A publisher who pays much regard to usefulness and economy in reprints has
put forth _Buchan's Domestic Medicine_ for something less than a crown,
with a supplementary "Cholera Morbus, its history, symptoms, mode of
treatment, antidotes,&c." By the way, we have often thought Buchan's book
like the Dead Sea: you cannot fall into the latter without some of its
water incrusting on you, and you cannot read Buchan without feeling an
ache. Its popularity is founded upon the hackneyed adage "the knowledge of
a disease is half its cure." People will pore over its sea of calamities
till they almost fall into the fire, or get scalded with the water from a
kettle, and then turn to the Index, Scalds, page 326: perhaps this is a
good plan to test the practical value of a book, as the surgeon scalded
two fingers and plunged one into turpentine and the other into spirits of
wine to test their respective services in case of a scald.
Here too we may notice a cheap _Companion to the Family Medicine Chest,_
with an alphabetical arrangement of Medicines, their properties, and plain
rules for taking them; with the Cholera, of course, as a rider, and
cautions respecting suspended animation and poisons. The little
shillingsworth is in its fifteenth edition, so that many thousand persons
must have taken many million doses by its prescription, and in some cases
become their own medicine chests, with this book as their companion.
* * * * *
HERBERT'S COUNTRY PARSON, &c.
Readers who delight to slake their thirst for knowledge from the deep and
pure wells of our olden literature will rejoice to hear of a cheap and
elegant reprint of this beautiful little book. Perchance some book-buyer
need be told that the above is a book to live by--an invaluable legacy of
a parish priest to his brethren and the world. The author George Herbert,
was born in 1593, near Montgomery, in the castle that had been
successively happy in the Herberts, as Isaak Walton observes, "a family
that hath been blest with men of remarkable wisdom." Herbert was educated
at Cambridge, where he obtained the friendship of "the great secretary of
nature and all learning, Sir Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam," who consulted
Herbert "before he would expose any of his books to be printed, and
dedicated a version of the Psalms to him as the best judge of divine
poetry." Herbert was patronized by James I. who, for an elegant Latin
oration, gave him a sinecure of 120_l_. a-year, for in those days the only
Royal Society of Literature was in the palace; it is now among subjects,
and too little in the Court. Upon the death of James, Herbert's Court
hopes died also, and he betook himself to a retreat from London. In this
retirement, "he had many conflicts with himself, whether he should return
to the painted pleasures of court life or betake himself to the study of
divinity, and enter into sacred orders." He chose the latter. He married
well. In 1630 he was inducted into the parsonage of Bemerton, a mile from
Salisbury; the third day after which, he said to his wife, "You are now a
minister's wife, and must now so far forget your father's house, as not to
claim a precedence of any one of your parishioners; for you are to know
that a priest's wife can challenge no precedence or place, but that which
she purchases by her obliging humility; and I am sure, places so purchased
do best become them. And let me tell you, that I am so good a herald, as
to assure you that this is truth." These rules his meek wife observed with
cheerful willingness. Herbert now set about his "Priest to the Temple: or
the Country Parson, his character, and rule of Holy Life." Unlike many
doctrinists, he practised his own rules: he was a self-example of his own
precepts, and his book was the rule of his own life; or, as Walton more
beautifully explains it "his behaviour towards God and man may be said to
be a practical comment on the holy rules set down in that useful book."
Thus, he sets forth the Diversities of a Pastor's life: the Parson's life,
knowledge, praying, preaching, Sundays, house, courtesy, charity, church,
comfort, eye, mirth, &c.; his prayers before and after Sermon, with a few
poetical pieces of quaint but touching sweetness. His poetry has been
censured for its point and antithesis; but he cultivated the poetical art
to convey moral and devotional sentiments; others excel him in smoothness
of versification, but not in benevolent purpose. Herbert though himself a
pattern of humility, was younger brother of the celebrated Lord Herbert of
Cherbury, whom Horace Walpole abuses for his beauty and gallant bearing,
tinctured it must be allowed, with affected notions of high birth. But the
gay philosopher of Cherbury lived in the last days of chivalry, and had
their light but gleamed upon Walpole, he would, in all probability, have
borne the very qualities which he so loudly censures in Herbert. The
pastor Herbert's wife was nearly related to Lord Danby, so that the
caution which we have quoted was perhaps requisite. As Herbert sank his
own high birth, it was but fit that his wife should forget hers also.
* * * * *