be very willing to part with it. He said he was fully satisfied therewith, and that he always thought me a person of worth and honour, and that I had dealt with him in this business like one.

"I told him I did not know yt I had any enemy in ye country, but on his or his brother's account, and he said he did in his conscience believe so. I told him I did not know whom he intended to put in my place, but I should always be ready to serve him in any capacity there, and all I desired was yt I might have ye favour of his countenance, when I paid my duty to him; to which he said I should as much as ever I had in my life; and when I desired to kiss his hand upon it, he stooped down ready to embrace me."

Anthropometamorphosis: Man transform'd; or, the artificial Changling Historically presented, In the mad and cruell Gallantry, foolish Bravery, ridiculous Beauty, filthy Finenesse, and loathsome Lovelinesse of most Nations, fashioning and altering their Bodies from the Mould intended by Nature; with Figures of those Transfigurations. To which artificiall and affected Deformations are added, all the Native and Nationall Monstrosities that have appeared to disfigure the Human Fabrick; with a Vindication of the regular Beauty and Honesty of Nature, and an Appendix of the Pedigree of the English Gallant. Scripsit J. B. cognomento Chirosophus, M. D. London: printed by William Hunt, Anno Dom. 1653.

OF John Bulwer, the author of this singular volume, but few particulars are now to be recovered. His first appearance in a literary character was in the year 1644, when he published two Tracts, with an equally portentous superscription. 66 Chirologia, or the natural Language of the Hand, composed of the speaking Motions and discoursing Gestures thereof; whereunto is added, Chironomia, or the Art of Manuall Rhetoricke, consisting of the natural Expression digested by Art in the Hand, as the chiefest Instrument of Eloquence, by Historicall Manifestos exemplified out of the authentique Registers of common Life and civill Conversation, with Types or Chyrograms: a longwished-for Illustration of this Argument. By J. B. Gent. Philochirosophus, 1644."

These Treatises, as was usual in their days, are heralded by numerous testimonial and commendatory verses, one set of which bears the following most unlatinized address: "Meissimo in deliciis, Chirologiæ Authori, Amanuensi Musarum, Polihymniæ Alumno, Motistarum clarissimo, et manus publicè prehensantium Candidato." The object of the first part of Bulwer's labour on this occasion, is to teach the language of signs and a finger alphabet; for he was engaged in that most praiseworthy and benevolent offset of his profession, which in our own days has so wonder

fully established itself in separate existence, the education of the deaf and dumb. With this circumstance we become acquainted with a volume which appeared in 1648, with a similar profuse expenditure of words to announce it as that which had been lavished on his other publications. "Philocophus, or the Deafe and Dumb Man's Friend, exhibiting the philosophical verity of that Subtile Art, which may inable one with an observant Eie to heare what any Man speaks by the Moving of his Lips. Upon the same Ground, with the Advantage of an historicall Exemplification, apparently proving that a Man born Deaf and Dumb may taught to heare the Sound of Words with his Eie, and thence learne to speake with his Tongue. By J. B. surnamed the Chirosopher."

be

In this instance Bulwer dedicated to "the Right Worshipful Sir Edward Gostwicke, of Wellington, in the county of Bedford, Baronet, and Mr. William Gostwicke, his youngest brother;" two young gentlemen of good family, who, having been deaf and dumb from their birth, were placed under his tuition, and, as it appears, successfully. As is his custom, he collects very wondrous facts, and comments upon them with not less wondrous ratiocination. Thus he shows, on good authority, that all those who are born in ships at sea, "by a propriety of their place of birth, are, like fishes, mute." There may be something, doubtless, in this statement; and the deduction is quite as good as the premisses; but what shall be said respecting "the propriety of the place," which is similarly advanced as a reason why all the Barons of Claramont, who have been born within the walls of their own castle, should prove dumb? Few will question that there is a necessity that a child's tongue should be hindered, if Mercury be impedite with Saturn" at its nativity: but we may be permitted to doubt, whether the instance in which surprise is said to have cured this infirmity, may be explained by the effect of "a mixt passion which causeth a miscellaneous motion of the native heat."

66

Bulwer's fourth tract was physiognomical: "Pathomyotamia, or a Dissection of the Significative Muscles of the Affections of the Minde, being an Essay to a new Method of observing the most important movings of the Muscles of the Head; as they are the nearest and immediate Organs of the voluntarie or impetual Motions of the Mind; with the Proposall of a new Nomenclature of the Muscles. By J. B. surnamed the Chirosopher, 1649."

This treatise is mentioned, but not with much applause, by Mr. Parsons, in his " Crounian Lectures" on Muscular Motion, printed as a supplement to the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1746. He characterizes it as filled with extravagant notions from different authors, a criticism which probably is very just; but which, nevertheless, should be received with some degree

of caution, as proceeding from one engaged in the same trade, and, therefore, proverbially likely to disagree. From the " Pathomyotamia" we learn the only two remaining facts relative to Bulwer's personal history which we have been able to collect; the one, that " his loving father, Mr. Thomas Bulwer," to whom he dedicates, was, like himself, a physician: the other, that his contemporaries passed much the same sentence upon his ingenious discoveries as we apprehend will be passed by those who now become acquainted with them. The following avowal does no small credit to his honesty: "I confess I have met with little encouragement in this design; for all the physicians and anatomists that I have hinted it unto, have held it scarce feasible, Dr. Wright junior onely excepted"—and for the approbation of Dr. Wright junior, a very satisfactory reason is assigned. The critic was returning "oa gès "oa, and paying his friend in the same coin of applause which he had received for a darling hypothesis of his own.

But we pass on to the crowning labour, the opus maximum, of the Chirosophist, of whom, after the appearance of the " Anthropometamorphosis" we wholly lose sight. "The force of nature could no farther go!" It would have been idle to expect any new work from the same brain superior to it; and he whose effigy had been inscribed with the following glowing panegyric, could scarcely look for higher living honours, and might fairly be considered as already exalted to his literary apotheosis. The print, thus underwritten, as might be expected, is often ravished from the volume which it originally accompanied, to gladden some collector's portfolio. "Johannes Bulwer, cognomento chirosophus, alias philosophus: vultispex insignis: utriusque physiognomiæ protomystes: pathomyotomus: naturalis loquelæ primus indagator: anatomus moralis: stagirita novus: motistarum clarissimus: stator augustus et vindex naturæ, M.D. &c." It is hazardous to pronounce upon similarity of style in different languages, otherwise this anonymous Latin in many points so strongly resembles the excellent doctor's avowed English, that we should be inclined to ascribe it, in spite of his blushes to the contrary, to the person most intimately acquainted with his merits, and therefore most qualified to blazon them-himself.

Among the preliminaries to the Anthropometamorphosis will be found, "a list of divines, poets, historians, philosophers, anatomists, physicians, and others, cited to give in evidence, and out of which number was a grand jury impanelled for the triall of the "Artificial Changling," upon the indictment filed by the author about the matter of fact of man's voluntary transformation." If a writer's learning and research is to be measured by such a catalogue as this, few have in these points exceeded Bulwer; the names which he registers amount to two hundred

and eighty-eight, and they are of all classes and all reputations, from Moses and Isaiah down to Sir John Mandevill and Mr. Pretty.

The body of the work is divided into twenty-four chapters, or Scenes, as they are termed, each relating to some fashion which different times and nations have adopted as to different parts of the human frame; these are accompanied by illustrative cuts, which are not among the least curious parts of the book. The first Scene treats of" certaine fashions of the head, affected and contrived, by the pragmaticall invention and artificial endeavours of many nations." The Brazilians, according to Purchas, have flat heads we know not whether Bulwer's reasoning thereon accords with the modern discoveries of phrenology.

"The inconveniences that many times attend this affected fashion of the head, when the naps, with a little bunchines remaineth not, but the nodock is made flat, are, that the brain is not so figured as is requisite for wit and stability, for the depression of this posterior prominency of the head weakens the stabilitie to action, as Galen shewes; the reason is, because voluntary motion depends upon the nerves, whose principle the Cerebellum is. Since, therefore, the originall and chiefe instrument of voluntary motion resides in the hinder part of the head, men are by this depraving the figure of their heads, made more cold and indisposed unto motion, and so likewise unto recordation, the after-brains, the seat of Memory, being thus perverted. Which effect was observed (as Beneventus reports) in the dissection of one James, a famous thiefe, the hinder part of whose head, where the seat of Memory is, was found so short that it contained but a very little portion of brains; for which cause, when he could least of all remember the banishments, imprisonments, and torments he had suffered for his former villanies, falling like an impudent dog to his vomit, was at last hanged, which put an end to his life and theft together." P. 9.

We are by no means deeply versed in the mysteries of Professors Gall, Spurzheim, and De Ville, but, as far as we recollect, the above paragraph reads very much like a portion of a Craniological Lecture. In a similar strain we are told that a spherical or orbicular form of the head, such as may be observed in the French (who on that account can seldom fit an Englishman with a hat) denoteth quick moving, unstableness, forgetfulness, small discretion, and little wit. Square-headed gallants also must needs suffer some damage in their intellectuals; for, a head that hath angles argues an impediment of judgment and ratiocination.

Although many have held opinion that Megasthenes, Pliny, and Aulus Gellius were loud liars when they wrote and published that there lived a certain kind of people in Scythia which had dogs' heads, yet the relation is confirmed by some of the order of Predicants sent as legates from the Apostolic State unto

the Tartars, who assure us that there is a certain nation in Tartary who have a dog's face; the same authors adding withal, that although the men have such a resemblance of a dog's head, as beforesaid, the women have a human visage as other women in the world have. If we seek farther evidence of this remarkable fact, it may be found in the pages of Vincentius Burgundius, Johannes de Plancarpio, Kornmannus, Marco Polo, Johannes Camers, Hector Pintus, and Isidore; a cloud of witnesses to which incredulity itself dare scarcely refuse assent.

So too for the Acephali, who want their necks and have their eyes in their shoulders. St. Augustin is most charitable to the sceptical, and might certainly be pardoned if he dogmatized more sturdily regarding these monsters, considering the ocular proof which he possessed of their existence. He

"makes commemoration of such a nation, and although he there does not impose a necessity of believing the relations that are made of such kinds of men; so he seems to grant that it is not incredible; nay, he testifies that he hath seen them himself, for he assures us in these words (Serm. 37 ad Frat. in Eremo), I was now Bishop of Hippo, and with certain servants of Christ I travelled to Æthiopia to preach the Gospell of Christ unto them, and we saw there many men and women having no heads, but grosse eyes fixed in their breasts; their other members like unto ours." P. 21.

It must be observed, that even Sir Walter Raleigh was a believer in these headless monsters. "The Ewaipoosomi," he says, 66 are a people dwelling on the banks of the river Caora, whose heads appear not above their shoulders, which, though it may be thought a meere fable, yet for my own part I am resolved it is true; because every child in the province of Arromaia and Comurs affirms all the same: they are called Ewaipanomi, and are reported to have their eyes in their shoulders, and their mouths in the middle of their breasts, and that a long train of hairs groweth backward between the shoulders. The son of Tomawari, which I brought with me into England, told me that they were the most mighty men of all the land, and use bowes, arrowes, and clubs, thrice as bigg as any of Guiana and of the Oronoqueponi, and that one of the Iwarawakeni took a prisoner of them the yeare before our arrival there, and brought him into the borders of Arromaia, his father's country.. And further, when I seemed to doubt of it, he told me that it was no wonder among them, but that they were as great a nation, and as common as any other in all the provinces, and had of late years slain many hundreds of his father's people, and of other nations their neighbours; but was not my chance to heare of them till I was come away, and if I had but spoken one word of it while I was there, I might

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VOL. II.-PART II,

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