Sir Humphry Davy lived from 1778 to 1829. Coleridge said of him, "Had not
Davy been the first chemist, he probably would have been the first poet of
the age." He made some important chemical discoveries, overworked his body
and brain, and took the pen "to amuse" and recreate himself, but too late,
telling us of "the pleasures and advantages of fishing," etc.
The following verses are from the poem of Dr. David Macbeth Moir, on the
death of his darling little boy, who died at the age of five years:--
"Gem of our hearth, our household pride,
Earth's undefiled,
Could love have saved, thou hadst not died,
Our dear, sweet child!
Humbly we bow to Fate's decree;
Yet had we hoped that time should see
Thee mourn for us, not us for thee,
Casa Wappy![9]
"The nursery shows thy pictured wall,
Thy bat, thy bow,
Thy cloak, thy bonnet, club, and ball;
But where art thou?
A corner holds thine empty chair;
Thy playthings, idly scattered there,
But speak to us of our despair,
Casa Wappy!
"Yet 'tis a sweet balm to our despair,
Fond, fairest boy,
That heaven is God's, and thou art there,
With him in joy!
There past are death and all its woes,
There beauty's stream forever flows,
And pleasure's day no sunset knows,
Casa Wappy!"
"The sole purpose of poetry," says the author of the above beautiful poem,
"is to delight and instruct; and no one can be either pleased or profited
by what is unintelligible. Mysticism in law is quibbling; mysticism in
religion is the jugglery of priestcraft; mysticism in medicine is
quackery; and these often serve their crooked purposes well. But mysticism
in poetry can have no attainable triumph." Again he says,--
"The finest poetry is that which is most patent to the general
understanding, and hence to the approval or disapproval of the common
sense of mankind."
Dr. Moir enriched the pages of Blackwood's Magazine for thirty years with
his beautiful poems, and occasional prose, which, according to Professor
Wilson, "breathed the simplest and purest pathos." He practised medicine
and surgery in his native village, six miles from Edinburgh, till the day
of his death, which occurred in consequence of a wound caused by the
upsetting of his carriage.
I find four physicians by the name of Abercromby, who were excellent
physicians, and authors of no little note. One, Patrick, a Scotchman, and
physician to James II., had a library second to few physicians of his
day. Lancisi, an Italian physician who lived at the same time, possessed a
splendid library consisting of thirty thousand volumes. He discovered a
set of lost plates of Eustachius, from which he published tables. Lancisi
was physician to several popes, and was a master of polite literature, and
an author of great distinction.