine te quicquam macerare neu

obtrectationem illam gravius vocare ad animum. Nota est orbi tua

eruditio, tua virtus et ingenuitas, quæ ea propter nullam patietur

jacturam. Tu modo, ut hactenus fecisti, pergito bene mereri de

Republicâ literariâ, et mihi favere, certò tibi persuasus, habere te

hîc loci hominem tui amantem, et observantem maxime._”

Zuinger answered more at large for the Faculty at Basle. They bade him

not to marvel that he should be accused of heresy and blasphemy,

seeing that the same charge has been brought against their

Theologians, who when they taught according to Scripture that God

alone was the Father of the spirits as their parents were of their

bodies, and that the reasonable soul therefore was not derived from

their parents, but infused and concreated _θύραθεν à Deo ἀμέσως_ were

accused either of Pelagianism, as if they had denied Original Sin, or

of blasphemy, as if they had made God the author of sin. They

admonished him to regard such calumnies more justly and quietly, for

evil and invidious tongues could never detract from that estimation

which he had won for him in the Republic of Letters. Nevertheless as

he had asked for their opinion, they would freely deliver it.

First then as to the postulate which he had premised in the Epistle

accompanying his Questions, that wherever there is creation, something

is produced from nothing, _(ubicunque creatio est, ibi aliquid ex

nihilo producitur)_ if by this he intended, that in no mode of

creation, whether it were _κτίσις_, or _ποίησις_, or _πλᾶσις_ there

was no substrate matter out of which something was made by the

omnipotent virtue of the Deity, in that case they thought, that his

opinion was contrary to Scripture, forasmuch as it plainly appeared in

the book of Genesis, that neither the male nor female were created

from nothing, but the man from the dust of the ground, and the woman

from one of his ribs, _tanquam præcedentibus corporum materieribus_.

But though it is indubitable that the creation of the soul in either

parent was immediately _ex nihilo_, as was shewn in the creation of

Adam we see nevertheless that the name of creation has been applied by

Moses to the formation _(plasmationi)_ of their bodies. But if

Sennertus's words were to be understood as intending that wherever

there was a creation, something was produced in this either _ex

nihilo_ absolutely, or relatively and _κατά τι_ out of something, some

preceding matter, which though certainly in itself something, yet

relatively,—that which is made out of it, is nothing, _(nihil, aut non

ens)_ because it hath in itself no power, liability, or aptitude that

it should either be, or become that which God by his miraculous and

omnipotent virtue makes it, they had no difficulty in assenting to

this. As for example, the dust of which God formed the body of Adam

was something and nothing. Something in itself, for it was earth;

nothing in respect of that admirable work of the human body which God

formed of it.

As for the question whether his opinion was blasphemous and heretical,

it could be neither one nor the other, for it neither derogated from

the glory of God, nor touched upon any fundamental article of faith.

Some there were who opined that Chaos was created _ex nihilo_, which

they understood by Tohu Vabohu, from which all things celestial and

elementary were afterwards mediately created by God. Others exploding

Chaos held that heaven, earth, water and air, were created _ex

nihilo_. But they did not charge each other with blasphemy, and heresy

because of this disagreement, and verily they who thought that the

souls of brutes were originally created by God _ex nihilo_ appeared no

more to derogate from the might, majesty and glory of God, than those

who held that brutes were wholly created from the element. The virtue

of an omnipotent God became in either case presupposed.

There was no heresy they said in his assertion that the souls of

brutes were not of an elementary nature, but of something different:

provided that a just distinction were made between the rational soul

and the brute soul, the difference being not merely specific but

generic. For the rational soul is altogether of a spiritual nature and

essence, _adeòque Ens uti vocant transcendens_, bearing the image of

God in this, that properly speaking it is a spirit, as God is a

Spirit. 2d. The rational soul as such, as Aristotle himself testifies,

has no bodily energies, or operations; its operations indeed are

performed in the body but not by the body, nor by bodily organs; but

the contrary is true concerning the souls of brutes. 3dly. The

rational soul, though it be closely conjoined with the body and

hypostatically united therewith, nevertheless is separable therefrom,

so that ever out of the body _sit ὑφιστάμενον aliquod_; but the souls

of brutes are immersed in matter and in bodies, so that they cannot

subsist without them. Lastly, the rational soul alone hath the

privilege of immortality, it being beyond all controversy that the

souls of brutes are mortal and corruptible. These differences being

admitted, and saving the due prerogative, excellence, and as it were

divinity of the rational soul, the Theological Faculty of Basil

thought it of little consequence if any one held that the souls of

brutes were of something different from elementary matter.

They delivered no opinion in condemnation of his assailant's doctrine,

upon the ground that the question was not within their province.

“_Certum est,_” they said, “_uti formas rerum omnium difficulter, et

non nisi a posteriori, et per certas περιστάσεις, cognoscere possumus;

ita omnium difficillimè Animarum naturam nos pervestigare posse,

nostramque, uti in aliis, ita in hac materiâ, scientiam esse, ut scitè

Scaliger loquitur, umbram in sole. Ac non dubium, Deum hic vagabundis

contemplationibus nostris ponere voluisse, ut disceremus

imbecillitatis et cæcitatis nostræ conscientiâ humiliari, cum stupore

opera ejus admirari, atque cum modestia et sobrietate philosophari._”

They declared however that the rational soul differed from that of

brutes in its nature, essence, properties and actions, and that this

was not to be doubted of by Christians: that the soul of brutes was

not spiritual, not immaterial, that all its actions were merely

material, and performed by corporeal organs, and they referred to

Sennertus's own works as rightly affirming that it was partible, _et

dividatur ad divisionem materiæ, ita ut cum corporis parte aliquid

animæ possit avelli_, inferring here as it seems from a false analogy

that animal life was like that of vegetables, _quæ ex parte a plantâ

avulsâ propagantur_.

They entered also into some curious criticism metaphysical and

philological upon certain texts pertinent to the questions before

them. When the dust became lice throughout all the land of Egypt, the

mutation of the dust into lice was to be understood: so too in the

creation of Adam, and the formation of Eve, there could be no doubt

concerning the matter from which both were made. But when water was

miraculously produced from the rock, and from the hollow place in the

jaw, _ibi sanè nemo sanus dicet, aquam è petrâ aut maxillâ à Deo ita

fuisse productam, ut petra aut maxilla materiam aquæ huic præbuerit._

The answer from Marpurg was short and satisfactory. There also the

Professors waived the philosophical question, saying _Nos falcem in

alienam messem non mittemus, nec Morychi in alieno choro pedem nostrum

ponemus, sed nostro modulo ac pede nos metiemur, nobis id etiam dictum

putantes, τὰ ὑπὲρ ἡμᾶς οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς. Nobis nostra vendicabimus,

Philosophis philosophica relinquentes._ Tertullian they said had

asserted that Philosophers were the Patriarchs of Heretics,

nevertheless a philosophical opinion, while it keeps within its own

circles, and does not interfere with the mysteries of faith, is no

heresy. They adduced a subtle argument to show that upon the point in

question there was no real difference between something and nothing.

_Creatio ex nihilo intelligitur fieri tum ratione sui principii, quod

est nihilum negativum; tum ratione indispositionis, ob quam materia,

ex quâ aliquid fit, in productione pro nihilo habetur. Quamvis igitur

animæ bestiarum dicerentur in Creatione ex potentiâ materiæ eductæ,

nihilominus ob indispositionem materiæ quam formæ eductæ multum

superant, ex nihilo creatæ essent._ And they agreed with Luther and

with those other Divines who held that the words in the first Chapter

of Genesis whereby the Earth was bade to bring forth grass, herbs,

trees and living creatures after their kind, and the water to bring

forth fishes, were to be strictly understood, the earth and the waters

having _ex Dei benedictione, activè et verè_ produced them.

The answer from Konigsberg was not less favourable. The dispute which

Freitagius had raised, _infelix illa σύῤῥαξις_ they called it, ought

to have been carried on by that Professor with more moderation.

Granting that the souls of brutes were not created separately like

human souls but conjointly with the body, it still remained doubtful

_quomodo se habuerit divinum partim ad aquam et terram factum

mandatum, partim simultanea brutalium animarum cum corporibus

creatio._ For earth and water might here be variously considered, 1,

as the element, 2, as the matter, 3, as the subject, and 4, _ut mater

vel vivus uterus ad animalium productionem immediatâ Dei operatione

exaltatus._ Water and earth themselves were first created, and on the

fifth the vital and plastic power was communicated to them, in which

by virtue of the omnipotent word they still consist. They were of

opinion that the souls of brutes and of plants also, were divinely

raised above an elementary condition, it being always understood that

the human soul far transcended them. The expression of Moses that

formed every beast and every fowl out of the ground, proved not the

matter whereof, but the place wherein they were formed.

The Faculty at Jena returned a shorter reply. The ingratitude of the

world toward those who published their lucubrations upon such abstruse

points, reminded them they said of Luther's complaint in one of his

Prefaces: _Sæpe recordor boni Gersonis dubitantis num quid boni

publicè scribendmn et proferendum sit. Si scriptio omittitur, multæ

animæ negliguntur, quæ liberari potuissent; si verò illa præstatur,

statim Diabolus præstò est cum linguis pestiferis et calumniarum

plenis, quæ omnia corrumpunt et inficiunt._ What was said of the

production of fish, plants and animals might be understood

synecdochically, _salvâ verborum Mosaicorum integritate,_ as the text

also was to be understood concerning the creation of man, where it is

said that the Lord formed him of the dust of the earth, and

immediately afterwards that he breathed into his nostrils the breath

of life.

The Strasburg Divines entered upon the subject so earnestly that their

disquisition far exceeds in length the whole of the communications

from the other Universities. Sennertus could not have wished for a

more elaborate or a more gratifying reply. The Faculty at Altdorff

said that the question was not a matter of faith, and therefore no one

could be obnoxious to the charge of heresy for maintaining or

controverting either of the opposite opinions. They seem however to

have agreed with neither party; not with Freitagius because they

denied that brute souls were of an elementary nature, not with

Sennertus, because they denied that they were created at first from

nothing. It is manifest, said they, that they are not now created from

nothing, because it would follow from thence that they subsist of

themselves, and are not dependent upon matter, and are consequently

immortal, which is absurd. It remained therefore that the souls of

brutes, as they do not now receive their existence from mere nothing,

so neither did they at the first creation, but from something

pre-supposed, which the Peripatetics call the power of matter or of

the subject, which from the beginning was nothing else and still is

nothing else, than its propension or inclination to this or that form.

_Quæ forma multiplex, cum etiam in potentia primi subjecti passiva

præcesserit, per miraculosam Dei actionem ex illa fuit educta,

actumque essendi completum in variis animalium speciebus accepit._

Sennertus either published these papers or prepared them for

publication just before his death. They were printed in octavo at

Wittenberg, with the title _De Origine et Natura Animarum in Brutis,

Sententiæ Cl. Theologorum in aliquot Germaniæ Academiis, 1638_.

Sprengel observes that none of the Historians of Philosophy have

noticed,—

_Cætera desunt._

CHAPTER CCXL.

THE JESUIT GARASSE'S CENSURE OF HUARTE AND BARCLAY.—EXTRAORDINARY

INVESTIGATION.—THE TENDENCY OF NATURE TO PRESERVE ITS OWN ARCHETYPAL

FORMS.—THAT OF ART TO VARY THEM.—PORTRAITS.—MORAL AND PHYSICAL

CADASTRE.—PARISH CHRONICLER AND PARISH CLERK THE DOCTOR THOUGHT MIGHT

BE WELL UNITED.

Is't you, Sir, that know things?

SOOTH. In nature's infinite book of secresy,

A little I can read.

SHAKSPEARE.

The Jesuit Garasse censured his contemporaries Huarte and Barclay for

attempting, the one in his _Examen de los Ingenios_, the other in his

_Icon Animorum_, to class men according to their intellectual

characters: _ces deux Autheurs_, says he, _se sont rendus criminels

contre l'esprit de l'homme, en ce qu'ils ont entrepris de ranger en

cinq ou six cahiers, toutes les diversitez des esprits qui peuvent

estre parmy les hommes, comme qui voudroit verser toute l'eau de la

mer dans une coquille._ For his own part, he had learnt, he said, _et

par la lecture, et par l'experience, que les hommes sont plus

dissemblables en esprit qu'en visage._

Garasse was right; for there goes far more to the composition of an

individual character, than of an individual face. It has sometimes

happened that the portrait of one person has proved also to be a good

likeness of another. Mr. Hazlitt recognized his own features and

expression in one of Michael Angelo's devils. And in real life two

faces, even though there be no relationship between the parties, may

be all but indistinguishably alike, so that the one shall frequently

be accosted for the other; yet no parity of character can be inferred

from this resemblance. Poor Capt. Atkins, who was lost in the Defence

off the coast of Jutland in 1811, had a double of this kind, that was

the torment of his life; for this double was a swindler, who having

discovered the lucky facsimileship, obtained goods, took up money, and

at last married a wife in his name. Once when the real Capt. Atkins

returned from a distant station, this poor woman who was awaiting him

at Plymouth, put off in a boat, boarded the ship as soon as it came to

anchor, and ran to welcome him as her husband.

The following Extraordinary Investigation, cut out of a Journal of the

day, would have excited our Doctor's curiosity, and have led him on to

remoter speculations.

“On Tuesday afternoon an adjourned inquest was held at the

Christchurch workhouse. Boundary-row, Blackfriars-road, before Mr. R.

Carter, on the body of Eliza Baker, aged 17, who was found drowned at

the steps of Blackfriars-bridge, on Saturday morning, by a police

constable. Mr. Peter Wood, an eating-house-keeper, in the Bermondsey

New-road, near the Brick-layers Arms, having seen a paragraph in one

of the Sunday newspapers, that the body of a female had been taken out

of the Thames on the previous day, and carried to the workhouse to be

owned, and, from the description given, suspecting that it was the

body of a young female who had lived in his service, but who had been

discharged by his wife on account of jealousy, he went to the

workhouse and recognized the body of the unfortunate girl. He was very

much agitated, and he cut off a lock of her hair, and kissed the

corpse. He immediately went to an undertaker, and gave orders for the

funeral. He then went to the deceased's parents, who reside in

Adelaide-place, Whitecross-street, Cripplegate, and informed them of

the melancholy fate of their daughter. They also went to the

workhouse, and, on being shown the body, were loud in their

lamentations.

“On the Jury having assembled on Monday evening, they proceeded to

view the body of the deceased, and, on their return, a number of

witnesses were examined, mostly relations, who swore positively to the

body. From the evidence it appeared that the deceased had lived with

Mr. Wood as a servant for four months, but his wife being jealous, she

was discharged about a month ago, since which time Mr. Wood had

secretly supplied her with money, and kept her from want. Mrs. Baker,

the mother of the deceased, and other relations, in giving their

evidence, spoke in severe terms of the conduct of Mr. Wood, and said

that they had no doubt but that he had seduced the unfortunate girl,

which had caused her to commit suicide.

“The Jury appeared to be very indignant, and, after five hours'

deliberation, it was agreed to adjourn the case until Tuesday

afternoon, when they re-assembled. Mr. Wood, the alleged seducer, was

now present, but he was so overcome by his feelings at the melancholy

occurrence, that nothing could be made of him; in fact, he was like a

man in a state of stupefaction. Mrs. Wood, the wife was called in; she

is twenty-eight years older than her husband, and shook her head at

him, but nothing was elicited from her, her passion completely

overcoming her reason.

“A Juryman.—The more we dive into this affair the more mysterious it

appears against Mr. Wood.

“This remark was occasioned on account of some marks of violence on

the body; there had been a violent blow on the nose, a black mark on

the forehead, and a severe wound on the thigh. The Jury were

commencing to deliberate on their verdict, when a drayman in the

employ of Messrs. Whitbread and Co., brewers, walked into the

jury-room, and said that, he wished to speak to the Coroner and Jury.

“Mr. Carter.—‘What is it you want?’

“Drayman.—‘I comes to say, gentlemen, that Mrs. Baker's daughter, you

are now holding an inquest on, is now alive and in good health.’

“The Coroner and Jury (in astonishment).—‘What do you say?’

“Drayman.—‘I'll swear that I met her to-day in the streets, and spoke

to her.’

“The Coroner, Witnesses, and Jury were all struck with amazement, and

asked the drayman if he could bring Eliza Baker forward, which he

undertook to do in a short time.

“In the interim the Jury and Witnesses went again to view the body of

the deceased. Mr. Wood shed tears over the corpse, and was greatly

affected, as well as her relations: the drayman's story was treated as

nonsense, but the Jury, although of the same opinion, were determined

to await his return. In about a quarter of an hour the drayman

returned, and introduced the real Eliza Baker, a fine looking young

woman, and in full health. To depict the astonishment of the relations

and of Mr. Wood is totally impossible, and at first they were afraid

to touch her. She at last went forward, and took Mr. Wood by the hand

(who stood motionless), and exclaimed ‘How could you make such a

mistake as to take another body for mine? Do you think I would commit

such an act?’ Mr. Wood could not reply, but fell senseless in a fit,

and it was with great difficulty that seven men could hold him. After

some time he recovered, and walked away, to the astonishment of every

one, with Eliza Baker, leaving his wife in the jury-room. Several of

the Jurors remarked that they never saw such a strong likeness in

their lives as there was between Eliza Baker and the deceased, which

fully accounted for the mistake that the Witnesses had made.

“The whole scene was most extraordinary, and the countenances of

Witnesses and Jurymen it is impossible to describe. There was no

evidence to prove who the deceased was: and the Jury, after about

eleven hours' investigation, returned a verdict of ‘Found drowned,’

but by what means the deceased came into the water there is no

evidence to prove.”

But in such likenesses, the resemblance is probably never so exact as

to deceive an intimate friend, except upon a cursory glance, at first

sight: even between twins, when any other persons might be perplexed,

the parents readily distinguish. The varieties of countenances are far

more minute and consequently more numerous than would appear upon

light consideration. A shepherd knows the face of every sheep in his

flock, though to an inexperienced eye they all seem like one another.

The tendency of Nature is to preserve its own archetypal forms, the

tendency of art and of what is called accident being to vary them. The

varieties which are produced in plants by mere circumstances of soil

and situation are very numerous, but those which are produced by

culture are almost endless. Moral and physical circumstances effect

changes as great, both externally and internally in man. Whoever

consults the elaborate work of Dr. Prichard on the Physical History of

Mankind, may there see it established by the most extensive research

and the most satisfactory proofs, that the varieties of the human

race, great and striking as they are, are all derived from one stock;

philosophical enquiry here when fully and fairly pursued confirming

the scriptural account, as it has done upon every subject which is

within the scope of human investigation.

Dr. Dove in the course of his professional practise, had frequent

opportunities of observing the stamp of family features at those times

when it is most apparent; at birth, and in the last stage of

decline,—for the elementary lines of the countenance come forth as

distinctly in death as they were shaped in the womb. It is one of the

most affecting circumstances connected with our decay and dissolution,

that all traces of individual character in the face should thus

disappear, the natural countenance alone remaining, and that in this

respect the fresh corpse should resemble the new born babe. He had in

the same way opportunities for observing that there were family

dispositions both of body and mind, some remaining latent till the

course of time developed them, and others till circumstances seemed as

it were to quicken them into action. Whether these existed in most

strength where the family likeness was strongest was a point on which

his own observation was not extensive enough for him to form an

opinion. Speculatively he inclined to think that moral resemblances

were likely to manifest themselves in the countenance, but that

constitutional ones must often exist where there could be no outward

indication of them. Thus a family heart, (metaphorically speaking) may

be recognized in the “life, conduct and behaviour,” though the face

should be a false index; and hereditary tendencies in the great organs

of life show themselves only in family diseases.

Under our Saxon Kings, a person was appointed in every great Monastery

to record public events, register the deaths, promotions, &c., in the

community, and enter in this current chronicle every occurrence in the

neighbourhood which was thought worthy of notice. At the end of every

reign, a summary record was compiled from these materials,—and to this

we owe our Saxon Chronicle, the most ancient and authentic in Europe.

But he often regretted that in every generation so much knowledge was

lost, and that so much experience was continually allowed to run to

waste, many—very many of the evils which afflict mankind being

occasioned by this neglect and perpetuated by it. Especially he

regretted this in his own art: and this regret would not have been

removed if Medical Journals had been as numerous in his days as they

are at present. His wishes went much farther.

We are told that in the sixteenth century the great Lords in France

piqued themselves upon having able and learned men for their

secretaries, and treated them as their friends. The principal business

of such secretaries was to keep a journal of the most interesting

events; and the masters having witnessed or borne a part in the

business of state were well able to inform them of the intrigues and

tortuous policy of their own times. From such journals it is that most

of those old Memoirs have been formed, in which French literature is

so peculiarly rich. They usually include as much general history as is

in any way connected with the personage whom the writer served.

Boswell, who if ever man went to Heaven for his good works, has gone

there for his life of Johnson,—Boswell, I say thought, and Johnson

agreed with him, that there ought to be a chronicler kept in every

considerable family, to preserve the characters and transactions of

successive generations. In like manner Milton's friend, Henry More the

Platonist and Poet, would have had the stories of apparitions and

witchcraft publicly recorded, as they occurred in every parish,

thinking that this course would prove “one of the best antidotes

against that earthly and cold disease of Sadducism and Atheism,” which

he said, “if not prevented might easily grow upon us, to the hazard of

all religion and the best kinds of philosophy.” Our philosopher had

more comprehensive notions of what ought to be. He wished not only for

such domestic chronicles, but that in every considerable family there

should be a compleat set of portraits preserved in every generation,

taken in so small a size that it might never be necessary to eject

them in order to make room for others. When this had been done for

some centuries, it might be seen how long a family likeness remains,

whether Nature repeats her own forms at certain times, or after

uncertain intervals; or whether she allows them to be continually

modified, as families intermarry, till the original type at last may

altogether be obliterated.

In China there are not only learned men whose business it is to record

every thing remarkable that is either said or done by the reigning

Emperor, (which is done for his own instruction, as well as for that

of his successors,) but the great families, have in like manner their

records, and these are considered as the most precious part of the

inheritance which descends from sire to son. All who aspire to any

high office are required to be well acquainted with the history of

their ancestors, and in that history their indispensable

qualifications are examined.

That excellent good man Gilpin drew up a family record of his great

grandfather, grandfather and father, who had all been “very valuable

men.” “I have often thought,” said he, “such little records might be

very useful in families; whether the subjects of them were good or

bad. A light house may serve equally the purpose of leading you into a

haven, or deterring you from a rock.”[1]

If it may stand with your soft blush, to hear

Yourself but told unto yourself, and see

In my character what your features be,

You will not from the paper slightly pass.

No lady, but at some time loves her glass.

And this shall be no false one, but as much

Removed, as you from need to have it such.[2]

[Footnote 1: WARNER'S RECOLLECTIONS.]

[Footnote 2: BEN JONSON.]

There was once a German who being poet, physician and physiognomist,

saw in a vision of Paradise Physiognomy herself, and received from her

a most gracious compliment, which lay buried among the Heidelberg

Manuscripts in the Vatican, till Frederick Adelung in the year 1799,

brought it to light some centuries after the very name of the poet had

perished. Read the compliment, reader, if thou canst as given by the

German antiquary, without note, comment, glossary, or punctuation. I

can answer for the fidelity of my transcript, though not of his text.

_Zu mir in gar glicher wise

Quam us hymels paradyse

Vil manich schöne frouwe name

Jeglicher wol die kron zam

Sie waren schöne und gecleit

Vrauwelicher zuchte mynnekeit

Sie ziert ine danne riche gewant

Mir wart iglicher name bekant

Wanne er in geschriben was

An ir vorgespan als ich las_

PHISONOMIA _kunstenriche

Gutlicht redt wider mich

Wir byden dich herre bescheiden

Das du in gottes geleiden

Dust machen myne lobelich kunst

So hastu mynneclichen gunst

Von mir und myner gespilen vil

Der igliche dich des bidden wil

Das du in erkennen gebest

Und du in unser früntschaft lebest

Alleine din cleit sy donne

Got wil dir geben solich wonne

Die mannich gelerter mane

Nummer mer gewynnen kan._

There was no truth in Physiognomy when she made this promise to her

medico-poet. Yet he deserved her gratitude for he taught that her

unerring indications might be read not in the countenance alone, but

in all the members of the human body.

In cases of disputed inheritance, when it is contended that the heir

claimant is not the son of his reputed father, but a spurious, or

supposititious child, such a series of portraits would be witnesses,

he thought, against whose evidence no exception could be taken. Indeed

such evidence would have disproved the impudent story of the Warming

Pan, if any thing had depended upon legitimacy in that case; and in

our times it might divest D. Miguel of all claim to the crown of

Portugal, by right of birth.

But these legal and political uses he regarded as trifling when

compared with the physiological inferences which in process of time

might be obtained, for on this subject Mr. Shandy's views were far

short of Dr. Dove's. The improvement of noses would be only an

incidental consequence of the knowledge that might be gathered from

the joint materials of the family portrait gallery, and the family

chronicle. From a comparison of these materials it might be inferred

with what temperaments of mind and of body, with what qualities good

or evil, certain forms of feature, and certain characters of

countenance were frequently found to be connected. And hence it might

ultimately be learnt how to neutralize evil tendencies by judicious

intermarriages, how to sweeten the disposition, cool the temper and

improve the blood.

To be sure there were some difficulties in the way. You might expect

from the family chronicler a faithful notice of the diseases which had

proved dangerous or fatal; to this part of his duty there could be no

objection. But to assure the same fidelity concerning moral and

intellectual failings or vices, requires a degree of independence not

to be hoped for from a writer so circumstanced. If it had still been

the custom for great families to keep a Fool, as in old times, our

Philosopher in his legislative character would have required that the

Fool's more notable sayings should be recorded, well knowing that in

his privileged freedom of speech, and the monitions and rebukes which

he conveyed in a jest, the desiderated information would be contained.

But in our present state of manners he could devise no better check

upon the family historiographer,—no better provision against his sins

both of omission and of commission, than that of the village or parish

chronicle; for in every village or parish he would have had every

notable event that occurred within its boundaries duly and

authentically recorded. And as it should be the Chronicler's duty to

keep a Remembrancer as well as a Register, in which whatever he could

gather from tradition, or from the recollections of old persons was to

be preserved, the real character which every person of local

distinction had left behind him among his domestics and his neighbours

would be found here, whatever might be recorded upon his monument.

By these means, one supplying the deficiencies of the other, our

philosopher thought a knowledge of the defects and excellencies of

every considerable family might be obtained, sufficient for the

purposes of physiology, and for the public good.

There was a man in the neighbouring village of Bentley, who he used to

say, would have made an excellent Parish Chronicler, an office which

he thought might well be united with that of Parish Clerk.[3] This

person went by the name of Billy Dutchman: he was a journeyman

stone-mason, and kept a book wherein he inserted the name of every one

by whom he had been employed, how many days he had worked in every

week, and how many he had been idle, either owing to sickness or any

other cause, and what money he had earned in each week, summing up the

whole at the year's end. His earning in the course of nine and twenty

years beginning in 1767, amounts to £583. 18_s._ 3_d._, being, he

said, upon an average, seven shillings and ninepence a week.

[Footnote 3: Such a Chronicler is old James Long—now 77 years of

age—50 of which he has served in the capacity of Parish Clerk of

West-Tarring, in the County of Sussex. There is no by-gone incident in

this, or the neighbouring Parishes,—no mere—stone or balk—with which

he is not acquainted. Aged and truthful Chronicler!

—Enjoy thy plainness

It nothing ill becomes thee.—

Since the above was written the old man has been gathered to his

fathers. _Requiescat in pace!_]

The Doctor would have approved of Jacob Abbott's extension of his own

plan, and adaptation of it to a moral and religious purpose. Jacob

Abbott, without any view to the physical importance of such documents,

advises that domestic journals should be kept, “Let three or four of

the older brothers and sisters of a family agree to write a history of

the family, any father would procure a book for this purpose, and if

the writers are young, the articles intended for insertion in it might

be written first on separate paper, and then corrected and

transcribed. The subjects suitable to be recorded in such a book will

suggest themselves to every one; a description of the place of

residence at the time of commencing the book, with similar

descriptions of other places from time to time, in case of removals;

the journies or absences of the head of the family or its members; the

sad scenes of sickness or death which may be witnessed, and the joyous

ones of weddings, or festivities, or holydays; the manner in which the

members are from time to time employed; and pictures of the scenes

which the fire-side group exhibits in the long winter evening, or the

conversation which is heard, and the plans formed at the supper table

or in the morning walk.

“If a family, where it is first established, should commence with such

a record of their own efforts and plans, and the various dealings of

Providence towards them, the father and the mother carrying it on

jointly until the children are old enough to take the pen, they would

find the work a source of great improvement and pleasure. It would

tend to keep distinctly in view the great objects for which they ought

to live; and repeatedly recognizing, as they doubtless would do, the

hand of God, they would feel more sensibly and more constantly their

dependence upon him.”

CHAPTER CCXLI.

THE DOCTOR'S UTOPIA DENOMINATED COLUMBIA.—HIS SCHEME ENTERED UPON—BUT

‘LEFT HALF TOLD’ LIKE ‘THE STORY OF CAMBUSCAN BOLD.’

I will to satisfy and please myself, make an Utopia of mine own, a new

Atlantis, a poetical commonwealth of mine own, in which I will freely

domineer, build cities, make laws, statutes, as I list myself. And why

may I not?

BURTON.

The Doctor's plan would have provided materials for a moral and

physiological Cadastre, or Domesday Book. This indeed is the place for

stating what the reader, knowing as much as he knows of our

Philosopher, will not be surprised to hear, that Dr. Dove had

conceived an Utopia of his own. He fixed it an island, thinking the

sea to be the best of all neighbours, and he called it Columbia, not

as pretending that it had been discovered by his “famous namesake,”

but for a reason which the sagacious may divine.

The scheme of his government had undergone many changes, although from

the beginning it was established upon the eternal and immutable

principles of truth and justice. Every alteration was intended to be

final; yet it so happened that, notwithstanding the proposed

perpetuity of the structure, and the immutability of the materials, he

frequently found cause to exercise the imperscriptible and inalienable

right of altering and improving his own work. He justified this, as

being himself sole legislator, and moreover the only person in

existence whose acceptance of the new constitution was necessary for

its full establishment; and no just objection, he said, could be

advanced against any of these changes, if they were demonstrably for

the better, not merely innovations, but improvements also; for no

possible revolution however great, or however suddenly effected, could

occasion the slightest evil to his Commonwealth. Governments _in

nubibus_ being mended as easily as they are made, for which, as for

many other reasons, they are so much better than any that are now

actually existing, have existed, or ever will exist.

At first he denominated his Commonwealth an Iatrarchy, and made the

Archiatros, or Chief Physician, head of the state. But upon after

consideration he became convinced that the cares of general

government, after all the divisions and subdivisions which could be

made, were quite enough for any one head, however capacious and

however strong, and however ably assisted. Columbia therefore was made

an absolute monarchy, hereditary in the male line, according to the

Salic law.

How did he hold sweet dalliance with his crown,

And wanton with dominion, how lay down,

Without the sanction of a precedent,

Rules of most large and absolute extent,

Rules which from sense of public virtue spring,

And all at once commence a Patriot King![1]

O Simon Bolivar, once called the Liberator, if thou couldst have

followed the example of this less practical but more philosophical

statesman, and made and maintained thyself as absolute monarch of thy

Columbia, well had it been for thy Columbians and for thee! better

still for thyself, it may be feared, if thou hadst never been born.

[Footnote 1: CHURCHILL.]

There was an order of hereditary nobles in the Doctor's Columbia; men

were raised to that rank as a just reward for any signal service which

they had rendered to the state; but on the other hand an individual

might be degraded for any such course of conduct as evinced depravity

in himself, or was considered as bringing disgrace upon his order. The

chiefs of the Hierarchy, the Iatrarchy, the Nomarchy and the Hoplarchy

(under which title both sciences, naval and military, were comprised)

were like our Bishops, Peers of the realm by virtue of their station,

and for life only.

I do not remember what was the scheme of representation upon which his

House of Commons was elected, farther than it commenced with universal

suffrage and ascended through several stages, the lowest assembly

chusing electors for the next above it, so that the choice ultimately

rested with those who from their education and station of life might

be presumed to exercise it with due discretion. Such schemes are

easily drawn up; making and mending constitutions, to the entire

satisfaction of the person so employed, being in truth among the

easiest things in the world. But like most Utopianizers the legislator

of this Columbia had placed his Absolute King and his free People

under such strict laws, and given such functions to the local

authorities, and established such complete and precise order in every

tything, that the duties of the legislative body were easy indeed;

this its very name imported; for he called it the Conservative

Assembly.

Nor is Crown-wisdom any quintessence

Of abstract truth, or art of Government,

More than sweet sympathy, or counterpease

Of humours, temper'd happily to please.[2]

[Footnote 2: LORD BROOKE.]

The legislator of Columbia considered good policy as a very simple

thing. He said to his King, his Three Estates and his collective

nation, with the inspired lawgiver “and now Israel what doth the Lord

thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all

his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy

heart and with all thy soul: to keep the commandments of the Lord and

his statutes, which I command thee, this day, for thy good?” And he

added with St. Paul, “now the end of the commandment is charity, out

of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.”

Take care of the pennies, says the frugal old Proverb, and the pounds

will take care of themselves. “_Les petites choses_,” says M. de

Custine, _sont tout ce qu'on_ sent _de l'existence; les grandes se_

savent, _ce qui est très-différent._ Take care of little things, was

the Doctor's maxim as a legislator, and great ones will then proceed

regularly and well. He was not ignorant that legislators as well as

individuals might be penny-wise and pound foolish; proofs enough he

had seen in the conduct of the English Government, and many more and

more glaring ones he would have seen if he had lived to behold the

progress of œconomical reform and liberal legislation. He also knew

that an over-attention to trifles was one sure indication of a little

mind; but in legislation as in experimental philosophy, he argued,

that circumstances which appeared trifling to the ignorant, were

sometimes in reality of essential importance, that those things are

not trifles upon which the comfort of domestic life, the peace of a

neighbourhood, and the stability of a state depend, and yet all these

depend mainly upon things apparently so trifling as common schools and

parochial government.

“I have ever observed it,” says Ben Jonson, “to have been the office

of a wise patriot, among the greatest affairs of the state, to take

care of the commonwealth of learning. For schools they are the

seminaries of state; and nothing is worthier the study of a statesman,

than that part of the republic which we call the advancement of

letters.”

CHAPTER CCXLII.

FARTHER REMARKS UPON THE EFFECTS OF SCHISM, AND THE ADVANTAGES WHICH

IT AFFORDS TO THE ROMISH CHURCH AND TO INFIDELITY.

—_Io non ci ho interresso

Nessun, nè vi fui mai, ne manco chieggo

Per quel ch'io ne vò dir, d'esservi messo.

Vò dir, che senza passion eleggo,

E non forzato, e senza pigliar parte;

Di dirne tutto quel, ch'intendo e veggo._

BRONZINO PITTORE.

One cause why infidelity gained ground among the middle and the lower

classes was, that owing to the increase of population, the growth of

the metropolis, and the defects of our Church Establishment, no

provision had been made for their religious instruction. Every one

belonged to a parish, but in populous parishes a small part only of

the parishioners belonged to the Clergyman's flock; his fold in very

many places would not have contained half, and in some, not a tenth of

them; they were left therefore as stray sheep, for false shepherds and

for the wolf. This was the main cause of the increase of dissenters

among us, and their increase occasioned an increase of infidelity.

Many of their ministers and more of their students, revolting against

the monstrous doctrines of Calvinism, past from one extreme to the

other, more gradually indeed than their brethren have done in Germany,

in Geneva and in New England, for they halted awhile on Arian ground,

before they pitched their tents in the debateable land of Socinianism,

where not a few of them afterwards crossed the border. The principle

of Nonconformity itself led naturally to this consequence; it

scornfully rejected that reasonable and well-defined submission to

authority required by the Church of England, which is the true

Catholic Church; and thus it encouraged and indeed invited tutors and

pupils at their Academies to make their own immature and

ill-instructed reason the test of all truths. A good and wise man has

well remarked that “what men take for, or at least assert to be, the

dictates of their conscience, may often in fact, be only the dictates

of their pride.” With equal truth also he has said that he who

“decides for himself in rejecting what almost all others receive, has

not shewn himself at least in one instance to be a ‘wise man;’—he does

not ‘know that he is a fool.’”

This cause was continually operating upon their students and younger

ministers during the latter half of the last century. It was suspended

first by the missionary spirit, which called forth a high degree of

enthusiasm, and gave that feeling its most useful direction, and

secondly by the revival of political Puritanism, as soon as the

successors of the Parliamentary Divines thought themselves strong

enough to act as a party in the state, and declare war against the

Establishment. But as in that time, so in a greater degree at present,

the floating population who by no fault of their own are

extra-parochial as to all purposes of church-worship and religious

instruction, are as much endangered by facility of change, as the

students used to be by their boasted liberty of choice. Sectarian

history might supply numerous examples; one may be related here for

the extraordinary way in which it terminated. I know not from what

community of Christians the hero of the tale strayed over to the

Methodists, but he enjoyed for awhile the dream of perfection, and the

privilege of assurance as one of their members. When this excitement

had spent itself, he sought for quietness among the Quakers, _thee'd_

his neighbour, wore drab, and would not have pulled off his hat to the

king. After awhile, from considering, with them, that baptism was a

beggarly element, he passed to the opposite extreme; it was not enough

for him to have been sprinkled in his infancy, he must be dipt over

head and ears in the water, and up he rose, rejoicing as he shook his

dripping locks, that he was now a Baptist. His zeal then took another

direction; he had a strong desire to convert the lost sheep of Israel;

and off he set from a remote part of the country to engage in single

controversy with a learned Rabbi in one of the Midland counties. Tell

it not in Duke's-Place! Publish it not in the Magazine of the Society

for converting the Jews!—The Rabbi converted him: and if the victor in

the dispute had thought proper to take the _spolia opima_ which were

fairly lost, the vanquished would have paid the penalty, as he

conceived himself in honour and in conscience bound. He returned home

glorying in his defeat, a Jew in every thing but parentage and the

outward and visible sign. The sons of the synagogue are not ambitious

of making converts, and they did not chuse to adopt him by performing

the initiating rites. He obtained it however from a Christian surgeon,

who after many refusals, was induced at length in humanity to oblige

him, lest, as he solemnly declared he would, he should perform it upon

himself.

They who begin in enthusiasm, passing in its heat and giddiness from

one sect to another, and cooling at every transition, generally settle

in formalism where they find some substantial worldly motives for

becoming fixed; but where the worldly motives are wanting, it depends

upon temperament and accident whether they run headlong into

infidelity, or take refuge from it in the Roman Catholic church. The

papal clergy in England have always known how to fish in troubled

waters; and when the waters are still, there are few among them who

have not been well instructed in the art of catching gudgeons. Our

clergy have never been in the same sense, fishers of men.

In an epigram written under the portrait of Gibbon, as unquotable at

length, as it is unjust in part of the lines which may be quoted, the

face is said to be

—the likeness of one

Who through every religion in Europe has run

And ended at last in believing in none.

It was a base epigram which traduced the historian's political

character for no other reason than that he was not a Whig; and it

reproached him for that part of his conduct which was truly

honourable,—the sincerity with which, when ill-instructed, he became a

Roman Catholic, and the propriety with which, after full and patient

investigation, he gave up the tenets of the Romish church as

untenable. That he proceeded farther, and yielded that which can be

maintained against the Gates of Hell, is to be lamented deeply for his

own sake, and for those in whom he has sown the seeds of infidelity.

But the process from change to change is a common one, and the cases

are few wherein there is so much to extenuate the culpability of the

individual. It was not in the self-sufficiency of empty ignorance that

Gibbon and Bayle went astray; generally the danger is in proportion to

the want of knowledge; there are more shipwrecks among the shallows

than in the deep sea.

During the great Rebellion, when the wild beasts had trampled down the

fences, broken into the vineyard and laid it waste, it is curious to

observe the course taken by men who felt for various causes, according

to their different characters, the necessity of attaching themselves

to some religious communion. Cottington, being in Spain, found it

convenient to be reconciled to the Romish church; the dominant

religion being to him, as a politician, the best. Weak and plodding

men like Father Cressey took the same turn in dull sincerity: Davenant

because he could not bear the misery of a state of doubt, and was glad

to rest his head upon the pillow of authority; Goring from remorse;

Digby (a little later) from ambition, and Lambert, because he was sick

of the freaks and follies of the sectaries.

Their “opinions and contests,” says Sir Philip Warwick, “flung all

into chaos, and this gave the great advantages to the Romanists, who

want not their differences among themselves, but better manage them;

for they having retained a great part of primitive truths, and having

to plead some antiquity for their many doctrinal errors and their

ambitious and lucrative encroachments, and having the policy of

flinging coloquintida into our pot, by our dissentions and follies,

they have with the motion of the circle of the wheel, brought

themselves who were at the Nadir, to be almost at the Zenith of our

globe.”

In no other age (except in our own and now from a totally different

cause) did the Papists increase their numbers so greatly in this

kingdom. And infidelity in all its grades kept pace with popery. “Look

but upon many of our Gentry,” says Sanderson, (writing under the

Commonwealth,) “what they are already grown to from what they were,

within the compass of a few years: and then _ex pede Herculem_; by

that, guess what a few years more may do. Do we not see some, and

those not a few, that have strong natural parts, but little sense of

religion turned (little better than professed) Atheists. And other

some, nor those a few, that have good affections, but weak and

unsettled judgements, or (which is still but the same weakness) an

overweening opinion of their own understandings, either quite turned,

or upon the point of turning Papists? These be sad things, God

knoweth, and we all know, not visibly imputable to any thing so much,

as to those distractions, confusions and uncertainties that in point

of religion have broken in upon us, since the late changes that have

happened among us in church affairs.”

The Revolution by which the civil and religious liberties of the

British nation were, at great cost, preserved, stopt the growth of

popery among us for nearly an hundred years: but infidelity meanwhile

was little impeded in its progress by the occasional condemnation of a

worthless book; and the excellent works which were written to expose

the sophistry, the ignorance, and the misrepresentations of the

infidel authors seldom found readers among the persons to whom they

might have been most useful. It may be questioned whether any of

Jeremy Bentham's misbelieving disciples has ever read Berkeley's

Minute Philosopher, or the kindred work of Skelton which a London

bookseller published upon Hume's _imprimatur_.

CHAPTER CCXLIII.

BREVITY BEING THE SOUL OF WIT THE AUTHOR STUDIES CONCISENESS.

You need not fear a surfeit, here is but little, and that light of

digestion.

QUARLES.

Who was Pompey?

“The Dog will have his day,” says Shakespeare. And the Dog must have

his Chapter say I. But I will defer writing that Chapter till the

Dog-days.

CHAPTER CCXLIV.

THE AUTHOR VENTURES TO SPEAK A WORD ON CHRISTIAN CHEERFULNESS:—QUOTES

BEN SIRACH,—SOLOMON,—BISHOP HACKET,—WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR,—BISHOP

REYNOLDS,—MILTON,—&C.

--_Ἀλλὰ σὺ ταῦτα μαθὼν, βιότου ποτί τέρμα

ψυχῇ τῶν ἀγαθῶν τλῆθι χαριζόμενος._

SIMONIDES.

In the thirtieth chapter of the Book called Ecclesiasticus, and at the

twenty-fifth verse, are these words

“A cheerful and a good heart will have a care of his meat and diet.”

This is not the text to a sermon, but the beginning of a Chapter.

There is no reason why a Chapter as well as a sermon, should not be

thus impressively introduced: and if this Chapter should neither be so

long as a sermon, nor so dull as those discourses which perchance and

(I fear) per-likelihood, it may be thy fortune to hear, O Reader, at

thy parish church, or in phrase nonconformist, to sit under at the

conventicle, it will be well for thee: for having began to read it, I

dare say thou wilt peruse it orally, or ocularly to the end.

A cheerful and a good heart, the Doctor had; aye as cheerful and good

a one as ever man was blest with. He held with Bishop Hacket, that

melancholy was of all humours the fittest to make a bath for the

Devil, and that cheerfulness and innocent pleasure preserve the mind

from rust, and the body from putrifying with dulness and distempers;

wherefore that Bishop of good and merry memory would sometimes say, he

did not like to look upon a sour man at dinner, and if his guests were

pleased within, would bid them hang out the white flag in their

countenance.

_Udite, udite amici, un cor giocondo

E Rey del Mondo._

And if the poet says true (which I will be sworn he does) our Doctor

might be more truly King of the World, than Kehama after he had

performed his sacrifice.

His cheerfulness he would not have exchanged for all the bank-bills

which ever bore the signature of Abraham Newland, or his successor

Henry Hase; he thanked his Maker for it; and that it had been kept

from corruption and made so far good as (with all Christian humility)

to be self approved; he thanked his heavenly Father also for the free

grace vouchsafed him, and his earthly one for having trained him in

the way that he should go.

Cheerful and grateful takers the Gods love

And such as wait their pleasures with full hopes;

The doubtful and distrustful man Heaven frowns at.[1]

[Footnote 1: BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.]

Being thus cheerful and good, he had that care of his meat and diet

which the son of Sirach commends in the text, and notices as an

indication of cheerfulness and goodness.

Understand me, Reader: and understand the author of the Wisdom. It was

not such a care of his meat and diet as Apicius has been infamed for

in ancient, and Darteneuf in modern times; not such as Lucullus was

noted for, or Sir William Curtis, with whom Lucullus had he been an

English East Indian Governor, instead of a Roman Prætor, might have

been well pleased to dine. Read Landor's conversation between Lucullus

and Cæsar, if thou art a scholar Reader, and if any thing can make

thee think with respect and admiration of Lucullus, it will be the

beautiful strain of feeling and philosophy that thou wilt find there.

Wouldst thou see another work of first-rate genius, not less masterly

in its kind, go and see Chantrey's bust of Sir William Curtis: and

when thou shalt have seen what he hath made of that countenance, thou

wilt begin to think it not impossible that a silk purse may be made of

a sow's ear. Shame on me that in speaking of those who have gained

glory by giving good dinners, I should have omitted the name of

Michael Angelo Taylor, he having been made immortal for this his great

and singular merit!

Long before the son of Sirach, Solomon had spoken to the same effect:

“there is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink,

and that he should make his soul enjoy good in its labour. This also I

saw that it was from the hand of God.” “Go thy way said the wisest of

monarchs and of men, in his old age, when he took a more serious view

of his past life; the honours, pleasures, wealth, wisdom he had so

abundantly enjoyed; the errors and miscarriages which he had fallen

into; the large experience and many observations he had made, of

things natural, moral, domestical: civil, sensual, divine: the curious

and critical inquiry he had made after true happiness, and what

contribution all things under the sun could afford thereunto:”—“Go thy

way,” he said, “eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a

merry heart!”

“Inasmuch,” says Bishop Reynolds in his commentary upon this passage,

“as the dead neither know, nor enjoy any of these worldly blessings;

and inasmuch as God gives them to his servants in love, and as

comfortable refreshments unto them in the days of their vanity,

therefore he exhorteth unto a cheerful fruition of them, while we have

time and liberty so to do; that so the many other sorrows and

bitterness which they shall meet with in this life, may be mitigated

and sweetened unto them. He speaketh not of sensual, epicurean and

brutish excess; but of an honest, decent, and cheerful enjoyment of

blessings, with thankfulness, and in the fear of God.” “A _merry_

heart” the Bishop tells us might in this text have been rendered a

_good_ one; as in other parts of scripture a _sad_ heart is called an

_evil_ heart. “It is pleasing unto God,” says the Bishop, “that when

thou hast in the fear of his name, and in obedience to his ordinance,

laboured, and by his blessing gotten thee thine appointed portion,

then thou shouldst, after an honest, cheerful, decent and liberal

manner, without further anxiety or solicitousness, enjoy the same.

This is the principal boundary of our outward pleasures and delights,

still to keep ourselves within such rules of piety and moderation, as

that our ways may be pleasing unto God. And this shows us the true way

to find sweetness in the creature, and to feel joy in the fruition

thereof; namely, when our persons and our ways are pleasing unto God:

for piety doth not exclude, but only moderate earthly delights; and so

moderate them, that though they be not so excessive as the luxurious

and sensual pleasures of foolish epicures, yet they are far more pure,

sweet and satisfactory, as having no guilt, no gall, no curse, nor

inward sorrow and terrors attending on them.”

Farther the Bishop observes, that food and raiment being the

substantiall of outward blessings, Solomon has directed unto

cheerfulness in the one, and unto decency and comeliness in the other.

He hath advised us also to let the head lack no ointment, such

perfumes being an expression of joy used in feasts; “the meaning is,”

says the Bishop, “that we should lead our lives with as much freeness,

cheerfulness and sweet delight, in the liberal use of the good

blessings of God, as the quality of our degree, the decency of our

condition, and the rules of religious wisdom, and the fear of God do

allow us; not sordidly or frowardly denying ourselves the benefit of

those good things which the bounty of God hath bestowed upon us.”

It is the etiquette of the Chinese Court for the Emperor's physicians

to apply the same epithet to his disease as to himself—so they talk of

his most high and mighty diarrhœa.

At such a point of etiquette the Doctor would laugh—but he was all

earnestness when one like Bishop Hacket said, “Do not disgrace the

dignity of a Preacher, when every petty vain occasion doth challenge

the honour of a sermon before it. If ever there were _τὸ δέον οὐκ ἐν

τῶ δεόντι_,—a good work marred for being done unreasonably,”—(in the

Doctor's own words, _Grace before a sluttish meal, a dirty table

cloth_)—“now it is when grace before meat will not serve the turn, but

every luxurious feast must have the benediction of a preacher's pains

before it. _Quis te ferat cœnantem ut Lucullus, concionantem ut Cato?_

Much less is it to be endured, that some body must make a sermon,

before Lucullus hath made a supper. It is such a flout upon our

calling methinks, as the Chaldeans put upon the Jews in their

captivity,—they in the height of their jollity must have _one of the

Songs of Sion_.”

The Doctor agreed in the main with Lord Chesterfield in his opinion

upon political dieteticks.

“The Egyptians who were a wise nation,” says that noble author,

“thought so much depended upon diet, that they dieted their kings, and

prescribed by law both the quality and quantity of their food. It is

much to be lamented, that those bills of fare are not preserved to

this time, since they might have been of singular use in all

monarchical governments. But it is reasonably to be conjectured, from

the wisdom of that people, that they allowed their kings no aliments

of a bilious or a choleric nature, and only such as sweetened their

juices, cooled their blood, and enlivened their faculties,—if they had

any.”

He then shews that what was deemed necessary for an Egyptian King is

not less so for a British Parliament. For, “suppose,” he says, “a

number of persons, not over-lively at best, should meet of an evening

to concert and deliberate upon public measures of the utmost

consequence, grunting under the load and repletion of the strongest

meats, panting almost in vain for breath, but quite in vain for

thought, and reminded only of their existence by the unsavoury returns

of an olio; what good could be expected from such a consultation? The

best one could hope for would be, that they were only assembled for

shew, and not for use; not to propose or advise, but silently to

submit to the orders of some one man there, who, feeding like a

rational creature, might have the use of his understanding.

“I would therefore recommend it to the consideration of the

legislature, whether it may not be necessary to pass an act, to

restrain the licentiousness of eating, and assign certain diets to

certain ranks and stations, I would humbly suggest the strict

vegetable as the properest ministerial diet, being exceedingly tender

of those faculties in which the public is so highly interested, and

very unwilling they should be clogged, or incumbered.”

“The Earl of Carlisle,” says Osborne, in his Traditional Memorials,

“brought in the vanity of ante-suppers, not heard of in our

forefathers' time, and for ought I have read, or at least remember,

unpractised by the most luxurious tyrants. The manner of which was, to

have the board covered at the first entrance of the guests, with

dishes, as high as a tall man could well reach, filled with the

choicest viands sea or land could afford: and all this once seen, and

having feasted the eyes of the invited, was in a manner thrown away,

and fresh set on to the same height, having only this advantage of the

other, that it was hot.

“I cannot forget one of the attendants of the King, that at a feast

made by this monster in excess, eats to his single share a whole pye,

reckoned to my Lord at ten pounds, being composed of ambergreece,

magisteriall of pearl, musk, &c., yet was so far, (as he told me) from

being sweet in the morning, that he almost poisoned his whole family,

flying himself, like the Satyr, from his own stink. And after such

suppers huge banquets no less profuse, a waiter returning his servant

home with a cloak-bag full of dried sweetmeats and confects, valued to

his Lordship at more than ten shillings the pound.”

But, gentle and much esteemed Reader, and therefore esteemed because

gentle, instead of surfeiting thy body, let me recreate thy mind, with

the annexed two Sonnets of Milton, which tell of innocent mirth, and

the festive but moderate enjoyment of the rational creature.

TO MR. LAWRENCE.

LAWRENCE, of virtuous father virtuous son,

Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire,

Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire

Help waste a sullen day, what may be won

From the hard season, gaining? time will run

On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire

The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire

The lily and rose, that neither sow'd nor spun.

What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,

Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise

To hear the lute well touch'd, or artful voice

Warble immortal notes of Tuscan air?

_He who of these delights can judge, and spare

To interpose them oft, is not unwise._

TO SYRIAC SKINNER.

CYRIAC, whose grandsire on the royal bench

Of British Themis, with no mean applause

Pronounc'd, and in his volumes taught our laws,

Which others at their bar so often wrench;

To day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench

_In mirth, that after no repenting draws:_

Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause,

And what the Swede intends, and what the French.

To measure life learn thou betimes, and know

Toward solid good what leads the nearest way;

For other things mild Heav'n a time ordains,

_And disapproves that care, though wise in show,

That with superfluous burden loads the day

And when God sends a cheerful hour refrains._

_Thou canst cure the body and the mind,

Rare Doctor, with thy two-fold soundest art;

Hippocrates hath taught thee the one kind,

Apollo and the Muse the other part;

And both so well that thou well both dost please,

The mind with pleasure, and the corpse with ease._

DAVIES OF HEREFORD.

FRAGMENTS TO THE DOCTOR.

A LOVE FRAGMENT FOR THE LADIES,—INTRODUCED BY A CURIOUS INCIDENT WHICH

THE AUTHOR BEGS THEY WILL EXCUSE.

Now will ye list a little space,

And I shall send you to solace;

You to solace and be blyth,

Hearken! ye shall hear belyve

A tale that is of verity.

ROSWALL AND LILLIAN.

A story was told me with an assurance that it was literally true, of a

Gentleman who being in want of a wife, advertised for one, and at the

place and time appointed was met by a Lady. Their stations in life

entitled them to be so called, and the Gentleman as well as the Lady

was in earnest. He however unluckily seemed to be of the same opinion

as King Pedro was with regard to his wife Queen Mary of Aragon, that

she was not so handsome as she might be good, so the meeting ended in

their mutual disappointment. Cœlebs advertised a second time,

appointing a different Square for the place of meeting, and varying

the words of the advertisement. He met the same Lady,—they recognized

each other, could not chuse but smile at the recognition, and perhaps

neither of them could chuse but sigh. You will anticipate the event.

The persevering Batchelor tried his lot a third time in the

newspapers, and at the third place of appointment he met the equally

persevering Spinster. At this meeting neither could help laughing.

They began to converse in good humour, and the conversation became so

agreeable on both sides, and the circumstance appeared so remarkable,

that this third interview led to a marriage, and the marriage proved a

happy one.

When Don Argentes Prince of Galdasse had been entrapped into the hands

of a revengeful woman whose husband he had slain in fair combat, he

said to two handsome widows who were charged every day to punish him

with stripes, _que par raison là on se se voit une grande beauté n'a

pas lieu la cruauté ou autre vice_—and the Chronicler of this

generation of the house of Amadis, observes that this assertion _fut

bien verifié en ces deux jeunes veufues douées de grande beauté,

lesquelles considerans la beauté et disposition de ce jeune chevalier

et la vertu de sa personne, presterent l'oreille aux raisons qu'il

alleguoit pour son excuse, et aux louanges qu'il leur donnoit de rare

et singuliere beauté, de maniere qu'elles eurent pitié de luy._

“I can hardly forbear fancying,” says Lord Shaftesbury, “that if we

had a sort of Inquisition, or formal Court of Judicature, with grave

Officers and Judges, erected to restrain poetical licence, and in

general to suppress that fancy and humour of versification, but in

particular that most extravagant passion of Love, as it is set out by

Poets, in its heathenish dress of Venus's and Cupids; if the Poets, as

ringleaders and teachers of this heresy, were under grievous penalties

forbid to enchant the people by their vein of rhyming; and if the

People, on the other side, were under proportionable penalties, forbid

to hearken to any such charm, or lend their attention to any

love-tale, so much as in a play, a novel, or a ballad; we might

perhaps see a new Arcadia arising out of this heavy persecution. Old

people and young would be seized with a versifying spirit; we should

have field conventicles of Lovers and Poets; forests would be filled

with romantic Shepherds and Shepherdesses; and rocks resound with

echoes of hymns and praises offered to the powers of Love. We might

indeed have a fair chance, by this management, to bring back the whole

train of Heathen Gods, and set our cold Northern Island burning with

as many altars to Venus and Apollo, as were formerly in Cyprus, Delos,

or any of those warmer Grecian climates.”

But I promised you, dear Ladies, more upon that subject which of all

subjects is and ought to be the most interesting to you, because it is

the most important. You have not forgotten that promise, and the time

has now come for fulfilling it.

Venus, unto thee for help, good Lady, I do call,

For thou wert wont to grant request unto thy servants all;

Even as thou didst help always Æneas thine own child,

Appeasing the God Jupiter with countenance so mild

That though that Juno to torment him on Jupiter did preace,

Yet for the love he bare to thee, did cause the winds to cease;

I pray thee pray the Muses all to help my memory,

That I may have ensamples good in defence of feminye.[1]

Something has been said upon various ways which lead to love and

matrimony; but what I have to say concerning imaginative love was

deferred till we should arrive at the proper place for entering upon

it.

[Footnote 1: EDWARD MORE.]

More or less, imagination enters into all loves and friendships,

except those which have grown with our growth, and which therefore are

likely to be the happiest because there can be no delusion in them.

Cases of this kind would not be so frequent in old romances, if they

did not occur more frequently in real life than unimaginative persons

could be induced to believe, or made to understand.

Sir John Sinclair has related a remarkable instance in his

Reminiscences. He was once invited by Adam Smith to meet Burke and Mr.

Windham, who had arrived at Edinburgh with the intention of making a

short tour in the Highlands. Sir John was consulted concerning their

route; in the course of his directions he dwelt on the beauty of the

road between Dunkeld and Blair;—and added, that instead of being

cooped up in a post-chaise, they would do well to get out and walk

through the woods and beautiful scenes through which the road passes,

especially some miles beyond Dunkeld.

Some three years afterwards Mr. Windham came up to Sir John in the

House of Commons and requested to speak to him for a few moments

behind the Speaker's chair. “Do you recollect,” said he, “our meeting

together at Adam Smith's at dinner?” “Most certainly I do.”

“Do you remember having given us directions for our Highland tour, and

more especially to stroll through the woods between Dunkeld and

Blair?” “I do.”

Mr. Windham then said, “In consequence of our adopting that advice, an

event took place of which I must now inform you. Burke and I were

strolling through the woods about ten miles from Dunkeld, when we saw

a young female sitting under a tree, with a book in her hand. Burke

immediately exclaimed, ‘Let us have a little conversation with this

solitary damsel, and see what she is about.’ We accosted her

accordingly and found that she was reading a recent novel from the

London press. We asked her how she came to read novels, and how she

got such books at so great a distance from the metropolis, and more

especially one so recently published. She answered that she had been

educated at a boarding-school at Perth, where novels might be had from

the circulating library, and that she still procured them through the

same channel. We carried on the conversation for some time, in the

course of which she displayed a great deal of smartness and talent;

and at last we were obliged, very reluctantly, to leave her, and

proceed on our journey. We afterwards found that she was the daughter

of a proprietor of that neighbourhood who was known under the name of

the Baron Maclaren. I have never been able,” continued Mr. Windham,

“to get this beautiful mountain nymph out of my head; and I wish you

to ascertain whether she is married or single.” And he begged Sir John

Sinclair to clear up this point as soon as possible, for much of his

future happiness depended upon the result of the inquiry.

If not the most important communication that ever took place behind

the Speaker's chair, this was probably the most curious one. Sir John

lost no time in making the desired inquiry. He wrote to a most

respectable clergyman in the neighbourhood where Miss Maclaren lived,

the Rev. Dr. Stewart, minister of Moulin; and was informed in reply,

that she was married to a medical gentleman in the East Indies of the

name of Dick. “Upon communicating this to Mr. Windham,” says Sir John,

“he seemed very much agitated. He was soon afterwards married to the

daughter of a half-pay officer. I have no doubt, however, that had

Miss Maclaren continued single, he would have paid her his addresses.”