happily turned, but we forgive you that our mirth is often insipid to you, while you sit absent to what passes among us from your care of such as languish in sickness. We are sensible their distresses, instead of being removed by company, return more strongly to your imagination by comparison of their condition to the jolli ties of health." This charming eulogium seems to convey the universal impression of Garth's character. The author of the Dispensary (his sole work of any consequence, and by no means a poem of much pretension) was a warm whig and adherent to the house of Hanover, in whose behalf he drew the pen of a political pamphleteer. For these services, on the accession of the first prince of that family, he was knighted with the sword of Marl. borough, his favorite military hero, and appointed physician in ordinary to the king and physician-general to the army. From Garth, we turn to another physician, who was also a poet and also a knight, Sir Richard Blackmore, the very antipode of that heroical poetry he so much affected, yet a most worthy man, and if a mediocre versifier, still a scholar of considerable acquirement, who has had staunch admirers among philosophers, who, it must be confessed at the same time, had little insight into the mysteries of genuine poesy. Copiousness and a fatal facility" appear to be the distinguishing traits of Blackmore's muse. He wrote no less than five poems in the epic form alone, which the world has willingly enough "let die."

66

66

Gay has made a poetical catalogue of these productions, accompanied by a lively, satirical commentary, in his easy, graceful style.

"See who ne'er was nor will be half read, Who first sang Arthur, then sang Alfred, Prais'd great Eliza in God's anger,

Till all true Englishmen cried, 'Hang her!' Made William's virtues wipe the bare aAnd hang'd up Marlborough in arras; Then, hissed from earth, grew heavenly quite;

Made every reader curse the light: Maul'd human wit in one thick satire, Next, in three books, spoil'd human na

ture ;

Undid creation at a jerk,
And of redemption made damn'd work.
Then took his Muse at once and dipt her
Full in the middle of the Scripture.

What wonders then the man, grown old,

did!

Sternhold himself he out-Sternholded.
Made David seem so mad and freakish,
All thought him just what thought King
No mortal read his Solomon,
Achish.
But judg'd Re'boam his own son.
Moses he serv'd, as Moses Pharaoh,
And Deborah, as she Siserah:
Made Jeremy full sore to cry,
And Job hiniself curse God and die.
What punishment all this must follow?
Shall Arthur use him like King Tollo?
Shal David as Uriah slay him?
Or dextrous Deborah Sisera-him?
Or shall Eliza lay a plot,
To treat him like her sister Scot?
Shall William dub his better end,
Or Marlborough serve him like a friend?
No! none of those!-Heaven spare his
life!
But send him, honest Job, thy wife!”

Notwithstanding the witty, satirical assaults Blackmore was obliged to submit to from his contemporary wits, he could number among his admirers, Locke and Johnson and Watts, men who could appreciate the purity of his life, and the general good sense of his moral speculations, but who were as ill qualified as any three English writers that could be named, for the office of poetical critic. Even Addison (whose taste in poetry leaned toward the correct and delicate) praised the Creation, as we suspect, almost extravagantly; while the fierce Dennis, in the later period of his career, placed it above the great work of Lucretius. Blackmore had, it seems, some talent for the philosophical poetry (as the piebald species of didactic writing, half prose, half rhyme, was called), current at that time, but for the higher philosophical poetry, he was about as fit as the coachman that drove his lumbering old chariot. Of Blackmore's early stupid simplicity, we have a proof in the reply of the celebrated Sydenham to him. On being asked by the young doctor what course of reading to pursue, he advised him to read Don Quixote, as a capital work, into which he often looked himself. We must not forget, however, the high personal moral character of Sir Richard. Detraction and witty malice could find no occasion for serious cenHe never resented the most abusive attacks, and soothed the mind

sure.

of Dennis in his old age (as did his great rival, Pope) though he had virulently scandalized him at the outset of his career, by which magnanimity he so won the heart of the fretful old critic, as to draw from him the encomium on his Creation, to which we have above alluded.

During the reigns of the second and third Georges, we meet the names of these several authors, who were at the same time physicians, Armstrong, Akenside, Smollett, Goldsmith, Grainger, Darwin, Moore, Wolcot, and Currie.

Armstrong wrote a sensible poem on the means of preserving health, which might have been as well written in prose, without any considerable loss to the world. It is essentially a didactic essay in verse.

Akenside has higher pretensions, but we cannot say that the imagination of his readers is inclined to admit them. Hazlitt thought his lines stately and imposing, but turgid and gaudy.

We have never heard of nor met with a hearty lover of Akenside's poetry. True it has power and a philosophical precision; the Pleasures of the Imagination is an elaborate commentary on the Platonic philosophy, in blank verse, but it wants nature, freshness, unconscious grace. It was written at the early age of twenty-three, and published in the same year; at which time, also, our poet took his degree in medicine. The history of the publication of this work is pleasant to record. It was offered to Dodsley, who took it to Pope for his advice, who with his natural generosity told him by all means to secure the MS., and not offer a niggardly price, as the author was no every-day writer. If we do not mistake, Bulwer, in his conversations with an ambitious student, passes a high eulogium on Akenside, to whom he also devotes a critical analysis, but the effect of it is, to impress one with the idea that he criticises for the sake of criticism, as Johnson often talked for victory, and with no very strong conviction of the tenable nature of his position. The life of Akenside contains a noble instance of friendship, in the case of Mr. Dyson, who, when the poet's resources had almost entirely failed him, settled upon him an income of three hundred pounds a year, by which he was not only rescued from

poverty, but was enabled to commence his professional career in a suitable manner. Akenside's practice, like that of his brother poetical physicians, was never large, and he was busied in several labors connected with general literature and the literature of his profession. As a man, he had an independent and high-toned temper; as a scholar, rich in acquisitions, and with an active and accomplished intellect. He is said to have been pompous and ostentatiously pedantic. But he must be a churlish critic, who cannot pardon an author for a defect incident to his calling.

From Akenside we naturally enough turn to Smollett, as his satirist (in the character of the Pedant in Perigrine Pickle): the supper in imitation of the dinner of the ancients being intended as a burlesque, and it is inimitable, to be sure, of the affectation of learning that Akenside occasionally displayed in familiar conversation. Yet Smollett needed to satirize no one to build himself a reputation thereby. Himself an admirable comic painter, a pleasing poet, a master of character, and a generous man, he had all the qualities to charm, to enlighten, and command reputation. But he was unfortunate, jealous, and irritable; these two most venial defects growing out of the pressure of circumstances. He is classed with physicians, though practising only in the early part of his life. He was a surgeon on board of a man of war, where he saw that life he has painted with such force and coloring in Roderick Random. Most of his characters and even the incidents of his novels were taken from real life-and, in Count Fathom, there is a sketch of a medical quack, the cleverest, we believe, ever drawn. Smollett is said not to have succeeded in his practice, because he could not manage to conciliate the female portion of his patients (who generally make a man's fortune), though he was handsome, graceful, and perfectly courteous. so open in expressing his contempt for affectation and pretence, had so little sympathy with meanness and servility, so heartily despised all cunning and trickery, that he failed in getting on in a pursuit in which we every day see worth, talent, and gentlemanliness obscured by chicanery, fraud, and impudent imposture. Though a high Tory,

Yet he was

he had the cause of liberty (as he viewed it) sincerely at heart, as every reader of his noble poem, The Address to Scotland, and the Ode to Independence, must confess.

Goldsmith may have ranked low among medical men; we are not sure, but think he did; it is not wonderful; he was no courtier, and he was poor; the two heaviest of all social sins; yet his fame is immortal and his works delightful. We will not be guilty of the impertinence of re-writing a trite criticism upon them.

Grainger is known by a few short pieces, the happiest of which are inserted in Percy's Reliques. Darwin was the poet of science; the Botanic Garden is one continued treatise on the Linnæan system of botany, delivered and couched under the form of allegory. It is as ornate as the rhetoric of Robins the auctioneer; trivial phrases and glittering metaphors, are substituted for simplicity of feeling and strength of passion. Yet it is full of ingenuity, learning, and misplaced vigor. Wolcot cannot be accused of similar faults; he is sufficiently downright and homely. A strong, coarse satirist; the Cobbett of political versifying. Dr. John Moore, the father of Sir John, and the friend of Burns, who preferred him to Sterne and Addison, is much less known than he should be. He has written one capital novel, Zeluco, and one a little inferior to it, Edward. Zeluco is a truly admirable portrait, and though the author suc

ceeded best in the dark traits of character (at least in this work), there are still fine strokes of humor, and many less observable points of excellence. The faculty may be honestly proud of Dr. John Moore and place him next to Smollett. The best life of Burns (to our mind) has been written by Currie, a man of elegant taste, clear judgment, and varied scholarship. He closes the short list.

Three fine poets of our own time, may by some poetic license be ranked among the faculty. Crabbe was apprentice to a surgeon, but soon relinquished the calling. Shelley walked the hospitals for a season, purely out of humanity, and with no eye to future practice. And Keats was also apprenticed to an apothecary.

At home, Holmes and Drake, both fine poets, are the only instances we can discover of the union of the two arts. A Dr. Belknap wrote a humorous work, the Foresters, many years ago, but we know nothing of it but the name.

French literature may boast of its Rabelais, and probably other bright names, among the physicians of that country. So too of the Germans; but we have brought together the best in our own literature, some of them among our standard classical authors, to demonstrate the fact, that if formerly the physicians had the most learning of the three professions, they have now not the least literature.

MR. MADISON observed to Harriet Martineau, that it had been the destiny of America to prove many things which were before thought impossible. It may be said, with equal truth, that it is the destiny of the same country to teach the world what men have been among its brightest ornaments and worthiest benefactors. We have an instance of what is to be done in this respect, in the unfortunate but extraordinary man whose name graces the head of this paper. It is reserved for America to rescue his fame from the cold neglect which it is the interest of older nations to gather round it, and to show mankind, by her warm appreciation of his genius and character, how much virtue and excellence were lost when he perished. In his own country, and in his own day and generation, he lived an outcast. He was banished from the keen delights of his paternal fireside; he was expelled the society of his fellows; his property, the fruit of his toil, and his children, the offspring of his body, were alike torn roughly from him; his name was heaped with obloquy; his spirit broken by persecution; nor did death soften the ferocity of prejudice which haunted his life. His ashes still slumber far from his native land, beneath the mouldering walls of Rome, and his memory is still pursued with reproach. Yet he was the most remarkable man of his time a scholar, rich in the lore of all tongues and ages-a poet, gifted with sensibility beyond any contemporary-a man, of the loftiest integrity and self-sacrificing worth-and a philanthropist, of the broadest benevolence, of the noblest aspirations. His life was a perpetual illustration of how much virtue could be combined with consummate genius. In the dark history of the past, he rises upon our view like "some frail exhalation which the dawn robes in its golden beams," that, after struggling awhile with the mists of earth, turns upward again and mingles with its native sky.

Let the stranger and the foreigner undertake the grateful task of placing his merits on their true basis, and of assigning him his right position among the illustrious names of English literature.

We design to remark upon Shelley as a poet and a man. We think that justice has never yet been done him. His countrymen are not in a mood either to apprehend or to confess his legitimate value. The tincture of the bitter gall of prejudice has not yet passed from their eyes; their judgments are warped by old remembrances, and it is left to their late posterity and other lands to form a proper estimate of all that he was. No time or place more fitting for the formation of such an estimate, than this age of progress and this land of freedom!

In entering upon the task, we do it with diffidence. We know the difficulties of the undertaking. Our sympathy with the subject is great; our love for the man deep and abiding but we fear the want of ability rightly to present him to the minds of the multitude. Let the warmth of our attachment, then, be an apology for the defects of our execution.

Shelley was born at Field Place, in the county of Sussex, on the 4th of August, 1792. His father was Sir Timothy Shelley, a gentleman of property and high family distinction, who traced his remote ancestry to the chivalrous and poetical Sir Philip Sidney. As a child, Shelley appears to have been delicate and sensitive to a painful extreme, ardent in his affections, and tenderly alive to the influences of natural circumstance. The residence of