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 Another Random Document on
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Should a Moslem when praying, feel himself disposed to gape, he is
ordered to suppress the sensation as the work of the Devil, and to
close his mouth, lest the father of iniquity should enter and take
possession of his person. It is curious that this opinion prevails also
among the Hindoos who twirl their fingers close before their mouths
when gaping, to prevent an evil spirit from getting in that way.

GRIFFITHS.

In what part soever of the world they die and are buried, their
bodies must all rise to judgement in the Holy Land, out of the valley
of Jehosophat, which causeth that the greater and richer sort of
them, have their bones conveyed to some part thereof by their
kindred or friends. By which means they are freed of a labour to
scrape thither through the ground, which with their nails they hold
they must, who are not there buried, nor conveyed thither by others.

SANDERSON. PURCHAS.

The Russians in effecting a practicable road to China, discovered in

lat. 50 N., between the rivers Irtish and Obalet, a desert of very
considerable extent, overspread in many parts with Tumuli, or
Barrows, which have been also taken notice of by Mr. Bell and other
writers. This desert constitutes the southern boundary of Siberia. It
is said the borderers on the desert, have for many years, continued
to dig for the treasure deposited in these tumuli, which still however
remain unexhausted. We are told that they find considerable
quantities of gold, silver and brass, and some precious stones,
among ashes and remains of dead bodies: also hilts of swords,
armour, ornaments for saddles and bridles, and other trappings, with
the bones of those animals to which the trappings belonged, among
which are the bones of elephants. The Russian Court, says Mr.
Demidoff, being informed of these depredations, sent a principal
officer, with sufficient troops, to open such of these tumuli, as were
too large for the marauding parties to undertake and to secure their
contents. This Officer on taking a survey of the numberless
monuments of the dead spread over this great desert, concluded
that the barrow of the largest dimensions most probably contained
the remains of the prince or chief; and he was not mistaken; for,
after removing a very deep covering of earth and stones, the
workmen came to three vaults, constructed of stones, of rude
workmanship; a view of which is exhibited in the engraving. That
wherein the prince was deposited, which was in the centre, and the
largest of the three, was easily distinguished by the sword, spear,
bow, quiver and arrow which lay beside him. In the vault beyond
him, towards which his feet lay, were his horse, bridle, saddle and
stirrups. The body of the prince lay in a reclining posture, on a sheet
of pure gold, extending from head to foot, and another sheet of
gold, of the like dimensions, was spread over him. He was wrapt in a
rich mantle, bordered with gold and studded with rubies and
emeralds. His head, neck, breast and arms naked, and without any
ornament. In the lesser vault lay the princess, distinguished by her
female ornaments. She was placed reclining against the wall, with a
gold chain of many links, set with rubies, round her neck, and gold
bracelets round her arms. The head, breast and arms were naked.
The body was covered with a rich robe, but without any border of
gold or jewels, and was laid on a sheet of fine gold, and covered
over with another. The four sheets of gold weighed 40 lb. The robes
of both looked fair and complete; but on touching, crumbled into
dust. Many more of the tumuli were opened, but this was the most
remarkable. In the others a great variety of curious articles were
found.

MONTHLY REVIEW, Vol. 49.

The following story I had from Mr. Pierson, factor here for the
African company, who was sent here from Cape Coree to be second
to Mr. Smith then chief factor. Soon after his arrival Mr. Smith fell
very ill of the country malignant fever; and having little prospect of
recovery, resigned his charge of the company's affairs to Pierson.
This Mr. Smith had the character of an obliging, ingenious young
gentleman, and was much esteemed by the King, who hearing of his
desperate illness, sent his Fatishman to hinder him from dying; who
coming to the factory went to Mr. Smith's bed-side, and told him,
that his King had such a kindness for him, that he had sent to keep
him alive, and that he should not die. Mr. Smith was in such a
languishing condition, that he little regarded him. Then the
Fatishman went from him to the hog-yard, where they bury the
white men; and having carried with him some brandy, rum, oil, rice,
&c., he cry'd out aloud, O you dead white men that lie here, you
have a mind to have this factor that is sick to you, but he is our
king's friend, and he loves him, and will not part with him as yet.
Then he went to captain Wiburn's grave who built the factory, and
cry'd, O you captain of all the dead white men that lie here, this is
your doings; you would have this man from us to bear you company,
because he is a good man, but our king will not part with him, nor
you shall not have him yet. Then making a hole in the ground over
his grave, he poured in the brandy, rum, oil, rice, &c., telling him, If
he wanted those things, there they were for him, but the factor he
must not expect, nor should not have, with more such nonsense;
then went to Smith, and assured him he should not die; but growing
troublesome to the sick man, Pierson turned him out of the factory,
and in two days after poor Smith made his exit.

Mr. Josiah Relph to Mr. Thomas Routh, in Castle Street, Carlisle.

June 20, 1740.

* * * * *

“The following was sent me a few months ago by the minister of

Kirklees in Yorkshire, the burying place of Robin Hood. My
correspondent tells me it was found among the papers of the late Dr.
Gale of York, and is supposed to have been the genuine epitaph of
that noted English outlaw. He adds that the grave stone is yet to be
seen, but the characters are now worn out.

Here undernead dis laitl Stean

Laiz Robert Earl of Huntingtun.
Nea Arcir ver az hie sa geud,
An Piple kauld im Robin Heud.
Sick utlawz az hi and is men
Vil england nivr si agen.
Obiit 24. Kal. Dehembris, 1247.

I am, dear Sir, your most faithful and humble Servant,

JOSIAH RELPH.”

Note in Nichols.—See the stone engraved in the Sepulchral

Monuments, vol. i. p. cviii. Mr. Gough says the inscription was never
on it; and that the stone must have been brought from another
place, as the ground under it, on being explored, was found to have
been never before disturbed.2
2 On the disputed question of the genuineness of the above epitaph, see the Notes
and Illustrations to Ritson's Robin Hood, pp. xliv—1. Robin Hood's Death and Burial is
the last Ballad in the second volume.

“And there they buried bold Robin Hood,

Near to the fair Kirkleys.”

Lord Dalmeny, son of the E. of Rosebery, married about eighty years

ago a widow at Bath for her beauty. They went abroad, she sickened
and on her death-bed requested that she might be interred in some
particular church-yard, either in Sussex or Suffolk I forget which.
The body was embalmed, but at the custom-house in the port where
it was landed the officer suspected smuggling and insisted on
opening it. They recognized the features of the wife of their own
clergyman,—who having been married to him against her own
inclination had eloped. Both husbands followed the body to the
grave. The Grandfather of Dr. Smith of Norwich knew the Lord.

It was a melancholy notion of the Stoics that the condition of the

Soul, and even its individual immortality, might be affected by the
circumstances of death: for example, that if any person were killed
by a great mass of earth falling upon him, or the ruins of a building,
the Soul as well as the body would be crushed, and not being able
to extricate itself would be extinguished there: existimant animam
hominis magno pondere extriti permeare non posse, et statim
spargi, quia non fuerit illi exitus liber.

Upon this belief, the satirical epitaph on Sir John Vanbrugh would
convey what might indeed be called a heavy curse.

Some of the Greenlanders, for even in Greenland there are sects,

suppose the soul to be so corporeal that it can increase or decrease,
is divisible, may lose part of its substance, and have it restored
again. On its way to Heaven which is five days dreadful journey, all
the way down a rugged rock, which is so steep that they must slide
down it, and so rough that their way is tracked with blood, they are
liable to be destroyed, and this destruction, which they call the
second death, is final, and therefore justly deemed of all things the
most terrible. It is beyond the power of their Angekoks to remedy
this evil; but these impostors pretend to the art of repairing a
maimed soul, bringing home a strayed or runaway one, and of
changing away one that is sickly, for the sound and sprightly one of
a hare, a rein deer, a bird, or an infant.
“This is the peevishness of our humane wisdom, yea, rather of our
humane folly, to earn for tidings from the dead, as if a spirit
departed could declare anything more evidently than the book of
God, which is the sure oracle of life? This was Saul's practise,—
neglect Samuel when he was alive, and seek after him when he was
dead. What says the Prophet, Should not a people seek unto their
God? Should the living repair to the dead? (Isai. viij. 19.) Among the
works of Athanasius I find (though he be not the author of the
questions to Antiochus,) a discourse full of reason, why God would
not permit the soul of any of those that departed from hence to
return back unto us again, and to declare the state of things in hell
unto us. For what pestilent errors would arise from thence to seduce
us? Devils would transform themselves into the shapes of men that
were deceased, pretend that they were risen from the dead (for
what will not the Father of lies feign?) and so spread in any false
doctrines, or incite us to many barbarous actions, to our endless
error and destruction. And admit they be not Phantasms, and
delusions, but the very men, yet all men are liars, but God is truth. I
told you what a Necromancer Saul was in the Old Testament, he
would believe nothing unless a prophet rose from the grave to teach
him. There is another as good as himself in the New Testament, and
not another pattern in all the Scripture to my remembrance, Luke
xvi. 27. The rich man in hell urged Abraham to send Lazarus to
admonish his brethren of their wicked life; Abraham refers to Moses
and the Prophets. He that could not teach himself when he was
alive, would teach Abraham himself being in hell, Nay, Father
Abraham, but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.

“The mind is composed with quietness to hear the living; the

apparitions of dead men, beside the suspicion of delusion, would fill
us with gastly horror, and it were impossible we should be fit
scholars to learn if such strong perturbation of fear should be upon
us. How much better hath God ordained for our security, and
tranquillity, that the priest's lips should preserve knowledge? I know,
if God shall see it fit to have us disciplined by such means, he can
stir up the spirits of the faithful departed to come among us: So,
after Christ's resurrection many dead bodies of the Saints which
slept arose, and came out of their graves, and went into the Holy
City, and appeared unto many. This was not upon a small matter, but
upon a brave and renowned occasion: But for the Spirits of
damnation, that are tied in chains of darkness, there is no repassage
for them, and it makes more to strengthen our belief that never any
did return from hell to tell us their woeful tale, than if any should
return. It is among the severe penalties of damnation that there is
no indulgence for the smallest respite to come out of it. The heathen
put that truth into this fable. The Lion asked the Fox, why he never
came to visit him when he was sick: Says the Fox, because I can
trace many beasts by the print of their foot that have gone toward
your den, Sir Lion, but I cannot see the print of one foot that ever
came back:

Quia me vestigia terrent

Omnia te advorsum spectantia, nulla retrorsum.

So there is a beaten, and a broad road that leads the reprobate to

hell, but you do not find the print of one hoof that ever came back.
When I have given you my judgment about apparitions of the dead
in their descending from Heaven, or ascending from hell, I must tell
you in the third place, I have met with a thousand stories in
Pontifician writings concerning some that have had repassage from
Purgatory to their familiars upon earth. Notwithstanding the
reverence I bear to Gregory the Great, I cannot refrain to say; He
was much to blame to begin such fictions upon his credulity; others
have been more to blame that have invented such Legends; and
they are most to be derided that believe them. O miserable
Theology! if, thy tenets must be confirmed by sick men's dreams,
and dead men's phantastical apparitions!”

BP. HACKETT.
“It is a morose humour in some, even ministers, that they will not
give a due commendation to the deceased: whereby they not only
offer a seeming unkindness to the dead, but do a real injury to the
living, by discouraging virtue, and depriving us of the great
instruments of piety, good examples: which usually are far more
effective methods of instruction, than any precepts: These
commonly urging only the necessity of those duties, while the other
shew the possibility and manner of performing.

“But then, 'tis a most unchristian and uncharitable mistake in those,

that think it unlawful to commemorate the dead, and to celebrate
their memories: whereas there is no one thing does so much uphold
and keep up the honour and interest of religion amongst the
multitude, as the due observance of those Anniversaries which the
Church has, upon this account, scattered throughout the whole
course of the year, would do: and indeed to our neglect of this in a
great part the present decay of religion may rationally be imputed.

“Thus in this age of our's what Pliny saith of his, Postquam desimus
facere laudanda, laudari quoque ineptum putamus. Since people
have left off doing things that are praiseworthy, they look upon
praise itself as a silly thing.

“And possibly the generality of hearers themselves are not free from
this fault; who peradventure may fancy their own life upbraided,
when they hear another's commended.

“But that the servants of God, which depart this life in his faith and
fear, may and must be praised, I shall endeavour to make good upon
these three grounds.

“In common justice to the deceased themselves. Ordinary civility

teaches us to speak well of the dead. Nec quicquam sanctius habet
reverentia superstitum, quàm ut amissos venerabiliter recordetur,
says Ausonius, and makes this the ground of the Parentalia, which
had been ever since Numa's time.
“Praise, however it may become the living, is a just debt to the
deserts of the dead, who are now got clear out of the reach of envy;
which, if it have anything of the generous in it, will scorn, vulture-
like, to prey upon carcass.

“Besides, Christianity lays a greater obligation upon us; The

Communion of Saints is a Tenet of our faith. Now, as we ought not
pray to or for them, so we may and must praise them.

“This is the least we can do in return for those great offices, they did
the Church Militant, while they were with us, and now do, they are
with God; nor have we any other probable way of communicating
with them.

“The Philosopher in his Morals makes it a question, whether the

dead are in any way concerned in what befals them or their posterity
after their decease; and whether those honours and reproaches,
which survivors cast upon them, reach them or no? and he
concludes it after a long debate in the affirmative; not so, he says,
as to alter their state, but, συμβάλλεσθαί τι, to contribute somewhat
to it.

“Tully, though not absolutely persuaded of an immortal soul, as

speaking doubtfully and variously of it, yet is constant to this, that
he takes a good name and a reputation, we leave behind us, to be a
kind of immortality.

“But there is more in it than so. Our remembrance of the Saints may
be a means to improve their bliss, and heighten their rewards to all
eternity. Abraham, the Father of the Faithful, hath his bosom thus
daily enlarged for new comers.

“Whether the heirs of the kingdom are, at their first admission,

instated into a full possession of all their glory, and kept to that stint,
I think may be a doubt. For if the faculty be perfected by the object,
about which 'tis conversant; then the faculties of those blessed ones
being continually employed upon an infinite object, must needs be
infinitely perficible, and capable still of being more and more
enlarged, and consequently of receiving still new and further
additions of glory.

“Not only so, (this is in Heaven:) but even the influence of that
example, they leave behind them on earth, drawing still more and
more souls after them to God, will also add to those improvements
to the end of the world, and bring in a revenue of accessory joys.

“And would it not be unjust in us then to deny them those glorious

advantages, which our commemoration and inclination may and
ought to give them.”3

ADAM LITTLETON.
3 “Five Sermons formerly printed,” p. 61., at the end of the volume. The one from
which the above passage is extracted is that preached at the obsequies of the Right
Honorable the Lady Jane Cheyne.

Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal right
lined circle, must conclude to shut up all. There is no Antidote
against the Opinion of Time, which, temporally considereth all
things; Our Fathers find their Graves in our short memories and
sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. Grave-stones
tell truth scarce forty years: Generations pass while some Trees
stand, and old families last not three oaks. To be read by bare
Inscriptions like many in Gruter, to hope for Eternity by Ænigmatical
Epithetes, or first Letters of our names to be studied by Antiquaries,
who we were, and have new names given us like many of the
Mummies, are cold consolations unto the students of perpetuity even
by everlasting Languages.

SIR T. BROWNE.
 CHAPTER CCXXXVI.

CHARITY OF THE DOCTOR IN HIS OPINIONS.—MASON THE POET.—POLITICAL

MEDICINE.—SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.—CERVANTES.—STATE PHYSICIANS.—
ADVANTAGE TO BE DERIVED FROM, WHETHER TO KING, CABINET, LORDS OR
COMMONS.—EXAMPLES.—PHILOSOPHY OF POPULAR EXPRESSIONS.—COTTON
MATHER.—CLAUDE PAJON AND BARNABAS OLEY.—TIMOTHY ROGERS AND
MELANCHOLY.

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 Whiggery1 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.”
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.”
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
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.”