to the utmost; and the floating crowds were repulsed by their own violence from this new paradise, where "The Tree of Knowledge" was said to be planted. At the succeeding meeting "the Restorer of Ancient Eloquence" informed persons in chairs that they must come sooner.' He first commenced by subscriptions to be raised from "Persons eminent in Arts and Literature," who, it seems, were lured by the seductive promise, that, "if they had been virtuous or penitents, they should be commemorated;" an oblique hint at a panegyrical puff. In the decline of his popularity he permitted his doorkeeper, whom he dignifies with the title of Ostiary, to take a shilling! But he seems to have been popular for many years; even when his auditors were but few, they were of the better order*; and in notes respecting him which I have seen, by a contemporary, he is called "the reverend and learned." His favourite character was that of a Restorer of Eloquence; and he was not destitute of the qualifications of a fine orator, a good voice, graceful gesture, and forcible elocution. Warburton justly remarked, "Sometimes he broke jests, and sometimes that bread which he called the Primitive Eucharist." He would degenerate into buffoonery on solemn occasions. His address to the Deity was at first awful, and seemingly devout; but, once expatiating on the several sects who would certainly be damned, he prayed that the Dutch might be undamm'd! He undertook to show the ancient use of the petticoat, by quoting the Scriptures where the mother of Samuel is said to have made him "a little coat," ergo, a PETTIcoalt! His advertisements were mysterious Gent. Mag. vol. lvii. p. 876. ribaldry to attract curiosity, while his own good sense would frequently chastise those who could not resist it; his auditors came in folly, but they departed in good-humour. These advertisements were usually preceded by a sort of motto, generally a sarcastic allusion to some public transaction of the preceding week §. Henley pretended to great impartiality; and when two preachers had animadverted on him, he issued an advertisement, announcing "A Lecture that will be a challenge to the Rev. Mr. Batty, and the Rev. Mr. Albert. Letters are sent to them on this head, and a free standing place is there to be had gratis." Once Henley offered to admit of a disputation, and that he would impartially determine the merits of the contest. It happened that Henley this time was overmatched; for two Oxonians, supported by a strong party to awe his “ marrowboners," as the butchers were called, said to be in the Orator's pay, entered the list: the one to defend the ignorance, the other the impudence, of the Restorer of Eloquence himself. As there was a door behind the rostrum, which led to his house, the Orator silently dropped out, postponing the award to some happier day. This age of lecturers may find their model in Henley's "Universal Academy," and if any should corrupted, will be impracticable." Thus speciously could "the Orator" reason, raising himself to the height of apostolical purity. And, when he was accused that he did all for lucre, he retorted, that "some do nothing for it ;" and that "he preached more charity sermons than any clergyman in the kingdom." He once advertised an oration on marriage, which drew together an overflowing assembly of females at which, solemnly shaking his head, he told the ladies, that "he was afraid, that oftentimes, as well as now, they + His "Defence of the Oratory" is a curious perform-came to church in hopes to get husbands, rather than be ance. He pretends to derive his own from great authority. “St. Paul is related, Acts 28, to have dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and to have received all that came in unto him, teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him. This was at Rome, and doubtless was his practice in his other travels, there being the same reason in the thing to produce elsewhere the like circumstances." He proceeds to show "the calumnies and reproaches, and the novelty and impiety, with which Christianity, at its first setting out, was charged, as a mean, abject institution, not only useless and unserviceable, but pernicious to the public and its professors, as the refuse of the world." -Of the false accusations raised against Jesus-all this he applies to himself and his oratory--and he concludes, that "Bringing men to think rightly will always be reckoned a depraving of their minds by those who are desirous to keep them in a mistake, and who measure all truth by the standard of their own narrow opinions, views, and passions. The principles of this institution are those of right reason: the first ages of Christianity; true facts, clear criticism, and polite literature-if these corrupt the mind, to find a place where the mind will not be instructed by the preacher;" to which he added a piece of wit, not quite decent. He congregated the trade of shoemakers, by offering to show the most expeditious method of making shoes: he held out a boot, and cut off the leg part. He gave a lecture, which he advertised was "for the instruction of those who do not like it; it was on the philosophy, history, and great use of Nonsense to the learned, political, and polite world, who excel in it." § Dr. Cobden, one of George the Second's chaplains, having, in 1748, preached a sermon at St. James's, from these words, "Take away the wicked from before the king, and his throne shall be established in righteousness," it gave so much displeasure, that the doctor was struck out of the list of chaplains; and the next Saturday, the following parody of his text appeared as a motto to Henley's advertisement: aspire to bring themselves down to his genius, I furnish them with hints of anomalous topics. In the second number of "The Oratory Transactions," is a diary from July 1726 to August 1728. It forms, perhaps, an unparalleled chronicle of the vagaries of the human mind. These archives of cunning, of folly, and of literature, are divided into two diaries; the one "The Theological or Lord's days' subjects of the Oratory;" the other, "The Academical or Week-days' subjects." I can only note a few. It is easy to pick out ludicrous specimens ; for he had a quaint humour peculiar to himself; but among these numerous topics are many curious for their knowledge and ingenuity. common places of wit, memoranda," &c. They were sold for much less than one hundred pounds; I have looked over many; they are written with great care. Every leaf has an opposite blank page, probably left for additions or corrections, so that if his nonsense were spontaneous, his sense was the fruit of study and correction. Such was "Orator Henley!" A scholar of great acquirements, and of no mean genius; hardy and inventive, eloquent and witty; he might have been an ornament to literature, which he made ridiculous; and the pride of the pulpit, which he so egregiously disgraced; but, having blunted and worn out that interior feeling, which is the instinct of the good man, and the wisdom "The last Wills and Testaments of the Patri- of the wise, there was no balance in his passions, archs." "An Argument to the Jews, with a proof that they ought to be Christians, for the same reason which they ought to be Jews." and the decorum of life was sacrificed to its selfishness. He condescended to live on the follies of the people, and his sordid nature had changed him till he crept, licking the dust with the "St. Paul's Cloak, Books, and Parchments, serpent." left at Troas." "The tears of Magdalen, and the joy of Angels." "New Converts in Religion." After pointing out the names of "Courayer and others, the Dof W-n, the Protestantism of the P-, the conversion of the Rev. Mr. B-e, and Mr. Har-y," he closes with " Origen's opinion of Satan's conversion; with the choice and balance of Religion in all countries." 46 THE MALADIES OF AUTHORS. THE practice of every art subjects the artist to some particular inconvenience, usually inflicting some malady on that member which has been over-wrought by excess: nature abused, pursues man into his most secret corners, and avenges herself. In the athletic exercises of the ancient Gymnasium, the pugilists were observed to become "Feb. 11. This week, all Mr. Henley's writ-lean from their hips downwards, while the superior ings were seized, to be examined by the State. parts of their bodies, which they over-exercised, Vide Magnam Chartam, and Eng. Lib." There is one remarkable entry : were prodigiously swollen; on the contrary, the It is evident by what follows that the personal-racers ities he made use of, were one means of attracting auditors. "On the action of Cicero, and the beauty of Eloquence, and on living characters; of action in the Senate, at the Bar, and in the Pulpit-of the Theatrical in all men. The manner of my Lord —, Sir —, Dr. —, the B. of —, being a proof how all life is playing something, but with different action." In a Lecture on the History of Bookcraft, an account was given "Of the plenty of books, and dearth of sense; the advantages of the Oratory to the booksellers, in advertising for them; and to their customers, in making books useless; with all the learning, reason, and wit, more than are proper for one advertisement." Amid these eccentricities it is remarkable, that "the Zany" never forsook his studies; and the amazing multiplicity of the MSS. he left behind him, confirm this extraordinary fact. "These," he says, "are six thousand more or less, that I value at one guinea apiece; with 150 volumes of were meagre upwards, while their feet acquired an unnatural dimension. The secret source of life seems to be carried forwards to those parts which are making the most continued efforts. In all sedentary labours, some particular malady is contracted by every worker, derived from particular postures of the body and peculiar habits. Thus the weaver, the tailor, the painter, and the glass-blower, have all their respective maladies. The diamond-cutter, with a furnace before him, may be said almost to live in one; the slightest air must be shut out of the apartment, lest it scatter away the precious dust-a breath would ruin him! The analogy is obvious*; and the author must participate in the common fate of all sedentary occupations. But his maladies, from the very nature of the delicate organ of thinking, intensely exercised, are more terrible than those of any Hawkesworth, in the second paper of the Adventurer, has composed, from his own feelings, an elegant description of intellectual and corporeal labour, and the sufferings of an author, with the uncertainty of his labour and his reward. 1 other profession; they are more complicated, more hidden in their causes, and the mysterious union and secret influence of the faculties of the soul over those of the body, are visible, yet still incomprehensible; they frequently produce a perturbation in the faculties, a state of acute irritability, and many sorrows and infirmities, which are not likely to create much sympathy from those around the author, who, at a glance, could have discovered where the pugilist or the racer became meagre or monstrous: the intellectual malady eludes even the tenderness of friendship. The more obvious maladies engendered by the life of a student arise from over-study. These have furnished a curious volume to Tissot, in his treatise "On the Health of Men of Letters;" a book, however, which chills and terrifies more than it does good. The unnatural fixed postures, the perpetual activity of the mind, and the inaction of the body; the brain exhausted with assiduous toil deranging the nerves, vitiating the digestive powers, disordering its own machinery, and breaking the calm of sleep by that previous state of excitement which study throws us into, are some of the calamities of a studious life: for like the ocean, when its swell is subsiding, the waves of the mind too still heave and beat; hence all the small feverish symptoms, and the whole train of hypochondriac affections, as well as some acute ones". • Dr. Fuller's "Medicina Gymnastica, or, a treatise concerning the power of Exercise, with respect to the Animal Economy, fifth edition, 1718," is useful to remind the student of what he is apt to forget; for the object of Among the correspondents of the poets Hughes and Thomson, there is a pathetic letter from a student. Alexander Bayne, to prepare his lectures, studied fourteen hours a day for eight months successively, and wrote 1600 sheets. Such intense application, which, however, not greatly exceeds that of many authors, brought on the bodily complaints he has minutely described, with "all the dispiriting symptoms of a nervous illness, commonly called vapours, or lowness of spirits." Bayne, who was of an athletic temperament, imagined he had not paid attention to his diet, to the lowness of his desk, and his habit of sitting with a particular compression of the body;-in future, all these were to be avoided. He prolonged his life for five years; and, perhaps, was still flattering his hopes with sharing, one day, in the literary celebrity of his friends, when, to use his words, "the same illness made a fierce attack upon me again, and has kept me in a very bad state of inactivity and disrelish of all my ordinary amusements:" those amusements were his serious studies. There is a fascination in literary labour: the student feeds on magical drugs; to withdraw him from them requires nothing less than that greater magic, which could break his own spells. A few months after this letter was written, Bayne died on the way to Bath, a martyr to his studies. The excessive labour on a voluminous work, which occupies a long life, leaves the student with a broken constitution, and his sight decayed or lost. The most admirable observer of mankind, and the truest painter of the human heart, declares, “The corruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthy tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth on many things." Of this class was old Randle Cotgrave, the curious collector of the most copious dictionary of old French and old English words and phrases. The work is the only treasury of our genuine idiom. Even this labour of the lexicographer, so copious and so elaborate, must have been projected with rap this volume is to substitute exercise for medicine. He wrote the book before he became a physician. He considers horse-riding as the best and noblest of all exercises, it being "a mixt exercise, partly active and partly passive, while other sorts, such as walking, running, stooping, or the like, require some labour and more strength for their performance." Cheyne, in his well-known treatise of "The English Malady," published about twenty years after Fuller's work, acknowledges that riding on horse-ture, and pursued with pleasure, till, in the back is the best of all exercises, for which he details his reasons. "Walking," he says, "though it will answer the same end, yet is it more laborious and tiresome;" but amusement ought always to be combined with the exercise of a student; the mind will receive no refreshment by a solitary walk or ride, unless it be agreeably withdrawn from all thoughtfulness and anxiety; if it continue studying in its recreations, it is the sure means of obtaining neither of its objects-a friend, not an author, will at such a moment be the better companion. The last chapter in Fuller's work contains much curious reading on the ancient physicians, and their gymnastic courses, which Asclepiades, the pleasantest of all the ancient physicians, greatly studied; he was most fortunate in the invention of exercises to supply the place of much physic, and (says Fuller) no man in any age ever had the happiness to obtain so general an applause; progress, "the mind was musing on many things." Pliny calls him the delight of mankind. Admirable physician, who had so many ways, it appears, to make physic agreeable! He invented the lecti pensiles, or hanging beds, that the sick might be rocked to sleep; which took so much at that time, that they became a great luxury among the Romans. Fuller judiciously does not recommend the gymnastic courses, because horse-riding, for persons of delicate constitutions, is preferable; he discovers too the reason why the ancients did not introduce this mode of exercise-it arose from the simple circumstance of their not knowing the use of stirrups, which was a later invention. Riding with the ancients was, therefore, only an exercise for the healthy and the robust; a horse without stirrups was a formidable animal for a valetudinarian. Then came the melancholy doubt, that drops mil-volumes of MSS., preserved in the Archiepiscopal dew from its enveloping wings over the volu- Library at Lambeth. These great labours were minous labour of a laborious author, whether he pursued with the ardour that only could have probe wisely consuming his days, and not perpetually duced them; the author had not exceeded his neglecting some higher duties, or some happier thirtieth year, when he sank under his continued amusements. Still the enchanted delver sighs, studies, and perished a martyr to literature. Our and strikes on, in the glimmering mine of hope. literary history abounds with instances of the sad If he live to complete the great labour, it is, effects of an over-indulgence in study: that agreeperhaps, reserved for the applause of the next able writer, Howel, had nearly lost his life by an age; for, as our great lexicographer exclaimed, excess of this nature, studying through long nights "In this gloom of solitude I have protracted my in the depth of winter. This severe study occawork, till those whom I wished to please have sioned an imposthume in his head; he was eighteen sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage days without sleep; and the illness was attended are empty sounds;" but, if it be applauded in his with many other afflicting symptoms. The eager own, that praise has come too late for him whose diligence of Blackmore, protracting his studies literary labour has stolen away his sight. Cot- through the night, broke his health, and obliged grave had grown blind over his dictionary, and him to fly to a country retreat. Harris, the hiswas doubtful whether this work of his laborious torian, died of a consumption by midnight studies, days and nightly vigils was not a superfluous as his friend Hollis mentions. I shall add a labour, and nothing, after all, but a poor recent instance, which I myself witnessed: it is bundle of words." The reader may listen to the that of John Macdiarmid. He was one of those gray-headed martyr, addressing his patron, Lord Scotch students whom the golden fame of Hume Burghley: and Robertson attracted to the metropolis. He mounted the first steps of literary adventure with credit; and passed through the probation of "I present to your lordship an account of the expense of many hours, which, in your service, and to mine own benefit, might have been other-editor and reviewer, till he strove for more heroic wise employed. My desires have aimed at more substantial marks; but mine eyes failed them, and forced me to spend out their vigour in this bundle of words, which may be unworthy of your lordship's great patience, and, perhaps, ill-suited to the expectation of others." adventures. He published some volumes, whose subjects display the aspirings of his genius: “An Inquiry into the Nature of Civil and Military Subordination ;" another into "the System of Military Defence." It was during these labours I beheld this inquirer, of a tender frame, emaciA great number of young authors have died of ated, and study-worn, with hollow eyes, where over-study. An intellectual enthusiasm, accom- the mind dimly shone like a lamp in a tomb. panied by constitutional delicacy, has swept away With keen ardour he opened a new plan of biohalf the rising genius of the age. Curious calcu- graphical politics. When, by one who wished the lators have affected to discover the average number author was in better condition, the dangers of of infants who die under the age of five years: had excess in study were brought to his recollection, they investigated those of the children of genius he smiled, and, with something of a mysterious who perish before their thirtieth year, we should air, talked of unalterable confidence in the powers not be less amazed at this waste of man. There of his mind; of the indefinite improvement in our are few scenes more afflicting, nor which more faculties; and, with this enfeebled frame, condeeply engage our sympathy, than that of a youth, sidered himself capable of continuous labour. glowing with the devotion of study, and resolute His whole life, indeed, was one melancholy to distinguish his name among his country- trial. Often the day cheerfully passed without men, while death is stealing on him, touching with premature age, before he strikes the last blow. The author perishes on the very pages which give a charm to his existence. The fine taste and tender melancholy of Headley, the fervid genius of Henry Kirke White, will not easily pass away; but how many youths as noble-minded have not had the fortune of Kirke White to be commemorated by genius, and have perished without their fame! Henry Wharton is a name well known to the student of English literature; he published historical criticisms of high value; and he left, as some of the fruits of his studies, sixteen its meal, but never without its page. The new system of political biography was advancing, when our young author felt a paralytic stroke. He afterwards resumed his pen; and a second one proved fatal. He lived just to pass through the press his "Lives of British Statesmen," a splendid quarto, whose publication he owed to the generous temper of a friend, who, when the author could not readily procure a publisher, would not see the dying author's last hope disappointed. Some research and reflection are combined in this literary and civil history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but it was written with the blood of the author, for Macdiarmid died of over-study chants, and his virelays; and, after a year's and exhaustion. Among the maladies of poor authors, who procure a precarious existence by their pen, one, not the least considerable, is their old age; their flower and maturity of life were shed for no human comforts; and old age is the withered root. The late THOMAS MORTIMER, the compiler, among other things, of that useful work, "The Student's Pocket Dictionary," felt this severely-he himself experienced no abatement of his ardour, nor deficiency in his intellectual powers, at near the age of eighty-but he then would complain "of the paucity of literary employment, and the preference given to young adventurers." Such is the youth, and such the old age of ordinary authors! LITERARY SCOTCHMEN. absence, our bard returned in the triumph of verse. This was the most seducing moment of life; RITSON felt himself a laureated Petrarch; but he had now quitted his untutored but feeling admirers; and the child of fancy was to mix with the everyday business of life. At Edinburgh he studied medicine, lived by writing theses for the idle and the incompetent, and composed a poem on Medicine, till at length his hopes and his ambition conducted him to London. But the golden age of the imagination soon deserted him in his obscure apartment in the glittering metropolis. He attended the hospitals, but these were crowded by students who, if they relished the science less, loved the trade more: he published a hasty version of Homer's Hymn to Venus, which was good enough to be praised, but not to sell; at length his fertile imagination withering over the task-work of literature, he WHAT literary emigrations from the North, of resigned fame for bread; wrote the preface to young men of genius, seduced by a romantic Clarke's Survey of the Lakes, compiled medical passion for literary fame, and lured by the golden articles for the Monthly Review; and, wasting prospects which the happier genius of some of fast his ebbing spirits, he retreated to an obscure their own countrymen opened on them! A lodging at Islington, where death relieved a hopevolume might be written on literary Scotchmen, less author, in the twenty-seventh year of his life. who have perished immaturely in this metropolis; The following unpolished lines were struck off at little known, and slightly connected, they have a heat in trying his pen on the back of a letter; dropped away among us, and scarcely left a vestige he wrote the names of the Sister Fates, Clotho, in the wrecks of their genius. Among them Lachesis, and Atropos-the sudden recollection of some authors may be discovered who might have his own fate rushed on him-and thus the rhapranked, perhaps, in the first classes of our litera- sodist broke out : ture. I shall select four out of as many hundred, who were not entirely unknown to me; a romantic youth-a man of genius-a brilliant prose writer -and a labourer in literature. ISAAC RITSON (not the poetical antiquary) was a young man of genius, who perished immaturely in this metropolis by attempting to exist by the efforts of his pen. In early youth he roved among his native mountains, with the battles of Homer in his head, and his bow and arrow in his hand; in calmer hours, he nearly completed a spirited version of Hesiod, which constantly occupied his after-studies; yet our minstrel-archer did not less love the severer sciences. Selected at length to rise to the eminent station of the Village Schoolmaster,-from the thankless office of pouring cold rudiments into heedless ears RITSON took a poetical flight. It was among the mountains and wild scenery of Scotland, that our young Homer, picking up fragments of heroic songs, and composing some fine ballad poetry, would, in his wanderings, recite them with such passionate expression, that he never failed of auditors; and found even the poor generous, when their better passions were moved. Thus he lived, like some old troubadour, by his rhymes, and his "I wonder much, as yet ye're spinning, Fates! I love you much; ye flatter not my pride. Thus deeply he enters into his own feelings, and abjures his errors, as he paints the utter G |