Frank. In my pocket. Bronze. That's lucky! give it me. Frank. Gi' it thee! Ees, dom thee, come out, and I'll gi' it thee (clenching his fist). • Vortex. Begone! Frank. Gentlemen, I wish you both a good morning.-Exit." Art. 30. Epitre à mon Pere, par le Chevalier T. I. D'Ordre. 8vo. pp. 15. Chelsea, No. 28, Robinson's-lane. 1797. The author of this little poem, which was written on the recovery of his father from the small-pox, was induced to publish it by the encouragement of his subscribers, and by the assistance given to it by an English translation of considerable merit, executed by the Rev. Weeden Butler, M. A. The lines are easy, and the sentiments contained in them do great credit to the writer's sensibility. The following extract may be acceptable to many readers, as it exhibits, in elegant and warm expressions, the filial piety and the innocent passions of this youthful bard: • Pour plaire et pour fixer Lise a tout enpartage. Elle est jeune; elle est belle; elle est bonne; elle est sage. On ne peut la connoître aussi sans l'estimer. Art. 31. An Essay on Man. By Alexander Pope, Esq. A new Edition. To which is prefixed A Critical Essay, by J. Aikin, M. D. small 8vo. 6s. Boards. Cadell jun. and Davies. 1796. In selecting a work from Mr. Pope, for the purpose of making a new edition with pictorial accompaniments, we may be allowed to wonder that the choice had not rather fallen on the Rape of the Lock, than on the Essay on Man; yet we are better pleased that Dr. Aikin should take the latter instead of the former as the subject of an essay. Combining in himself the two characters of a philosopher and a man of taste, he was peculiarly well qualified for a critical examination of the Essay on Man ;" and something was surely wanting to occupy the place of Dr. Warburton's glosses on it; for, as Dr. A. observes, so much is the sense of the poet strained and warped by these processes of his commentator, that it is scarcely possible in many places to enter into his real meaning, without laying aside the commentator, and letting the text speak for itself.' " After a neat analysis of Mr. Pope's Essay, pointing out its beauties and defects, Dr. A. thus sums up the result: The reader will probably find himself at a loss to deduce that exquisite chain of argumentation, that lucid method, which are with so much much evident labour attempted to be traced out by the Right Rev. Commentator. He will rather discern a writer, made a systembuilder by accident, but a poet by nature, taking up a grand and copious topic, well adapted in parts for the display of his genius, but as a whole belonging to a very different class of composers. He will see him exhibiting a great variety of powers according to the exigencics of his subject; sometimes close, concise, nervous, and sententious; sometimes copious, 'expansive, and brilliant ;-now enchanting by elegance and beauty, now commanding by dignity and sublimity. The work itself he will probably esteem as one of the noblest productions, not only of its author, but of English poetry; and amidst all its defects, he will rejoice that the writer was induced to exercise his talents in a walk so new, and in many respects so well suited to them. In fine, if he does not choose to derive his ethical system from "the Essay on Man," he will again and again have recourse to it as a store-house of great and generous sentiments; and he will never rise from its perusal without feeling his mind animated with the love of virtue, and improved in benevolence towards his fellow-creatures, and piety towards his Creator.' To the poet who, takes a philosophic or ethical system as a subject for a poem, we should be inclined to say, Ornari res ipsa negat, contenta doceri: but Pope has adorned philosophy with richness of imagery, and has delighted the imagination while his professed object is to convey instruction, and to vindicate the ways of God to man. How could it ever have been made a question, whether Pope was a poet! Four plates are given to embellish this elegant little volume. MEDICAL and CHEMICAL, &c. Art. 32. Epidemics, or General Observations on the Air and Diseases, from the Year 1740 to 1777 inclusive; and particular Ones from that Time to the beginning of 1795; containing a Description of some preparatory States; and of the Rise and Progress of a Pestilential Constitution. To which is prefixed a Preliminary Discourse on Sublime Science; with Observations on the Author's Writings on Divine Subjects. By J. Barker. 8vo. pp. 232. 5s. Printed at Birmingham. Longman, London. Our medical readers will, we believe, readily excuse us for passing over, in a work on Epidemics, a discourse on Sublime Science, and the author's observations on his own writings on Divine Subjects; nor need we apprehend that we shall displease the author himself by such an omission, since he is disposed to treat with contempt the critical judgment exercised in modern reviews.' We should, indeed, be inclined to indulge him with a total discharge from our court, did not such a pretension as that of giving a history of all epidemics, for a great number of years, require a little notice in behalf of those whose curiosity may be interested by it. Of Mr. Barker's extent of reading, and of his candour, some idea 'may be formed from his assertion that, from the time of Hippocrates down to that of the publication of the present work, no good observations have been made on the air and diseases arising from its state and temperature;' and if he be at all acquainted with the names of REV. JUNE, 1797. Sydenham, Sydenham, Huxham, and numbers more who have adopted similar inquiries, he has kept such knowlege to himself, never having made any reference to their works. In an account of epidemics, calculated to throw light on this difficult subject, and to improve medical practice, we should expect great accuracy of statement, full references to authorities, and, above all, a freedom from pre-conceived hypotheses, and a rigorous care not to mix theoretical notions respecting cause with the description of effects. In all these points, it is not easy to conceive any work of the kind more defective than the present; in which every thing is jumbled and confused, with few or no verifications of particular observations, and a perpetual use of the language and reasoning of the old humoural pathology, in the midst of lamentations concerning the pride of system, and the propensity to new opinions. Pestilential Constitution is the leading topic of the writer, without any attempt to give a precise idea of it, or to discriminate it from other morbid constitutions. This, it seems, has been prevailing ever since 1778, and in such a progressive state, that it is wonderful that it has not long ago produced the real plague; a disease which the author thinks capable of being generated here without foreign infection. His argument on this occasion reminds us of that of honest Corporal Trim, respecting a seaport in the inland country of Bohemia :-" There might have been one if it had pleased God." Thus, says Mr. B. May not the plague take its rise, I ask among Christians, by almighty power, in any climate upon earth? Thus we see that the want of a due degree of faith infallibly includes a want of knowledge.' Were the converse of this proposition true, Mr. B.'s professional knowlege would be indisput able. Art. 33. Mercury Start Naked.-A Series of Letters addressed to Dr. Beddoes, stripping that poisonous Mineral of its Medical Pretensions; &c. By Isaac Swainson, Proprietor of the Vegetable Syrup of De Velnos. 8vo. 2s. Ridgway. 1797. We have lately seen (Rev. for Nov. 1796. p. 271.) an humourous writer unmasking Hermes. Mr. Swainson undertakes to strip him start naked. By this example of encroachment on the coverings of a heathen god, we might fear lest some licentious wit should be led to make free with the goddesses, if our author had not abided by his resolution of exhibiting Mercury so as not to offend the delicacy of the times.' Mr. Swainson in fact aims not at raillery. He labours, in sober sadness, to prove two propositions of general concern, and one that is personal, to the party whom he addresses. These propositions are as follows: I. That Mercury is not a remedy, and does not effect a cure in any of the disorders wherein it is administered. II. That the principal of those disorders owe their celebrity, their establishment, and their increasing prevalence, to the use of mercury, and the conduct of interested medical classes in the use of it. III. That, as a medical, moral, and political reformer, it seems to be your duty, and your interest, to commence your operations, by the introduction of a Materia Medica wholly vegetable. • On On the first proposition,' he proceeds, I might address you as a man attached to demonstrative and philosophical proofs; and rest my argument on the uniform determinations of nature or of nature's God, respecting the limits and uses of unorganized and organized productions, or those departments of the globe called its three kingdoms. No mode of just reasoning, authorised by an enlightened experience, will warrant the conclusions against the general rule of nature, that vegetables affixed to the earth are to find their subsistence in health and their remedies in disease, in the bosom of that earth-and that animals detached from it, and endued with different organs, find their food and remedies, either in the vegetable or animal kingdom.' Mr. S. pursues his general speculation at some length, and is led by it to fix a note of reprobation on the whole mineral kingdom! as absolutely noxious in all forms of disease. He afterward adduces instances of the pernicious operation of mercurials, and quotes, from various writers, testimonies of their inefficacy or bad effects. Some anecdotes, disreputable to members of the profession, are related; and the author goes so far as to assert that the use of mercury is continued in the general practice for venereal and scrofulous disorders, not from an opinion of its efficacy in the more sagacious practitioners, but generally from the astonishing emolument that occurs by its happy faculty (happy only to the practitioner) of making symptoms disappear, while it may give to the disease, in some new form, a full possession of the whole constitution.' This, with more, laid down in forcible language, is well calculated to deter from mercury and the surgeon, and, by a necessary consequence, to promote the sale of the Vegetable Syrup :-but, whether the general argument, founded on an assumed 'rule of nature,' be not a pure petitio principii; whether Mr. S. does not argue from the abuse of minerals against their use; whether there be an ABSOLUTE SPECIFIC in nature, and therefore it be any rational objection to the use of mercury that it does not reach all cases; whether the cause of humanity would not sustain an irreparable injury, if the public should listen to a man who, in the crime and injury of using mercury,' ventures to involve the use of all minerals as medicines ;'-these are problems which we doubt whether the genuine medical philosopher would resolve altogether to the satisfaction of the author. It is, however, but justice to say that the pamphlet is composed with great urbanity, and with more address than any one which we remember to have read in recommendation of a secret medicine. POLITICAL, &c. Art. 34. A Summary Vier of the Population of France, and of the British Empire; their Commerce, Force and actual Condition, fairly compared. By an unprejudiced Traveller. With an Appendix, containing many new and interesting Anecdotes relative to the French Revolution. New Edition. 8vo. PP. 105. 2s. 6d. Kearsley. 1797. This pamphlet, we understand, is written by a gentleman who, since the year 1782, has passed ten years in France, and was detained there as as a national hostage during the greater part of the present war. He thinks that, at this time, a fit occasion presents itself for exhibiting to public view a concise Statement of the Population of the principal Cities and Towns of the Two Empires; from which we may, in a great measure, deduce an estimate of their Comparative Strength, and properly meet the exaggerations and fanfaronnade of a government, which, without one fourth part of our Naval Power, now threatens a descent on these coasts, for the purpose of subjugating (with as much facility as they have done the degenerate and nerveless race of Lombardy) a people famed in battle, and spirited as themselves a people who actually count upwards of 300,000 disciplined men serving in their fleets and armies, and whose levée-enmasse would, no doubt, if fighting for their Properties, their Liberty, and Religion, be inspired with an enthusiastic courage, at least equal to that which, through the course of this all-devastating Revolution, has been the chief boast and glory of the Republicans. Considering the purpose for which this tract is avowedly written, we ought not implicitly to rely on the calculations which it contains; nor should the zeal of the author be forgotten, while we are estimating the credit that is due to his testimony. He gives the following comparative view of the population of the principal cities of France, Great Britain, and Ireland: G. BRITAIN AND IRELAND. rft July, 1796. 1 600.000 London, with Westminster' Lyon Marseille 145.000 150.000 100.000 115.000 and Southwark } 900.000 58.000 Manchester 80.000 90.000 50.000 Norwich 80.000 Rennes + Lille 60.000 40.000 Edinburgh (with Leith) Scotland 78.000 55.000 Liverpool 76.000 70.000 48.000 Birmingham 65.000 50.000 40.000 Exeter 42.000 In this estimate, we observe that the population of Paris is represented as having suffered a diminution of 250,000 between the years 1789 and 1796, but, according to a report of the French Minister of the interior, made in the year 1796, the population of Paris had augmented during the revolution by not less, (if we re *Greatly enlarged, by extending the barriers, in 1788. Transient garrisons are not comprehended in the population of fortified towns; such as Lille, Metz, Landau, &c." collect 43.000 1.937.000 |