THIS VOLUME IS DEPOSITED WITH THE NEW HAMPSHIRE J51 r REV. SILAS KETCIH M, ON THE FOLLOWING CONDITIONS: IT shall be subject: to the order of the said SILAS KETCH- UM, or to removal by him at any time, on giving his receipt to the Curator; or to be claimed by his legal representative any time within one year after his decease. It shall be subject to the same regulations as other volumes in the Soci- ety's Library; and the Society shall assume no risk on the same against loss by fire, the owner's right to insure being reserved. (Signed) SILAS KETCHUM. THE above Conditions were agreed to by Vote of the N. H. ANTIQVAKIAN SOCIETY, at the Regular Meeting, igth of January, 1875. GEO. . BLAISDELL, Record. Sec. S.K. ..,- MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE, WRITINGS, AND CHARACTER, LITERARY, PROFESSIONAL, AND RELIGIOUS, OF THE LATE JOHN MASON GOOD, M.D. K.R.S. r. R. S. L. MEM. AM. PHIL. SOC. AND F. L. S. OF PHILADELPHIA, ETC. ETC. ETC. BY OLINTHUS GREGORY, LL. D. PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS IN THE ROYAL MILITARY ACADEMY, &.C. &C. WITH THE SERMON OCCASIONED BY HIS DEATH, BY CHARLES JERRAM, M. A. BOSTON : PUBLISHED BY CROCKER & BREWSTER, 47, Washington Street. NEW YORK . J. LEAVITT, 182, Broadway. 1829. THIS edition of the Memoirs of Dr. Good differs from the Lon- don edition, from which it is printed, in the following respects. The preface, a few notes containing, for the most part, matter that would be interesting only to an English antiquary, and some ex- tracts from the writings of other persons having little or no refer- ence to Dr. Good's history or character, have been omitted ; the extracts, with which the Memoirs abound, from the works of Dr. Good have, in several instances, been curtailed ; and there has been added the funeral Sermon preached by the Vicar of the church with which Dr. Good was connected for some time pre- vious to his death. PEIRCE AND WILLIAMS, PRINTERS. CONTENTS. PAGE SECTION I. Memoirs of the Life of Dr. J. M. Good .... 13 J. M. Good's family .... 14 His father's ordination and mar- riage 15 Early concurring circumstances in the formation of J. M. Good's character 17 Put apprentice to a surgeon at Gosport 20 His early Common-place-book '21 Attends the London Hospitals 23 Settles as a surgeon at Sudbury '2 1 His first marriage, &c. ... 25 Becomes acquainted with Dr. Drake 27 Mr. Good's second marriage . 27 He becomes involved in pecu- niary embarrassments . . . their effect 28 Poems published in " theWorld" 29 Essay on Providence .... 32 Remark on our Lord's Miracles 48 Mr. Good removes to London . 49 Address to the Evening Star . 50 Verses to a Bath Stove (left be- hind) at Sudbury 51 New perplexities and trials . . 52 Account of the Phannaccutic Association 53 Ignorance of many country Drug- gists in 1794 54 Mr. Good's translations from Clcmenti Bondi 56 His generalizing study of lan- guages 57 Contributes to the Critical and other Reviews 61 Mr. Good loses his only son . . 62 Commences his translation of Lucretius 64 Translation effected during his professional walks .... 65 United with Dr. Gregory and Mr. Bosworth in the Panto- logia 68 Delivers Lectures at the Surrey Institution 70 72 PACK Occasional poetry : Another Trifle, Birdbrook Parsonage, The Wish, On the Death of the Princess Charlotte, &.c. Mr. Good contributes to the British Review 77 Takes the degree of M. D. . . 78 Writes his System of Nosology 79 Study of Medicine . 80 Publishes the Book of Nature . 80 His declining health, and antici- pations of death 80 Extracts from letters to Drs. Walton and Drake .... 81 Death 85 Brief character, by Mr. Ro- berts, &c 87 SKCTIOX II, Review of the prin- cipal publications of Dr. Good, and an account of two impor- tant works yet unpublished . . 90 Diseases of Prisons, &c. ... 91 History of Medicine . . . .93 Translation of the Song of Songs 95 Memoirs of Dr. Geddes ... 99 Refutation of one of his errors . 101 Translation of Lucretius . . . 103 Sketch of the System of Epicu- rus 108 Exposure of some of its errors, 111 Specimens of the translation . 114 of the notes . . . 119 Anniversary Oration : Medical Society 124 Essay on Medical Technology 125 Translation of the Book of Job, 127 Dr. Good's account of its nature and contents 130 Translation of Job xix. . . . 146 Comparative specimens from Mr. Scott, Dr. Smith, &c. . . 147 Specimen of Dr. Good's trans- lation in heroic verse .... 148 Physiological Nosology . . . 150 Outline of Dr. Good's system . 151 Table of proposed affixes and suffixes 154 Study of Medicine 157 CONTENTS. PAGE Quotation, on distortion of the spine 161 Opinions of Medical Journalists 163 The Book of Nature .... 165 Extract, on the varieties of the human race 169 Translation of Proverbs . . . 183 Extract from Introductory Dis- sertation 185 Translation of the Psalms . . 198 Extracts from Dr. Good's His- torical Outline 202 Specimens of the translation, and comparisons with other translations 206 Summary of Dr. Good's intel- lectual character 216 SECTION III. A developement of Dr. Good's religious character 218 Preliminary remarks on the superiority of the religious to the intellectual principle . . 219 On the law of reputation, and our responsibility for our opinions 220 To what extent is infidelity pre- valent among medical men ? . 223 Whether changes of opinion fair- ly imply a want of principle 1 225 Dr. Good adopts Socmian sen- timents 231 Notes extracted from his inter- leaved Bible 233 His slow escape from specula- tive error 237 Metrical translation of Psalm xlii. 238 Correspondence with his minis- ter, on his separation from the Sccinians 240 Becomes acquainted with Rev. S. Marsden . . 244 PAGE Extract from an essay on Hap- piness . . 246 Verses on entering his 50th year 24*9 The Daisy, a short poetical ef- fusion 250 The Resting Place . . . . .251 More notes from his interleaved Bible 252 Effect of the alarming illness of his two daughters 254 Illness and death of his son-in- law, the Rev. Cornelius Neale 256 Specimens of his devotional poetry 259 Selections from his Occasional Thoughts : Enoch .... 268 On, My kingdom is not of this world 269 Form of Prayer 273 On, The Way Everlasting . . 274 On, Be of good cheer : it is I ; be not afraid 277 On, And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the evening 281 On, And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trem- bled s 285 On, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us . 290 Dr. Good's last letter . . . .299 Account of his last illness and death 301 Sermon occasioned by his death 313 MEMOIRS. SECTION I. MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF DR. JOHN MASON GOOD, ILLUS- TRATED BY VARIOUS EXTRACTS FROM HIS UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS, OR FROM THOSE THAT WERE PUBLISHED ANONYMOUSLY. THE attempt to sketch the biography of a deceased friend is at once delightful and difficult. It is delightful to retrace those characteristics of mind and heart, which excited our admiration, and kept our affection alive ; but it is difficult so to accomplish this as to avoid the charge of partiality ; and an apprehension of this difficulty, ex- perienced by one, who, whatever was his attachment to the deceased individual, wishes only to be just in his appreciation of character, occasions a feeling of restraint which is unfavorable to the due execution of the task he has undertaken. In delineating, however, the intellectual and moral jwrtrait of Dr. JOHN MASON GOOD, the subject of these memoirs, the difficulty to which 1 have here adverted is considerably diminished ; because the papers, which have been preserved with unusual care, in a tolerably connected series, from his earliest youth, will furnish the principal materials for the picture ; and thus will free me 2 14 MEMOIRS OF in great measure from the temptation, either to over- charge the likeness, or to intercept its exhibition by placing myself before it. If it be true, as has been often affirmed, that there has rarely passed a life of which a faithful and judicious narrative would not be interesting and instructive ; it will surely not be unreasonable to hope that advantage may result from even an imperfect development of the circumstances that contributed to the formation of a character of no ordinary occurrence ; one which com- bined successfully the apparently incongruous attributes of contemplation and of activity : where memory evinced with equal energy its faculties of acquisition, of retention, and of promptness in reproduction ; and where, in con- sequence, the individual attained an extraordinary emi- nence, not merely in one department of literature or science, but in several ; and proved himself equally expert in the details of practice, and in the researches of theory ; allowing neither the fatigues of the one, nor the absorptions of the other, permanently to extinguish that thirst after the chief good which is the noblest character- istic of true greatness of mind. In attempting this development, I shall not wander from the proposed point, if I commence with a short account of Dr. Good's family. This family was highly respecta- ble, and had for several generations possessed property at Romsey, in Hampshire, and in the neighboring parish of Lockerley. The shalloon manufacture, now greatly on the decline, had for ages been carried on to a consider- able extent at Romsey, and the family of the Goods long ranked amongst the most successful and opulent of the proprietary manufacturers. Inscriptions over the ashes of several of them, for two or three centuries back, may be seen in the aisles of the venerable abbey church, some with the cautious monumental designation of " gen- tleman and alderman of this town." The grandfather of John Mason Good, who was actively engaged in this manu- facture, had three sons, "William, Edward, and Peter : of these the eldest devoted himself to the military profession and died young ; the second succeeded his father as a shalloon manufacturer, and possessed the family estates at Romsey and Lockerley ; the third, evincing early in- DR. MASON GOOD. 15 dications of piety, was devoted to the ministry of the Gospel among the Independent or Congregational class of Dissenters. To qualify him for this, he was first placed under the care of the Rev. W. Johnson, then the minister of a flourishing congregation at Romsey ; from whom he was, after he had finished his preparatory studies, removed to the Congregational academy at Ottery-St.-Mary, in Devonshire, then under the charge of a very eminent scholar, the Rev. Dr. Levander. Here he made considerable proficiency in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages, and acquired a love for general literature and its application to Biblical criticism and ex- plication, which he never lost. Having terminated his academical course, and estab- lished a reputation for learning and piety, he was invited to take the pastoral charge of an " Independent church and congregation" at Epping in Essex. His ordination took place on Thursday the 23d of September, 1760, and the celebrated JOHN MASON " delivered the charge" on that occasion. It was an interesting and instructive composition, peculiarly characteristic of its author, which I have read with great pleasure, in the Rev. Peter Good's common-place book ; though I believe it has never been published. About a year after his establishment at Epping, Mr. Good married Miss SARAH PEYTO, the daughter of the Rev. HENRY PEYTO, of Great Coggeshall, Essex, and the favorite niece of the Rev. John Mason. This Mr. Ma- son acquired a lasting and distinguished reputation, as the author of the universally known TREATISE ON SELF- KNOWLEDGE ;* and was the grandson of another John Maton, rector of Water Stratford in Buckinghamshire, a * He wrote and published several other valuable works. In one of them, '' A J-lain and Modest Pica lor Christianity," published in 1743, he com- pletely exposed and refuted the pernicious sophistry, then producing a most baneful effect, diffused in a treatise entitled " Christianity not founded on Argument." Amoug his publications are, " The Student and Pastor ; or iples of Harmony L Poetical Composition :" An " Essay on Elocution," which was long em- ployed as a text-book at Oxford ; and four octavo volumes of sermons, published in 1754, under the title of "The Lord's-Day Evening Entertain- ment." Most of these still retain an undiminished reputation. Mr. Mason died in 1753, aged 58 years. 16 MEMOIRS OF man of great genius as well as piety, who died in 1694, and who left a little collection of devotional aphorisms, published by the recommendation of Dr. Watts, and en- titled " Select Remains of the Rev. John Mason, A. M." This little book continues, most deservedly, to receive a wide circulation. It is constituted principally of short, but sententious and weighty reflections on the most mo- mentous topics in reference to the Christian life ; and it is defaced with fewer conceits than most works of the same age, devoted to a similar purpose. Miss Peyto resided almost from her infancy with her uncle, Mr. Mason, and derived, both with regard to the cultivation of her understanding and of her heart, all the advantages which, under the blessing of God, so enviable a situation could supply. At the time of her marriage she was noted for the elegance and solidity of her acqui- sitions, the soft and gentle fascinations of her manners, and for the most decided piety. Mr. Good and Miss Peyto were married in 1761 ; but their union was not of long continuance. She died on the 17th of February, 1766, at the early age of 29, four days after the birth of her youngest child. She left three children. William, born Oct. 19th, 1762 ; John Mason Good, the subject of these memoirs, born May 25th, 1764 ; and Peter, born Feb. 13th, 1766. William and Peter are still living, and reside, one at Bath, the other in London. Within two years of the death of his first wife, the Rev. Peter Good married a second, the only daughter of Mr. John Baker, an opulent tradesman, residing in Cannon Street, London. She was a woman of great piety and extensive information, and discharged the duties which devolved upon her with so much prudence, affection, and delicacy, that many years elapsed before John Mason Good discovered, with equal surprise and regret, that she was not actually his mother. She had one child, a daughter, who is still living, and resides at Charmouth. Shortly after his second marriage, Mr. Good was in- vited to take the pastoral charge of a congregation at Wellingborough, in Northamptonshire, to which place he in consequence removed with his family. But he did not DR. MASON GOOD. It remain there much more than a year. His elder brother John dying unmarried, and without having made a will, the patrimonial property and the business at Romsey passed, by that event, into his hands ; so that it became necessary for him to quit Wellingborough, and reside in Hampshire. His first thoughts were to carry on the shal- loon manufacture, with the assistance of his late brother's superintendent of the works, until one of his sons should be old enough to take the business. But he soon found that this class of occupations drew him too much from his favorite pursuits ; and disposed of " the concern" to some individual accustomed to business, and able to conduct it advantageously. He then resolved to devote his time to the education of his own children : no sooner was this determination known, however, than he was earnestly importuned by relatives and friends, and by many of the gentlemen, clergy, and other ministers in the neighborhood, to associate their children with his. After much delibera- tion, he at length determined to engage an assistant of extensive knowledge and sound principles, and to take the general superintendence of a few pupils, fixing the maximum at sixteen in number, including his own sons. Thus, a desire to preserve his children from the more obvious evils of public schools, and to supply them with the advantage of select associates, placed him in a sphere of employment, but not of heavy or anxious labor, with a happy competency, and in the immediate vicinity of the sweetly variegated scenery of the New Forest ; fond of rural enjoyments, fond of domestic life, fond of acquiring and of communicating knowledge, fond of select and in- telligent society, fond of benevolent exertion, blessed with the confluence of these streams of delight, and to a high degree proving that the elegant delineation of the author of the " Seasons" is as exquisite in real life as it is touching in poetry. Oh ! speak the joy, ye whom the sudden tear Surprises often, while ye look around. And nothing meets your eye but sights of bliss ! A moderate sufficiency, content, Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books, Ease, and alternate labor, useful life, Progressive virtue, and approving heaven ! *2 18 MEMOIRS OP This piece of family detail will not, I trust, be thought incongruous with my general narrative, since it shows that the subject of it commenced his studies in a seminary conducted by his father. Here he, in due time, made a correct acquaintance with the Latin, Greek, and French languages ; and soon evinced a remarkable desire to drink deeply of the springs of knowledge and pleasure which they laid open to him. Among the books placed in the hands of the boys, besides those usually employed in classical instruction, were most of the publications of Mr. Mason, mentioned in a preceding note ; and it was a great object with Mr. Good, not merely to excite in the minds of his pupils a fondness for general reading, but to explain to them the best modes of abridging and record- ing, in common-place books, upon the plan recommended by Mr. Locke, the most valuable results of their daily researches. His own common-place book, to which I have already adverted, is an excellent proof of the utility of these repositories ; and those of his son, from some of which I shall have occasion to make extracts, serve equally to shew how successfully his pupils adopted the plan. They who remark in how many instances apparently slight circumstances give the essential determination to character ; who recollect, for example, the fact that both the father and the husband of Michael Angela's nurse were stone-masons, and that the chisel which she often put into his infant hands as a plaything, served to create the bent of genius which issued in the sculptures of that admirable artist or who are aware how much the poetic inspiration of the excellent Montgomery was nurtured by the early perusal of Cowper's Poems, the only work of taste and imagination which he was allowed to read while at Fulneck school will not fail to notice what various particulars concurred in the arrangements for John Mason at this susceptible age, to implant in his mind those principles of thought, and feeling, and action, which, ultimately exfoliated, produced that character in maturity which it is our object to portray. From Mr. Mason's " Rules for Students," and from the example of his father, he learned that these " five things are necessary ; a proper distribution and management of his time ; a DR. MASON GOOD. 19 right method of reading to advantage ; the order and regulation of his studies ; the proper way of collecting and preserving useful sentiments from books and con- versation ; and the improvement of his thoughts when alone :" from Mr. Mason's Essays on " the Principles of Harmony," the illustrations in which are selected with much taste and judgment, he early acquired a relish for easy and mellifluous versification : from the example of his parents, and from that of Mr. Mason, which they taught him to contemplate with veneration, he imbibed the persuasion that universal knowledge did not obstruct the- road to eminence in any one pursuit; and a conviction equally strong, though not so invariably in operation, that true piety was susceptible of a happy union with talent and genius : and, superadded to all this, the localities of Romsey enkindled in his bosom a love for rural scenery and rural pleasures, which he never lost. Thus, in one of his poems, written a few years after he quitted the domestic dwelling and the neighboring regions, productive of so much genuine happiness, after describing the sweet flowing river, the bridge then new, the lawns, and glens, and vistas of Lord Palmerston's seat at Broadlands, the ecstacy with which he engaged in the game of cricket and other athletic exercises, he exclaims, with that sigh of retrospection which is often as natural to an individual just starting into manhood as to one who feels himself sliding into the vale of years, Ah ! scenes beloved ! to purer days decreed, When first, unskill'd, I touch'd the Dorian reed. Tho' many a sign has roll'd its chequer'd hours, Since, rude of life, I left your tranquil bowers ; And heaven has now my devious lot assign'd Far from your thickets rough, or groves refin'd Think not that time or space can e'er suppress Thro' my fond heart, your wonted pow'r to bless : Erase the soft delights, 'twas yours to prize, Or make my soul those soft delights despise. No while that heart with circling life shall beat, While swells that soul, or memory keeps her seat : Tho' heaven should doom me to some desert shore, Where never human exile trod before ; Still fancy's pen should sketch your prospects true, Give all your charms, and every joy renew ; 20 MEMOIRS OP Still paint your plains and academic shade, Where Hoijle* at times, at times where Horace sway'd. That felicitous alternation of study and exhilarating exercise, however, to which our young aspirant here adverts, was not, in the first instance, at all congenial with his own taste and wishes. Such was the delight with which he pursued his studies of every kind, that it occasioned an entire absorption of thought ; so that when he was little more than twelve years of age, his habit of hanging over his hooks had produced a curvature in his back, equally unfavorable to his growth and his health. His father, anxious to remove this evil, earnestly besought him to join with his fellow students in their various games and sports ; and ere long he engaged in these also with his characteristic ardor, and became as healthful, agile, and erect, as any of his youthful asso- ciates. As the season approached in which it would be proper for Mr. Good to put his sons into more immediate training for the professions which they respectively selected, he gradually diminished the number of his pupils, in order that when they had quitted home, he should only retain two or three students, and they of more mature age. His eldest son William was at fifteen years of age, arti- cled to an attorney at Portsmouth ; John Mason, at about the same age, was apprenticed to Mr. Johnson, a surgeon apothecary at Gosport, son of the Rev. W. Johnson of Romsey, before mentioned ; and the youngest son, Peter, was placed in a commercial house at Portsmouth. The father being now at liberty fully to resume the pas- toral duties, (having, indeed, continued to preach fre- quently at Romsey.) acceded to the invitation of a con- gregation at Havant ; to which place he removed in the year 1779 or 1780. Here he was within a few miles of all his sons, and kept alive an intimacy between them and his two remaining pupils ; one a son of Sir John Carter, of Portsmouth, the other a son of the Rev. J. Renaud, then rector of Havant. This latter I specify as an indi- cation of the catholic spirit which actuated these two ministers of the Gospel of different persuasions. They * The writer who first digested the laws of the game of cricket. DR. MASON GOOD. 21 seem to have imbibed the happy sentiment recommended by Matthew Henry : "Herein a Christian commendrth his love, when he loves those who differ from him, and joins in affection to those with whom he cannot concur in opinion." Our young friend quitted the paternal roof under the influence of all the emotions that are usually excited on such an occasion : " Some natural tears he dropt ; but wip'd them soon :" the buoyancy and hilarity of youth, and the direction of his ardent and aspiring mind into fresh channels of research, soon rendered him happy in his new situation. There is no difficulty in conceiving with what jocund activity he would go through the varied employments and amusements of an apprentice to a country surgeon. He quickly acquired and discharged the pharmaceutic functions ; he studied the Clinical Guide, and the Dispen- satories of that day, with old Quincy, and other books recommended to him by Mr. Johnson ; he now and then snatched an evening hour to give to his beloved cricket, and the exercise of fencing ; and [often did he recreate his spirits by the study of music, and in playing the Ger- man flute, an instrument in the use of which he became a very respectable proficient. But these, though they evidently occupied much of his time, he did not suffer to engross the whole ; for even at this early age he began to exercise his powers in original composition, as well as to digest plans for the augmentation of his literary and scientific stores. At the age of fifteen he composed a " Dictionary of Poetic Endings," and several little poems. He also drew up " An Abstracted View of the Principal Tropes and Figures of Rhetoric, in their Origin and Powers," illustrated by a variety of examples, original and collected. Shortly afterwards he made himself mas- ter of the Italian language, thus becoming enabled to cull the sweets of Ariosto, Tasso, Dante, and the devo- tional Filicaja, whose works he perused with the most enthusiastic avidity : and simultaneously he reduced into active operation the plan of common-place books, so in- cessantly recommended by his father. These he threw into separate classifications, and, commencing with a 22 MEMOIRS OF series of books, each of a convenient size for a coat- pocket, he made one or other his constant companion : and thus, wherever he went, and could get access to a book, he was prepared to select from it, and add to his own stores.* The evidences of these early labors now lie by me. One of the books is entitled Extracta ex Autoribus diversis, and relates principally to such topics as would interest a lover of poetry and the belles lettres, but the spare corners are most amusingly interspersed with gleanings of professional lore, under the heads of Spt. Mendcrcr., Vin. Vermifug., Vin. Antimon., Vitr. Cerat. Antimon. &c. The " Extracta" shews with what taste, as well as diligence, the collector augmented his literary stores. In this little volume he has laid nearly a hundred authors, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, English, under contribu- tion. In others his quotations relate more to chemistry, or the broader outlines of natural philosophy. But at this early period I trace no indications of his having be- gun to explore and classify the profusion of bounty and beauty poured before us in the vegetable world, the sub- lime and impressive peculiarities of the mineral kingdom, or even the touching and instructive varieties and resem- blances which the animal world exhibits ; except so far as these latter fell under his notice in the professional study of comparative anatomy. Before our young surgeon had completed his eigh- teenth year, Mr. Johnson's health became so indifferent,! that he was obliged to engage a gentleman of skill and talent to conduct his business. For this purpose he selected Mr. Babington, then an assistant surgeon at * Most auspiciously for him, at this spring-tide of his intellectual facul- ties, his father had recommended him to the watchful eye of the Rev. Dr. Wren, then resident at Gosport, with whom he always spent his Sunday evening's, and to whose valuable library he had free access. t Since the above was written, I have ascertained from an authentic source, that even before the subject of this narrative had completed hissia:- teenth year, the bad health of Mr. Johnson caused to be thrown upon his apprentice an unusual weight of responsibility for one so young. He had to prepare the medicines, to enter an account of them in the several books, to send them to the respective patients, &,c., almost entirely without super- intendence. All this, however, served but to consolidate and establish the habits of order and regularity in which he had been trained ; and tiius sup- plied another link in the chain of circumstances which operated in the for- mation of his character. DR. MASOX GOOD. 23 Haslar Hospital, and since well known as a physician of high reputation in London. Mr. Babington was older by a few years than Mr. Good ; but the disparity was not jsuch as to prevent their forming for each other a cordial esteem. Since the death of Dr. Good, Dr. Babington, on being asked by a friend of mine, as to the impression which he retained of his early disposition and habits, he replied, that when he first became acquainted with him at Gosport. he was not, he thinks, quite seventeen years of age ; that he was of excellent character, both of moral and intellectual qualities ; that he was a lively, quick youth, of very ready apprehension, and with a mind even then fully imbued with more than the elements of classi- cal literature ; that his professional ardor was considera- ble, and his capacity and taste for scientific acquirements rapidly developing themselves. Satisfactory plans for the efficient cooperation of these two individuals had scarcely been formed, when the death of Mr. Johnson, and opening prospects of another kind for both, prevented them from being reduced into action. A favorable opportunity presented itself at this juncture for Mr. Good's reception into the family of a surgeon of great skill and extensive practice at Havant, where his father then resided, he removed thither ; and thus was permitted, though only for a few months, again to enjoy the full advantages, v.-hich he had long known how to val- ue, of the paternal advice. A few occasional visits to his grandfather, Mr. Peyto, still living at Coggeshall, prepar- ed the way for his entering into partnership with a Mr. Deeks, a reputable surgeon at Sudbury, in the neighbor- ing county. To quality himself as far as possible for the duties he was about to undertake, he spent the autumn and winter of the year 1783, and the spring of 1734, in London ; attending the lectures of Dr. George Fordyce, Dr. Lowder, and other eminent professors of the various departments of medical science and practice ; taking down those lectures very accurately in short-hand (which he wrote with great neatness and facility) and afterwards transcribing them fully into larger books, with marginal spaces, on which he might record subsequently the results of his reading, as well as of his professional experience. 24 MEMOIRS OP The greater portion of the papers and memoranda he thus collected, were carefully preserved, and are still extant. Though he probably quitted home, on this occasion, with a heart eager in expectation and buoyant with hope, he was too much influenced by the sensibilities enkindled by domestic life, and too fully aware of the evils to which he might be exposed, to leave the scenes and the associa- tions of so many happy years without a pang. On his arrival in London, he found a few associates of kindred minds ; and amongst them a Mr. Godfrey, son of a surgeon at Coggeshall, and devoted to the same pro- fession. With them he ardently pursued his theoretical and practical inquiries, not merely attending the lectures, and going assiduously through the hospital practice, but becoming an active member of a society for the promotion of natural philosophy, as well as medical science, then existing among the students at Guy's Hospital. Such an institution lay so naturally in the current of his investiga- ting intellect, that he soon distinguished himself by the discussions into which he entered, and the essays which he prepared. One of these, " An Investigation of the Theory of Earthquakes," is now on my table. It is a closely written manuscript, on 44 quarto pages, full of in- genuity and research, but employed in defending what all philosophers now regard as an erroneous theory. I , refer to it simply for the purpose of recording, at the same time, that it yields unquestionable evidence of his having consulted, previously to writing it, (atjirst-hatid, and not through the invention of synopses or histories,) all that fairly bore upon the inquiry, in the works of Pliny, Sene- ca, Lucretius, Sim. Portias, Pontoppidan, Nollet, Amon- tons, Bertram!, Beccaria, Stukcly, Mitchell, Franklin, Priestley, Hamilton, Henley, Williams, &,c. The style of this juvenile essay is good ; but it is not distinguished (nor indeed would it be natural to expect it) by the ease, freedom, and spirit which marked its author's latter pro- ductions. Having terminated his winter and spring course at the hospitals, and spent the earlier part of the summer in col- lecting such professional information as London then supplied, he commenced his duties at Sudbury, in July or August, 1784, that is, shortly after he had completed DR. MASON GOOD. 25 his twentieth year.* At so early an age, many obstacles to his gaining the confidence of the inhabitants would naturally present themselves. But he had the advantage of strong recommendations from his hospital friends, with the most eminent of whom he laid a plan for regular correspondence on professional topics; and he had the farther advantage of great professional activity, cheerful and engaging manners, and a soul ready to evince the liveliest sympathy in cases where it was most needed. Some striking proofs of his surgical skill, which occur- red shortly after his establishment at Sudbury, gave, how- ever, an extent and solidity to his reputation which could not have been anticipated. The result was, that, in a few months, Mr. Deeks, left the business entirely in his hands. By the time he was twenty-one years of age, his thoughts aspired to a partnership of a more endearing kind. His frequent visits to Coggeshall had brought him into habits of intimacy with the family of his friend Mr. Godfrey, already mentioned, and had taught him that there were emotions of a higher order, and a livelier glow, than any which he had hitherto experienced. Miss Godfrey, the sister of that friend, is described, by those who still recollect her, as a young lady of accomplished mind and fascinating manners. Before she had comple- ted her nineteenth year she was married to Mr. Good, who was then just twenty-one. Enjoying all the happiness w.b.ich youth and virtue can taste at such a season, and ardently predicting a long continuance of his bliss, he thus expressed himself, * About the same lime, or shortly afterwards, the Rev. Peler Good re- moved from Havant to Bishop's Hull, near Charmouth. where lie continued to discharge the pastoral duties over a respectable church and congrega- tion, until death put a period to his useful labors in the year 1805 or 1806 He was doubtless a man of rich intellectual qualifications ; and from several of his manuscript papers, which I have been permitted to read, it appears that his religious sentiments were correct, and his spirit truly catholic and liberal, such as in " the olden time" was evinced by Mr. Howe, and a few others, who, as that great man expresses it, were animated " by agenerout love, not to Christians of this or that party only, but to all in whom the true essentials of Christianity are found ;" a spirit which, in proportion as it prevails, will " make religion a more lively, powerful, awful, amiable thing, more grateful to God, more sweet, influential, tranquillizing, and elevating to men." 26 MEMOIRS OF PARADISE. When first in Eden's balmy bow'rs Man pass'd his solitary hours In bliss but half complete : To heav'n he rais'd his anxious pray'r, And sought some gentler form to share The rich luxuriant seat. That gentler form immediate rose ; The sire of man with rapture glows, He weds the lovely prize : Ah ! doom'd to changes too perverse: His very blessing proves a curse His Eden instant flies. Not thus for me this lot of woe, Which Adam first sustain'd below ; The partial fates decree That bridal state those genial hours, Which lost him Eden's balmy bow'rs, Give Eden all to me. But, alas ! " a worm was in the bud of this sweet rose." In little more than six months after his marriage his youthful bride died of consumption ; and he learned from sad experience, how correct was the presentiment that dictated these lines of a brother poet : " Dearly bought, the hidden treasure, Finer feelings can bestow ; Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure Thrill the deepest notes of woe.'' Burns. Nearly four years from this event Mr. Good remained a widower. His professional occupations, however, which now began to extend themselves into the surrounding villages together with the soothing influence of time and of cheerful society, in a few months restored to his spirits their native buoyancy. At this period of his life I have reason to believe that he did not bend his mind to any regular course of study : he perused with the utmost eagerness everything that was new to him, and he continu- ed his early acquired habit of recording all that he thought striking, or useful, or essentially original, in one or other of his common-place books ; but his reading was desulto- ry, and without any fixed object. DR. MASON GOOD. 27 Early in the year 1790, Mr. Good had the happiness to become acquainted with a gentleman of the same profes- sion, and in many respects of a kindred mind, Dr. Na- than Drake,* well known to the public as the accom- plished and amiable author of " Literary Hours," " The Gleaner," and other esteemed works, devoted to the illustration of tasteful and elegant literature. Their con- geniality of sentiment, and similarity of pursuits, laid the basis of a warm and permanent friendship ; which con- tinued without interruption or remission, until it was closed by death. Each stimulating the other to an ex- tended activity of research, and each frequently announc- ing to the other the success which attended his exertions, or each as frequently exhibiting to the other some new acquisition of knowledge, some fresh specimen of poetic composition, either original or translated ; and all this in the may-day of life, when with regard to both, the buds and blossoms of thought, and the varied foliage of imagination, were starting forth with a vigorous exuber- ance, could not but be productive of the most beneficial effects. Mr. Good greatly enlarged his acquaintance with the writers of Greece and Rome, at the same time he took a more extensive view of the poetry and literature of France and Italy ; and, as though these were not enough to engage all the powers of his mind, he commenced the study of Hebrew, a language of which he soon acquired a clear and critical knowledge. In l?<^9, Mr. Good again rendered his home "cheer- ful" by a second marriage. The object of his choice was a daughter of Thomas Fenn, Esq. of Ballingdon Hall, an opulent and highly respectable banker at Sud- bury. The experience of thirty-eight years amply proved with what success the refined friendship of domestic life " redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in sunder." Here, however, I must, though with reluctance, check my pen. Of the six children who were the result of the marriage, only two survive, botli daughters ; and I am conscious that I cannot more fully accord with the wishes and feel- ings of these my esteemed friends, (each of whom evinces * Dr. Drake at the commencement of this intimacy, lived at Sudbury ; but in little more than a year removed to HadJeigh, in Suffolk, where he has ever since resided. MEMOIRS OF as great a solicitude to avoid praise as to deserve it) than by mentioning their names as little as possible during the progress of this narrative. Some time in the year 1792, Mr. Good, either by be- coming legally bound for some friends, or by lending them a large sum of money, under the expectation that it would be soon returned, but which they were unable to repay, was brought into circumstances of considerable pecuniary embarrassment. Mr. Fenn most cheerfully stepped forward to remove his difficulties, and lent him partial aid, an aid, indeed, which would have been ren- dered completely effectual, had not Mr. Good resolved that perplexities, springing from what he regarded as his own want of caution, (though in no other respect open to censure,) should be removed principally by his own exertions. Thus it happened that a pecuniary loss, from the pressure of which men with minds of an ordinary cast would have gladly escaped as soon as assistance was offered, became with him the permanent incentive to a course of literary activity, which, though it was inter- cepted repeatedly by the most extraordinary failures and disappointments, issued at length in their complete re- moval, and in the establishment of a high and richly deserved reputation. And thus, by the sombrous vicissi- tude of his providential dispensations, the heavenly Prepar'd the soil ; and silver-tongued Hope Promis'd another harvest." Mr. Good's exertions, on this occasion, were most per- severing and diversified. He wrote plays ; he made translations from the French, Italian, &/c. ; he composed poems ; he prepared a series of philosophical essays : but all these efforts, though they soothed his mind and occu- pied his leisure, were unproductive of the kind of benefit which he sought. Having no acquaintance with the managers of the London theatres, or with influential men connected with them, he could not get any of his trage- dies or comedies brought forward ; and being totally unknown to the London booksellers, he could obtain no purchasers for his literary works : so that the manuscript copies of these productions, which in the course of two DR. MASON GOOD. 29 or three years had become really numerous, remained upon his hands. Yet nothing damped his ardor. He at length opened a correspondence with the editor of a London newspaper, and became a regular contributor to one of the Reviews : and though these, together, brought him no adequate remuneration, they served as incentives to hope and perseverance.* Mr. Good's newspaper connexion was with " THE WORLD," the Morning Post of that day, conducted by Captain Topham, a man whose character was too noto- riously marked to need any delineation now. The com- munications of our " Rural Bard," as he was usually denominated in " The World," ornamented its poet's corner : two of them alone are inserted here, as speci- mens. ODE TO HOPE. O gentle HOPE ! whose lovely form The plunging sea-boy, midst the storm, Sees beckoning from the strand, * Several of the manuscripts are still in existence, and I shall throw into this note the titles of such of them as I have read : " History of Alcidalis and Zelida," translated from a fragment of Voi- ture. " Ethelbert, a Tragedy ;" some portions of it written with great spirit. "The Revolution, a Comedy;" composed in lively, easy dialogue ; but not possessing enough of ludicrous incident to excite the ' broad grin,' which seems essential to the success of modern comedy. " The Female Mirror, a Didactic Poem ; to which are added, a Transla- tion of two Odes of Horace, lately discovered in the Palatine Library at Rome ; and an Elegy on Sensibility of Mind." Some passages in this latter poem are truly elegant and expressive. " A Poetical Epistle on the Slave-trade." This, I believe, received some corrections from the hand of Dr. Drake ; but was never published. " The Summer Recess, or a View of the World at a Distance." This poem is in three books, and was evidently composed with Virgil's Georgics in the author's eye. Several of its descriptions of rural scenery, ana of rustic occupations and amusements are highly picturesque. Ten Essays. 1. On the Being of a God. 2. On the Origin of Evil. 3. On Liberty and Necessity. 4. On Providence. 5. On a Future State. 6. On the Credibility of Revelation. 7. On the Homogeneity of Animal Life. 8 and 9. On the Social Offices and Affections. 10. On Happiness. Most of these Essays are well written ; but the Subjects are treated more in the strain of philosophy than of theology, and several of them are tinged with sentiments which their author, in maturer life, most cordially disap- proved. One, however, which I think Mr. Good would have preserved, will be inserted in the text. *3 30 MEMOIRS OP If yet thy smile can chace the sighs From love and adverse fate which rise, O view this lifted hand ! Thro' dire despair's tremendous shade, Supported by thy secret aid, The troubled spirit flies. Thy sight sustains his drooping pow'rs, Thy finger points to brighter hours, And clears the distant skies. Then haste thee, HOPE, and o'er my head, While yet impervious tempests spread, Obtrude thy magic form : O give me, ere gay youth decline, To view the fair ZELINDA mine, And I'll despise the storm. HYMN REHEARSED AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE FUNERAL OF GENERAL LA HOCHE. Les Femmes. Du haut de la voute Sternelle, Jeune heros, recois nos pleurs. Que notre doleur solemnelle T'offre des hymnes et des fleurs. Ah ! sur ton urne sepulcrale Gravons ta gloire et nos i egrets ; Et que la palme triumphale S'eleve au sein de tes cypres. Les Viellards. Aspirez a ses destinees, Guerriers, defenseurs de nos lois, Tous ses jours furent annees ; Tous ses faits furent des exploits. La mort, qui frappa sa jeunesse, Respectera son souvenir ; S'il ii'atteignit point la vieillesse, II sera vieux dans 1'avenir. Les Guerriers. Sur les rochers de 1'Armorique, II terrassa la trahison ; II vainquit 1'hydre fanatique, Semant la flamme et le poison. La guerre civille etouffee Cede a son bras liberateur ; Et ce'st-lji le plus beau trophee D'un heros pacificateur. DR. MASON GOOD. Oui, tu seras notre module ; Tu n'as point terni tes lauriers. Ta voix librc, ta voix fidelle, Est toujours pr sente aux guerriers Aux champs d'honneur ou vit ta gloire, Ton ombre, au milieu de nos rangs, Saura captiver la victoire, Et punir encor les tyrans. TRANSLATION OF THE PRECEDING. Women. From heaven's high vault with stars o'erspread, HERO ! accept the tears we shed : And let the incense of our sighs To thee like hymns and flowers arise, Ah ! round thine urn our griefs be train'd, Mixt with the glories thou hast gain'd ! And let full many a cypress tree Spring round the laurel rear'd to thee ! Old Men. Warriors ! the Laws' brave guardians ! aim To rival his immortal fame. His days were ages and each deed Claim'd from the world a hero's meed. The scythe of death that struck his prime, Still spares his name to endless time ; And though with ancients not enroll'd, Posterity shall see him old. Warriors. O'er ARMORICA'S rocks he flew, When TREASON rous'd the rebel crew : There, spreading poison, spreading fire, He triurnph'd o'er the hydra dire. The strife subdued through all the land He scatter'd blessings from his hand : Then shone the godlike Hero most ; For peace is chief the Hero's boast. Yes we will draw our lives from thee ! Thy brow no tarnish 'd laurels bound ; Thy faithful voice, thy voice most free, Through ev'ry soldier's ear shall sound. In thine own fields where glory led, Thy shade, amidst our ranks of war, Shall give us conquest as we tread, And fell the tyrants we abhor. 31 32 MEMOIRS OP Among the Essays composed by Mr. Good in the midst of these varied exertions, that which is devoted to the defence of a particular providence, is, in my judg- ment, one of the best. He does not seem, however, to have attended to the discussions relative to " the spring of action in Deity," in which Balguy, Bayes, and Grove, each defended a separate theory. Balguy, as many will recollect, refers all the divine actions to rectitude, Bayes to benevolence, and Grove to wisdom. Yet both Grove and Balguy acknowledge that the communication of hap- piness is so noble an end, that the Deity unquestionably keeps it always in view ; while the wisdom adduced in Grove's theory differs very little from the rectitude as- sumed as the basis of Balguy's. Had Mr. Good been acquainted with the different branches of this controversy, the commencement of his own disquisition would proba- bly have been somewhat modified : and if, instead of starting from a doubtful position, he had simply reasoned from a proposition in which all agree, viz. that God always does that which is right and good, the general strain of his reasoning would have been the same, while the exposure of Hume's sophistry, would, I think, have been complete. ON PROVIDENCE. "Whatever arguments may be adduced in proof of the existence of a Deity, may likewise be adduced in proof of the existence of a general and particular providence. If it be true, and no one, I believe, will be disposed to doubt it, that every power we meet with in the universe ought originally to be attributed to the great First Cause of all things, it follows inevitably that this great First Cause must itself be all-active and all-powerful. And if, again, it be true, as I have endeavored to demonstrate on another occasion, that the principal, not to say the only motive by which the Deity could be excited in the creation of any order of beings, was their own individual happiness, it follows, moreover, that the constant exertion of this power and activity must be employed in the pro- motion and continuance of that happiness. It follows therefore, again, that the Creator must, of necessity, be employed in a course of general and uninterrupted provi- DR. MASON GOOD. 33 dence. But ' we cannot conceive, (as Dr. Price justly observes,) any reasons that can influence the Deity to exercise any providence over the world, which are not, likewise, reasons for extending it to all that happens in the world.'* A providence that neglects or forsakes indi- viduals is incomplete, and inadmissible ; because incom- petent to the conception of a perfect being. The provi- dence, therefore, which is a general, must, at the same time, be a particular one. " Whether, indeed, the constant harmony and regu- larity observable in nature, with all the various events that occur around us, be the effect of original appoint- ment at the first formation of the universe ; foreseen and predetermined ; or the result of one continued energy incessantly protracted is not, perhaps, fully to be de- cided, and is, morever, totally irrelevant to our present purpose. Every individual circumstance that has since occurred, both in the moral and physical departments of creation, must, even on the first hypothesis, have been clearly represented to a Being of universal prescience : and without obtaining his approbation could never have taken effect. However, therefore, philosophers may dif- fer in their ideas on this subject; and though the doctrine of incessant interposition must, on many accounts, appear the most plausible ; yet each may contend with nearly equal propriety for the existence of a providence. " Such considerations, however, have not been allowed their due weight and importance by all philosophers. Some have totally denied the existence of any providence at all ; while others, acknowledging the existence of a general providence, have denied that it is in any instance particular, or exerts any influence over individuals. " I know of but three objections that can be fairly urged either by the one side or the other, in opposition to the doctrine in dispute. The first is, that the Deity is incapable of exercising such a power : the second, that it would be derogatory to him : the third, that its exertion must be inconsistent with the liberty of moral election. " There is no author I am acquainted with who has advanced the first objection with so much success and * Dissertation on Providence. 34 MEMOIRS OF authority as Mr. Hume :* and it will be to his writings, therefore, I shall direct myself more particularly in my reply. The position he so much labors to demonstrate appears to be this : that even allowing a Deity, he does not seem to have been, and we have no reason to suppose he was possessed of more than just that determinate quantity of power which was requisite to produce the creation ; the exertion of which obliged him to sink into rest through mere debility, and leave his scarcely finished undertaking to itself and its own imperfect powers of mutual dependence. " In support of this extraordinary proposition, the ar- guments he adduces are the following. " ' Causes are, at all times, proportioned to their con- sequent effects, and ought not to be supposed to possess any qualities but what are exactly sufficient to produce them. A body of ten ounces raised in any scale, may serve as a proof that the counterbalancing weight exceeds ten ounces ; but can never afford a reason that it exceeds a hundred. The same rule holds true universally, whether the cause assigned be brute unconscious matter, or a rational intelligent being. No one, merely from a sight of one of Zeuxis's pictures, could know that he was also a statuary or architect, and was an artist no less skilful in stone or marble than in colors. The talents and taste displayed in the particular work before us, these, and only these, we may safely conclude the workman to be possessed of. " ' The chief or sole argument, for a divine existence is derived from the general order of nature ; which is an argument drawn from effects to causes. Every argument, therefore, deduced from causes to effects must be a gross sophism, since it is impossible to know anything of the cause but what has been antecedently, not only inferred, but discovered to the full in the effect. On the same account, we cannot, according to the rules of just reason- ing, ascend from the effect to the cause, and thence re- turn back from that cause with any new inference ; or, making any addition to the effect as we find it, establish any new principles of conduct and behavior. * Vide Sect. 11. On a Particular Providence and a Future State. DR. MASON GOOD. 35 " ' Though, from a knowledge of the actions and sen- timents of the human species, we may, with propriety, infer more than the simple appearance of objects present- ed to us would otherwise give us a right to infer : as, for instance, from a half finished edifice, and the materials for building scattered around it, we might presume that such an edifice would soon be completed, and receive all the further improvements which art could bestow upon it; yet we are not allowed the same liberty of ascending from the effect to the cause, and thence descending from the same cause to infer other effects, in any of our argu- ments respecting the Deity ; since the Deity is only known to us by his actual productions, and since we are ignorant of the motives by which he is actuated, and the sentiments by which he is governed.' * " It is not strictly true, however, in the first place, that the sole or even the chief argument in proof of the exis- tence of a Divine Being is derived from the general order of nature. The existence of man alone is sufficient to prove the existence of a Deity, and to demonstrate his perfections. And this simple fact, without any addition whatsoever, has been successfully selected by Mr. Locke for this very purpose j and been made the means of deduc- ing a proof of such an existence, equal, as he himself ex- presses it, ' to that of mathematical certainty.'! Wherever a human being exists, if in the possession of his reason, he must have an undoubted perception and certainty of his existence ; he must moreover be certain that nothing could possibly proceed from nothing, and he must be therefore certain there must be something uncreated and eternal. That which is uncreated and eternal must, again, possess all the powers, and that in an infinite degree, as being devoid of opposition or obstruction which can pos- sibly be traced in the being that is finite and created. It * " Since he is a Being, (as Mr. H. continues.) who discovers himself only by some faint traces or outlines, beyond which we have no authority to ascribe to him any attribute or perfection ; and a being respecting whom what we imagine to be a superior perfection may really be a defect." In the delineation of these arguments, I hough I have been under the neces- sity of contracting and condensing them from the original,! am not con- icious of having injured their strength ; and I have used Mr. Hume's own expressions as often as I could possibly introduce them. f Essay on Human Understanding, b. i. ch. 10. 36 MEMOIRS OF must be, therefore, omnipotent, and all-intelligent. From the possession of which intelligence it is easy to de- duce every other attribute, whether moral or physical. The argument a priori must, at all times, be at least equal to that deduced from effects to causes. " But, acceding to the position that all our arguments for a divine existence are derived from the general order of nature, and the display of objects around us ; and that this general order and display of objects is the effect, and the Deity himself the cause ; it is far from being a neces- sary conclusion, and by no means invariable, that the cause in this instance is adjusted precisely to the effect exhibited, and possesses no power or property whatso- ever but what is therein displayed. " In brute conscious matter, it is true, the experienced train of events shews us there is a constant proportion observed between the cause and the effect, however varie- gated : but it is an obvious error to contend that the same law obtains among rational and intelligent beings ; and it is an error proceeding from the belief of a doctrine we have before animadverted upon the doctrine, I mean, that maintains the same species of absolute necessity to sub- sist among moral as among physical agents. Hercules did not on all occasions, put forth the utmost quantity of his strength ; nor Cicero nor Demosthenes exert the whole of their eloquence. They found themselves at full liberty, and not subjected to the same inflexible laws that actuate mere incogitative atoms. It is acknowledged that no one merely from the sight of a picture of Zeuxis in ancient times, or of Salvator Rosa in more modern, could determine that the former was also a statuary and an architect, and the latter a poet and musician, whose sa- tires arid harmonic compositions fell but little short of his skill in the art of coloring. But what is the reason that we are here incapable of determining ? Plainly this : that there is no necessary connexion between these different arts and sciences whatsoever. They may be conjoined in the same subject ; but they may subsist by themselves : and he who is the best musician may be the worst pain- ter, and the best poet may be the worst statuary. " The case is very different with respect to the per- fections of intelligent beings, and especially the perfec- DR. MASON GOOD. 37 lions of the Deity : through the whole of which there is a natural link subsisting so obviously, that, from the demonstration of one or two, the rest seem to follow ef inevitable necessity. The Being, who is eternal and all-powerful, must be all-intelligent : he who is all-pow- erful and all-intelligent, must be infinitely happy : he who is infinitely happy in himself, can only be actuated in what he does by motives of benevolence. " Yet how are we capable of determining at all on the Deity which is the cause, if we can only reason respect- ing him from a full knowledge of the creation, which is the effect? This creation is extended around us on every side : let us confine ourselves alone to the proofs of pow- er it exhibits. Are we acquainted with its unfathomable dimensions ? Have we penetrated into the whole system of laws by which it is regulated ? Can we develope the causes of gravitation, magnetism, or muscular motion ? Is nothing obscure, nothing mysterious, concealed from our view ? If to inquiries like these we can return a satisfactory reply then, but not till then, let us think of determining our idea of the great original Cause by the effect alone which he has thus exhibited. But if this we cannot do if, here we are obliged to acknowledge our ignorance and incapacity, does it not evince the grossest presumption to set bounds to the power of a Being who has thus magnificently manifested himself? a power that defies the calculations of science, and overwhelms the conceptions of the most daring I " Yet if we are not adequate to the comprehension of his power, why should we attempt to fix bounds to any other attribute or perfection of which the Deity may be possessed ? That the exertion of power in the works of creation surpasses the limits of human conjecture, is what the most hesitating sceptic must allow. As far, however, as we have been able to discover, an order and disposition, uniform and similar, prevail throughout the whole. But order and disposition must be the result of intelligence. Is the display of power then illimited and incomprehensible? so is that of wisdom and intelligence. Is the same all-powerful and intelligent Being, who is the former of this portion of the universe on which we reside, the Creator of the universe at large ? the same motives 4 38 MEMOIRS OP must actuate him, and a conduct not inconsistent be ex- hibited. That he may possess qualities and energies with which we are totally unacquainted, will readily be granted ; yet this must forever remain mere hypothesis, since \ve have no data on which to found our judgment of them. Yet, be they what they may, they cannot be in- congruous with those which are developed to our notice in the present world : much less can any of them which he has exhibited, and which reason has taught one_class of intelligent beings to deem perfections, be ever regarded by another as defects. " To confine therefore our ideas of the Deity by the general appearance of objects and events in the present world, or any part of that section of the universe, the mere threshold of creation, with which we are acquainted ; or to bound those attributes we cannot but allow him by deductions drawn from so limited a scene is both incon- sistent and unphilosophical : inconsistent, because we have no reason to conceive that an active intelligent Being should at all times exert himself to the utmost of his power ; unphilosophical, because we have the clearest reasons for believing that a scene so limited bears not the proportion to the general system of the universe that a grain of sand does to the Pyrenees, or a drop of water to the ocean. And we may, therefore, with the strictest propriety suppose the Divine Being possessed of a greater degree of perfection in all his various attributes than the present situation of things will immediately demonstrate to the view : and this without advancing from the effect to the cause, and thence descending to infer other effects which are totally unconnected with their original. The reason being that the limited capacities of the human species are not adequate to a comprehension of the effect themselves ; and if they cannot fully comprehend the effect, how is it possible they should be able fully to com- prehend the cause ? " I cannot, however, forbear to notice in this place, that the ascending from an effect to a cause, and thence descending from the same cause to infer other effects which we were ignorant of before, is a liberty which is often taken by philosophers. And that not only in re- searches which refer to man, or any other animal with which they are intimately acquainted, but which re- DR. MASON GOOD. 39 fer to the works of Deity himself. And it is a liberty in- deed, without which science could no longer exist. The general laws of nature with which we are acquainted will most of them afford us a proof of the truth of this assertion. A close attention to a few particular facts has commonly been the mode in which they have been deduced : and when thus deduced as causes of those facts, they have been afterwards applied to the explanation of other oc- currences, which before appeared perfectly unaccounta- ble. The laws of gravitation, which have since been so successfully applied to every point of the heavens, were, as is known to every one, at first determined from the most trifling event possible. And thus, in optics, from a few observations on some of the phenomena of light are inferred the general laws of refraction and reflexion : which when in this manner once obtained, are applied to the solution of a variety of other phenomena, which would, otherwise, remain inexplicable paradoxes. " But suppose we make a farther concession still ; and allow what, indeed, we find every hour in every day continually contradicting that the same proportion and adjustment between cause and effect obtains among ra- tional and intelligent beings, as among brute, unconscious matter ; and that the power or capacity of exertion, which is the cause, is never superior to the operation, which is the effect: even by this concession, the argument urged against us, so far from obtaining the least additional force, would, on the very principles of Mr. Hume himself, prove the means of its own refutation. " All our knowledge, even according to his own sys- tem, with respect to matters of fact and existence, we derive from experience : and every event, that takes place in opposition to this grand criterion of our judgment, must bring with it proofs that will more than counterbal- ance the observations of every day, before a philosopher can assent to its truth. It is this constant and unremit- ted experience which shews us the continual coherence between cause and effect. Not that the first bears any analogy to the second, or exerts any sensible influence over it ; but only, by long habitude, we have accustomed ourselves to expect the second as the necessary result of the first. For had causes any analogy to their effects, or 40 MEMOIRS OF exerted any known energy over them ; immediately on the appearance of a cause, however singular, and how- ever impossible to be classed under any determined species, we should be able, very nearly, to decide at once what effect it might produce, or to invert the whole : were an effect equally singular and unparalleled, to be present- ed to our view, we should, with the same facility, be ena- bled to interpret its cause. Yet in all such cases, on the present constitution of things, we should certainly find ourselves at a loss for an answer. " It is owing, therefore, entirely to the constant con- junction of occurrences, as established by the laws of na- ture, that we are capable of inferring one object from another, or of predicting one event from a preceding. If we examine the universe at large, we find it an effect ab- solutely unparalleled ; and which cannot be comprehend- ed under any species with which we are acquainted. And as we cannot, prima facie, infer any effect from a pre- sented cause, or any cause from a given effect, we find ourselves obliged to hesitate about what the cause of such an extraordinary effect may be ; or whether, in reality, we are capable of conceiving any cause at all. Yet, taken collectively, the arguments for the existence of a cause are so potent and convincing, that even in the pre- sent age of speculation and refinement, and amongst those who have indulged themselves in the largest lati- tude of conjecture, there is no philosopher whatever who has been bold enough to controvert them : or rather who has not stood forward as the champion and espouser of a truth so obvious and incontestable : a truth to which Mr. Hume himself submits with the most cordial acquies- cence,* which is completely assented to by Lord Bol- ingbroke,t and imagined to be self-evident by the late * " The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author ; and no rational inquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion." Hume on the Natural History of Religion. t " I know, for I can demonstrate, by connecting the clearest and most distinct of my real ideas, that there is a God ; a first, intelligent cause of all things, whose infinite wisdom and power appears evidently in all his works, and to whom therefore I ascribe, most rationally, every other perfec- tion, whether conceivable or not conceivable by me." Bolingbroke's Works, vol. m. DR. MASON GOOD. 41 royal philosopher of Sans Souci.* This mode of argu- ing, therefore, is obviously fallacious ; is destructive of principles acknowledged to be incontrovertible ; and if pursued, would lead us into endless mazes of error and perplexity. Hume himself was sensible of the conse- quences which must necessarily result from the continua- tion of such an argument, and drops it, therefore, abrupt- ly, without pressing it forward to its extreme; 'lest it should lead us, as he observes, into reasonings of too nice and delicate a nature.' " But the Deity being allowed to possess a capability of exerting a providential care over his creatures, it has at times been contended that such an exertion would be derogatory to his infinite greatness and majesty. A mean and contracted idea ! and unworthy of a philosopher to entertain for a moment. However it may be respecting ourselves, in the view of the Deity nothing can, properly speaking, be either great or small ; and nothing unwor- thy the notice of him who created it. If the Deity did not degrade himself by the formation of his creatures, much less can he do so by superintending them after they are formed : for an existing being must at all times be superior to non-existence ; and though they may have claims upon his bounty and his protection at present, it is certain they could have no claim at all anterior to their actual creation. " I have, moreover, observed already, that the Creator is a being of infinite benevolence ; and that the principal motive he could possibly be actuated by in the formation of any order of beings, must be their own essential felici- ty. If it did not degrade him, then, to exert himself in providing for this felicity at first, it cannot degrade him in the superintendence and direction of it afterwards ; and as a being all-active, and all-powerful, he cannot pos- sibly resist such a conduct. " In effect, such a superintendence and unremitted ex- * Le monde entier prouvc cette intelligence. II ne faut qu' ouvrir les yeux pour s'en convaincre. Les fins que la nature 1'est proposees dans ses ouvrages, se manifestent si evidemment, qu' on est force de reconnaitre une cause souveraigne et superieuremeiit inlelligente qui y preside necessaire- ment. Pour peu qu' on soil de bonne foi, il est impossible de se refuser a cette vcrile. Reflexions du Roi de la Prusse sur la Religion. *4 42 MEMOIRS OP ertion seems fully proved both from the continued opera- tion of the laws of nature ; the powers entrusted to man- kind ; and the various and unexpected events which often arise to confound the policy of the most artful, and baffle the strength of the mighty. Were it not so, material bodies must be possessed of an innate and essential power of mutual gravitation : a doctrine, as Sir Isaac Newton observes, too absurd to be credited by any man in his senses ;* and few events in nature would take place contrary to our expectation, or at any time excite our surprise. " It appears singular and unaccountable, that after ac- knowledging his belief in the existence of such a general providence, and indeed contending for its truth, Lord Bol- ingbroke should, nevertheless, deny the extension of this providence to individuals. That the same volume which declares that ' when the immortality of individuals be- comes that of a w r hole society, then the judgments of God follow, and men are punished collectively in the course of a general providence,'! that this same volume should almost in the same page inform us that ' it is plain from the whole course of this providence, God regards his human creatures collectively, and not individually ; how worthy soever every one of them may deem himself to be a particular object of the divine care ; and that there is no foundation in nature for the belief of such a scheme as a providence thus particular. 't Is not then every collec- tion and society of beings composed of individuals ? or is it possible for such a society or collection to be interested in providential interpositions, and yet for the individuals that compose it to remain uninterested and unaffected thereby ? Is it from a view of the derogation we have before remarked upon, or of fatigue, or of incapacity, that the Deity should thus restrain himself? or what precise number of individuals can constitute a society capable of demanding the full attention of Providence, the abstrac- tion of a single member from which would immediately render it unworthy of any further notice or regard ? " Miserable indeed must have been the situation of Cadmus or Idomeneus, wandering, as they were, from * Letters to Dr. Bentley. t Vol. T. Quarto edit. DR. MASON GOOD. 43 climate to climate, in pursuit of an unknown region ; and attended, perhaps, by too few associates to induce the in- terference and benediction of Providence upon their at- tempts. And still more miserable the fate of a Philoc- tetes, or a Robinson Crusoe, cut off, by the most de- sert solitude, from the pleasures of social communication, and, by the same solitude, deprived of the assistance of the Deity. And Sophocles had more reason than has generally been imagined, when he makes the former ex- claim, " In fact, every order of created beings whatsoever, and every station in every various order, must be equally the object of the attention and care of the Supreme Be- ing. While Solomon was noticed by him, in all his glory, he did not forget the ' lily of the field/ in its hum- bler and more modest array. And whatever difference there might have appeared to the dazzled eyes of mortals, between the situation of David or Cincinnatus, when engaged in the lowlier employments of agriculture and rural economy, and when advanced to the first dignities of their different nations, and leading forward their ex- ulting armies to victory and renown in the grand survey of the great Creator of all things, such differences and distinctions must shrink into nothing, and every grada- tion of life alike enjoy his common protection. " If the race of man did actually proceed, according to either the Mosaic history or the fabulous accounts of the Greeks, from one single pair, or family it is plain, ac- cording to this doctrine, that Providence could have little to do with the world, either at its first creation, or imme- diately after the deluge : and it would form a curious in- quiry, and one, I fear, not easily resolved, at what period, from either of these grand epochs, were mankind, so multiplied as to become proper objects of providential no- tice ? " Pope, who is often the mere echo of Bolingbroke, who was ' formed by his converse,' as he expresses it * O Death, where art them, Death ? so often called, Wilt thou not listen ? wilt thou never come 7 Francktia. 44 MEMOIRS OP himself, and had, ' in his little bark, attended his triumph and partaken the gale' so far, that he was often ignorant of his own latitude has, nevertheless, dared to differ from his noble patron on this subject, and discovers a manly independence in thinking for himself. The pro- vidence of God, according to him, extends alike to every being, the most lowly as well as the most exalted, the peasant as well as the prince. ' And sees, with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish, or a sparrow fall : Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd, And now a bubble burst, and now a world.'* A noble and philosophic sentiment, whose beauty is only proportioned to its truth. " But it has, farther, been alleged, and in that part of the allegation which regards individuals, Lord Boling- broke unites in opinion, that no providence or divine interposition, either general or particular, can ever exist without infringing on the liberty of moral election. " Now it is possible, and indeed nothing is more com- mon, than for influences and interpositions to subsist be- tween man and man, and yet for the liberty of the person who is acting to remain as free and inviolate as ever. Such are often the result of the remonstrances of friend- ship, such, of the counsels of wisdom and experience. We consent to desist from one particular mode of con- duct, and to pursue its opposite, whenever the first is de- monstrated to us to be unjust or deleterious ; and the se- cond to be advantageous, or consistent with rectitude. We act under the influence of the representations of our friends, but we perceive not, in thus acting, and in reali- ty, do not submit to, any infringement on our liberty of choice. " Shall we, then, allow the existence of such an imper- ceptible power in man, and yet maintain that it cannot possibly exist in the Supreme Being? If the man of ad- dress, from a superficial knowledge of our character and opinions, is so far capable of insinuating himself into our favor, as often to influence and direct our ideas and our * Essay on Man. DR. MAS OX GOOD. 45 actions to the very point he has in view must not a Be- ing who is all-powerful, and all-active, who is acquainted with the deepest recesses of the soul, who views every thought as it arises, and knows by what motives it may most assuredly be influenced, must not such a Being be capable of directing, with infinitely more ease, the train of its ideas ; and, at pleasure, either subtract from, or make addition to, the force of the motives that govern it ? How- ever impossible this may be on the doctrine of moral ne- cessity, and supposing the same severity of fate to subsist throughout the ideas and actions of intelligent beings, that is ever to be met with in the physical depart- ment of creation far from any such impossibility of con- duct resulting from the opposite doctrine, it is a conduct that appears perfectly natural to the Almighty Creator, and which, in fact, he must unavoidably pursue. " The poetry of Tasso, therefore, is not more sublime than his philosophy is just, when, in his description of the glories of heaven, and the magnificence of the eternal throne, he adjoins ' Sedea cola, dond' egli, e buono e giusto, Da legge al tutto : e '1 tutto orna, e perduce ; Souvra i bassi confin del mondo angusto, Ove senso, o ragion non si conduce.'* " I grant that the belief of a providence thus particular has been the source of a thousand errors and extravagant conceits in the minds of the enthusiastic and superstitious. But, not to urge that right reason can never admit the doctrine of a general providence, without, at the same time, including that of a particular, it does not follow that a proposition must be false because some visionary adherents to it pretend to deduce consequences which are not necessarily involved in it, and with which, in re- ality, they are by no means connected. I am not con- tending for the inspiration of De Serres,t or the wander- * Gerusalemme Liberata, cant. 9. sta. 56. ! Tis there he sits, the just the good Supreme; Propounds his laws, and harmonizes all : And leads the tribes of this diminish'd orb Thro' scenes where sense and doubting reason fails, t II j" ayoit deja lon( ' Too many irons in the fire,' conveys an abominable lie. You cannot have too many ; poker, tongs, and all keep them all going." t In the year 1800, there appeared an anonymous satirical poem in three cantos, entitled the Millennium, which has been generally ascribed to our author. For some years he contributed largely to Dodslcy's Annual Reg- ister; taking, 1 believe, the entire departments of Natural History and Philosophy, of general literature, and of Poetry, and Belles-lettres. He alo 68 MEMOIRS OF The Pantologia was commenced by Mr. Bosworth and myself in 1802. On my removal to Woolwich in January 1803, another gentleman was associated with us, who, however, in consequence of an unexpected accession of property, retired from the labor in about twelve months. Shortly afterwards a speculating bookseller, who had ascertained that this Universal Dictionary was in pre- paration, with a view to anticipate us both in object and name, commenced the publication of a new Cyclopedia, of which Dr. George Gregory was announced as the editor, while, in fact, the late Mr. Jeremiah Joyce w;is the principal, if not the only, person engaged upon the work. This rnanoauvre suggested the expediency of new arrangements, as well as of a new title for our Encyclo- pedia; and Mr. Good having recently published his " Song of Songs" at Mr. Kearsley's the bookseller, who was the chief proprietor of the new undertaking, his high reputa- tion for erudition, and for punctuality in the execution of his engagements, induced us to look to him as an admirably qualified individual to co-operate with us in our important enterprise. Some time elapsed before we could overcome his objections to the placing his name Jirst on the title-page of a work, of which he was not to take the general superintendence : but at length the scru- ple was removed ; and from 1805, when our joint prepara- tions commenced, to the spring of 1813, when the task was completed, when he continued with the utmost prompt- ness, regularity and versatility of talent, to supply the various articles and treatises that were comprehended in the extensive portion of the Dictionary which he under- took to compose. From the very date of this arrangement I felt desirous to cultivate a wanner intimacy with my new associate than was absolutely necessary to promote the objects of our literary coalition. I soon found that he was as esti- mable in domestic and social life, as he was eminent in the walks of literature ; that as a husband and father he was uniformly affectionate and attentive, as a friend assisted Mr. Wootlfall in the arrangement of the materials in his edition of Junius's Letters, published in 1812, and in investigating and balancing- the claims of diflerent individuaJs to the authorship of those extraordinary pro- ductions. 'DR. MASON GOOD. 69 cordial and sincere, as a companion remarkably enter- taining and instructive, equally enjoying and promoting "the least of reason and the flow of soul." His ordinary deportment was marked by a suavity and hilarity that were peculiarly engaging. His buoyancy of spirits led him to join with vivacity in conversation, which he greatly enriched from his copious intellectual stores. He would sometimes take a part in animated discussions ; yet the usual position of his mind was at the utmost pos- sible remove from a spirit of disputation, and he very rarely (so far as I recollect) adverted to theological or political topics of dispute. Although in conversation he usually contributed his full share, yet he evinced no desire to lead, but was as ready to listen as to speak. He made no effort to shine ; and was seldom tempted to ornament his discourse with scraps and patches from the learned languages ; regarding that art as very poor, in which any person may become an adept by devoting a week to the study of the " Dictionary of Quotations." What was far better, when the conversation took a lite- rary or scientific turn, he would, with almost unfailing promptness enliven and adorn it by those appropriate facts and illustrations which his comprehensive acquain- tance with the general range of human knowledge ena- bled him at once to supply. It was only in the compari- son of parallel passages from writers of different ages and countries, that he was wont to indulge in quotations ; and then he often produced them with a felicitous exu- berance which they who have read the notes to his " Lucretius," " Song of Songs," and " Book of Job," may easily conceive. Cheerfulness, activity, frankness, acutcness of intellect, and kindness of heart, were so obviously the main ingredients in his character, that before I had known him a month, I could not but say of him, as Mr. Burke of one of his friends' " Certainly he is a man formed to be admired and loved." An individual of ordinary character, with such a varie- ty of pursuits as occupied the attention of Mr. Good from 1800 to 1812, would inevitably have neglected some of them. But with him this was never allowed to happen. He was then blessed with the full maturity of all his powers bodily and mental, and delighted in nothing so TO MEMOIRS OP much as constant employment. He has frequently re- marked to me, that when he began to be a little weary of one pursuit, the mere transition to another would annihi- late the sense of fatigue ; and thus he could pass to five or six distinct topics of interesting research within the compass of twelve hours, and enter upon each with as much freshness and vigor as though he had just arisen from a good night's sleep. Thus, with him every new undertaking was, by a constant progress, advancing to its maturity without any apparent interruption ; and no sooner was one brought to a successful termination, than another took its place ; the mental mechanism moving onward with a constancy and uniformity analogous to that which we sometimes witness in complex machinery urged by material agents. In the autumn of 1810 Mr. Good was invited to deliver a series of Lectures at the Surrey Institution, " on any subject, literary or scientific, which would be agreeable to himself." He acceded to the request of the "Directors, and delivered his first course in the ensuing winter, to a crowded audience, who were so highly grati- fied and instructed, that he was entreated to persevere. This led to the delivery of a second and a third series, in the two succeeding winters. The First Series, in fifteen lectures, treated of the " Nature of the Material World ; and the scale of unorganized and organic tribes that issue from it :" The Second Series, in thirteen lectures, developed the "Nature of the Animate World; its peculiar powers and external relations ; the means of communicating ideas ; the formation of society ;" and the Third, in fifteen lectures, was devoted to the " Nature of the Mind; its general faculties and furniture." The plan is sufficiently extensive, but would have been rendered still more so in subsequent years, had not an augmented sphere of professional duties compelled Mr. Good, notwithstanding the most urgent persuasions to the contrary, to relinquish the occupation of a lecturer. In this mode of imparting instruction, however, he was equally qualified to command attention, and to ensure suc- cess. His delivery was good ; he had the most entire eelf-possession, and was always master, not only of his subject, but of his lecture. Although his manuscript notes DR. MASON GOOD. 71 lay before him, he seldom referred to them more than by a glance ; so that, instead of merely reading, a practice which is as much calculated to neutralize the efforts of the lecturer (and indeed of every public teacher) as it would be to destroy those of the legal advocate at the bar, he gave to his lectures all the correct expression of well-studied addresses delivered from memory, but enriched with those extemporaneous additions which spontaneously occur to a speaker of sentiment and feel- ing, when surrounded by a numerous and attentive audi- tory.* Instead of poring with monotonous dulness over his papers, his eyes passed incessantly over the entire assembly ; and thus when the countenance of an auditor indicated a want of comprehension of the subject, the lecturer, either by amplification, or repetition with slight variety, removed the defect. His language and manner, always good, at times assumed a tone of impassioned elo- quence which was deeply impressive. With these qualifications, and with the rich variety of topics he introduced, it was natural that his lectures should be popular. His success was highly gratifying to himself, and on the conclusion of the first course, he thus speaks in a confidential letter to a literary friend : " Upon the whole, I may say that I have had crowded audiences throughout, though the lecture-room held 500 persons the usual English greeting on entering and * After the experience of many ye rs, I need not hesitate to say, that my yiews, as to this point, accord most fully with ilvse of Professor Jardtne, as exhibited in his " Outlines of Philosophical Education," pp. 2G1 2oi'. I will not quote any portion of his judicious observation ; but most earnestly recommend the whole work to the attentive perusal of all who have the charge of instructing youth. ~ A letter from the celebrated Baron Cuvier. which I have recently perused, communicates similar opinious in a brief, but instructive passage, which I shall here subjoin. " Je crois que la plupart i@sfwr &@iiiC. In the year 1795, he published two medical essays, which were exceedingly well received by the profession, and served, as I have before remarked, to make him known as a man of talent and research. 92 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OP The first of these, "A Dissertation on the Diseases of Prison* and Poor Houses," was published at the request of the Medical Society of London, having obtained their prize. It is printed in duodecimo, and divided into three sections, which contain, 1st. Preliminary Observations, and a short sketch of the history of prisons and poor houses, and of the chief defects in their structure, econo- my, and discipline. 2dly, A history of the diseases most frequently observed to occur in such places, with their remedies and general mode of treatment. 3dly, An ac- count of the best plans to be adopted for presenting the recurrence of such diseases in future. Many of the de- tails in this little volume are very instructive, and well deserved the attention both of magistrates, and of the medical visitors of gaols and workhouses, at that time. But the benevolent exertions of the great Howard, and of others who have happily caught something of the same spirit, have led to such considerable improv ements during the last thirty years, (to which, indeed, the hints of our author not a little contributed,) that there is now no necessity to dwell upon the facts which he enumerates. The following quotation, however, will be read with interest by all who look beyond the mere point of health, important as it is, and especially by those whose admira- tion has been excited by the pious exertions of Mrs. Fry, and other benevolent ladies, the advantages of which are here not incorrectly depicted by a long anticipation. " I cannot, in this place, avoid mentioning, though it is not altogether connected with a medical treatise, the propriety there is in the appointment of an officiating clergyman, in all prisons at least. To a mind simply humane, there is something extremely indecorous in per- mitting a criminal to live and die without either religious reproof or consolation. But there is something more than indecorous in the case of penitentiary houses, there is something radically wrong and impolitic. If the criminal be sentenced to a confinement here for four or five years, and that with daily and regular returns of labor, and if these returns of labor be supposed insufficient to reclaim him, and introduce into his future life a habit of industry and honest exertion, how much more probable is it that he will be reclaimed, when the additional and more ener- DR. MASON GOOD. 93 getic power of principle is added to that of habit? when, for the same period of time, the effect of religion has been regularly and duly tried, and super added to the effect of regular and constant employment ? "Above all, more especially in the cases of poor-houses and charity-schools, I could wish the ladies in the coun- try would more warmly and frequently interest themselves. The claim of benevolence, and every soft affection of the heart, is peculiarly their own : and wherever they have thus acted, considerable benefit has, in every instance, accrued. It has done so at Frankfort ; it has done so at Dunbar ; and, above all, at the village of Cardington, in Bedfordshire, to which I have already adverted with much satisfaction : and, in fine, it has done so, and will do so, wherever their friendly interposition is exercised ; the in- stitution will flourish, the concerns of morality and reli- gion will prevail, the grand object of this dissertation will be attained, and the poor will be cheerful and happy." An appendix to this volume contains a " Case of Pre- ternatural Foetation, with some observations on the phae- nomena." This case occurred at Sudbury ; but the technical description of it I omit, as it would be princi- pally interesting to medical men ; for whom the author himself has given an abridged account in his "Study of Medicine," vol. v. p. 31. 2d edition. HISTORV OF MEDICINE. I have already (p. 53, &/c.) detailed the principal cir- cumstances which occasioned the formation of the " Phar- maccutic Association," and of Dr. Good's " History of Medicine, so far as it relates to the profession of the apothecary." This work is in duodecimo, and is com- prised in 255 pages. It is divided into four sections. In Section I. the author treats of the state of medicine, in reference to the apothecary, among the Greeks, Ro- mans, Arabians, the earlier ages of France, Italy, and Germany. The immediate occupation of the apothecary in those several countries at the respective periods spoken of, and the rank which he obtained among the different branches of the medical profession. The existence of any such occupation as that of the modern druggist, is investigated and denied, and the quarter is traced from 94 ACCOUNT OP THE WORKS OP whence the apothecary was supplied with the drugs of which he stood in need. Section II. is devoted to the origin of medicine, and especially of the profession of the apothecary in Great Britain. The different charters and acts of parliament which have successively been obtained relative to medi- cine, are traced ; and the knavery and ignorance exposed, of multitudes of medical practitioners, from the universal incompetency of those public edicts, &c. to prevent abuses. The origin of the occupation of the druggist is investigated, as well as the source from whence apotheca- ries previously derived their drugs. In Section III. the author explains the necessity of the profession of the apothecary to the nation at large, and the evils to which the profession and the public were then exposed. The origin of the General Pharmaceutic As- sociation is traced, and an entertaining account is given of its correspondence with medical men in all parts of the kingdom, and of several of the monstrous evils thus brought to light. Section IV. contains observations on the principles of action adopted by the Pharmaceutic Association, and a vindication of them, as consistent with general justice and policy, and essentially calculated to promote the welfare of the nation generally, by preventing the profession of medicine from sinking into contempt, and giving to that department of it which depends upon the genuineness and purity of its drugs, greater efficacy and certainty. The work, though comparatively small, exhibits strong evidences of the author's activity and powers of research. Though it was obviously drawn together in haste, to meet the exigencies of a particular occasion, it contains many proofs of extensive reading, even in that early period of Dr. Good's progress. Much of the information comprised within its pages was then known but to few even of the most active of medical men ; but the substance of it has since been frequently introduced into our Cyclopaedias, and other repositories of general knowledge, and now constitutes a part of that rich stock of theoretical and practical truth, which is possessed by the very numerous liberally educated men, who, in this age of intellectual impulse, adorn the medical profession. DR. MASON GOOD. 95 TRANSLATION OF THE SONG OP SONGS. Solomon's " Song of Songs," of Dr. Good's translation of which I must now speak, has, from the earliest ages of its existence been regarded as genuine and authentic ; yet it would be wrong to deny that great differences of opinion have existed amongst the wisest and best exposi- tors of Scripture, as to its inspiration. It was a part of those Scriptures which the Saviour and the Apostles often refer to as the word of God. The authority of this book was expressly allowed by Melito, in the second century ; and several of the Christian fathers, as Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyprian, Augustine, and Jerome, wrote com- mentaries upon it, or upon select portions of it. The father of English literature, Venerable Bede, wrote six books upon this Song : and in later ages, Alsted, Mercer, Bossuet, and Gill, have done much to elucidate its nature and object. There have been published several transla- tions into the English language, of which the best known are those of Dr. Percy, in 1764 ; of Miss Francis, in 1781 ; of Mr. Green, in the same year; of Mr. Hodgson, in 1785; of Doderlein, in 1795; and of Williams, in 1801. It would not seem that Dr. Good had an opportu- nity of examining all these : to those of Green, Percy, and Hodgson, he acknowledges himself indebted ; as well as to the Spanish version of Luis de Leon, and the Italian of Melesigenio. He frequently also expresses his obliga- tions to Lowth, whose sentiments, in reference to the character of the book, he adopts ; and whose circumspec- tion, with regard to minutiae of interpretation, he seems closely to have followed.* The opinions of learned men have differed greatly * " Concerning the explanation of this allegory, (says the bishop, Lett. xxxi.) I will only add, that in the first place we ought to be cautious of car- rying the figurative application too far, and of entering into a piToise expli- cation of every particular. Again, I would advise that this production be treated according to the established rules of allegory in the sacred writings, and that the author be permitted to be his own interpreter. In this respect the errors of critics and divines have been as numerous as they have been pernicious. Not to mention other absurdities, tbey have taken th allegory, not as denoting the universal state of the church, but th spiritual ttate of individuals; than which nothing can be more inconsistent with the very nature and groundwork of the allegory itself, as well as with the geu- eral practice of the Hebrew poets on these occasions." 96 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OP as to the precise nature of the "Song of Songs," consid- ered as an artificial composition, and of course as to the subdivisions to be traced in its structure. Bossuet re- garded it as a regular drama, divided into seven portions, corresponding with the seven days of the Jewish marriage festivals; and Lowth, Percy, and Mr. Williams adopted this sentiment ; but Jahn, Sir W. Jones, and our author, with some others, regard it as a series of sacred Idyls, the number of which Jahn supposes to be eight, while Dr. Good traces twelve. With regard to the language, Dr. Good remarks, that in no translation which he has seen, is the rendering presented with all the delicacy of diction to which the original is fairly entitled : this main defect, in his opinion, has resulted from close verbal renderings of Hebrew terms being given, when they ought to have been trans- lated equivalently ; and in the plan pursued by himself, we therefore find our cool northerly taste less frequently offended. He exhibits two translations in opposite pages, one of them resembling, as closely as the idioms of the respective languages will allow, the rhythmical structure of the original, the other in heroic verse. In the preface, he sketches his own views of the na- ture of Solomon's (or, as he assigns reasons for spelling it, iSbftmtan'J) Song : from this preface, therefore, I shall select a passage, and then present a short specimen of each of his versions. " It has been a question in all ages, whether the literal and obvious meaning of these sacred amorets be the whole that was ever intended by the royal bard ? or, whether they afford not at the same time, the veil of a sublime and mystical allegory, delineating the bridal union subsisting between Jehovah and his pure and uncor- rupted church? Upon this subject we have no sufficient data to build a decisive opinion. To those who disbe- lieve the existence of such an allegory, they still afford a happy example of the pleasures of holy and virtuous love; they inculcate, beyond the power of didactic poetry, the tenderness which the husband should manifest for his wife, and the deference, modesty, and fidelity with which his affections should be returned ; and, considered even DR. MASON GOOD. 97 in this sense alone, they are fully entitled to the honor of constituting a part of the sacred Scriptures. " To myself, nevertheless, I unite in the opinion of the illustrious Lowth, and believe such a sublime and mystic allegory to have been fully intended by the sacred bard. Regarded in this view, they afford an admirable picture of the Jewish and Christian churches ; of Jehovah's se- lection of Israel, as a peculiar people, from the less fair and virtuous nations around them ; of his fervent and permanent love for his elder church, so frequently com- pared by the Hebrew prophets to that of a bridegroom for his bride; of the beauty, fidelity, and submission of the church in return ; and of the call of the Gentiles into the pale of his favor, upon the introduction of Christianity, so exquisitely typified under the character of a younger sister, destitute, in consequence of the greater simplicity of its worship, of those external and captivating attrac- tions which made so prominent a part of the Jewish religion." ROYAL BRIDE, ATTENDANT VIRGINS. Royal Bride. Ch. I. 2. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth ; For thy love is delicious above wine. 3. Like the fragrance of thy own sweet perfumes Is thy name a perfume poured forth ; For this reason do the virgins love thee. 4. ' Still thus" attract me we would follow ' thy perfumes.' The king hath led me into his apartments. / '/'/ -yinf. We will exult in thec and rejoice : Thy love will we celebrate above wine ; Thou art every way lovely. Royal Bride. 5. Brown am I, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem ! As the tents of Kedar, as tho tapestries of Soloman. 6. ' Yet' despise me not because I am brown, For the sun hatli discolored me. My mother's children were severe with me ; 9 98 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF They made me keeper of the vineyards. My own vineyard have I not kept. 7. Tell me, O thou ! whom my soul loveth, Where thou feedest ' thy flock,' Where thou leadest it to rest at noon. For why should I be as a wanderer Among the flocks of thy companions ? Virgins. 8. If thou know not, O thou fairest among women ! Go forth in the footsteps of the flock ; And leave thy kids to feed Beside the tents of the shepherds. IDYL I. ROYAL BRIDE, ATTENDANT VIRGINS. Royal Bride. O LET him kiss me with those lips of bliss ! P\>r more than nectar dwells in every kiss. Rich thy perfumes ; but richer far than they The countless charms that round thy person play: Thv name alone, more fragrant than the rose, Glads every maid where'er its fragrance flows. Still let it draw me ! with attraction sweet Still sway our hearts and guide our willing feet! Daughters of Salem ! tell through every grove, The partial monarch crowns me with his love. Virgins. We share thy bliss and with triumphant voice, More than o'er wine, o'er costliest wine, rejoice. Fair is thy form, well worthy of its lot, matchless excellence ! and void of spot ! Royal Bride. Not such, ye maids of Salem, my renown ; My form is comely, but my face is brown : Comely as tapestry where the king frequents. But brown as Kedar's tawny-tinctur'd tents. Yet scorn me not though thus of humbler hue, 'Twas from the sun the sultry tint I drew. My mother's children, with unkind commands, In servile toils employ'd my infant hands : 1 kept their vineyards through the blazing day, And hence my own unprun'd and desert lay. DR. MASON GOOD. 99 Tell me, O thou ! for whom my spirit pines, Where now beneath the noon thy flock reclines ? There let me seek thee : for, devoid of home, Why 'mid the flocks of strangers should I roam ? Virgins. If, O thou fairest of the female race ! His devious flock thou know not where to trace, Go mark their footsteps follow where they guide, And leave thy kids the shepherds' tents beside. In the preface, our author delivers his opinion as to the probable age of Solomon when he composed these " Idyls," and endeavors to collect what he candidly de- nominates " a few detached and unsatisfactory anecdotes" relative to " the beautiful and interesting personage" on whose marriage with the Israelitish king they were written. The notes, which occupy about 150 pages, are ex- ceedingly elegant and amusing. Those, however, who turn to them for theological information, will be disap- pointed. They are intended to elucidate, not so much the language of religion as that of love, and to present examples in which the phraseology, imagery, and gene- ral sentiment of Solomon, in " these sacred amorets," have been accidentally or intentionally imitated. The parallel passages are drawn together from a great variety of authors, Persian, Arabic, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, and are, most of them, very tasteful and pleasing. Altogether, indeed, they may be regarded as constituting a beautiful anacreontic garland of flowers, gathered from every clime ; but of which a few are too strongly scented to be fully relished here, being the produce of such exotics as have never yet flourished in an " English garden." To most of the passages thus quoted, transla- tions are appended, of which several are by Dr. Good himself, and given with great spirit and vivacity. MEMOIRS OF DR. GEDDES. Dr. Good's " Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Dr. Alexander Geddes," were published in 1803, in an 8vo. volume of nearly 600 pages. This extraordinary individual 100 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF was born in Banffshire, in September 1737, and died in London, February 26th, 1802. He was an indefatigable writer, being the avowed author of 35 publications on dif- ferent subjects connected with politics, and with sacred and profane literature ; besides a great number of pamphlets published anonymously. His principal work was a trans- lation of the Bible, of which, however, he only published a few of the earlier books ; the boldness of his specula- tions, and the rashness of many of his proposed emenda- tions, having excited such an opposition to his undertak- ing that he could not possibly proceed with it. He was a man of profound and extensive erudition, of deep re- search, and of unwearied application ; an enthusiastic propagator of his particular opinions respecting the Scrip- ture historians : but as these are justly reckoned not only erroneous, but even dangerous by the majority of Chris- tians, it is no wonder that his publications on such sub- jects diminished that respect which all men of learning would otherwise have entertained for him. The memoirs are written in a lively, pleasing style, and convey much amusing information, not only relative to Dr. Geddes, but to many of his associates in the literary world ; men who took an active part in the literature and the politics of that stormy period, from the commence- ment of the French Revolution until about 1800, when political and theological rancor were at their height, and when nothing was more difficult than for an individual to steer his course quietly through the world without becom- ing a partizan. The biographer says, " I have freely commended, and I have freely blamed I have deviated from Dr. Geddes's opinions where I have seen reason for dissent, and I have vindicated him in instances where I have conceived the motives of his conduct to have been misrepresented or misunderstood." The truth, however, need not be concealed, that at that time the opinions of the biographer and of his hero accorded pretty nearly on most points ; although but a few years passed away before Dr. Good found himself conscientiously impelled to abandon, as dangerous, many notions which he had before thought, if not perfectly true, at least altogether harmless. Among the singular and dangerous opinions held by Dr. Geddes, one of the most revolting was that which DR. MASON GOOD. 101 related to the character of Moses. He believed that the great Jewish legislator was not inspired, but assumed a pretended inspiration. " Indeed, (says he,) I cannot conceive how Moses could have governed so rude, so stubborn, so turbulent a nation and made them submit to such a code of laws as he devised for them without feigning an immediate intercourse with the Deity, and ascribing to him every injunction laid upon them. But although his communications with God were frequent, and almost on every emergency, he was particularly care- ful to keep the pQople at a distance from the intercourse ; no one must approach the mount while he is receiving the Decalogue, under pain of death : no one must hear the responses given from the oracle, but through him ; no one but he sees God " face to face ;" no one must reason against any of his ordinances ; no one object to any of his decisions : because his ordinations and decis- ions are all from the mouth of God." Now, in opposition to these preposterous sentiments Dr. Good remarks, " It is an insuperable objection to this part of our author's creed, that it is contradictory to itself. Dr. Geddes admits his most ample belief in the divine author- ity of Jesus Christ, " whose Gospel is his religious code, whose doctrines are his dearest delight :" but Jesus Christ uniformly avowed the inspiration of Moses, by expressly adverting to such inspiration in the delivery of one prediction fulfilled in his own person. It is in every respect inconsistent and illogical, therefore, to accredit the divine mission of the author of the Christian faith, and yet to deny the same authority to the Hebrew legislator. One principal reason that operated upon our author in support of this denial was, the many acts of cruelty which were perpetrated at the instigation of Moses, and from which he was anxious to exculpate the Deity ; arid par- ticularly the total destruction and extermination of the seven Canaanite nations, and the transfer of their land and possessions to the Israelites. ' I cannot possibly believe, (says he,) that ever a just, benevolent being, such as I conceive my God to be, gave such a sanguinary order to Moses and the Israelites as in the book of Deu- teronomy is said to have been given.' The explanation *9 102 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OP of this transaction, advanced by the very liberal and learn- ed Bishop of Llandaff, in his Apology for the Bible, is known to every one, and is satisfactory to most. But our author, not only acknowledges himself not satisfied with it, but labors in a long and argumentative note, to prove its impotence and irrelevancy. He will not allow any simile drawn from the phenomena of nature ; such as the ravages of earthquakes, pestilences, or inundations, to be coincident with this event, as recorded in the Bible. ' When the earthquake (says he) swallows up, the sea overwhelms, the fire consumes, the famine starves, or the plague destroys ; we are totally ignorant by what laws of nature or concatenation of causes, the desolating events happen ; we see only the dismal effects : and no conse- quence can rationally be deduced from them, against the principle of moral equity. From such events no one would derive an argument for the lawfulness of disposses- sing his neighbor, either in his property or person ; no argument for the lawfulness of burying alive idolaters, drowning heretics, starving atheists, &,c.' " I freely confess (proceeds Dr. Good,) I cannot see the difference here contended for : and even Dr. Geddes himself must have admitted the possibility of God's pre- determining and prognosticating, as well as immediately operating the total extermination of a whole people, or- must have disbelieved the tremendous history of the de- struction of Jerusalem, and the propagation of his predict- ed curse upon the Hebrew race to the present moment. Here I think the simile is at least admissible ; and I am surprised that our modern polemics have not occasionally adverted to it. If it be consistent with the justice and benevolence of the Supreme Being, that the Jewish nation, his own peculiar people, should, on account of the enormity of their sins, be in their turn attacked in their inheritance ; be subjugated to a foreign power ; become the prey and plunder of a long succession of capricious, cruel, and avaricious tyrants ; have their city and temple at length assaulted ; be loaded with every possible calamity which pestilence, famine, and torture, their own mutual treacheries and animosities, and the implacable enmity and ingenuity of their adversaries, could invent during the continuance of this tremendous DR. MASON GOOD, 103 siege if it be consistent with the same adorable attri- butes, that upwards of a million of them should fall vic- tims to so complicated a scourge, and that the wretched remnant who escaped should be suffered to wander about as outcasts and vagabonds over the face of the whole earth, equally despised and derided by every nation among whom they might acquire a temporary abode if it be consistent with these attributes that this terrible visita- tion should be persevered in for a period of at least eigh- teen centuries, thus punishing from age to age, the children for the >///.- of thi'ir fathers if the case before us, which we cannot but believe, be consistent with the justice and benevolence of the Deity surely the case recorded (a case of far inferior vengeance) demands no great credu- lity to obtain our assent, nor strength of reasoning to reconcile it with the moral perfections of the Supreme Being." TRANSLATION OF LUCRETIUS. Of the preceding works of our author I have, design- edly, said but little, that I might speak more fully of the great work, which, as my readers will already have seen, (pp. 64 67) occupied so large a share of several of the most active years of his life ; the " Translation of Lucre- tius," which, having long devoted to it his head, his hand and his heart, he published in 1805, in two volumes quarto. It is still a question with many, whether or not this philosophical poet is worthy of all the pains which have been bestowed upon him ; and, probably, like Epicurus, the great master of his system, he has received a larger share of both praise and blame than are fairly his due. It has been said, for example, that as a philosophical poet, Lucretius is inferior to Homer. That he is deci- dedly inferior as a poet, no one will question ; but they must view the character of Homer through a very extra- ordinary medium, who regard him as the poet of philoso- phy. There would be no difficulty in shewing, from many of his beautiful similes, that he was an accurate observer of natural phenomena ; and it might be shewn in like manner from his exquisite delineation of charac- ters, that he was most intimately acquainted with human 104 ACCOUNT OP THE WORKS OP nature ; yet, as he is not on the latter account, classed with moralists, so neither can he, on the former, be rank- ed with philosophers. The Roman poets, indeed, tinctured their sentiments and language very deeply with the philosophy of the Greeks. Thus Virgil adopts sometimes the notions of the Stoics, sometimes those of the Platonists, at others those of the Pythagorean and the Epicurean systems. Horace breathes the Epicurean spirit. Ovid evinces his acquaintance with the Greek theogonies: and Persius warmly advocates the morals of the Stoics. Yet, by these and others, the doctrines they adopted were introduced occasionally, and not made the basis of their structure. Not so Lucretius. In his poem, De Rerum Natura, he has with accuracy of method, and clearness of concep- tion, and usually with great elegance of diction, entirely unfolded the system of Epicurus : and the remarkable fact ought not to be suppressed, that the inductive meth- od of Bacon, portions of the physics of the Newtonian school, and of the chemical discoveries of the last forty years, have been anticipated, both as to their principles and results, in this elaborate production. Although I am by no means inclined to admit so much in reference to these points as Mr. Dutens, in his " Inquiry into the Origin of the discoveries attributed to the Moderns," or even as Dr. Good has done in his preface, and several of his notes ; yet I am not reluctant to allow, that with respect to nature, active and animated, to the corpuscu- lar philosophy the constitution of the milky way, the moon, the tides, the circulation of the blood, the exis- tence of the Fallopian tubes, the sexual system of plants, the principles of sculpture, painting, and music, and some of our metaphysical theories, the ancients have pre- ceded us by more than a mere adumbration ; and that the perspicuous developement of various trains of inquiry, thought to have been peculiar to the last century, in this great work of Lucretius, give to it an interest possessed by no other production of Roman genius, independently of that which is excited by its poetical merit. That it has poetical merit, however, and that of the highest order, was declared by Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Gellius, and Cornelius Nepos, among the ancients ; DR. MASON GOOD. 105 as well as by moderns of deserved reputation. Dr. Warton, especially, in his Dissertation on the Life and Writings of Pope, says, " The Persians distinguish the different degrees of the strength of fancy in different poets, by calling them painters or sculptors. Lucretius, from the force of his images, should be ranked among the latter. He is, in truth, a sculptor-poet. His writings have bold relief." And again, in another dissertation, when devoting himself to a more complete exfoliation of the character and great production of this sculptor-poet, he says, " I am next to speak of Lucretius, whose merit has never yet been sufficiently displayed, and who seems to have had more fire, spirit, and energy, more of the vivifla, r/.s animi, than any of the Roman poets, not ex- cepting Virgil himself. Whoever imagines, with Tully, that Lucretius had not a great genius, is desired to cast his eye on two pictures he has given us at the beginning of his poem : the first of Venus, with her lover Mars, beautiful to the last degree, and more glowing than any picture painted by Titian ; the second, of that terrible and gigantic figure, the demon of superstition, worthy the energetic pencil of Michael Angelo. Neither do I think that the description that immediately follows, of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, was excelled by the famous picture of Timanthes on the same subject, of which Pliny speaks so highly in the 35th book of his Natural History : espe- cially the minute and moving circumstances of her per- ceiving the grief of her father Agamemnon, and of the priest's concealing his sacrificing knife, and of the spec- tators bursting into tears, and her falling on her knees. Few passages even in Virgil himself, are so highly finish- ed, contain such lively descriptions, or are so harmonious in their versification, as where our poet speaks of the fruitfulness occasioned throughout all nature by vernal showers, of the ravages committed by tempestuous winds," &,c. The Doctor then proceeds briefly, but with commendation, to describe and select from the six books, into which the poem is divided.* * The sentiments of Dionysius Lambinus, the eclilor of the Paris edition of 156370, (whom Eichstadt characterises as " vir exquisiiissimae doc- trinae copijs, et singular! acumine praeditus,") being less known to the E- 106 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF With an admiration of his author not inferior to that of Lambinus, and with a mind copiously imbued both with classical knowledge, and with the results of the arts and sciences of every polished nation, Dr. Good devoted himself to the translation and commentary of which I am now to speak. A spirited preface, and a life of Lucretius, occupy about 130 pages of the first volume. In these he briefly adverts to preceding translations, and deduces from their imperfections the necessity of his own. He also enters into an elaborate defence of the system of Epicurus, and glish reader than those of Warton, may without impropriety be inserted In this note. " The poem of Lucretius, although he advances in it some opinions that are repugnant to our religion, is, nevertheless, a most beautiful poem, dis- tinguished, illustrated, and adorned, with all the bril!'.ancy of wit and fancy. What, though Epicurus and Lucretius were impious in our views, are we who read them therefore impious ?"...." Since we daily read many things that are fabulous, incredible, and false, either to yield some respite to our minds, or to make us the more constantly to adhere to such as are true, what reason is there that we should despise Lucretius, a most elegant and beautiful poet, the most polite and the most ancient of all the Latin writers, from whom Virgil and Horace have, in many places, borrowed not half, but whole verses ? When he descants upon the invisible corpuscles or first principles of things, on their motion, their various configuration, on the void, the images or tenuous membranes that fly off from the surface of all bodies, the nature of the mind and soul, the rising and setting of the planets, the nature of lightning, of the rainbow, the causes of diseases, and of many other things, he is learned, wise, judicious, and elegant. In the introductions to his books, in his similes, his examples, his disputations against the fear of death, concerning the inconveniences and the harms of love, in his account of sleep, and of dreams, he is copious, discreet, eloquent, and often sublime. We not only read Homer, but even commit his verses to memory, because, under the veil of fables, partly obscene, partly absurd, he has in a manner included the knowledge of all natural and human things. Why, then, shall we not hear Lucretius, who, without the disguise of fables and such trifles, not always indeed truly, nor piously, but plainly and openly, and in a style the most correct and pure, treats of the principles and causes of things, of the universe, of its parts, of a happy life, and of things celestial and ter.cstrial ?". ..." How admirably does he discourse upon the restraining of pleasures, the curbing of the passions, and the attainment of tranquillity of mind ! How wisely does he rebuke and confute those who affirm that nothing can be perceived, and nothing known ! How beautiful are his descriptions ! How graceful, as the Greeks call them, are his episodes ! How fine are his descriptions of colors, of mirrors, of the loadstone, and of the Averni ! How serious and impressive are his exhortations to live continently. justly, temperately, innocently! What shall we say of his diction, than which nothing can be imagined more pure, correct, perspicuous, or elegant. I scruple not to affirm, that in all the Latin language, no author writes Latin better than Lucretius, and that the diction, neither of Cicero nor of Csesar, is more pure." Epistle Dedi- catory to diaries IX. DR. MASOX GOOD. 107 skilfully, though not with entire success, defends him from the charge of atheism and irreligion. From this portion of the \vork I shall select a few passages, as in- dicative both of Dr. Good's manner and of his tone of thought, at the period in which they were written. " In attentively perusing the poem before us, it is im- possible to avoid noticing the striking resemblance which exists between many of its most beautiful passages, and various parts of the poetic books of the Scrip- tures: and the Abbe de St. Pierre, as well as several other continental writers, have hence considered Lucre- tius to have been acquainted with them. The idea, it must be confessed, is but little more than a conjecture/ but it is a conjecture which may easily be defended. Vir- gil, who, though considerably younger than Lucretius, was contemporary with him, and attained his majority on the very day of our poet's decease, was indisputably ac- quainted with the prophecies of Isaiah ; and Longinus, who flourished during the reign of Aurelian, quotes from the Mosaic writings by name. It is not difficult to ac- count for such an acquaintance : for different books of the Bible, and especially those of the Pentateuch, appear to have been translated into Greek by the Jews themselves, at least three centuries anterior to the Christian aera, for the use of their brethren, who at that time were settled in Egypt, and other Grecian dependencies, and, residing among the Greeks, had adopted the Greek language. The Septuagint itself, moreover, was composed and pub- lished about the same period, by the express desire, and under the express patronage, of Ptolemy Philadelphus ; who, convinced of the importance and excellence of the Hebrew Scriptures, was desirous of diffusing a knowledge of them among the various classes of men of letters, who, at his own invitation, had now thronged to Alexandria from every quarter. Theocritus was at this time among the number, and largely partook of the liberality of the Egyptian monarch ; and Sanctius seems fairly to have established it, that the labors of the Grecian idyllist are deeply imbued with the spirit, and evince manifest imita- tions of the language, of the Song of Songs. Dr. Hodg- son has, indeed, ascended very considerably higher, and even challenges Anacreon with having copied, in a varie- 108 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OP ty of instances, from this inimitable relic of the sacred poetry of Solomon. This accusation may, perhaps, be doubtful ; but it would be easy to prove, if the discussion were necessary in the present place, that, during the dynasty of the Ptolemies, not only the muses of Aonia were indebted to the muse of Sion, but that the eclectic philosophy, which first raised its monster head within the same period, incorporated many of the wildest traditions of the Jewish rabbis into its chaotic hypothesis. The literary connexion which subsisted between Rome and Alexandria is well known ; and it is not to be supposed that writings, which appear to have been so highly prized in the one city, would be received with total indifference in the other. " Be this, however, as it may ; be the parallelisms I advert to, designed or accidental ; I trust I shall rather be applauded than condemned, for thus giving a loose to the habitual inclination of my heart. Grotius, Schultens, Lowth, and Sir William Jones, have set me the example, and, while treading in the steps of such illustrious schol- ars, I need not be afraid of public censure. Like them, I wish to prove that the sacred pages are as alluring by their language, as they are important in their doctrines ; and that, whatever be the boast of Greece and Rome with respect to poetic attainments, they are often equalled, and occasionally surpassed, by the former. The man who, professing the Christian religion, is acquainted with the ancient classics, ought, at the same time, to be acquaint- ed with biblical criticism ; he has, otherwise, neglected his truest interest, and lived but for little purpose in the world. I delight in profane literature, but still more do I delight in my Bible : they are lamps, that afford a mutual assistance to each other. In point of importance, how- ever, I pretend not that they admit of comparison ; and could it once be demonstrated that the pursuits are in- consistent with each other, I would shut up Lucretius for ever, and rejoice in the conflagration of the Alexandrian library." The following able sketch of the system of Epicurus will be read with interest and advantage by the young stu- dent of the philosophy of the ancients. " In its mere PHYSICAL contemplation, the theory of DR. MASON GOOD. 109 Epicurus allows of nothing but matter and space, which are equally infinite and unbounded, which have equally existed from all eternity, and from different combinations of which every individual being is created. These exist- ences have no property in common with each other ; for, whatever matter is, that space is the reverse of; and what- ever space is, matter is the contrary to. The actually solid parts of all bodies, therefore, are matter ; their actual pores, space ; and the parts which are not altogeth- er solid, but an intermixture of solidity and pore, are space and matter combined. Anterior to the formation of the universe, space and matter existed uncombined, or in their pure and elementary state. Space, in its elemen- tary state, is positive and unsolid void : matter, in its elementary state, consists of inconceivably minute seeds or atoms so small, that the corpuscles of vapor, light, and heat, are compounds of them ; and so solid, that they cannot possibly be broken, or made smaller, by any con- cussion or violence whatever. The express figure of these primary atoms is various : there are round, square, pointed, jagged, as well as many other shapes. These shapes, however, are not diversified to infinity ; but the atoms themselves, of each existent shape, are infinite or innumerable. Every atom is possessed of certain intrin- sic powers of motion. Under the old school of Democri- tus, the perpetual motions exhibited were of two kinds, a descending motion, from its own gravity ; and a re- bounding motion, from mutual concussion. Besides these two motions, and to explain certain phenomena which the following poem developes, and which were not accounted for under the old system, Epicurus supposed that some atoms were occasionally possessed of a third, by which, in some very small degree, they descended in an oblique or curvilinear direction, deviating from the common and right line anomalously ; and hence, in this respect, resembling the oscillations of the magnetic needle. " These infinitudes of atoms, flying immemorially in such different directions, through all the immensity of space, have interchangeably tried and exhibited every possible mode of action, sometimes repelled from each other by concussion, and sometimes adhering to each 10 110 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF other from their own jagged or pointed construction, or from the casual interstices which two or more connected atoms must produce, and which may just be adapted to those of other configurations, as globular, oval, or square. Hence the origin of compound bodies ; hence the origin of immense masses of matter ; hence, eventually, the ori- gin of the world itself. When these primary atoms are closely compacted together, and but little vacuity or space intervenes, they produce those kinds of substances which we denominate solid, as stones and metals : when they are loose and disjoined, and a large quantity of space or vacuity occurs between them, they produce the phenome- na of wool, water, vapor. In one mode of combination, they form earth ; in another, air ; and in another, fire. Arranged in one way, they produce vegetation and irrita- bility ; in another way, animal life and perception. Man hence arises families are formed society multiplies, and governments are instituted. " The world, thus generated, is perpetually sustained by the application of fresh elementary atoms, flying with inconceivable rapidity through all the infinitude of space, invisible from their minuteness, and occupying the posts of all those that are perpetually flying off. Yet, nothing is eternal and immutable but these elementary seeds or atoms themselves ; the compound forms of matter are con- tinually decompounding, and dissolving into their original corpuscles : to this there is no exception minerals, vegetables, and animals, in this respect all alike, when they lose their present configuration, perishing from ex- istence for ever, and new combinations proceeding from the matter into which they dissolve. But the world itself is a compound, though not an organized being ; sustained and nourished like organized beings, from the material pabulum that floats through the void of infinity. The world itself therefore, must, in the same manner, perish : it had a beginning, and it will eventually have an end. Its present crasis will be decompounded ; it will return to its original, its elementary atoms ; and new worlds will arise from its destruction. " Space is infinite, material atoms are infinite, but the world is not infinite. This, then, is not the oniy world, or the only material system, that exists. Th& cause DR. MASON GOOD. Ill whence this visible system originated is competent to pro- duce others ; it has been acting perpetually from all eter- nity ; and there are other worlds and other systems of worlds existing around us. In the vast immensity of space, there are also other beings than man, possessed of powers of intellect and enjoyment far superior to our own ; beings who existed before the formation of the world, and will exist when the world shall perish forever ; whose happiness flows unlimited and unalloyed, and whom the tumults and passions of gross matter can never agitate. These, the founder of the system denominated gods ; not that they created the universe, or are possessed with a power of upholding it ; for they are finite and created beings themselves, and endowed alone with finite capaci- ties and powers ; but from the uninterrupted beatitude and tranquillity they enjoy, their everlasting freedom from all anxiety and care." p. cxi. " Epicurus, in the opening of a letter addressed to a favorite disciple, says, ' Believe, before all things, that God is an immortal and blessed Being ; as, indeed, com- mon sense should teach us concerning God. Conceive nothing of him that is repugnant to blessedness and im- mortality, and admit everything that is consistent with these perfections. " He admitted, moreover, the existence of orders of intelligences, possessed of superior powers to the human race, whom, like the angels and archangels of the Chris- tian system, he conceived to be immortal from their na- ture ; to have been created anterior to the formation of the world, to be endowed with far ampler faculties of en- joyment than mankind, to be formed of far purer mate- rials, and to exist in far happier abodes. The chief dif- ference which I have been able to discern between the immortal spirits of the Epicurean system, and the Chris- tian theologist, is, that while the latter are supposed to take an active part in the divine government of the world, the former are represented as having no kind of con- nexion with it: since it was conceived by Epicurus that euch an interference is absolutely beyond their power, and would be totally subversive of their beatitude." p. Ixvi. Gassendi, in his tractate " de Vita et Moribus Epi- 112 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF curi," has a similar observation. Yet the difference to which both he and Dr. Good advert, is not secondary and trifling, but primary, essential, and of the utmost moment. If, as Epicurus taught, it was inconsistent with the na- ture and being, not merely of these minor divinities but of the Supreme Deity, to give himself either diversion or disturbance by making the world ; if he encumber not himself with the care and government of it ; if he dwell for ever in the extramundane spaces, exercising no in- spection over mankind, nor concerning himself about their actions and affairs ; if in him neither anger nor favor, complacency nor displacency, have place ; where can scope be found, in such a system, for the exercise of piety towards God, of submission to his authority, resig- nation to his will, or a regard to his favor and protection ? Interpreted correctly, therefore, this is a cold and com- fortless theory, equally robbing God of his richest attri- butes, and man of his most delectable privileges. It takes away all intercourse, all communion, between mankind and the Great Supreme: God cannot "dwell with man upon earth," man cannot dwell with God in heaven ; and Deity becomes a mere speculation ; at the utmost an object of veneration, but never the object of love. If virtue spring from such a source, (and it is right to admit that Epicurus was, in many respects, a virtuous man, gentle, kind, temperate, continent,) the scheme of morality must be wrong at its very foundation. The vir- tue which it prescribes is resolved into a man's private convenience and advantage, independently of reference to any Divine law, (for Divine law, in truth, there could not be on such a system :) if Epicurus declaim against vice, it is because it would expose the culprit to the pen- alties of human laws ; but he declaims much more ear- nestly against the fear of the gods, and the fear of death ; the former because the gods regard not us, the latter because " whilst we live, death is not ; and when death is, we are not." Against injustice, ambition, envy, revenge, he levels several excellent observations ; and many of them are wrought out, with much beauty, by Lucretius ; yet, as a system for the regulation of human conduct, and DR. MASON GOOD. 113 the real augmentation of human happiness, experience, wherever it was tried, evinced its total inefficacy. The same, however, may be affirmed of every human system, ancient or modern. And it is solely to put the young and ardent admirer of classical literature upon his guard, that he may be watchful as to the defects of every system but one, and set his eyes fully upon the glories of that one, the system revealed to us by God himself, that I have thought it right to present these remarks. Had a now edition been called for during the lifetime of my de- ceased friend, he would, I am persuaded, most scrupu- lously have precluded the possibility of mistake on this important subject. But it is time we should proceed to the work itself; on corresponding and opposite pages of which Dr. Good has placed the original, (closely, but not slavishly, following Mr. Wakefield's edition,) and his own translation. In adopting blank verse as his vehicle, he seems to have set at defiance the frequently quoted aphorism of Johnson ,* but the truth is, that in thus deciding he was much more likely to succeed in the happy transfusion of the sentiments of Lucretius, than if he had " condescended to rhyme." Freed from the restraints of similar termination, the translator of a didactic and philosophic poem has a far better chance of rendering his author faithfully, without waste of words, than those who confine themselves to the rhyming couplet. Thus, in the translations of Creech, of Dryden, and of Dr. Busby, we meet with frequent and sometimes ridiculous redundancies ; and those who have compared the translations, of the Iliad by Pope and Cow- per, will have noticed the advantage, in point of terseness and general accuracy, possessed by the latter translator. Blank verse, in the hands of one who has a tolerable command of diction, admits of a dignity and variety in translation, which is seldom attained by him who rhymes. The adoption of blank verse, therefore, in the translation of Lucretius has, I believe, been generally approved. The characteristic of Dr. Good's poetry is elegant variety. His versification is easy, his style flowing, and usually harmonious ; and, in the philosophical portions especially * " He that thinks himself capable of astonishing' may write blank verse ; but those that hope only to please, must condescend to rhvme." *10 114 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF the copious diction of modern science has often been felicitously introduced. In the pathetic and the awful, he has, I think, sometimes failed : but in these depart- ments of his art, the Roman poet exhibits a simple majesty, which, I am aware, it is far more easy to ad- mire than to imitate. The reader, however, will form a more correct estimate from a few specimens, than from any criticisms which I can offer. Let me first, then, present Dr. Good's version of the far famed exordium of the second book : Suave, mari magno turbantibus tequora ventis, E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem : &c. in which the beauty and elegance of the language and imagery have excited universal admiration, and produced a host of imitators. How sweet to stand, when tempests tear the main, On the firm cliff, and mark the seaman's toil ! Not that another's danger soothes the soul, But from such toil how sweet to feel secure ! How sweet, at distance from the strife, to view Contending hosts, and hear the clash of war ! But sweeter far on Wisdom's height serene, Upheld by Truth, to fix our firm abode ; To watch the giddy crowd that, deep below, Foi ever wander in pursuit of bliss : To mark the strife for honors and renown, For wit and wealth, insatiate, ceaseless urg'd Day after day, with labor unrestrain'd. O wretched mortals ! race perverse and blind ! Through what dread dark, what perilous pursuits, Pass ye this round of being ! know ye not Of all ye toil for, nature nothing asks But for the body freedom from disease, And sweet, unanxious quiet, for the mind ? And little claims the body to be sound: But little serves to strew the paths we tread With joys beyond e'en Nature's utmost wish. What, though the dome be wanting, whose proud walls A thousand lamps irradiate, propt sublime By frolic forms of youths in massy gold, Flinging their splendors o'er the midnight feast : Though gold and silver blaze not o'er the board, Nor music echo round the gaudy roof? Yet listless laid the velvet grass along Near gliding streams, by shadowy trees o'er-arch'd, Such pomps we need not ; such still less when spring Leads forth her laughing train, and the warm year DR. MASON GOOD. 115 Paints the green meads with roseat flowers profuse. On down reclin'd, or wrapp'd in purple robe, The thirsty fever burns with heat as fierce As when its victim on a pallet pants. Since, then, nor wealth, nor splendor, nor the boast Of birth illustrious, nor e'en regal state Avails the body, so the free-born mind Their aid as little asks. Unless, perchance, The warlike host, thou deem, for thee array'd In martial pomp, and o'er the fiery field Panting for glory ; and the gorgeous fleet, For thee unmoor'd, and ardent, can dispel Each superstitious terror ; from the breast Root out the dread of death, and lull to peace The cares, the tumults, that distract thy soul. But if all this be idle, if the CARES, The TERRORS still that haunt, and harass man, Dread not the din of arms, o'er kings and chiefs Press unabash'd, unaw'd by glittering pomp, The purple robe unheeding canst thou doubt Man pants for these from poverty of mind, Wand'ring in darkness, and through life misled ? For as the boy, when midnight veils the sKies, Trembles, and starts at all things, so, full oft, E'en in the noon men start at forms as void Of real danger as the phantoms false By darkness conjur'd, and the school-boy's dread. A terror this the radiant darts of day Can ne'er disperse : to truth's pure light alone, And wisdom yielding intellectual suns. I. C2. The beautiful passage in the fifth book, in which the poet manifests his superiority to some of the vulgar super- stitions beginning with, Nee pietas ulla est velatum Sfepe videri Vorticr ad lapidem, atque omneis adcedere ad aras; has received this spirited, though rather free rendering. No it can ne'er be piety to turn To stocks and stones with deep-veil'd visr:o\ ; light O'er every altar incense ; o'er the dust Fall prostrate, and, with outstretched arms, invoke Through every temple, every god that reigns, Soothe them with blood, and lavish vows on vows. This, rather thou term piety, to mark With cairn untrembling soul each scene ordain'd. For when we, doubtful, heaven's high arch survey, The firm fixt ether, sta--emboss'd,\and pause O'er the sun's path, and pale meand'ring moon, 116 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF Then superstitious cares, erevvhile represt By cares more potent, lift their hydra-head. " What ! from the gods, then, flows this power immense That sways, thus various, the bright host of stars ? (For dubious reason still the mind perturbs) This wondrous world how form'd they ? to what end Doom'd ? through that period can its lab'ring walls Bear the vast toil, the motions now sustain'd ? Or have th' immortals fram'd it free from death, In firm, undevious course empovver'd to glide O'er the broad ravage of eternal time ?" V. 1243. That portion of the fifth book, in which Lucretius pre- sents a description of primaeval life and manners, and traces from thence the growth of civilization and refine- ment, and the corresponding modifications in the habits and pleasures of man, has been regarded as most happily characteristic of his best manner. I shall quote another passage from this part of the poem, as one in which the translator has caught much of the spirit of his author. But nature's self th' untutor'd race first taught To sow, to graft ; for acorns ripe they saw, And purple berries, shatter'd from the trees, Soon yield a lineage like the trees themselves. Whence learn'd they, curious, through the stem mature To thrust the tender slip, and o'er the soil Plant the fresh shoots that first disordered sprang. Then, too, new cultures tried they, and, with joy, Mark'd the boon earth, by ceaseless care caress'd, Each barbarous fruitage sweeten and subdue. So loftier still and loftier up the hills Drove they the woodlands daily, broad'ning thus The cultur'd foreground, that the sight might trace Meads, corn-fields, rivers, lakes, and vineyards gay, O'er hills and mountains thrown ; while thro' the dales, The downs, the slopes, ran lavish and distinct The purple realm of olives ; as with hues Distinct, though various still the landscape swells, Where blooms the dulcet apple, mid the tufts Of trees diverse that blend their joyous shades. And from the liquid warblings of the birds Learn'd they their first rude notes, ere music yet To the rapt ear had tun'd the measurd verse ; And Zephyr, whisp'ring through the hollow reeds, Taught the first swains the hollow reed to sound : Whence woke they soon those tender trembling tones Which the sweet pipe when by the fingers prest, Pours o'er the hills, the vales, and woodlands wild, Haunts of lone shepherds, and the rural gods. DR. MASON GOOD. 117 So growing time points, ceaseless, something new, And human skill evolves it into day. Thus sooth'd they ev'ry care, with music, thus Clos'd ev'ry rneal, for rests the bosom then. And oft they threw them on the velvet grass, Near gliding streams, by shadowy trees o'er-arch'd, And void of costly wealth, found still the means To gladden life. But chief when genial spring Led forth her laughing train, and the young year Painted the meads with roseat flow'rs profuse Then mirth, and wit, and wiles, and frolic, chief, Flow'd from the heart ; for then the rustic muse Warmest inspir'd them : then lascivious* sport Taught round their heads, their shoulders, taught to twine Foliage, and flowers, and garlands richly dight ; To loose, innum'rous (unmeasur'd) time their limbs to move, And beat, with sturdy foot, maternal earth ; While many a smile, and many a laughter loud, Told all was new, and wondrous much esteem'd. Thus wakeful liv'd they, cheating of its rest The drowsy midnight ; with the jocund dance Mixing gay converse, madrigals, and strains Run o'er the reeds with broad recumbent lip : As, wakeful still, our revellers through night Lead on their defter dance to time precise ; Yet will not costlier sweets, with all their art, Than the rude offspring earth in woodlands bore. V. 1451. But whatever may be the estimate of this work, con- sidered as a translation, it may justly claim a considera- bly augmented value on account of the voluminous and extremely diversified collection of annotations, which form a kind of running commentary to the entire poem. These notes are printed in double columns, with a type much smaller than the original and translation ; and occupying, as they do on the average, more than half of each page, comprise altogether a rich body of entertain- ment and instruction. They consist of comments on the doctrines of the poem, and of the sect of philosophers whose tenets Lucretius espoused ; observations on the peculiarities of other schools of philosophy, Indian, Gre- cian, Roman, &,c. ; correct sketches of the discoveries and theories of the moderns, whether devoted to chemis- try or physics ; developements of striking facts in natural " The term lascivia is often and elegantly made use of in poetry, and particularly by Lucretius, without ititendinir to express any impurity of action." 118 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OP history ; and allusions to many extraordinary anticipa- tions of discoveries supposed to be modern. Our anno- tator also expatiates, with taste and feeling, upon the beauties of his author, and collects numerous obvious or imagined imitations of him in several poets of earlier and later times. His extensive attainments as a linguist, and that indefatigable industry to which I have more than once adverted, enabled him to enrich this department of his undertaking with an almost boundless profusion ; and to present resemblances, parallelisms, allusions, and prob- able copies of his text, from Arabic, Persian, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German English, and other poets, from various parts of the Holy Scriptures, and from every work of taste or knowledge that could, without unnatural straining, contribute to his purpose. In cases where he could not at once select good English renderings of the authors quoted in these illustrations, he has introduced translations of his own ; and these, together with his criticisms, and his reasonings on the utmost diversity of topics, evince a union of learn- ing, taste, feeling, and judgment, such as has very rarely been found. Sometimes, indeed, it must be admitted that his admiration of his author and his theories carry him beyond the limits of sober interpretation ; yet, on the whole, these notes possess a rich and permanent value ; and may be generally consulted, by one who guards against this tendency, with the utmost safety,* as well as advantage and pleasure. To facilitate the reader's appli- cation to them, a comprehensive and judicious index of the several subjects treated both in the poem and in the notes, is placed at the end of the second volume. Looking back upon the space which has been already devoted to these volumes, I feel the expediency of check- ing myself; and shall, therefore, only select two or three specimens from Dr. Good's interesting commentary. On turning to an exquisite passage in the 3d book, beginning, Nam jam non domus adcipiet te laeta, neque uxor * It is a matter of sincere and deep regret, that the translator did not, by expunging, instead of translating, some vi-ry objectionable passages near the end of the fourth book, insure for this his elaborate work an unqualified commendation. DR. MASON GOOD. 119 Optuma, nee dulces obcurrent oscula natei Prceripere, et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent : we find a very characteristic note, which, with the simple omission of the Greek, Latin, and German originals, cited by the annotator, I shall now introduce. -" Thy babes belov'd, Whose haste half-met thee, emulous to snatch The dulcet kiss " " I must not hear forbear to quote a beautiful passage of Homer, towards which, as Lambinus has justly obser- ved, Lucretius appears to have thrown his eye, in this exquisite delineation, and whence, perhaps, he drew the rudiments of one of his most pathetic traits : Know thou, whoe'er with heavenly power contends, Short is his date, and soon his glory ends. From fields of death, when late he shall retire, No infant on his knees shall call him sire. Pope. " But though Lucretius may, perhaps, with respect to one idea, be a copyist of Homer, Virgil is a far closer copyist of Lucretius. Yet he has written, as Dr. Warton judiciously asserts, with less tenderness and effect : He feels the father's and the husband's bliss, His infants climb, and struggle for a kiss ; His modest house strict chastity maintains. Jl'arton. " Our own language boasts of a variety of imitations of this elegiac and exquisite passage ; of which several are possessed of great feeling and simplicity. The following is from the pathetic muse of Gray : For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care ; % JVo children run, to lisp their sire's return, Or climb hi&-knccs, the entied kiss to share. " The two last lines are very nearly a verbal transla- tion. The next imitation, to which 1 shall refer, is by Thomson ; it is freer than that of Gray, but executed 120 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF with equal felicity. It occurs in his Winter, to which season it particularly adverts : In vain for him th' officious wife prepares The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm : In vain, his little children, peeping out Into the mingled storm, demand their sire With tears of artless innocence. Alas ! JVor wife, nor children, more shall he behold, Nor friends, nor sacred home. Ver. 311. " It is not unlikely that Thomson, rather than Lucre- tius, has been copied in this delineation by Klopstock, in the following verses, which comprise a part of the medi- tations of the repentant Abadonna : Come, let me see the man that yonder lies Dying, and wrung with anguish as he dies ; And mark his gory wounds. In dead of night Haply he hasted, with a sire's delight To clasp his babes, that round their mother's knee, Lisp'd his dear name. These never shall he see ! By ruthless ruffians murder'd ! " Equally in point, with both these citations, is the following, by Collins ; affording a picture which yields to neither of them in tenderness or beauty. It comprises a part of his well-known description of the Kelpie, a Water- fiend : For him, in vain, his anxious wife shall wait, Or wander forth to meet him on his way ; For him, in vain, at to-fall of the day, His babes shall linger at th' unclosing gate. Ah ! ne'er shall he return ! " I add the following from Dyer, because, though it offers a parallel, if not a copied image, it directs to a happier purpose. The poet is representing the agricul- tural province of a worthy cottager with whom he was acquainted, and who never suffered the growth of useless trees about the few acres he occupied : Only a slender tuft of useful ash, And mingled beech, and elm. securely tall, The little smiling cottage, warm embower'd: DR. MASON GOOD. 121 The little smiling cottage, where at eve Jfe mcrty his rosy children at the, door, Prattling their icelcomes, and, his honest wife, With good brown cake, and bacon-slice, intent To cheer his hunger alter labor hard. Fleece, Book I. " Of a purport precisely similar, and pregnant with similar imagery, is the ensuing address of a cottager to his beloved wife, from the Idyls of Gessner, with which I shall conclude this note. It occurs in his Herbstmor- gen : " When seated by thee, let the pent-up winds put forth their rage : let the snow-storm cover the face of the earth ; then chiefly feel I that thou art everything to me. May the fulness of my prosperity be the lot of yourselves, ye lovely children ! adorned with every grace of your mother, which blossoms as a blessing upon us both ! The first syllable she taught you to lisp was to let me know that ye loved me. As I return from the field or the flock, joyfully ye throng together, and call to me from the sill of the door ; and clinging round my knees, re- ceive, with childish rapture, the little presents I bring you O how does your pure and innocent happiness transport me !" Vol. I. page 502. In adverting to the poetic representations of death and its harbingers, some observations occur which are not un- worthy the attention of biblical critics : "The personification of Death, in the act of executing the divine commands, is exhibited with great difference, both as to features and character, amongst different na- tions. Perhaps the most mean and insignificant delinea- tion is the common monkish one of a skeleton with a dart in one hand, and an hour-glass in the other, ghauntly striding towards the victim of his attack : while one of the most terrible and best defined, is that of the Scandinavian poets, who represent him as mounted on horseback, fleeing, in the dead of night with inconceiva- ble rapidity, over hedges and ditches, vallies, mountains, and rivers, in pursuit of his prey, meagre in flesh, wan in color, and horrible in aspect, the horse possessing the same character as the rider. Many of the German ballads, and especially those of Burger, have, of late, 122 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OP made a free use of this personification ; and it has been contended that the picture is altogether of Scandi- navian origin, and peculiar to the bards of that country : yet what will such antiquarians say to the following par- allel passage in the APOCALYPSE, ch. vi. 8. which, while it evinces every characteristic feature of the foregoing imagery, adds a variety of collateral circumstances of the utmost sublimity and terror, unknown to Runic poetry, infinitely superior to its proudest and most energetic specimens : ' And I looked, and behold ! a ghastly horse, and the name of his rider was DEATH ; and HELL fol- lowed him. And they were empowered to exterminate a fourth part of the earth with sword, and with famine, and with pestilences and with the wild beasts of the earth.' The word here translated ghastly, x.^^, is peculiarly expressive in the original. It is more generally rendered pale, but this is still less adequate to its real spirit ; it means that green-sick, wan, and exanimate hue which is pathognomically descriptive of the disease termed chlo- rosis." Vol. II. page 585. Again, in the very next page, while commenting upon that '' daring dithyrambic expression," ' We change the covering of the skies,' Dr. Good remarks, that the sacred writings furnish many similar examples, and quotes the originals of Psalm cii. 25, 26, and of Isaiah xl. 21 23. Rendering the latter part of the citation from the Psalm thus, Even as a garment shall they be worn out, And when thou choosest to change them they shall be changed. I shall be forgiven for inserting the remainder of the note. " Have ye not known ? have ye not heard ? Hath it not been published to you from the beginning ? Have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth ? He who sitteth upon the circle of the earth, And to whom its inhabitants are as grasshoppers ; Who unfoldeth the heavens as a curtain, And spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in ; Who reduceth magistrates, yea, monarchs, to nothing Can dissolve the earth itself into emptiness ? "The arrangement here presented, of this sublime passage of the original, is different from that afforded by DR. MASON GOOD. 123 any modern version with which I am acquainted, yet I have no doubt that it is what was intended by the prophet himself. It gives a sense far more magnificent than that in common acceptation ; is more consonant with the context, and prevents the necessity of arbitrarily sup- plying the verb it is, at the opening of verse 22, for which there is no authority in the Hebrew. Upon turning to the Septuagint, I find, also, that I am countenanced in this rendering by the translation there offered, which, in ver. 23, runs as follows : "O ftS'ouf ntp^vT*.; w; cuffv et fX. ily '> THN AE THN 'fiS OTAEN EFIOIHSEN. " The word curtain, in ver. 22. which I have contin- ued from our standard version, is rendered awning by Dr. Stock, who justifies the change by a note cited from bishop Lowth, as occurring in Shaw's Travels. With due deference to these very excellent authorities, I still think the standard rendering preferable. The kind of curtain, immediately referred to, is that which was sus- pended in Greece, Rome, and Asia, (in which last region the same custom still prevails) over the theatres and pleasure-gardens, to screen them from the heat of the sun, and which was drawn or undrawn at option. For a fuller account of which, the reader may turn to the note on Book IV. ver. 80. of the present Poem : and especially to my translation of the Song of Son. 13iJ from a multiplicity of examples, drawn both from the pri- vacy of retired life and the publicity of crowded cities, that everything is suffered to take place at present in a mys- terious and unexplained manner ; that, admitting a variety of exceptions, the wicked are still generally successful, and prosecute their course uncontrolled ; that even the un- sinning embryon in the womb expires, not unfrequently, as soon as created, as though neglected or despised by its Maker ; and that the lonely widow is, in like manner, left to pine in want and misery. He allows, nevertheless, that nothing can be more precarious than the pleasures and prosperity of vice ; that God has his eye at all times upon the wicked ; and that often, though not generally, they are overthrown in a moment, and reduced, from the utmost height of splendor, to the lowest abyss of beggary arid ruin. " Bildad, to whom it belongs next to reply, is com- pletely confounded. He is compelled to admit that the present state of things proves the Deity to work with absolute sway, and in an incomprehensible manner. But, though driven from his former position, he still main- tains that Job must be wicked, since every man is wicked and altogether worthless in the sight of God ; all which, in order to give the greater weight to his observations, he confirms, by delivering them in the words of ancient and proverbial maxims. " Job, in reply to Bildad, is indignant at his not openly retracting an opinion which, it was obvious, he could no longer maintain. He is particularly irritated at his pre- tending once more to quote the proverbial maxims of past times, as though to enlist the wisdom of the ancients against him ; and sarcastically follows him up by a string of other traditions of a similar kind, possessing still more magnificence, and at least as much general connexion. And, having thus severely reproved him, he returns to the argument, in chap, xxvii. and asserts that, distressed as he is, and forsaken of God, habitual innocency has ever belonged to him, and ever shall ; and on this very account he secretly encourages a hope that he shall not be ultimately forsaken ; and forcibly points out the very different situation of the wicked when they also are over- taken by calamity ; their ruin being, on the contrary, 140 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OP utter and irreversible, and even entailed on their poster- ity. Under the disappointment their visit had produced, and the proofs of feebleness and folly it had exhibited where wisdom and consolation were to have been ex- pected, he proceeds to a highly figurative and exquisite description of the value of genuine wisdom, and the diffi- culty of searching out its habitation; concluding, as the result of his inquiry, that it alone resides in and issues from the Creator, and is only bestowed upon those who sincerely fear him and depart from evil. He closes with a detailed and deeply interesting examination into every department of his life, an examination that ought to be studied and copied by every one. He investigates his conduct in the full sunshine of prosperity, as a magistrate, as a husband, as a father, as a master ; and, in all these characters, he feels capable of conscientiously justifying himself. In the course of this historical scrutiny, he draws a very affecting contrast between his past and his present situation ; the period in which all was happiness and splendor, and that in which all is trouble and humi- liation. He challenges his companions, and the world at large, to accuse him publicly and expressly of a single act of injustice or oppression ; declares that, so far from shrinking from such an accusation, he would wear it as a frontlet upon his shoulder and his turban ; that, like a witness on the side of his accuser, he would furnish him with all the evidence in his power ; and pants earnestly to be put to the bar, and abide the decision of his country. " Zophar should now have replied in rotation ; but he has already exhausted himself and the argument closes. " Part V. contains the summing up of the controversy ; which is allotted to Elihu, a new character in the poem ; but who, though hitherto unnoticed, appears to have en- tered before the commencement of the debate, and to have impartially studied its progress. The speech of Elihu commences with the thirty-second chapter of the common arrangement, which constitutes its peroration, and offers a fine specimen of the art of bespeaking and fixing attention. He first adverts to the general irrele- vancy of the matter that has been advanced against Job from every quarter by which he has been attacked, and DR. MASON GOOD. 141 then proceeds to comment upon the patriarch himself. Tacitly admitting the general force of the reasoning by which he had confounded his opponents, Elihu nowhere charges him with former wickedness because of his pres- ent affliction ; but confines himself to his actual conduct, and the tendency of his replies on the existing occasion, both of which he reprehends with considerable warmth. In various instances he repeats his words literally, and animadverts upon them as highly irreverent ; and ob- serves, that the dispensations of Providence, dark and mysterious as they commonly appear to us, are always full of wisdom and mercy, and that in many cases we are made sensible of this even at this moment ; being fre- quently, by such means, warned and reclaimed, some- times publicly, but still oftener in secret, through the me- dium of dreams, diseases, or other providential inter- ferences. " In chap, xxxiv. he attacks the position of Job, that the present world is the portion of the wicked, and that here prosperity is more frequently their lot than that of the righteous ; and, with some degree of sophistry and disingenuity, turns, like Eliphaz, this position of the pa- triarch into a declaration that he approves of the ways of wickedness as a mean of prosperity, and has no desire to be righteous, unless where righteousness has a like chance of advancing his worldly views. Upon this point he attacks him with great severity ; and in general terms, and general but beautiful and highly figurative descrip- tions, adverts to the frequent and visible interferences of the Almighty to relieve the poor and the oppressed, and to hurl down the tyrant and the reprobate. He next ex- horts Job to relinquish his present sentiments, and to con- fess his transgressions, in full confidence of a return of the divine favor. Submission he asserts (chap, xxxv.) to be the only duty of man, and the wisest course he can pursue ; that God can derive neither advantage from his obedience nor disadvantage from his rebellion ; that man alone can profit from the one, and suffer from the other; and that, had Job suffered more, he would have disputed less. The remainder of this exquisite oration points out, consecutively, in strong and glowing language, full of sublimity and the finest painting, that God is supreme ; 142 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF that he is all in all ; and that everything is subject to him and regulated by him, and regulated in wisdom, goodness, and justice ; that hence, instead of reviling, it becomes us to submit ; that the worst of iniquities is, to wish for death, in order to escape from a chastisement we are en- during and have deserved ; and that, living or dying, it is in vain to fly from the Creator, since all nature was form- ed by him, and is the theatre of his power. The speaker closes with a lofty and transcendent description of the might and wisdom of the great Maker, in the works and wonders of the creation ; the formation of rain, thunder, lightning, snow, clouds, clear sky, the return of spring, and the general revolution of the seasons; concerning all which we know nothing, yet the whole of which is but a faint and reflected light from him who ordained and com- mands them : Splendor itself is with God ! Insufferable majesty ! Almighty ! we cannot comprehend him Surpassing in power and in judgment ! Yet doth not the might of his justice oppress. Let mankind, therefore, stand in awe of him : He looketh all the wise of heart to nothing. " Part VI. The trial of faith, resignation, and integrity, is now drawing to an end. The opponents of Job, and, through them, the arch-demon by whom they were excit- ed, have been baffled in their utmost exertions ; yet, though silenced, they still sullenly refuse to retract. The Almighty now visibly appears, to pronounce judgment, and ' speaks to Job out of the whirlwind :' and the address ascribed to him is a most astonishing combination of dig- nity, sublimity, grandeur, and condescension ; and is as worthy of the magnificent occasion, as anything can be, delivered in human language. " The line of argument pursued in the course of this inimitable address is, that the mighty speaker is Lord of all, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and that everything must bow down before him ; that he is the God of providence ; and that everything is formed by him in wisdom, and bespeaks a mean to an end, and that end, the happiness and enjoyment of his creatures. In DR. MASON GOOD. 143 the developement of this reasoning, the formation of the world is first brought before us, and described in lan- guage that has never been equalled the revolution of the heavenly bodies and the regular return of the sea- sons. The argument then descends from so overwhelm- ing a magnificence, and confines itself to phenomena that are more immediately within the scope and feeling of the sons of earth. It is God who supplies the wants of every living creature : it is he who finds them food in rocks and wildernesses ; it is his wisdom that has adapted every kind to its own habits and mode of being ; that has given cunning where cunning is necessary ; and, where un- necessary, has withheld it that has endowed with rapidity of foot, or of wing, where such qualities are found needful ; and where might is demanded, has afforded proofs of a might the most terrible and irresistible. The whole of which is exquisitely illustrated by a variety of distinct in- stances, drawn from natural history, and painted to the very life : the following impressive corollary forming the general close : God is supreme, and must be bowed to and adored : his wisdom is incomprehensible, how vain then to arraign it : his power omnipotent, how absurd then to resist it : his goodness universal, how blind then to deny it. " This awful address is listened to with fearful convic- tion. The humiliated sufferer confesses the folly of his arrogance and presumption, and abhors himself for his conduct. " The peripetia, or revolution, immediately succeeds. The self-abasement of Job is accepted; his three friends are severely reprimanded for having formed a dishonora- ble judgment concerning him, and having taken a false and narrow view of the providence of the Almighty, in contending that he never does or can permit trouble but in cases of wickedness : a sacrifice is demanded of them, and Job is appointed to be their intercessor : upon the accomplishment of which, the severely tried patriarch is restored to his former state of enjoyment, and his prosper- ity is in every instance doubled." p. xli. To this masterly and often impressive summary, I feel that I ought to annex the author's view of the doctrines taught in the book. 144 ACCOUNT or THE WORKS OF " If we ask, What is the ultimate intention of the book of Job ? and for what purpose is it introduced into the Hebrew and Christian canons 1 It will then appear, that it is for the purpose of making those canons complete, by uniting, as full an account as is necessary of the dispen- sation of the patriarchs, with the two dispensations by which it was progressively succeeded. It will be seen, that the chief doctrines of the patriarchal religion, as col- lected from different parts of the poem, were as follow : I. The creation of the world by one supreme and eter- nal Intelligence, chap, xxxviii. xli. II. Its regulation, by his perpetual and superintending providence. Passim. III. The intentions of his providence carried into effect by the ministration of a heavenly hierarchy, chap. i. 6, 7; iii. 18, 19; v. 1. IV. The heavenly hierarchy, composed of various ranks and orders, possessing different names, dignities, and offices, chap. iv. 18; xxxiii. 22,23; v. 2; xv. 15. V. An apostacy, or defection, in some rank or order of these powers : of which Satan seems to have been one, and perhaps chief, chap. iv. 18 ; xv. 15 ; i. 6 12; ii. 27. VI. The good and evil powers or principles, equally for- med by the Creator, and hence equally denominated " sons of God," both of them employed by him, in the administration of his providence ; and both amenable to him at stated courts, held for the pur- pose of receiving an account of their respective missions, chap. i. 6, 7 ; ii. 1. VII. A day of future resurrection, judgment, and retri- bution, to all mankind, chap. xiv. 13, 14, 15 ; xix. 2529 ; xxi. 30 ; xxxi. 14. VIII. The propitiation of the Creator, in the case of hu- man transgressions, by sacrifices, and the mediation and intercession of a righteous person, chap. i. 5 ; xlii. 8, 9. " Several of these doctrines are more clearly developed than others ; yet, I think there are sufficient grounds for deducing the whole of them." p. Ixv. " It is curious to remark the different ground of argu- DR. MASON GOOD. 145 ment assumed in favor of a future state, in the present poem, and hence, perhaps, by the patriarchal times generally, and that assumed by the philosophers of Greece and Rome, who assented to the same doctrine ; the former appealing alone to a resurrection of the body, and appearing to have no idea of a distinct immortality of the soul ; and the latter appealing alone to a distinct im- mortality of the soul ; and appearing to have no idea of a resurrection of the body. It remained for that dispen- sation which has ' brought LIFE and IMMORTALITY to light,' the resurrection of the body, and the real nature of the soul, to reconcile the discrepancy, and to give to each ground of argument its proper force, p. Ixxxiv. In the main, this view of the doctrines exhibited in the book of Job, has been allowed to be correct. Yet, a qualification or two seem necessary to guard the young theological student from mistake. Dr. Good assumes, that the title "sons of God" is given in the Scriptures, to evil powers or principles, as well as good ones. But this is very questionable. Satan is stated to have presented himself among the sons of God, but that circumstance does not constitute him one. And, although it cannot fairly be questioned that the doctrine of a celestial hier- archy, composed of various orders of angels, is taught in Scripture ; still it may be doubted whether or not it is fully deducible from the passages cited by our author. Leaving these, however, as in some measure open to dis- cussion, the other particulars remain untouched ; and it must surely impress the mind of a reflecting reader with peculiar force, that in the avowedly oldest book in the Jewish canon, doctrines should be clearly unfolded, which Natural Religion in its brightest epochs never at- tained ; while the same book contains indisputable allu- sions to two, at least, of the characteristic doctrines of the Christian dispensation, that of the resurrection of the body, and that of a Saviour from sin and its conse- quences, who is unequivocally designated by the highest attributes and titles of Deity. Enough having now been said, I trust, to shew that our author's Introductory Dissertation is at once erudite and instructive, I will present a specimen of the translation ; 13 146 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF which shall be that of the 19th chapter, containing the pious patriarch's noble testimony of faith, worthy indeed to be engraven " on the rock for ever." JOB xix. 1. Whereupon Job answered, and said, 2. How long will ye afflict my soul, And overwhelm me with words ? 3. These ten times have ye reviled me ; Ye relax not, ye press forward upon me. 4. And be it, indeed, that I have transgressed, That my transgression hath harbored within me, 5. Will YE, then, forsooth, triumph over me, And expose co myself my own disgrace ? C. Know, however, that God hath humiliated me ; And that his toils have encompassed me about : 7. Behold ! I complain of the wrong, but am not heard ; I cry aloud, but no answer. 8. He hath fenced up my way so that I cannot go forward, And hath set darkness in my paths. 9. He hath stript me of my glory, And overturned the crown on my head : 10. He demolisheth me on every side and I am gone ; And he uprooteth my hope like a tree : 11. Yea, he kindleth his fury against me, And accounteth me to him as his enemy. 12. His besiegers advance in a body, And wheel their lines around me, And encamp about my dwelling. 13. My brethren hath he put aloof from me, And my familiars are quite estranged ; 14. My kinsfolk have forsaken me, And my bosom friends forgotten me. 15. The sojourners in my house, Yea, my own maid-servants, regard me as a stranger ; I am reckoned an alien in their eyes. 16. I call to my man-servant, but he answereth not, I entreat him to the very face. 17. My breath is scattered away by mv wife, Though I implore HER by the offspring of my own'loini. 18. Even the dependants spurn at me ; I rise up, and they hoot after me. 19. All my familiar friends abhor me ; Even they whom I loved are turned against me. 20. My bones stick out through my skin and my flesh ; And in the skin of my teeth am I dissolved. 21. Pity me ! pity me ! O ye, my friends ! For the hand of God hath smitten me. 22. Why, like God, should YE persecute me, And not rest satisfied with my flesh . J DR. MASON GOOD. 147 23. O ! that my words were even now written down ; O ! that they were engraven on a table ; 24. With a pen of iron, upon lead ! That they were sculptur'd in a rock for ever ! 25. For " I know that my REDEEMER liveth, And will ascend at last upon the enrth : 26. And, after the DISEASE hath destroyed my skin, That, in my flesh, I shall see God : 27. Whom I shall see for myself, And my own eyes shall behold, and not another's, Though my reins be consumed within me." 28. Then shall ye say, " How did we persecute him !" When the root of the matter is disclosed concerning me. 29. O, tremble for yourselves before the sword ; For fierce is the vengeance of the sword : Therefore beware ofits judgment. Dr. Good's original intention, with regard to the book of Job, seems to have been to present a literal translation, and one in heroic verse, in opposite pages ; as he had previously done with respect to the Song of Songs. But .after he had thus versified the first five chapters, he re- linquished the task ; adding to his specimen a note ex- pressive of his inability to throw " the many and exqui- site beauties of the original," into a translation in modern " measured verse." It is evident that at the time of this attempt, he had not seen Mr. Scott's version. A com- parison of the two may, therefore, gratify the inquisitive reader : and I cannot present a better than is supplied by the awful description of the vision in chapter iv., where the midnight darkness, the deathlike silence, the horror, the whirlwind followed by a sudden stillness, the burst of light and glory, the supernatural voice, each, in its degree, contributes to the production of one of the most sublime pictures ever sketched. MR. SCOTT'S. But hear the word divine, to me convey'd, Than pearls more precious, in the midnight shade ; Amidst th' emotions which from visions rise, When more than nature's sleep seals human eyes. Fear seiz'd my soul, the hand of horror strook My shudd'ring flesh, and every member shook. For a strong wind with rushing fury pass'd So near, so loud, blast whirling after blast, That my hair started at each stifFning pore, And stood erect. At one the wild oproar 148 ACCOUNT OF THE AVORKS OP Was hush'd ; a Presence burst upon my sight (I saw no shape) in majesty of light : Voice follow'd, and celestial accents broke, Which in these terms their awl'ul dictates spoke : " Is God arraign'd ? absolv'd man's sinful dust ? Less pure his Maker ? and his Judge less just ? Lo, he discerns, discern'd by him alone, Spots in the sanctities around his throne : Nor trusts his noble ministers of flame, To yield him service unalloy'd with blame. Yet, innocent of blame shall man be found ? Tenants of clay, and reptiles of the ground ? Crnsh'd like the moth, these beings of a day With unregarded waste are swept away: Their honors perish, and themselves descend Fools to the grave, and thoughtless of their end." DR. GOOD'S. This, too, I've seen, this witness'd when alone Breath'd o'er my ears, in hollow, whispering tone. 'Twas midnight deep the world was hush'd to rest, And airy visions every brain possess'd : O'er all my frame a horror crept severe, An ice that shiver'd every bone with fear : Before my face a spirit saw I swim Erect uprose my hair o'er every limb ; It stood the spectre stood to sight display'd, Yet trac'd I not the image I surveyed : 'Twas silence dead no breath the torpor broke When thus in hollow voice the vision spoke : " Shall man his Maker's piercing ken endure ? Before his God shall man be just and pure ? Lo ! his own servants falter in his eyes, His trustiest angels are not always wise. What are the dwellers then in tents of clay, Sprung from the dust, that into dust decay ? Before the moth they fail ; with easier strife Beat down and plunder'd of their little life ; From morn to noon they perish to the ground Unnotic'd drop, and quit their fluttering round ; Their total sum of wisdom, when they die, An empty boast, a mockery and lie." The " critical and illustrative notes" subjoined to Dr. Good's translation of Job, occupy 490 closely printed pa- ges. As might be expected, they evince the most exten- sive reading, and the author's peculiar facility in culling fruits and flowers from every region, and presenting them DR. MASON GOOD. 149 to those whom he wished to enrich and delight. While, however, they exhibit a greater share of his characteris- tic excellences than some of his former publications, they are not free from defects, of which, that which a cir- cumspect reader most regrets to see, is the author's proneness to give the reins to his imagination. Still these notes, many of which are strictly theological, while others, whether critical, poetical, geological, or philo- sophical, are as strictly elucidatory, cannot but be read with advantage by the biblical student.* My own total ignorance of the Hebrew language, incapacitates me from offering any judgment upon the correctness of the translation. To me, it has always appeared somewhat stiff and technical ; while I have been inclin- ed to regard the notes as too numerous. On my once hinting at these defects to the author, in the frankness of friendship, he acknowledged the justice of my remarks, and said he should hope, in a new edition, to give great- er freedom to some parts of the translation, without impairing its general accuracy : and that he should prob- ably strike out nearly all the notes, except those that were written to justify his deviations from the authorized version. I ought, perhaps, to say, in addition to the sen- timents of Drs. Smith and Clarke, already quoted, that, on my soliciting the opinion of a very profound Hebrew scholar, as to this translation and the notes, be replied, " The notes are more numerous than was necessary ; but still the work is truly valuable, and it is the farthest pos- sible from dry. I need not dwell upon specific differ- ences ; but in point of real utility to the theological stu- dent, I class together Lowth, Blayney, and Good." * The author's notes on the Behemoth and the Leviatlian, I much regret my want of room to insert. He proves, in my judgment, satisfactorily, that the behemoth cannot be either the hippopotamus or the elephant, as man}' commentators have imagined ; and assigns his reasons for believing' that it belongs to a genus altogether extinct, like the mastodondcmton or mammoth. The leviathan, he regards as no other than the crocodile. " The general character of the leviathan seems so well to apply to this animal, iu modern as well as in ancient times, the terror of all the coasts and coun- tries about the Nile, that it is unnecessary to seek farther." *13 150 ACCOUNT OP THE WORKS OF PHYSIOLOGICAL NOSOLOGY. Dr. Good's " Physiological System of Nosology, with a corrected and simplified Nomenclature," was the re- sult of several years' extensive experience and sedulous research. It was commenced in 1808, and partially an- nounced in the essay on Medical Technology, of which I have already given an account ; but it was not published until the year 1820. It is dedicated to the President and Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians of Lon- don ;" " a copy of the work having lain for public inspec- tion upon the Censor's table" for nearly two months, " and three other copies having been circulated among the Fellows in rotation ;" after which " the author's re- quest was unanimously acceded to." Indeed, the high reputation of Dr. Good for profes- sional zeal and industry, as well as for powerful talents, unusual erudition, and a liberal spirit of investigation, produced a cordial welcome for this comprehensive vol- ume, among all classes of medical men ; the most able of whom felt themselves pleasingly " constrained to ac- knowledge that his intimate acquaintance with almost all branches of science, literature, and the arts, placed him in the very first rank of our learned physicians."* The same professional critic speaks of this System of Nosology, as having " been adopted as a text-book in various medi- cal schools, as well as by individual writers. Like all new systems of nosology, (says the same writer) it re- quires a new technology and that is unquestionably an. evil. The arrangement of Dr. Good, we certainly pre- fer to every other, though no nosological arrangement has yet appeared without defects. To the nomenclature, too, we dare not object, since it is exclusively taken from the Greek, as far as regards his classes, orders, and genera his authorities, in general, being Celsus and Galen. When he happens to wander farther, he usually supplies him- self from ^Etius, Caelius Aurelianus, Diascorides, or Aristotle." Having adduced this professional opinion of Dr. Good's system from one of the first authorities, and one whose * Johnson's Medico-Chirurgical Review, vol. iii. p. 574. DR. MASON GOOD. 151 judgment has been amply confirmed by that of several medical friends ; I shall now proceed to describe the work in the manner that may be most interesting to a general reader ; that is, principally as a work of literary research and scientific classification. In attempting this, I shall avail myself of the masterly dissertation pre- fixed by the author to his treatise. The main objects of Dr. Good in the new system here exhibited are, to connect the science of diseases more closely than it has hitherto been, with the kindred branches of natural knowledge ; to give it at once a more obvious and intelligible classification, and an ar- rangement more simple in principle, yet more compre- hensive in extent ; to correct its nomenclature, where it can be done without unnatural force ; to trace its distinc- tive terms, botli upwards to their sources, and downwards to their modern synonyms in various languages : thus producing " not merely a manual for the student or a text-book for the lecturer, but a book that may stand on the same shelf with, and form a sort of appendix to, our most popular systems of Natural History ; and may at the same time, be perused by the classical scholar without disgust at that barbarous jargon, with which the language of medicine is so perpetually tesselated." The attempt is evidently a bold one ; but it is throughout conducted with a becoming spirit, both towards the author's prede- cessors in the same region of inquiry, and with regard to his own qualifications for the arduous task. In his preliminary dissertation, (occupying 100 pages) he describes, with great perspicuity, the chief nosologi- cal systems of modern times, the nomenclature in actual use, and the general nature of the improvements which he proposes to introduce. Speaking first of nosological treatises, he regards all their modes of arrangement as reducible to two classes, those of synopsis and of system ; and decisively prefers the latter, on account of the facili- ties which it supplies both with reference to study and to recollection. Of systematic arrangements, he briefly describes the alphabetic, that formed on the duration of diseases, that on the anatomy of the animal frame, that which is referred to the cause of diseases, denominated the etiological method, the mixed modification which 152 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF rests on extent, sex, and infancy, conjointly, and then, the system built upon the distinctive symptoms, or coin- cidents* of diseases, this latter being, in his opinion, the only method, which will generally hold true to itself, and on which entire dependence can be placed. He next presents characteristic sketches in succes- sion of the nosological systems of Plater, Sauvages, Lin- na?us, Vogel, Sagar, Cullen, Selle, Plouquet, Pinel, Macbride, Crichton, Darwin, Parr, and Young ; and of the limited arrangements of Plench, Willan, Abernethy, and Bateman. In pointing out the nature, merits, and defects, of the several systems which are thus made to pass in review before him, he evinces a kind, cour- teous, and liberal spirit, developing, with obvious plea- sure, the improvements which the author of one nosologi- cal scheme has made upon those which preceded, and marking those peculiarities which he has been able to incorporate with systematic propriety in his own arrange- ment. Several of the observations made by Dr. Good in these concise delineations indicate great logical acumen as well as philosophical research, and cannot but be pe- rused with benefit by the student of medicine, or, indeed, of natural history. Thus, when he notices Dr. Cullen's very extraordinary confusion of genera and species, he remarks that many other nosologists have fallen into similar mistakes. To prevent their recurrence, he subjoins the following in- structive observations. " A genus is not a disease, any more than it is an ani- mal, a vegetable, or a mineral ; but a group or assem- blage of any of these, possessing certain like characters, and associated in consequence of such resemblance. The consenting characters, being abstracted and put together, constitute the generic definitions, and apply to the whole ; while the subordinate characters or coincidents, by which one differs from another, constitute the specific de- finition, and distinguish 1 from 2, and 2 from 3, of the same group or genus. A genus, therefore, is a mere ab- stract term, a non-entity in nature ; highly useful, indeed, in the chain of orders, but which can no more exist * lu/u.Trra/u.n'raL from a-it^mTfrai, " to fall in, happen together, or coincide." DR. MASON GOOD. 153 without species, than a regiment, or a regimental com- pany, can exist without soldiers. On this account it is that no man can ever dif rover a genus, though he may combine generic signs, and invent a generic name. The usual order is the following : he first discovers an indivi- dual, whether a plant, animal, or disease, possessing very peculiar marks, so as to separate it distinctly from any known individual, or groups of individuals. He may now, therefore, be said to have found a new species. And he proceeds next to arrange it. He first separates from it the most striking mark by which it is distinguished ; and if this should be strictly singular, it constitutes alone a sufficient character for a new genus, and will form what is called, from this very circumstance, its essential generic character. If it be not strictly singu- lar, he must look for another striking character, a coincident or co-appearance, or if necessary, in order to render the distinction complete, a third; and the gen- eric character will consist in the union of these coinci- dents, in the combination of the marks that are thus first detached from the individual, and then brought into a state of combination. To this combination of detached or abstract signs he gives what name he pleases ; and he thus obtains a generic name, as well as a generic defini- tion. He then proceeds to select one, two, or more other marks, by which the individual is peculiarly distin- guished ; and these united form his specific definition, to which, in like manner, he adds a specific name. He has now discovered and identified a species, and formed and denominated a genus. His genus, indeed, consists at present but of a single species ; and many genera nev- er consist of more ; but the genus is, nevertheless, formed upon a collective principle ; it presupposes that other in- dividuals may, hereafter, be detected, possessing the same generic character, and consequently belonging to the same banner ; at the same time differing in several of its subordinate marks from the individuals already ar- ranged under such banner ; and which, in consequence, will produce new species as long as other individuals pos- sessing such discrepancies shall be traced out." p. xx. The second section of the preliminary dissertation, which is devoted to medical nomenclature, is taken prin- cipally from the essay on " medical technology," publish- 154 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OP ed in 1810. There are, however, some interesting addi- tions in reference to matters of etymology, the precise original import of words, the extraordinary changes which some of them have experienced in the lapse of time, and the radical absurdity involved in some current phrases, such for example, as tonic spasm, which is " literally exten- sible contractibility." In the third section the author explains his main de- sign in the present work which is to attempt improve- ment in the healing art in its two important branches of nosological arrangement and nomenclature. He investi- gates the primitive and modified meanings of several words from a great variety of languages, and adverts to some of the evils which arise from their loose and vague use. He then ascertains the import of the common prefixes and suffixes employed in the technology, and shews that they are too often so introduced as to occasion confusion, where accuracy and precision are above all things desirable. The general inquiry, which he thus pursues into its several ramifications, is new, I think, not only in reference to medicine, but in great measure, also, to Greek philology. It cannot but be useful to the intel- ligent medical student ; while it is, indeed, well calcula- ted to gratify the reader. The author next proceeds to unfold the principles by means of which he endeavors to incorporate the ele- mentary study of animal diseases, with that of the ani- mal structure, or rather, with the animal economy. He decides to erect his edifice upon a physiological basis ; and then sketches the plan which he proposes to himself and recommends to others. The author had first to balance between two schemes : that of Haller, who begins at the first and simplest vestige of the living fibre, and pursues the growing ens through all its stages of evolution ; and that of later physiologists, who take at once the animal frame in its mature and per- fect state, and trace it from some one assumed function through all the rest. He " was soon led to a preference of the second scheme. It is by far the simpler of the two, and directly harmonizes with the fundamental principle, which runs through all the systems of zoology, botany and mineralogy, of form- DK. MASON GOOD. 155 ing the arrangement and selecting the characters from the more perfect individuals, as specimens. He decided, therefore, upon taking the more prominent functions of the animal frame for his primary or classific division, and the more important of their respective organs for his secondary or ordinal ; and without tying himself to a particular distribution of the former in any authorized or popular use at the present moment, to follow what ap- pears to be the order of nature in her simplest and most intelligible march. " Tor epair the exhaustion which is constantly taking place in every part of the body from the common wear and tear of life, it is necessary that the alimentary canal should be supplied with a due proportion of food, the procuration of which, therefore, constitutes, in savage aq well as in civil society, the first concern of mankind. The food thus procured is introduced into a set of organs admirably devised for its reception ; and its elaboration into a nutritive form constitutes what physiologists have denominated the DIGESTIVE FUNCTION. The diseases, then, to which this function is subject, will be found to create the first class of the ensuing system. " The food thus far elaborated has yet to be conveyed to the lungs, and be still farther operated upon by the atmosphere, before it becomes duly assimilated to the nature of the fabric it has to support. The FUNCTION OF RESPIRATION embraces this part of the animal economy ; and the diseases to which this function is subject form the second class of the arrangement. " The blood, now matured and consummated, is re- turned to the heart, and sent forth, in a circulating course, to every organ of the body, as the common pabu- lum from which it is to screen what it stands in need of: the waste blood being carried back to the fountain from which it issued. It is this circulatory track that consti- tutes the SANGUINEOUS FUNCTION ; and the diseases by which it is characterized form the third class of the en- suing pages. " But the blood does not circulate by its own power. From the brain, which it recruits and refreshes, its vessels (perhaps itself) receive a perpetual influx of that sensorial energy which gives motion, as the blood gives food, to 156 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF the entire machine ; converts the organized into an ani- mal and intellectual system, and forms the important sphere of the IX ? ERVOUS FUNCTION. This function, also affords scope for a large family of diseases ; and hence we obtain a ground work for a fourth class. " Such is the progress towards perfection in the life of the individual. But man is not born to be an individual ; he is designed to perpetuate his species ; and the last finish to his frame consists in giving full developement and activity to the organs which are subservient to this pur- pose. We thus arrive at the SEXUAL FUNCTION ; and obtain from the diseases by which it is marked, a fifth class. " As every part is thus receiving new matter from the blood, it is necessary that that which is superseded should be carried off by proper emunctories-: as it is also necessary that the antagonist processes of restoration and detrition should maintain a fair balance. And hence the minute secretory and absorbent vessels hold the same relation to each other as the arteries and veins, and con- jointly create an EXCERNENT FUNCTION ; whose diseases lay a foundation for the sixth class of our systematic attempt. " It will yet remain to create a class for external acci- dcift.i, and those accidental mis form at ions which occa- sionally disfigure the fetus. This will constitute the seventh ; and under these seven classes it will possibly be found that all the long list of diseases may be in- cluded which man is called to suffer, or the art of medi- cine to provide for." p. Ixxx. Consistently with the arrangement thus simply dedu- ced, our author divides his work (which comprises 546 closely printed 8vo. pages) into seven sections, devoted to a series of seven classes and their subordinate orders, and in order that the student may, \vithout difficulty, compre- hend the nomenclature, he introduces a table of the principal Affixes and Suffixes, with the senses in which they are employed. With a desire to render this work more extensively useful, the author subjoins to the systematic name of every disease, its chief technical and vernacular synonyms ; confining, however, the vernacular synonyms to the DR. MASON GOOD. 157 English, German, and French languages, the technical ones, principally to the Greek, Latin, and Arabic. In this department of research, his knowledge of the Orien- tal languages has enabled him to proceed with firm steps over regions into which but few of his predecessors in physiology have attempted to make even an entrance. But, besides this peculiarity, there is another, and a very prominent feature in Dr. Good's treatise, which, I under- stand, served more than everything else to give it popu- larity. " In order to afford relief to the dryness of technical definitions, and verbal criticism, the author has digested his notes into a running commentary, which he has en- deavored to render replete with interesting cases, valuable hints or remarks, and singular physiological facts, gleaned from a pretty extensive perusal of the most approved au- thorities, collective or individual, ancient or modern ; occasionally interwoven with similar illustrations, as they occurred to the writer in his own private walk and inter- course of life." This " running commentary," is printed with a small type and occupies, on an average, more than half of the page. A copious nosological index at the end of the vol- ume, greatly facilitates reference, and proportionally aug- ments the utility of the whole. STUDY OF MEDICINE. The first edition of Dr. Good's " Study of Medicine" was published in 1822, in four thick Svo. volumes. It presented a fairly proportioned complete picture of medi- cal science, as it then existed. But, happily for the world, neither the healinsf art nor the theoretic considerations on which it so mainly depends, are stationary. They partake of the general intellectual impulsion of the pre- sent times : so that, while the principles experience ex- tension and correction, the practical applications become, in consequence, more simple, powerful, and direct. Thus the exigencies of the profession, and the success of this work (so well calculated for their use) concurred in the production of a new edition in 1825; in which, by modi- fications in the substance in many places, and valuable 14 158 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OP supplementary matter in others, the progressive improve- ments have been duly recorded ; the whole being now comprised in five volumes.* As the largest portion of the new matter appertains to what in the former impression constituted the second volume, the author has effected his augmentations " by dividing this alone into two vol- umes, and adding a little to the paging of the next." Dr. Good describes his object in this comprehensive work to be to unite those different branches of medical science, which when carried to any considerable extent, have hitherto been treated separately by most writers, into a general system, such as may be contemplated in a single view, and pursued under a common study. The branches thus united, are, 1. PHYSIOLOGY, or the doctrine of the natural action of the living principle. 2. PATHOL- OGY, or the doctrine of its morbid action. 3. NOSOLOGY, or the doctrine of the classification of diseases. 4, THE- RAPEUTICS, or the doctrine of their treatment and cure. In the nosological arrangement, the author has made slight alterations in the distribution of one or two of the *In a letter addressed to Dr. Drake (bearing 1 date December llth, 1824,) Dr. Good gives the following account of the progress of the new edition, and of the improvements which he proposed it to exhibit. " I am now hard at work in printing off my second edition. two volumes at a time, so that the whole will, I hope, be finished soon after the end of March. Having completed, however, the entire range of its composition, I have nothing to do but to correct the press. But I have bestowed a good deal of additional labor upon it, to meet some of the hints that have been communicated to me. It will now form, as far as I think it should, a record of all the opinions and methods of the continent advanced in our own day ; which has rendered it necessary for me to remodel the writing in some pails of most of the pages, as well as to wade through an immensity of trash, in pursuit of a little sterling matter; and, at .the particular request of the Army Medical Board, and especially of the Director General, it will a little enlarge on a few of the diseases of warm climates, from documents of their own, which have not met the public eye. There are also other subjects which remain to be brought forward, and have either been starlet! or have grown into importance since the first edition : as, Thomson's work on Varioloid Diseases, and the question it involves : Willan's speculations on the same subject, published posthu- mously : the destructive inflammation that occasionally takes place on dissecting with a punctured hand (Erythema anatomictim ,-) the singular emaciation or bloodlessness, described by some of the French writers (Marasmus Anhicmia ;) the Melanosis of Breschet and others; and the lateral curvature of the spine, or spinal muscles (Entasia Rhnchybia.) Then there is an account to be given of Laennec's Stethoscope, &c. ; how far Syphilis may be cured, or it ought to be attempted, without mercury : many of the new medicines lately Imported from France. &c. You will Lence perceive that I must have another volume." DR. MASON GOOD. 159 diseases, as compared with his " System of Nosology :" to the first six classes of which, however, he adheres, on the whole, throughout these volumes. The first volume comprises, in 630 pages, the whole of Class I., and the two first orders of Class II. Vol. II. in t>C2 pages, the re- mainder of Class II., and the two first orders of Class III. Vol. III. in 518 pages, is devoted to the remaining orders, genera and species of Class III. Vol. IV. in 688 pages, includes the whole of Class IV. And Vol. V. in 738 pages, comprehends Classes V and VI. The notes at the feet of the pages, consist principally of references to other works of celebrity, British and Foreign, on the same or connected topics ; and the side margin of every page contains, in a smaller type, a brief running abstract of the contents of the several sentences on the page itself. Every distinct opening of pages, too, exhibits an abbreviated reference to the class, order, genus, species : thus conducing greatly to a ready con- sultation of the appropriate portion of the work to which a student may wish to turn. A copious index of double columns on 30 pages, containing a reference to any sub- ject, as indicated by its Arabic, Greek, Latin, or English name, in addition to the other facilities just specified, gives to this work an advantage which few other modern treatises, on either the theory or practice of science, can boast of. Dr. Good remarks, that a pretty active spirit of physio- logy pervades the whole work. He has also availed him- self of the advantage so readily afforded by his arrange- ment, of prefixing to every class a " Physiological Proem," containing a summary of the most important laws and discoveries in physiology, that tend to elucidate the sub- jects comprehended in the class to which the proem be- longs. " The author has, also, occasionally enriched these dissertations by a glance at the more striking analogies of the animal, and even of the vegetable world at large, wherever they could add to the illustration." To me these " proems" seem to constitute the most entertaining and instructive portions of this highly entertaining and in- structive work. I have read some of them again and again, and always with an increased gratification. If they are throughout correct, of which I need scarcely declare my- 160 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF self again an incompetent judge, they would of themselves form an interesting volume. But many regions of physio- logical research, are as yet debateable ground ; and as the author confesses that he has here indulged " a pretty active spirit," it is not improbable that the properly qualified reader may not yield an entire assent to every statement or deduction in these preliminary disquisitions however sound the author's general principles, and however diver- sified and beautiful many of his illustrations. With a view to convey some idea of Dr. Good's method of treating a disease, I select for an example that which relates to Entasia Rachybia, muscular distortion of the spine. After laying down a general definition, he adverts to the various kinds, and dilates upon that first described by Pott ; scrofulous, and producing caries. He then traces the rachetic source, and remarks that in these cases the disease is a primary affection of the bones, pro- ducing angular distortion as opposed to lateral. He next speaks of muscular, ligamentous, or cartilaginous distor- tion, the organs being affected sometimes singly, sometimes jointly. Then he adverts to the distinctions observed by the Greek writers, viz. Lordosis, Cyrtosis, and Hybosis, distinctions well discriminated by Pott. To these suc- ceed brief accounts of the views of the disease taken by Baynton, Wilson, Lloyd, and Jarrold. The author then observes, that the muscular is much more common than the osseous distortion of the spine, and sketches the dif- ferent explanations of Grant, Harrison, and Dods. He next shews the nature of the muscular distortion now most common, assigns muscular debility as the proximate cause, traces the commencement and progress of the dis- ease, the augmentation of the evil by the modern disci- pline of ladies' schools and then describes the preventive and remediable means, as cupping, shampooing, friction, advantageous position, couch, inclined plane, &c. ; add- ing, however, that, besides these, pure air, sea-bathing, and every other kind of tonic, whether external or inter- nal, are of the utmost importance. Among the occasional causes of this diseased incurva- tion, Dr. Good includes the various contrivances adopted to mould the female form into greater symmetry than it is DR. MASON GOOD. 161 supposed to have received from its Creator. On this to- pic, his remarks are as important as they are just. "The greater frequency of the lateral distortion of the spine in our own day, compared with its apparent range in former times, together with the increased coercion and complication of the plan laid down in many of our fash- ionable schools for young ladies, seems clearly to indicate that some part at least of its increased inroad is charge- able to this source. " The simple fact is, that the system of discipline is carried too far, and rendered much too complicated ; and art, which should never be more than the handmaid of jifitiij-e, is elevated into her tyrant. In rustic life we have health and vigor, and a pretty free use of the limbs and muscles, because all are left to the impulse of the moment, to be exercised without restraint. The country girl rests when she is weary, and in whatever position she chooses or finds easiest ; and walks, hops, or runs, as her fancy may direct, when she has recovered herself: she bends her body and erects it as she lists, and the flexor and ex- tensor muscles are called into an equal and harmonious play. There may be some degree of awkwardness, and there generally will be, in her attitudes and movements ; and the great scope of female discipline (as to the motions of the body) should consist in correcting this. With this it should begin, and with this it should terminate, wheth- er our object be directed to giving grace to the unculti- vated human figure, or the uncultivated brute. We may modify the action of muscles in common use, or even call more into play than are ordinarily exercised, as in various kinds of dancing; but the moment we employ one set of muscles at the expense of another ; keep the extensors on a full stretch from day to day, by forbidr^ng the head to stoop, or the back to be bent ; and throw the flexors of these organs into disuse and despisal ; we destroy the harmony of the frame, instead of adding to its elegance ; weaken the muscles that have the disproportionate load thrown upon them ; render the rejected muscles torpid and unpliant ; sap the foundation of the general health, and introduce a crookedness of the spine instead of guarding against it. The child of the opulent, while too *14 162 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF young to be fettered with a fashionable dress, or drilled into the discipline of our female schools, has usually as much health, and as little tendency to distortion, as the child of the peasant : but let these two, for the ensuing eight or ten years, change places with each other ; let the young heiress of opulence be left at liberty ; and let the peasant girl be restrained from her freedom of muscular exertion in play and exercise of every kind ; and instead of this, let her be compelled to sit bolt-upright, in a high nar- row chair with a straight back, that hardly allows of any flexion to the sitting muscles, or of any recurvation to the spine ; and let the whole of her exercise, instead of ir- regular play and frolic gaiety, be limited to the staid and measured march of Melancholy in the Penseroso of Mil- ton : With even step and musing gait j to be regularly performed for an hour or two every day, and to constitute the whole of her corporeal relaxation from month to month, girded, moreover, all the while, with the paraphernalia of braces, bodiced stays, and a spiked collar ; and there can be little doubt, that, while the child of opulence shall be acquiring all the health and vigor her parents could wish for, though it may be with a color somewhat too shaded with brown, and an air somewhat less elegant than might be desired, the transplanted child of the cottage will exhibit a shape as fine, and a demeanor as elegant, as fashion can commu- nicate, but at the heavy expense of a languor and relaxa- tion of fibre that no stays of props can compensate, and no improvement of figure can atone for. " Surely it is not necessary, in order to acquire all the air and gracefulness of fashionable life, to banish from the hour of recreation the old rational amusements of battledore and shuttlecock, of tennis, trap-ball, or any other game that calls into action the bending as well as the extending muscles, gives firmness to every organ, and the glow of health to the entire surface. "Such, and a thousand similar recreations, varied ac- cording to the fancy, should enter into the school-training of the day, and alternate with the grave procession and the DR. MASON GOOD. 163 measured dance, for there is no occasion to banish either ; although many of the more intricate and venturous dances, as the Bolero, should be but occasionally and moderately indulged in ; since, as has been sufficiently shewn by -Mr. Shaw, ' we have daily opportunities of observing, not only the good effects of well-regulated exercise, but also the actual deformity which arises from the disproportionate developement that is produced by the undue exertion of particular classes of muscles." vol. iv. p. 332. Among our author's interesting treatises upon different diseases, that which relates to Leprosy is one of the most elaborate and curious. He traces the history of its tech- nology, from the Hebrew, through the Arabic and Greek languages, and is thus enabled to assign rea- sons for much of the vagueness and confusion which have prevailed respecting this disorder. The theologian, as well as the student of medicine, may here derive bene- fit from his researches. I much regret that their gene- ral result is presented too much at length to allow of its insertion in these pages. I have already (p. 80.) alluded to letters from several of the most distinguished physicians, and others, at home and abroad, expressive of their high sense of the value of Dr. Good's " Study of Medicine," and of its tendency " to support and increase the reputation he had so deservedly acquired, as one of the most learned and most philosophi- cal members of the medical profession." It was once my intention to solicit the permission of these gentlemen to publish their respective letters, as honorable to themselves for their frank and kind expressions of esteem, as to the individual whom they panegyrize for the rich diversity of his talents and attainments. But on farther meditation, I feel it preferable to adduce the testimonies supplied by two or three of our medical journals. To Dr. Johnson, in whose Medico-Chirurgical Review, vols. iii. and iv. there is a very elaborate and copious analysis, occupying 65 pages, I have already referred. But I may, notwith- standing, present another extract. After specifying a few defects in the first edition, which were corrected in the second, the author of the analysis* adds : * Usually imputed to Dr. Armstrong. 164 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF " With these trifling defects, we have no hesitation in pronouncing the work, beyond all comparison, the best of the kind in the English language. With the naval, the military, the provincial, and the colonial practitioner, the work before us, ought at once to supersede the unscien- tific compilation of Dr. ; and it will do so." In a note, the same professional critic observes, " We have just heard a gentleman remark, that he was rather disappointed in not finding minute information on a par- ticular subject, for which he consulted these volumes. The complaint was unreasonable. For minute informa- tion, we must consult monographs, or distinct treatises. In a system like this, however extensive, we can expect no more than general information, and references to other and more elaborate works, on the particular subject dis- cussed."* In " Anderson's Quarterly Journal of the Medical Sciences," vol. ii. No. 8. October, 1825, a full account is given of the improvements of the second edition of the Study of Medicine. The reviewer says, " We have already expressed our satisfaction at the reappearance of this valuable and accurate work in a new edition. Of such a work, indeed, when we consider it to be the composition of one man, we may say, with truth, that the age of laborious diligence is not past, and that there is still an individual among us who can devour and digest whole libraries. This would, no doubt, be surpri- sing even in a man of a retired life, but it is doubly so in one who is a practical physician, and a poet of no mean fame. For learning, for research, for original observa- tion, where is the practical system of the present day, we may fearlessly ask, that can be compared to it ?" " Dr. Good is a universal scholar ; intimately acquainted with the learned and Oriental languages ; he writes English with facility and elegance ; and we are sure that every physician who is a man of taste and of learning, will pe- ruse his pages with avidity and delight." Again the Editor of the "Edinburgh Medical and * It ought, however, to be observed, that the work abounds throughout, with the statement of facts and the relation of cases ; the latter uniformly given with graphic perspicuity, and, where they involved distressing or fa- tal consequences, with much sympathy and feeling. DR. MASON GOOD. 165 Surgical Journal," in the No. for January, 1826, after specifying the principal improvements in Dr. Good's new edition, proceeds : " Of the merits of this work, we formerly expressed our opinion at considerable length ; and it is not now re- quisite to resume the subject. Its good and bad points we canvassed in the spirit of liberal criticism ; but we trust without asperity. Though we still entertain the same opinion of its defects, we must confess, the oftener we read it, the more excellent it appears. The informa- tion is copious, accurate, and various ; the research and learning unrivalled ; the style clear and precise ; and the language, when not too affected, is classical and pleasing. It certainly contains the most comprehensive and correct view of medical knowledge extant ; and we know no work from which the student will derive greater informa- tion, arid obtain it in a more interesting manner." I need not apologize for collecting these critical opin- ions from the most respectable professional authorities, on a work respecting the scientific value of which it would be the height of absurdity for me to offer any judgment. I may, perhaps, without incurring the charge of invad- ing the province of others, remark, in addition to what has preceded, that Dr. Good richly merits a distinct eulo- gium for having, throughout these volumes, uniformly ex- erted himself to check the influence of fashion in the in- troduction and proscription of remedies, as well as in the practice of medicine generally.* THE BOOK OF NATURE. This publication issued from the press early in 1826, in three octavo volumes. It has, however, so infelicitous * Since the above was written, I have received a letter from my esteemed friend. Dr. J. VV. Francis, of .New York, in which he says, " The death of our mutual friend, Dr. Good, has produced a sensation among our medi- cal brethren, that shews most satisfactorily how high he stood in the estima- tion of the profession. His writings are well known among us, and no les* than three editions of his ' Study of Medicine' have been printed for our medical improvement. I intend, dear sir. to transmit you some account of what we Americans have thought of him; and I rejoice to learn that you contemplate an account of his life and writings. Is it so ? I wish to say a little of him. because of his vast renown in America, and the exemplary virtues of his private character." This promised communication I much regret to say, has not yet arrived. 1G6 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF a title, that it conveys no adequate idea, I might almost say, no idea, of the nature of the puhlication itself. These three volumes contain the lectures which Dr. Good delivered, in three successive winters, at the Surrey In- stitution. A few alterations and improvements have been introduced, of which the author thus speaks : " The progress of time (since 1810) and the mental activity with which it has been followed up, have stri- kingly confirmed various hints and opinions which he ven- tured to suggest as he proceeded, and have introduced a few novelties into one or two branches of science since the period referred to ; but the interval which has hereby occurred has enabled the author to keep pace with the general march, and to pay due attention to such doctrines or discoveries, in their respective positions of time and place." The plan of these volumes evinces less logical acumen than is exhibited in some of his other publications ; but this may probably have arisen from the author's delinea- ting the outlines of the first series of lectures, without having in contemplation any subsequent train of research beyond their immediate scope. Considered all together, however, notwithstanding the minor defects in arrange- ment, there is much, in the disquisitions thus collected, to amuse, to instruct, and often to delight and improve. The young in perusing them will find their thirst for knowledge kept alive while it is gratified ; and may yield themselves to this instructer without any fear that their better principles will be sapped, or their happiness endan- gered. The author's style is vivacious, popular, and free from technical stiffness, in a few cases perhaps to oratori- cal ; but he passes from subject to subject, in his widely diversified course, with that intellectual elasticity which was one of his most remarkable endowments, and which gave the principal charm to his successive productions. The volumes are devoted respectively to three series of lectures. Of these, the first is employed in unfolding " the nature of the material world, and the scale of unorganized and organized tribes that issue from it." This series com- prises fifteen lectures, which treat of matter and the mate- rial world, the elementary and constituent principles of DR. MASON GOOD. 167 things, the properties of matter essential and peculiar, geology, organized bodies, and the structure of plants compared with that of animals, 'the general analogy of animal and vegetable life, the principles of life, irrita- bility, and muscular motion, the bones, cartilages, teeth, hair, wool, silk, feathers, and other hard or solid parts of the animal frame, the digestive function and its appro- priate organs, diversities of food taken by different ani- mals, the circulation of the blood, respiration, and animalization, the processes of assimilation and nutri- tion, and the external senses of animals. The second series is employed in developing " the na- ture of the animate world ; its peculiar powers and exter- nal relations ; means of communicating ideas ; and the formation of society." The subdivisions (in 13 lectures) relate to zoological systems, and the distinctive charac- ters of animals the varieties of the human race instinct the distinguishing characters of instinct, sensation, and intelligence sympathy, and fascination sleep, dream- ing, reverie, and trance, sleep-walking and sleep-talking voice and language, vocal imitations, and ventriloquism the language of animals, the language of man legible language, imitative and symbolical the literary education of former times, and especially that of Greece and Rome the dark or middle ages the revival of literature. The third series, in 15 lectures, is devoted to " the nature of mind ; its general faculties and furniture." The subordinate divisions relate to materialism and im- materialism the nature and duration of the soul, as ex- plained by popular tradition, by various schools of philo- sophy, and by revelation the human understanding ancient and modern sceptics the " common sense" hy- pothesis human happiness the general faculties and free agency of the mind the origin, connexion, and cha- racter of the passions the leading characters and pas- sions of savage and of civilized life temperaments and constitutional propensities pathognomy, or the expres- sion of the passions physiognomy and craniognomy the language of the passions on taste, genius, and imagina- tion. In this wide range of subjects, philosophical, zoologi- 168 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF cal, metaphysical, literary, and moral, it would be unrea- sonable to expect that there should be no mistakes in reasoning, no defects in principle, no infringements upon good taste. But deductions from the value of the whole, on either of these accounts, are much more seldom requi- site than might have been expected, considering the great diversity of topics, and the difficulties essentially involved in some of them. The chief violation of good taste which I have noticed, consists in the employment of scriptural phrases* to illustrate other than theological subjects. They are never employed irreverently, or in badinage ; but in application to some intellectual inquiry. They were introduced, I conjecture, in the author's original composition of the Lectures, and escaped his notice at the time of final revision for publication ; a time when he had learned most scrupulously to abstain from everything cal- culated to diminish the reverence due to Scripture. What, however, is principally remarkable in these volumes, is the judicious selection and grouping under their proper heads, of a great variety of striking, curious, and illustrative facts ; so brought together and exhibited as to confirm most cogently the theory, or doctrine, or verity, with a view to which they have been thus collect- ed. While the author skilfully adduces facts and rea- sonings in favor of some theories, he proceeds similarly with regard to the refutation of others, especially of those, whether deduced from supposed physiological or metaphysical verities and principles, which militate against the statement of revealed truth. Were it not for my persuasion that the " Book of Na- ture" will be extensively read, so soon as its real charac- ter is known, I should be tempted to quote largely from its pages. But, with that conviction, I shall simply pre- sent a part of our author's inquiry into the varieties of the human race. This is a well-known subject of scepti- cal triumph, because of its assumed incompatibility with the Mosaic account of the creation of the world. Blu- menbach, Dr. Smith of America, and others, have most * Such as, " the fulness of time/' " regeneration," " rejoicing as a giant to run his race," " the day spring from on high," die. DR. MASON GOOD. 169 decidedly refuted the infidel objection, drawn from the imagined inconsistency of existing facts with the prime- val relation. But there was still room for a popular and spirited exhibition of the physiological arguments on this side of the question, incorporated with those which flow from a correct interpretation of the scripture narrative. Dr. Good delineates the principal varieties under the denominations of the European race, the Asiatic race, the American, the African, and the Australian ; agreeing nearly with the classifications of Blumenbach and Gmelin. Then he places the objections above adverted to, in their full force ; and after alluding to the hypothesis of those who would refer the human and the monkey tribes to one common stock, proceeds thus : " In order, however, to settle this question completely, let me mention a few of the anatomical points in which the orang-otang differs from the human form, and which can- not possibly be the effect of a mere variety, but must ne- cessarily flow from an original and inherent distinction. More might be added, but what I shall offer will be suf- ficient ; and if I do not touch upon a comparison of the interior faculties, it is merely because I will not insult your understandings, nor degrade my own, by bringing them into any kind of contact. " Both the orang and pongo, which of all the monkey tribes make the nearest approach to the structure of the human skeleton, have three vertebrae fewer than man. They have a peculiar membranous pouch connected with the larynx or organ of the voice, which belongs to no divi- sion of man whatever, white or black. The larynx itself, is, in consequence of this, so peculiarly constructed as to render it less capable even of inarticulate sounds, than that of almost every other kind of quadruped : and, last- ly, they have no proper feet ; for what are so called, are, in reality, as directly hands as the terminal organs of the arms : the great toe in m:m, and that which chiefly ena- bles him to walk in an erect position, being a perfect thumb in the orang-otang. Whence this animal is natu- rally formed for climbing : and its natural position in walking, and the position which it always assumes, except- ing when under discipline, is that of all-fours ; the body being supported on four hands, instead of on four feet as 15 170 ACCOUNT OP THE WORKS OP in quadrupeds. And it is owing to this wide and essen- tial difference, as, indeed, we had occasion to observe in our last study, that M. Cuvier, and other zoologists of the present day, have thought it expedient to invent a new name by which the monkey and maucaco tribes may be distinguished from all the rest; and, instead of QUADRU- PEDS, have called them QUADRUMANA,or QUADRUMANUALS ; by which they are at the same time equally distinguished from every tribe of the human race, which are uniformly, and alone, BI MANUAL. " But throwing the monkey kind out of the question, as in no respect related to the race of man, it must at least be admitted, contend the second class of philosophers be- fore us, that the wide differences in form, and color, and degree of intellect, which the several divisions of mankind exhibit, as you have now arranged them, must necessa- rily have originated from different sources ; and that even the Mosaic account itself will afford countenance to such a hypothesis. " This opinion was first stated, in modern times, by the celebrated Isaac Peyrere, librarian to the Prince of Conde ; who, about the middle of the last century, con- tended, in a book which was not long afterwards con- demned to the flames, though for other errors in conjunc- tion with the present, that the narration of Moses speaks expressly of the creation of two distinct species of man an elder species which occupied a part of the sixth day's creation, and is related in the first chapter of Genesis ; and a junior, confined to Adam and Eve, the immediate progenitors of the Hebrews, to whom this account was addressed ; and which is not referred to till the seventh verse of the second chapter, and even then without any notice of the exact period in which they were formed. After which transaction, observe this writer and those who think with him, the historian confines himself en- tirely to the annals of his own nation, or of those which were occasionally connected with it. Neither is it easy, they adjoin, to conceive, upon any other explanation, how Cain, in so early a period of the world as is usually laid down, could have been possessed of the implements of husbandry which belonged to him ; or, what is meant by the fear he expressed, upon leaving his father's family, DR. MASON GOOD. 171 after the murder of Abel, that every one who found him would slay him ; or, again, his going forth into another country, marrying a wife there, and building a city soon after the birth of his eldest son. " Now, a cautious perusal of the Mosaic narrative, will, I think, incontestably prove that the two accounts of the creation of man refer to one and the same fact, to which the historian merely returns, in the seventh verse of the second chapter, for the purpose of giving it a more de- tailed consideration ; for it is expressly asserted in the fifth, or preceding verse but one, as the immediate reason for the creation of Adam and Eve, that at that ' time there was not a man to till the ground ;' while, as to the existence of artificers competent to the formation of the first rude instruments employed in husbandry, and a few patches of mankind scattered over the regions ad- joining that in which Cain resided at the period of his fra- tricide, it should be recollected that thisjfirst fall of man by the hand of man, did not take place till a hundred and twenty-nine years after the creation of Adam ; for it was in his one hundred and thirtieth year, that Setli was given to him in the place of Abel : an interval of time amply sufficient, especially if we take into consideration the pe- culiar fecundity of both animals and vegetables in their primaeval state, for a multiplication of the race of man to an extent of many thousand souls. " On such a view of the subject, therefore, it should seem that the only fair and explicit interpretation that can be given to the Mosaic history is, that the whole hu- man race has proceeded from one single pair, or, in the words of another part of the Sacred Writings, ' that God hath made of ONE BLOOD all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.'* The book of Nature, is in this, as in every other respect, in union with that of Revelation : it tells us that one single pair must have been adequate to all the purposes on which this class of philosophers have grounded their objections : and it should be further observed to them, that thus to multiply causes without necessity, is not more inconsistent with the operations of nature, than with the principles of genuine philosophy. * Acts xviii. 26. 172 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF " But the question still returns : whence, then, proceed those astonishing diversities among the different nations of mankind, upon which the arrangement now offered is founded ? ''The answer is, that they are the effect of a combi- nation of causes ; some of which are obvious, others of which must be conjectured, and a few of which are be- yond the reach of human comprehension but all of which are common to other animals, as well as to man ; for extraordinary as these diversities may appear, they are equally to be met with in the varieties of several other kinds of animals, that can be proved to have been pro- duced from a single species, arid, in one or two instances, from a single pair. " The chief causes we are acquainted with are the four following : climate, food, manner of life, and hereditary diseases. "I. The influence which CLIMATE principally produces on the animal frame is on the color of the skin and on the extent of the stature. All the deepest colors we are acquainted with are those of hot climates ; and all the lightest those of cold ones. In our own country we per- ceive daily, that an exposure to the rays of the sun turns the skin from its natural whiteness to a deep brown or tan; and that a seclusion from the sun keeps it fair and unfreckled. In like manner, the tree-frog (rana arbo- red) while living in the shade is of a light yellow, but of a dark green when he is obliged to shift from the shade into the sunshine. To the nereis lacustris, though whitish under the darkness of a projecting bank, is red when exposed to the sun's rays. And that the larves of most insects that burrow in the cavities of the earth, of plants, or of animals, are white, from the same cause, is clear, since being confined under glasses that admit the influence of solar light, they exchange their whiteness for a brownish hue. " The same remark will apply to plants as well as to animals ; and hence nothing more is necessary to bleach or whiten them, than to exclude them from the light of day. Hence the birds, beasts, flowers, and even fishes of the equatorial regions, are uniformly brighter or deeper tinctured in their spots, their feathers, their petals, and DR. MASON GOOD. 173 their scales, than we find them in any other part of the world. And hence one reason at least for the deep jet which, for the most part, prevails among mankind under the equator ; the dark-brown and copper-colors found un- der the tropics ; and the olive, shifting through every in- termediate shade to the fair and sanguine complexion, as we proceed from the tropic of Cancer northwards. Hence, too, the reason why the Asiatic and African women, con- fined to the walls of their seraglios, are as white as Euro- peans ; why Moorish children, of both sexes, are, at first, equally fair, and why the fairness continues among the girls, but is soon lost among the boys. " As we approach the poles, on the contrary, we find everything progressively whiten ; bears, foxes, hares, fal- cons, crows, and blackbirds, all assume the same com- mon livery ; while many of them change their color with the change of the season itself. For the same reason, as also because they have a thinner mucous web, the Abys- sinians are less deep in color than the negro race ; for though their geographical climate is nearly the same, their physical climate differs essentially : the country stands much higher, and its temperature is far lower. " The immediate matter of color, as I had occasion to observe more fully in a preceding lecture, is the mucous pigment which forms the middle layer of the general in- tegument of the skin ; and upon this, the sun, in hot cli- mates, appears to act in a two-fold manner ; first, by the direct affinity of its colorific rays with the oxygene of the animal surface, in consequence of which the oxygene is detached and flies off; and the carbone and hydrogene being set at liberty, form a more or less perfect charcoal, according to the nature of their union ; and next, by the indirect influence which its calorific rays, like many other stimulants, produce upon the liver, by exciting it to a se- cretion of more abundant bile, and of a deeper hue: I have formerly remarked, that this second or coloring layer of the general integument of the skin, differs (as indeed all the layers of the skin do) in their thickness, not only in different kinds of animals, but very frequently in dif- ferent species, varieties, and even individuals. Thus, in our own country we find it more abundant in some per- sons than in others ; and wherever it is most abundant, *15 174 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OP we find the complexion also of a darker, and coarser, and greasier appearance, upon a common exposure to the so- lar light and heat; and we find also, that the hair is al- most uniformly influenced by such increase of color, and is proportionally coarser and darker. " It is of some consequence to attend to this observa- tion ; for it may serve to explain a physiological fact that has hitherto been supposed of difficult elucidation. " A certain degree of heat, though less than that of the tropics, appears favorable to increase of stature ; and I have already observed, that the tallest tribes we are ac- quainted with are situated at the back of Cape Horn, and the Cape of Good Hope. On the contrary, the most di- minutive we are acquainted with are those that inhabit the coldest regions or the highest mountains in the world : such are the Laplanders and Nova Zemblians in Europe, the Samoieds, Ostiacs, and Tungooses in Asia, and the Greenlanders and Eskimaux in America. Such, too, are the Kimos of Madagascar, if the account of these pigmy people may be depended upon, whose native region is stated to be the central and highest tracts of the island, forming, according to Commerson, an elevation of not less than sixteen or eighteen hundred fathoms above the level of the sea. " A multitude of distinct tribes have of late years been discovered in the interior of Africa, in the midst of the black tribes, exhibiting nothing more than a red or cop- per hue, with lank black hair. And, in like manner, around the banks of the Lower Orinoco, in Mexico, where the climate is much hotter, there are many clans of a much lighter hue than those around the banks of the Rio Negro, where it is much cooler ; and M. Humboldt has hence ventured to assert that we have here a full proof that climate produces no effect upon the color of the skin. Such an assertion, however, is far too hasty; for he should first have shown that the thickness of the mucous web, or coloring material, is equally abundant in all these instances. For if it be more abundant (as it probably is) in the tribes that are swarthiest, we have reason to expect that a swarthier color will be found where there is an DR. MASON GOOD. 175 equal, or even a less exposure to solar light and heat ; and we well know that the hair will vary in proportion.* " II. The effects of DIFFERENT KINDS OF FOOD upon the animal system are as extensive and as wonderful as those of different climates. The fineness and coarseness of the wool or hair, the firmness and flavor of the flesh, and in some degree the color of the skin, and extent of the stature, are all influenced by the nature of the diet. Oils and spirits produce a peculiar excitement of the liver ; and like the calorific rays of the sun, usually be- come the means of throwing an overcharge of bile into the circulation. Hence the sallow and olive hue of many who unduly addict themselves to vinous potation, and who, at the same time, make use of but little exercise. And hence also the dark and dingy color of the pigmy people inhabiting high northern latitudes, to whom we have just adverted, and whose usual diet consists of fish and other oils, often rancid and offensive. Though it must be ad- mitted that this color is in most instances aided by the clouds of smoke in which they sit constantly involved in their wretched cabins, and the filth and grease with which they often besmear their skins. And hence, also, one cause of their diminutive stature ; the food they feed on beinii unassitnilating and innutritive. Swine and all other animals fed on madder-root, or that of gallium rernm, or yellow-ladies-bed-straw, have the bones them- selves tinged of a deep red, or a yellow; and M. Huber of Lausanne, who has of late years made so many valua- ble discoveries in the natural habits of the honey-bee, has proved himself able, by a difference in the food alone, as indeed Debraw had done long before him,t to convert what is commonly, but improperly, called a neuter into a queen bee. " III. It would be superfluous to dwell on the changes of body and perceptive powers produced in the animal system by a DIFFERENCE IN THE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. We have the most striking proofs of this effect in all the domesticated animals by which we are surrounded. Compare the wild horse with the disciplined ; the bison * See Essai Politique sur la Nouvellc Espa^ne, par Alexandre de Hum- boldt, &.c. pp. 84, 85. 4to. Paris, 1808, 1809. t See Phil. Trans, for 1777, p. 15. 176 ACCOUNT OF THE W OttKS OF with the ox, which last is usually regarded as the bison in a state of lameness ; and the Siberian argali with the sheep, which is said to have sprung from it. Compare the modern Romans with the ancient ; the low cunning and servile temper of too many of the Greek tribes of the present day, that still bend to and kiss the Ottoman rod, with the noble courage and patriotic enthusiasm of their forefathers, who drove back the tyrant of Persia and his million of men across the Hellespont, and dashed to pieces the proud bridge with which he boasted of having conquered the billows. " It is in reality from long and deeply rooted habit alone that the black, red, and olive color of the Ethiopian, American, and Moguls, is continued in the future lineage for so many generations after their removal into other parts of the world ; and that nothing will, in general, re- store the skin to its original fairness, but a long succession of intermixtures with the European variety. It is a sin- gular circumstance that the black color appears to form a less permanent habit than the red or olive ; or in other words, the color chiefly produced by the action of the sun's colorific rays, than that produced by the action of its calorific rays : for the children of olive and copper- colored parents exhibit the parental hue from the moment of birth ; but in those of blacks it is usually six, eight, or ten months before the black pigment is fully secreted. We also sometimes find this not secreted at all, whence the anomaly of white negroes : and sometimes only in interrupted lines or patches, whence the anomaly of spot- ted negroes ; and we have even a few rare cases of ne- groes in America, who, in consequence of very severe illness, have had the whole of the black pigment absorbed and carried ofF, and a white pigment diffused in its stead. In other words, we have instances of a black man being suddenly bleached into a white man. These instances are indeed of rare occurrence ; but they are sufficient to shew the absurdity of the argument for a plurality of hu- man stocks or species, from a mere difference in the color of the skin ; an argument thus proved to be altogether superficial, and which we may gravely assert to be not more than skin-deep. DR. MASON GOOD. 177 "It is in consequence of this power in the system, of secreting a dark-colored pigment under particular cir- cumstances, that we not unfrequently see the skin of very fair women, when in a state of pregnancy, changed to a deep tawny, and almost to a black ; and it is hence that the black pigment of the eye is perpetually main- tained and replenished.* " Dr. Wells gave a paper to the Royal Society, which was read April 1, 1813, containing an account of a wo- man (Harriet Tresh) ' whose left shoulder, arm, and hand, are as black as the blackest African's, while all the rest of the skin is very white. She is a native of Sussex, and the cause she assigns is, that her mother set her foot upon a lobster during her pregnancy.' So that we have not only instances of blacks being suddenly bleached, but of whites being made more or less black. In like manner, confined birds sometimes become wholly black ; and are said to become so, occasionally, in the course of a single night. So the male kestrel, from being barred on the tail feathers, becomes wholly ash-colored except at the end ; and the heron, gull, and others, whose tail is white when matured, are for the first two years mottled. " IV. But it is probable that a very great part of the more striking distinctions we have noticed, and almost all the subordinate variations occasionally to be met with, are the result of a MORBID AND HEREDITARY AFFECTION. The vast influence which this recondite but active cause possesses over both the body and the mind, are known in some degree to every one from facts that are daily pre- senting themselves to us. We see gout, consumption, scrofula, leprosy, propagated on various occasions, and madness and fatuity, and hypochondriacal affections, as frequently. Hence the unhappy race of Albinoes, and whole pedigrees of white negroes ; hence the pigmy stature of some families, and the gigantic size of others. " Even when accident, or a cause we cannot discover, has produced a preternatural conformation or defect in a particular organ, it is astonishing to behold how readily it is often copied by the generative principle, and how tena- * Camper's Lect. on Comp. Anat. in regard to the Art of Drawing. 178 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OP ciously it adheres to the future lineage. A preternatural defect of the hand or foot has been propagated for many generations, and has in numerous instances laid a foun- dation for the family name. The name of Varus and Plautus among the ancient Romans afford familiar exem- plifications. Hence, hornless sheep and hornless oxen produce an equally hornless offspring ; the broad-tailed Asiatic sheep yields a progeny with a tail equally mon- strous, and often of not less than half a hundred pounds' weight ; and dogs and cats with mutilated tails not un- frequently propagate the casual deficiency. " There is a very peculiar variety of the sheep kind given in the Philosophical Transactions for 1813, by Colonel Humphreys of America, and which the American naturalists have called, from its bowed or elbowy legs, ovis?ie0n: but the common people the "otter-breed," from its resemblance to the general form of the otter, and a rumor that it was at first produced by an unnatu- ral intercourse between individuals of the two distinct kinds. Its size is small ; the full weight being about 451b. with loose articulations, crooked fore-legs, and great feebleness of power ; whence it walks with difficulty, and is therefore quiet, and not fond of rambling. Acci- dent seems to have produced this kind first, but the form has been most correctly preserved in the progeny ; and so tenaciously, that if a common sheep and ancon sheep of either sex unite, the young will be either a perfect ancon, or have no trace of it ; and if two are lambed at the same time, and one be of one variety and the other of the other, each is found to be perfect in its way, without any amalgamation. " In like manner, in all probability, from some primary accident resulted the peculiar shape of the head and face in ; niost nations as well as jn most families ; and hence too those enormous prominences on the hinder parts of one or two of the nations at the back of the Cape of Good Hope, of which an instance was not long since ex- hibited in this country with some degree of outrage on moral feeling. " Man, then, is not the only animal in which such variations gf form and feature occur ; nor the animal in DR. MASON GOOD. 179 which they occur either most frequently or in the most extraordinary and extravagant manner. " M. Blumenhach, who has pursued this interesting subject with a liveliness the most entertaining, and a chain of argument the most convincing, has selected the swine genus from among many other quadrupeds that would have answered as well, especially the dog and the sheep, in order to institute a comparison of this very kind : and he has completely succeeded in shewing that the swine, even in countries where we have historical and undeniable proofs, as especially in America, of its being derived from one common and imported stock, exhibits, in its different varieties, distinctions not only as numer- ous and astonishing, but, so far as relates to the exterior frame, of the very same kind as are to be met with in the different varieties of the human species. " In regard to size, the Cuba swine, well known, as he observes, to have been imported into that island from Europe, are at the present day double the height and magnitude of the stock from which they were bred. Whence we may well laugh at every argument in favor of more than one human stock or species drawn from the difference of stature in different nations of man. In regard to color, they display at least as great a diversi- ty. In Piedmont the swine are black ; in Bavaria red- dish-brown ; in Normandy white. Human hair, observes M. Blumenbach, is somewhat different from swine's bris- tles ; yet in the present point of view they may be com- pared with each other. Fair hair is soft, and of a silky texture ; black hair is coarser, and often woolly. In like manner, among the white swine in Normandy, the bris- tles on the body are longer and softer than among other swine ; and even those on the back, which are usually stouter than the rest, are flaccid and cannot be employed by the brush-makers. " The whole difference between the cranium of a Negro and that of an European is in no respect greater than that which exists between the cranium of the wild boar and that of the domestic swine. Those who are in possession of Daubenton's drawings of the two, mustjbe sensible of this, the fust moment they compare them to- gether. The peculiarity among the Hindus of having the 180 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF bone of the leg remarkably long, meets a precise parallel in the swine of Normandy, which stand so high on their hind quarters, that the back forms an inclined plane to the head ; and as the head itself partakes of the same direction, the snout is but a little removed from the ground. " In some countries, indeed, the swine have degenerated into races that in singularity far exceed the most extrava- gant variations that have been found among the human species. What can differ more widely than a cloven foot and a solid hoof? Yet swine are found with both ; the variety with a solid hoof was known to the ancients, and still exists in Hungary and Sweden ; and even the common sort, that were carried by the Spaniards to the isle of Cuba in 1509, have since degenerated into a varie- ty with a hoof of the same solid kind, and of the enor- mous size of not less than half a span in diameter. " How absurd, then, to contend that the distinctions in the different varieties of the human race must have proceeded from a plurality of species, while we are com- pelled to admit that distinctions of a similar kind, but more numerous and more extravagant, have proceeded from a single species in other animals. " It may appear singular, perhaps, that 1 have taken no notice of the wide difference which is supposed to exist in the intellectual faculties of the different species of man. To confess the truth, I have purposely omitted it, be- cause of all the arguments that have ever been offered to support the doctrine of different species, this appears to me the feeblest and most superficial. It may suit the narrow purpose of a slave merchant of a trafficker in human nerves and muscles of a wretch, who, in equal defiance of the feelings and the laws of the day, has the impudence to offer for sale, on the polluted shores of our own country, in one and the same lot, as was the case not long since, a dead cameleopard and a living Hotten- tot woman : it may suit their purpose to introduce such a distinction into their creed, and to let it constitute the whole of their creed, but it is a distinction too trifling and evanescent to claim the notice of a physiologist for a moment. " The variable talents of the mind are as propagable as the variable features of the body, how, or by what DR. MASON GOOD. 181 means, we know not, but the fact is incontrovertible. Wit and dulness, genius and idiotism, run in direct streams from generation to generation ; and hence the moral character of families, of tribes, of whole nations. The understanding of the Negro race, it is admitted, is in many tribes strikingly and habitually obtuse. It has thus, indeed, been propagated for a long succession of ages ; and till the Negro mind receives a new turn, till it becomes cultivated and called forth into action by some such benevolent stimulus as that which is now abroad generally, and especially such as is afforded it by the African Institution of our own country, (an establish- ment that ought never to be mentioned without rever- ence,) the same obtuseness must necessarily continue, and, by a prolongation of the habit, may perhaps even increase. But let the man who would argue from this single fact, that the race of negroes must be necessarily an inferior species, distinct from all the rest of the world, compare the taste, the talents, the genius, the erudition, that have at different periods blazed forth in different in- dividuals of this despised people, when placed under the fostering providence of kindness and cultivation, with his own, or those of the generality of his own countrymen, and let him blush for the mistake he has made, and the injury he has committed. " Freidig, of Vienna, was an excellent architect, and a capital performer on the violin ; Hannibal was not only a colonel of artillery in the Russian service, but deeply skilled in the mathematical and physical sciences ; so, too, was Lislet, of the Isle of France, who was in conse- quence made a member of the French Academy ; and Arno, who was honored with a diploma of doctor of phi- losophy by the university of Wirtemberg, in 1734. Let us add to these the names of Vasa, and Ignatius Sancho, whose taste and genius have enriched the polite literature of our own country : and, with such examples of negro powers before us, is it possible to do otherwise than adopt the very just observation of a very quaint orator, who has told us that the ' Negro, like the white man, is still God's image, although carved in ebony ?' " Nor is it to a few casual individuals among the black tribes, appearing in distant countries, and at distant aeras 16 182 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OP that we have to look for the clearest proofs of human intelligence. At this moment, scattered like their own oases, their islands of beautiful verdure, over the eastern and western deserts of Africa, multitudes of little princi- palities of negroes are still existing, multitudes that have, of late years, been detected, and are still detecting, whose national virtues would do honor to the most pol- ished states of Europe : while at Timbuctoo, stretching deepest towards the east of these principalities, from the western coast, we meet, if we may credit the accounts we have received, with one of the wealthiest, perhaps one of the most populous and best governed, cities in the world ; its sovereign a Negro, its army Negroes, its people Negroes ; a city which is the general mart for the commerce of Western Africa, and where trade and manufactures seem to be equally esteemed and protected.* " We know not the antiquity of this kingdom : but there can be no doubt of its having a just claim to a very high origin : and it is possible that, at the very period in which our own ancestors, as described by Julius Caesar, were naked and smeared over with paint, or merely clothed with the skins of wild beasts, living in huts, and \vor- * I follow Mr. Jackson's description, which is added to his " Account of the Empire of Marocco," as by far ilie most circumstantial and authorita- tive we have hitherto received. According to him " the city is situated on a plain, surrounded by a sandy eminence, about twelve miles north of the Nile El Abeade, or Nile of the Blacks; and three days' journey (erfael)at) from the confines of Sahara ; about twelve miles in circumference, but without walls. The town of Kabra, situated on the banks of the river, is its commercial depot or port. The king 1 is the sovereign of Bambarra : the name of this potentate, in 1800, was VV oolo : he is a black, and a native of the country he governs. His usual place of residence is Jiunic, though he has three palaces in Timbuctoo, which are said to contain an immense quantity of gold." The present military appointments arc, it seems, entire- ly from the negroes of Bambarra : the inhabitants are also, for the most part, Negroes, who possess much of the Arab hospitality, and pride them- selves in being attentive to strangers. By means of a water-carriage, east and west of Kabra, great facility is given to the trade of Timbuctoo. which is very extensive, as well in European as in Barbarv manufactures-. The various costumes, indeed, exhibited in the market-places and in the streets, sufficiently indicate this, each individual being liribiu-d in the dress of his respective country. There is a perfect toleration in matters of religion, except as to Jews. The police is extolled as surpassing anything of the kind on this side the Desert: robberies and house-breaking are scarcely known. The government of the city is entrusted to a divan of twelve slemma. or magistrates ; and the civil jurisprudence superintended by a learned cadi. DR. MASON GOOD. 183 shipping the misletoe, the black kingdom of Bambarra, of which Timbuctoois the capital, was as completely establish- ed and flourishing as at the present moment. " What has produced the difference we now behold? What has kept the Bambareens, like the Chinese, nearly in an invariable state for, perhaps, upwards of two thousand years, and has enabled the rude and painted Britons to become the first people of the world the most renowned for arts and for arms for the best virtues of the heart, and the best faculties of the understanding 1 Not a dif- ference in the color of the skin ; but, first, the peculiar favor of the Almighty ; next, a political constitution, which was sighed for, and in some degree prefigured, by Plato and Tully, but regarded as a masterpiece, beyond the power of human accomplishment: and, lastly, a fond and fostering cultivation of science, in every ramification and department. " Amidst the uproar and ruin of the world around us, these are blessings which we still possess ; and which we possess almost exclusively.* Let us prize them as they deserve ; let us endeavor to be worthy of them. To the great benefit resulting from literature and mental culti- vation, the age is, indeed, thoroughly awake ; and it is consolatory to turn from the sickening scenes of the con- tinent, and fix the eye in this point of view upon our native spot; to behold the ingenuous minds of multitudes laboring with the desire of useful knowledge ; to con- template the numerous temples that are rising all around us, devoted to taste, to genius, to learning, to the liberal arts ; and to mark the generous confederacies by which they are supported and embellished." Vol. ii. p. 113. TRANSLATION OF THE BOOK OF PROVERBS. Dr. Good's peculiar fondness for Hebrew literature, and for the noble specimens of the energy and sublimity of that language contained in the metrical and prophe- tical books of Scripture, induced him for several years to devote some part of almost every week to the study and translation of these favorite portions of the Old Testa- * The Lecture was delivered in 1812. 184 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF ment. The result of his labors on " the Song of Songs" and " the Book of Job" are before the public. But much of his attention was also directed to the Prophecies of Ezekiel, Joel, Zechariah, to the Book of Ecclesiastes, &LC. of striking passages in each of which he has left translations. During the years 1819, 1820, and 1821, notwithstanding the occupation of his time in his great works on Nosology and the Study of Medicine, he found leisure to complete a translation of the Book of Proverbs, to prepare a preliminary dissertation to that translation, and a great number of critical, theological, and illustra- tive notes. The manuscript copy of these, which is now before me, is in some respects incomplete, not having re- ceived the finishing touch of the author's hand. The notes would, doubtless, have been considerably modified, and the translation in a few respects a little changed, before he would have allowed them to meet the public eye. Imperfect, however, as the annotations are, they exhibit, like those in some of the author's previous works, an astonishing display of discursive illustration ; his ardent mind delighting itself in gliding over the fields of ancient and modern literature, to collect treasures of wisdom, and apply them to the purposes of genuine elucidation. The translation differs frequently from that of our authorized version ; more frequently, however, in appear- ance than in reality. I observe, too, that in some essen- tial particulars it differs greatly from Dr. Boothroyd's, the only other translation of the Book of Proverbs, with which I have had an opportunity of comparing that of my deceased friend. In his subdivisions of this inspired collection of apho- risms, Dr. Good, as will be seen, did not deviate much from the most judicious of preceding commentators. But his introductory dissertation contains several valuable remarks on the proverbial sayings of all nations generally, and on those of the Hebrews in particular. It compre- hends, moreover, various specimens of the translation which it was intended to precede. I shall, therefore, insert a copious extract, which as it explains the author's view of the book itself, and exhibits his version of several passages, may in some respects conduce to the better DR. MASON GOOD. 185 understanding of this ancient section of the canonical scriptures. " What was thus popular among all other parts of the east, was popular, also, and in all ages, among the He- brews ; from whom it is probable that the taste for moral adages was first derived : and in the book of Job they have handed down to us a full proof that the same taste prevailed in the antediluvian days, and a rich store of the moral sayings that were then in vogue. The speeches of the respective interlocutors in this extraordinary poem are in many instances ornamented with citations of this kind, and some of them are composed of whole strings of such citations ; to the antiquity of which, and their probable existence before the flood, the speaker frequently appeals for the purpose of giving them a stronger claim to attention. " The same tendency to characterize or illustrate pass- ing facts or events by well known adages of great anti- quity and veneration runs through all the books of the Old Testament, and is occasionally to be met with in the new, more especially in the condescending and colloquial intercourses of our Saviour with those around him. " The book we are now entering upon is made up en- tirely of such detached and sententious passages of moral wisdom, or short rules of life. And whether we regard the force of its diction, the variety of its manner, or the extent of its subject, it is by far the most valuable of the kind that has ever been offered to the world ; and is well worthy of a place in the sacred treasury of the scriptures. " The Hebrew title of the work ascribes its whole con- tents to Solomon : and it is hence most probable that the entire composition was furnished by his own hands or mouth : the latter part of it, from the beginning of the twenty-fifth chapter, forming evidently an appendix, was collected after his death, and added to what appears to have been more immediately arranged by himself. The materials of the first five chapters of this appendix we are distinctly told were copied out of comments left by Solo- mon at his death, apparently in the archives of the royal library ; the copyists being the scribes or other confiden- tial officers of Hezekiah's court, supposed by Grotius, from 2 Kings xviii. 18., to have been Eliakim, Shebnah, and Joah, acting under the king's commands ; but who *16 186 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF seem more probably, from Prov. xxx. 1., to have been Ithiel and Ucal. The thirtieth chapter consists of words furnished by Agur, the son of Jakeh, and hence called 'the words of Agur,' as the matter or words furnished by Lemuel, are shortly afterwards called ' the words of Lem- uel,' although we are at the same time told that they were composed by his mother, and only committed by him to memory. Of Agur, sacred history makes no further mention ; but he was probably a confidential friend of Solomon, and drew up what he has contributed, either from recollection, or from some private record, at the solicitation of Ithiel and Ucal, who seem to have been commissioned for this purpose, and were probably, as just noticed, ' the men of Hezekiah, the king of Judah,' referred to in the opening of the thirtieth chapter. The appendix closes with ' the words of Lemuel,' supposed to be Solomon, and expressly declared to have been taught him by his mother, who, in this case, must have been Bathsheba ; and who seems to have composed them for the use of her son when in the bloom of youth, and about the time when he was formally declared by his father, successor to the Jewish throne. As the person, how- ever, who furnished this parabolic address is called king Lemuel, he is conjectured by some writers to have been a different individual from king Solomon : but as we have no other account of any such personage as king Lemuel ; as the title of the book assigns the whole of its contents to Solomon alone, as its writer or speaker ; and as the subject matter expressly applies to himself, and to no other person we are acquainted with, there can be little doubt that the word Lemuel is a mere familiar substitute for that of Solomon, or rather of Se-lem-eh, which is the Hebrew orthography, varied by a liberty very generally taken on such occasions, in all languages, of uniting the beginning, and altering the termination of the name, so as from Se-lem-eh to produce first Se-lem-uel, and then Lemuel. " Solomon, who seems to have subjected all the known sciences of the time to his use, and to have done so by a special endowment, seems also to have turned his atten- tion peculiarly to the popular method of teaching morality by short striking descriptions and sententious precepts. We are told by the author of the 1st book of Kings, iv. DR. MASON GOOD. 187 32., that he spake not less than three thousand proverbs ; and he himself tells us, Eccles. xii. 9., that, in ofSer to teach the people knowledge, he sought out or selected and set in order or arranged a considerable number of these with great attention or good heed : and there can be little doubt that the substance of the following work is the result of this elaborate assortment ; which may hence, in the judgment of Solomon himself, be supposed to contain the flower and choice of his productions. " It is, in truth, by far the most valuable book with which he has favored the \vorld, and the most striking monument of the wisdom with which he was specially endowed : critically and captivatingly curious in the va- riety of its style and method, and of universal compre- hension in the subjects it embraces ; laying down rules of conduct for all possible conditions of life, for kings and courtiers and men of the world ; for masters and ser- vants ; for fathers, mothers, and children ; for the favo- rites of prosperity and the sons of affliction : so that it is difficult to say in what way the wisdom that was bestowed upon him could have been applied to a better purpose. " This valuable production is, in the original, entitled MESLIM, for which we have no term of exactly equivalent power in our own, nor perhaps in any other language : for it imports not merely brief axiomatic sentences of prac- tical morality, but brief authoritative illustrations of moral duties, delivered in strong and elevated language, under any other form, whether of personification, similitude, or personal address and embellished description. And hence, MESLIM imports PARABLES as well as PROVERBS, strictly so called : the ir*f*fc\!u, as well as the TrapHftHu, of the Greeks : on which account the Greek term rafj/^u/*/, and the Latin PROVERBIA, and our own derivation PRO- VERBS, are, in a broad sense, employed to express PARA- BLES, or high authoritative moral similitudes or allegories, as well as sententious maxims ; which last, however, for the most part, have some touch of comparison belonging to them, as constituting the hinge on which they turn. And hence, parables and proverbs, ^*/>*/?OA*/, and v^ium, are used as convertible terms in the Gospels; or rather what the three first evangelists call ir*p*&*M, or parables ; St. John calls ^a^/^/^, or proverbs, as in chapter xvi. 25. 188 ACCOUNT OP THE VoRKS OF " These things have I spoken to you in proverbs" tv veifUfjMi; ; and even in chapter x. 6. "this parable" as it is rendered in our established version, is still " this pro- verb" -TXVTM TV TTUfKlfJitM \\i the GrCek. " In denominating, therefore, the book of MF.SLIM the book of PROVERBS, the latter term must be understood in its utmost latitude, as importing allegorical or other figu- rative illustrations of moral duties, as well as moral and sententious axioms, for the MESLIM OF SOLOMON contain both ; and this, too, not loosely and irregularly intermix- ed, but in a nice progressive -order, admirably adapted to their respective purposes. The whole work, indeed, as it has descended to our own hands, is evidently comprised of four distinct books or parts, each of which is distin- guished both by an obvious introduction, and a change of style and manner, though its real method and arrange- ment seem, hitherto, to have escaped the attention of our commentators and interpreters. " PART I. extends from the opening of the work to the close of the ninth chapter ; arid it is chiefly confined to the conduct of juvenescence or early life, before a per- manent condition is made choice of. The exordium, com- prising the first six verses, is in the truest style of eastern grandiloquence ; and it is principally to this first part of the work that the royal moralist has devoted his descrip- tive or parabolical talents ; in the course of which he proves them to be of the highest order, and, in especial reference to the period of age to which he limits himself, he commences each of his parables or addresses with the endearing term of " my Son !" or, " O ye children !" a phraseology rarely to be met with afterwards, and only with the exception of a single instance,* where the same kind of address is incidentally renewed to persons of the same age in the third part, and once in the fourth part, where it occurs in the address of Lemuel's mother to himself. "All the most formidable dangers to which this season of life is exposed, and the sins which most easily beset it, are painted with the hand of a master. And whilst the progress and issues of vice are exhibited under a va- * Chap. xix. 27. DR. MASON GOOD. 189 riety of the most striking delineations and metaphors in their utmost deformity and horror, all the beauties of lan- guage, and all the force of eloquence, are poured forth in the diversified form of earnest expostulation, insinuating tenderness, captivating argument, picturesque descrip- tion, daring personification, and sublime allegory, to win the ingenuous youth to virtue and piety, and to fix him in a steady pursuit of his duties towards God and towards man. Virtue is pronounced in the very outset to be es- sential wisdom, and vice or wickedness essential folly : and the personifications thus forcibly struck out at the opening of the work are continued to its close. The only wise man, therefore, is declared to be the truly good and virtuous, or he that fears God, and reverences his law : while the man of vice or wickedness, is a fool, a dolt, an infatuated sot, a stubborn, froward, or perverse wretch, and an abomination to Jehovah. " Wisdom is, hence, allegorized as a tree of life, yield- ing delicious shade, fruit, and protection to those that approach her branches : throwing a garland of honor around their shoulders, and decorating their heads with a graceful chaplet, more precious than rubies. She is a sage and eloquent monitor, lifting up her warning voice at the gates and in the squares of the city, denouncing to the young the snares and dangers to which they are ex- posed, and exhorting them to abandon ' the way of the wicked,' which ' is as darkness,' for the path of the just, which is as the brightening dawn, Advancing and brightening to perfect day. " She is the characteristic attribute, the darling off- spring, of the Deity, who was with him, as his chief object of delight, when he planned the mighty frame of the creation : Jehovah held me the chief of his train Before his works, in the outset. From everlasting was I anointed : From the beginning, from the forecastings of the earth. When there were no abysses I was brought forth ; \\"hen no sluices, redundant with waters ; Ere the mountains were settled, Before the hills was I brought forth ; 190 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF When, as yet, he had not prepared the land or the lakes, Or beautified the dust of the world. When he arranged the heavens I was there ; When he turned the globe over the surface of the abyss; When he established the atmosphere ; When he strengthened the floodgates of the abyss ; When he gave to the sea his commandment That the waters should not overflow its boundary ; When lie hewed out the foundations of the earth ; Then was I with him, a favorite ; Then was I from day to day his delight. " The first idea of this wonderfully sublime description was probably taken from the author of the book of Job, chap, xxxviii. 4 18, whose classical ornaments, and, more particularly, whose occasional Arabisms, Solomon seems to have been peculiarly fond of copying ; but it is in many respects original, and needs not fear a compari- son with the magnificent source from which it has per- haps been derived. " Wisdom, under another similitude, is represented as a princely potentate, preparing a rich banquet in his splendid palace, sending forth his invitations freely in every quarter, and making a proclamation himself from the heights of the city, to all who stand in need of his counsel. Come, feast ye on my feast ; And drink of the wine I have mingled : Forsake the heedless and live, And walk in the way of understanding. Lo ! by me shall thy days be multiplied, And years of life be added unto thee. " The latter part of this allegory has not hitherto been seized by the translators ; but, when correctly rendered, it affords a contrast that adds wonderfully to the general effect : The essence of Folly is turbulence, Thoughtlessness, and vanity. Can she know anything ? She, too, sitteth at the opening of her pavilion ; On the throne of the heights of the citv, To call out to the travellers on their way, Who are rightly pursuing their courses : ' Whoso is thoughtless ~: let him turn in hither.' While to the silly-hearted thus saith she to Iiim, DR. MASON GOOD. 191 ' Sweet are the waters of stealth, And delicious the feast of the clandestine.' But he understandelh not that the ghosts are there, That her guests are in the depths of hell. " With this fearful and forcible stroke, the allegory and the book itself concludes : the general object of the whole being, as already observed, to inculcate upon the young and the yet unsettled in life, the great duties of fearing God, and reverencing parents ; of practising vir- tue, temperance and modesty, and keeping the passions in subjection, and to warn them against pride, arrogance, self-conceit, frowardness, envy, mischief-making, back- biting, hasty and imprudent friendships, and engage- ments ; and above all, profligacy, debauchery, and scof- fing, or making a mock at religion. " PART II. commences at the opening of the tenth chapter, as is obvious from the introductory clause of its first verse, ' The Proverbs of Solomon,' which, indeed, may be regarded as its title. Its range extends to the sixteenth verse of the twenty-second chapter inclusively ; the verse subsequent to this, opening with another exor- dium, and consequently with a third part or book. " The style and manner of the second part are as differ- ent as possible from those of the first : and it is evidently designed for the use of persons who are actually settled in life, and have advanced from the age of youth to that of manhood. And hence, while the preceding duties are occasionally glanced at as of obligation in every stage of life, the endearing phrases of ' my son !' and ' O ye chil- dren !' are entirely dropped, and the writer chiefly incul- cates the virtues of industry, honesty, frugality, fair and upright dealing, prudence, ingenuousness, compassion, mercy to animals, paucity and simplicity of words, hu- mility, reverence of kings and all in authority, family order and subordination, and the wholesome discipline of children: the chief vices denounced and warned against being those of sluggishness, deceit, falsehood, knavery, over-reaching, squandering, hasty and improvident surety- ship, slandering, hypocrisy, idle prating, tale-bearing, backbiting, gluttony and ebriety, pride, wrath and hatred, worldly-mindedness, and confidence in wealth, glory, honor, power, or any other external possession or quality ; 192 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF the sum of the whole being not RICHES but RIGHTEOUS- NESS ; which last is repeatedly designated as the chief source of public as well as of private well-being ; as a state virtue, not less than a domestic and social duty. " To the subject of this book nothing could be better adapted than the style. While in the preceding, which, as already observed, is addressed to the young and the unsettled, the richest ornaments of the fancy are made choice of, to captivate their attention and allure them to a right practice, in the present all is business and activi- ty, brevity, concinnity, and terseness ; every thought, though as highly polished, is, at the same time, as com- pressed as possible ; and the writer, thoroughly aware of the value of every moment of time at this important pe- riod, lays down a complete series of short rules of life, and concentrates the most momentous precepts into the narrowest compass. The former appeals to the imagina- tion, the latter to the judgment : the one exhibits all the genius of poetry, the other all the art of composition ; and hence the general matter is rendered as attractive in the one instance as in the other. " The great object in each of the proverbs or axioms of the present part, is to enforce a moral principle in words so few that they may be easily learned, and so cu- riously selected and arranged that they may strike and fix the attention instantaneously : whilst, to prevent the mind from becoming fatigued by a long series of detach- ed sentences, they are perpetually diversified by the most playful changes of style and figure. " Of these changes it will be sufficient to point out the six following : the attentive reader may discover many others, but it is not necessary to analyze the whole. Sometimes the style is rendered striking by its peculiar simplicity, or the familiarity of its illustration : sometimes by the grandeur or loftiness of the metaphor or simile em- ployed on the occasion : sometimes by a purposed or enigmatical obscurity, which rouses the curiosity : very frequently by a strong and catching antithesis : occasion- ally by a pointed anaphora, or playful iteration of the same word ; and in numerous instances by an elegant pleonasm, or the expansion of a single or common idea by a luxuriance of agreeable words. DR. MASON GOOD. 193 " 1. Of the simple and familiar style we have exam- ples in the following. In the multitude of words there is no lack of blundering ; Therefore he that restraineth his lips is discreet. x. 19. Commit thy doings to Jehovah, And thy purposes shall be established. xvi. 3. The rich and the poor are mixed together, Jehovah is the maker of them all. xxii. 2. "2. Of the grand and lofty style the following may serve as instances : In the path of righteousness is LIFE : Yea, the high way is IMMORTALITY. xii. 28. HELL and DKSTRCCTION are before Jehovah : How much more then the hearts of the sons of Adam. xv. 11. The man that wandereth from the way of understanding Shall make his bed among the assembly of the GHOSTS. xxi. 16. A wise man scaleth the city of the mighty, And casteth down the bulwark of its confidence. xxi. 22. " Which last may be regarded as a parabolic rendering of the maxim announced by Lord Bacon, that ' Know- ledge is power.' " 3. Of the obscure and enigmatical style, I may se- lect the following examples ; in the first and second of which it may be observed, that the key or explanation is given in the latter verse of the couplet. A gift is a precious stone in the eye of its receivers : On whichsoever side it is looked at, it quickeneth. xvii. 8. Acceptable words are a honeycomb ; Sweet to the soul, and healing to the bones. xvi. 24. With the fruit of a man's mouth shall his belly be filled : With the produce of his lips shall he be filled. xviii. 20 17 194 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF " The meaning is, to explain it by another proverb, ' According as a man soweth, so shall he reap.' The fruit of the mouth, of the lips, or of the thoughts, is a common metaphor in sacred poetry, to express ' words ; ' and oc- curs in Isa. Ivii. 19. Jer. vi. 19. Heb. xiii. 15. But the best illustration of the distich is to be found in the paral- lel proverb or parable ofjour Saviour upon eating with un- washen. hands, which is- of the same enigmatical cast and his own explanation of it to his disciples who did not understand its drift: Matt. xv. 11, 15 20. 'Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man, but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.' Then answered Peter, and said unto him, ' Declare unto us this parable.' And Jesus said, ' Are ye, also, yet without understanding ? Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught ? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart, and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man : but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man!' " 4. The antithetic style is that which occurs most fre- quently, and to which the royal writer appears to have been most addicted. Instances of it are to be found in almost every chapter, and sometimes in almost every verse of a chapter. Let the following serve as exam- ples : The heart knoweth its own bitterness : And a stranger cannot participate in its joy. xiv. 10. Get thou wisdom, O ! goodlier than gold ; Yea, get thou understanding, more desirable than silver. xvi. 16. A rebuke cutteth deeper into a wise man Than a hundred times flogging into a fool. xvii. 10. The mouth-wordiness of a man is a pool of water : The well-spring of wisdom a flowing stream. xviii. 4. DR. MASON GOOD. 195 As a roaring lion is the wrath of a king ; Bat as dew upon the grass his favor. xix. 12. Stuff! stuff! saith the buyer, But let him go off with it, then he boasteth. xx. 14. "5. The labored style, which consists in a playful iteration of the same word, is common to various kinds of poetry in the West as well as in the East. In the notes on my translation of Lucretius (vol. i. p. 132, ii. p. 4,) I have given various examples from the Greek and Roman poets, and in those on my translation of the book of Job, I have given several others from the Asiatic poets, and especially from those of Jerusalem. In the work before us we have numerous examples of the same kind, though they have rarely been attended to or preserved by the translators. The following may serve as specimens : Smartly shall he smart who is bail for a stranger ; While he who hateth suretyship is secure. xi. 15. He that walketh with wise men shall be wise ; But the friend of fools shall be friendless. xiii. 20. Whoso returneth evil for good, Evil shall not depart from his house. xvii. 13. He who justifieth the guilty, and he who findcth guilty the just, Verily both of them are an abomination to Jehovah. xvii. 15. " 6. Of the pleonastic or redundant style, we may se- lect the following examples**- To be slow to anger is better than to be valiant ; And to rule one's spirit than to take a city. xvi. 32. The real friend loveth at all times, And in adversity becometh a brother. xvii. 17. Multitudes cling to the countenance of the munificent ; And every one is an adherent to the man of gifts. xix. 6. 196 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF Whoso restraineth his words shall learn knowledge ; Choice of breath is the man of discernment. Even the dolt, while silent, is thought wise ; While shutting his lips, intelligent. xvii. 27, 23. " In this tetrastich there is so striking a resemblance to the following of an elegant Arabic writer, that they ought to be brought together for a comparison. Keep silence then ; nor speak but when besought : Who listens long grows tired of what is told: With tones of silver though thy tongue be fraught, Know this that silence, of itself, is gold. " PART III. is a miscellaneous collection of proverbs and parables, brief axioms, and figurative descriptions and addresses. It is consequently modelled after both the preceding parts, and contains moral instruction for all the different stages of life. It commences with an ob- vious break and apostrophe at the seventeenth verse of the twenty-second chapter, intimates, in the twentieth verse, when correctly rendered, that it is a third under- taking, division, or series of the subject, and that the ar- rangement was made by Solomon himself, and closes with the close of chapter the twenty-fourth. It yields in no respect to either of the preceding : the matter is as important, the diction as spirited and elegant, and the personifications as bold and striking. The introduction is' peculiarly beautiful and impressive : Incline thine ear, and hearken to the words of the wise, And apply thine heart to my instruct! jn. O ! how sweet, if thou keep them in thy bosom. Harmoniously shall they be fitted to thy lips. For the fixing thy trust in Jehovah To-day am I making thoe thoroughly know thyself; Yea, a third time am I not imprinting upon thee Concerning counsels and knowledge ? " The vice of intoxication, and the train of evils that accompany it, are, in this book, painted with a force and accuracy of coloring, that we shall in vain seek for any where else. It extends from the twenty-ninth verse of the twenty-third chapter, to its close ; and the following DR. MASON GOOD. 197 imagery is in the highest style of Oriental excellence, for the full meaning of which the reader may turn to the notes on the passage : Look not on wine when it assumeth the ruby ; When it throweth its eye from the cup. Though it move round with blandishments, In its end it will bite as a serpent, Yea, sting as a cockatrice : Thine eyes shall image profligate women, And thine heart utter incoherencies. " PART IV. is avowedly, as already observed, a post- humous appendix ; consisting of various parabolic com- positions, written and communicated by Solomon on dif- ferent occasions, but never published by himself in an arranged form ; yet altogether worthy of the place they hold in the Sacred Scriptures. It comprises the last seven chapters, and consequently commences with the twenty-fifth chapter. The editors of this part of the work are expressly declared to be the royal scribes or librarians in the reign of Hezekiah, who seem to have acted under the royal command, and were probably Ithiel and Ucal, mentioned in the first verse of chapter the thirtieth, as applying to Agur for documents in his possession, or recollections in his memory. The admon- itory verses composed for king Lemuel by his mother, when he was in the flower of youth and high expecta- tion, and with which the work concludes, are an inimi- table production, as well in respect to their actual mate- rials, as the delicacy with which they are selected. In- stead of attempting to lay down rules concerning matters of state and political government, the illustrious writer confines herself, with the nicest and most becoming art, to a recommendation of the gentler virtues of temper- ance, benevolence, and mercy ; and a minute and un- paralleled delineation of the female character, which might bid fairest to promote the happiness of her son in connubial life. The description, though strictly in con- sonance with the domestic economy of the highest sphere of life, in the early period referred to, and espe- cially in the East, is of universal application, and cannot be studied too closely ; and the value which Solomon ap- 17* 198 ACCOUNT OP THE WORKS OP pears to have set upon this beautiful address is the most striking practical illustration he could give of the impor- tant lesson he so frequently inculcates, Forsake not the precept of thy mother. " From these remarks it must be evident, that a good translation of the book of Proverbs cannot be accom- plished without great difficulties, though difficulties of a peculiar kind. In the book of Job, and in the prophe- cies of Isaiah and Hosea, the text is often in the greatest degree obscure, in consequence of the rapid transition of the writer from one subject or metaphor to another, and the frequent abruptness of his style. In the book before us, the prevailing difficulties are those of following up the particular construction of a verse, seizing the proper sense of what may be regarded as its governing term, and which constitutes the pivot on which the whole turns ; and in finding an equivalent term in the vernacu- lar tongue, capable of expressing a double sense, and of being equally iterated, in all cases in which such itera- tion is playfully introduced, and a double sense is made to appear in the original. Without this, the general moral may, indeed, be caught and communicated, but the fine aroma, the essential and operative spirit, will completely fly off in the distillation ; and what remains will be nothing more than a caput mortuum, or dead letter." TRANSLATION OP THE PSALMS. For the last four or five years of Dr. Good's life, much of his time was devoted to a new translation of " The Book of Psalms, from the Original Hebrew, with an Outline of their History, and explanatory Notes." Dur- ing this period, the Psalter was evidently his chief de- light. To some of his friends he wrote about it ; to others he expatiated upon it orally, read his translations of particular psalms, and developed their peculiarities ; to his family he expounded it, usually with great fervor and pathos. If, when speaking of this comprehensive summary, Luther's " Parva Biblia," he did not charac- terize it in the precise language of Augustine,* and Am- * Tutela pueris, Juvenibus ornamentum, solatium senibus, mulieribus aptissimus decor. August. Prolog, in lib. Psal. DR. MASON GOOD, 109 brose,* or in the quaint expressiveness of old Gerhard,! he evidently blended, in his estimate of its value, all that they have said, if not all that they could think. In one of his latest letters to his constant and valued friend, Dr. Drake, bearing date May 20, 1826 ; after speaking of his " Book of Nature," which he then presented to the Doctor, he proceeds, as with a decided persuasion that he was about to mention his last work : " I have thus been enabled to finish one of the designs on which I have long set my affections ; and it will afford me pleasure to learn that I have hereby given a little mental recreation to a friend, in whose fortunes of joy or sorrow I shall ever take a deep and almost personal interest. " But the time is short ! and a less firm possession of health than formerly is mercifully designed to imprint this most important lesson on my heart. May the gracious Power that is reading it to me, enable me to improve it ! I must, therefore, ' work while it is called to-day.' " I have just completed an entire new version of the Psalter, after the manner of the book of Job : and I have had very great pleasure in going through so rich a treasure of spiritual worth and unrivalled poetry. It has been a great and prime object with me to ascertain the time, place, and circumstances which appertain to each psalm, so as to assign to every one its exact historical position : and a very attentive and critical examination into the subject-matter of the whole, or the bearing of particular words or phrases the drift of scenery, or his- toric facts alluded to, has enabled me, as I trust, satis- * Licet omnis Scriptura Divina Dei gratiam spiret; prsecipue tanicn dulcis Psalmorum liber .... Hisloria instruit ; Lex clocet ; Prophetia an- nunciat ; Correptio castigat ; Moralitas suadet : In Libro Psalmorum pro- fectus est omnium. Amo. in Psal. Dav. prop/at. t The Psalms are a jewel-cluster made up of the gold of doctrine, the pearls of comfort, the gems of prayer. This book is a theatre of God's works, a sweet field and rosary of promises, a paradise of delicious fruits and heavenly delights : an ample sea, wherein tempest-tossed souls find pearls of consolation : an heavenly school, wherein God himself is chief instructer : the flower and quintessence of Scriptures : a glass of divine grace, representing the fatherly countenance of God in Christ : and a most accurate anatomy of the Christian soul, delineating all its affections, mo- tions, temptations, and depths of perplexity] with their proper remedy. Gerhard. Com. Pla. $ 144. 200 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF factorily to accomplish this yet novel undertaking ; and thus to furnish to every separate psalm, if I mistake not, a vastly greater interest than it can otherwise possess. Not that I mean thereby to disturb the esoteric or mysti- cal reference which they so frequently and unquestiona- bly have to the Messiah, or to undervalue the inapprecia- ble labors of the excellent Bishop Home ; but rather to give them more force by a fuller display of their primary and historic sources. " I, therefore, in a preliminary dissertation, give a chronological and general history of the Psalms, in their respective order of time; illustrating each from its own internal and most beautiful evidence, and assigning to each its specific impression, as derived from the deeply interesting historic facts with which it is connected." After Dr. Good's death, the manuscript copy of this work, over which he spent so many portions of his latest and his best days, w T as found completely ready for the press, even to the minutiae of the directions to the printer. According to the arrangement proposed by himself, the work would constitute two volumes octavo, each about 400 pages : the first comprehending the historical out- line, and the translation of the Psalms to the end of Psalm XC ; the second volume to comprehend the remaining psalms, and the notes, critical, philological, and explana- tory. But he adds, in a not a bcne, " If the whole can be printed in one handsome volume, 1 object not." In the historical outline, the author regards it as toler- ably decisive, that we assign not any of the psalms to an earlier epoch than that of Moses, nor to a later than that of Ezra, including the composition of the whole between about 1452 and 415 years before the Christian sera. He marks, as other critics have done, the division of the book into five distinct sections, agreeing with the Ma- sora ; in which the first extends to Psalm xli. inclusively, the second to the close of Psalm Ixxii ; the third to the end of Psalm Ixxxix ; the fourth includes Psalm cvi ; and the fifth comprehends the remaining Psalms. Each of these sections, as the attentive reader will have per- ceived, terminates with a doxology ; such as, ' Blessed be Jehovah, the God of Israel ! From everlasting even to everlasting. Amen, and Amen.' DR. MASON GOOD. 201 Or, as this, 'Blessed be Jehovah-God, the God of Israel, Who alone worketh marvels. Yea, blessed be his glorious Name for ever and ever ; And let his glory fill the whole earth ! Amen, and Amen.' He then takes a cursory glance at the chief probable authors, Moses, David, Heman, Ethan, and Asaph ; and so speaks of the characters of those eminent individuals, as to lead to the inference that " all- the psalms possess the highest authority that human dignity can give them, independently of their being inspired writings, and of their poetic beauty." He next presents a most enter- taining and curious account (perhaps in one or two in- stances a little fanciful,) of the music of the temple, the distinctive characters of the instruments, the probable number of male and female choristers, the number and character of the chiefs of the temple harmony, the ar- rangement for the responses and choruses of the Levites with their brethren opposite to them, " ward over agaimt ward," the office of the Azrahites or Laureates, &c. Dr. Good is disposed to attach a higher value to the authority of the titles to many of the psalms, than has been customary among those who have attempted to in- vestigate this important portion of critical research. In the same department of inquiry, also, he adverts to what he regards as a palpable mistake in rendering a Hebrew term by the words " to the chief musician," where the word musician is entirely interpolated. Dr. Good assigns, in these cases, as the proper rendering, " To the SU- PREME," or, " Upon the SUPREME," according as the text is distinguished by the second or third person. The propriety of this rendering may easily be ascertained, by turning to psalms iv, v, vi, viii, ix, xi, xii, xiii, &x. An equal degree of difficulty has been felt with regard to the meaning of the phrase prefixed to fifteen of the psalms, and usually rendered, " a song of degrees." Dr. Good remarks, that St. Jerom has correctly rendered it, " Canticum Graduum," a song of steps or progress; that the psalms to which the title is prefixed, were, in every instance, sung during a march, or when the people were advancing or stepping forward, as in their triumphant return to Jerusalem after the Babylonish captivity, or ad- 202 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF vancing towards it on one of the annual festivals ; and that the literal rendering in our own tongue, is, " a progressionary or march-song ," colloquially, " a sacred march." This interpretation of the titles, gives to most of these fifteen psalms a peculiar beauty and energy. After some appropriate observations on the acrostic or alphabetic psalms, Dr. Good takes a general view of the subjects which the entire book embraces ; from this I quote the following graphic passage : "We have already observed, that the subjects treated of in the entire collection of the Psalter, embrace every diversity of condition that can characterize either do- mestic or public life. We have hence numerous exam- ples of the sigh of penitence and contrition, the chas- tened meekness of resignation, the holy importunity of prayer, the sustaining confidence of faith, the energetic shout of thanksgiving : descants on the attributes of God, and the general course of his providence arid his grace ; on the regularity and picturesque beauty of the seasons ; on the wonderful structure and phenomena of the heavens, the earth, and the ocean ; the peaceful quiet of rural and pastoral life ; the roar and violence of the tempest, and the terrors of the mariner when in danger of ship- wreck. And, as the national events that are occasionally brought forward, extend from the time of Moses to that of Ezra, the Psalms may be contemplated as an abstract of Jewish history, through the whole of this period ; the incidents chiefly adverted to, many of which are dwelt upon at great length, and described in the most glowing and impressive colors, being the Egyptian bondage, and the miraculous deliverance from it : the signs and mar- vels performed while journeying to the land of Canaan, from the passage of the Red Sea to the overthrow of the devoted nations on either side of the Jordan : the calam- ities that pressed upon David on his entering into public life, and during his proscription by Saul: the wonderful series of his triumphs : his consecration of mount Zion, and removal of the ark to the tabernacle then erected for its reception ; his reverses under the overwhelming in- fluence of an infidel and traitorous faction, in league with a part of his own family : his inauguration of Solo- mon into the regal dignity as his successor ; the celebra- DR. MASON GOOD. 203 tion of the marriage of the latter, apparently with the princess of Egypt : occasional interpositions of miracu- lous power in several subsequent periods of emergency ; especially during the reigns of Jehoshaphat and Heze- kiah : penitential cries for relief during the Babylonian captivity : festals and triumphant eulogies on the marvel- lous deliverance from that humiliated state ; and the an- thems of exulting praise on the rebuilding and opening the temple, and re-establishment of the walls of Jerusalem. " But by far the most important feature of the Psalms to the present and all future times, is their figurative or parabolical character ; the secondary sense, in which they prophetically describe, in lineaments that can sel- dom be mistaken, the life and offices of the Redeemer, the whole mystery of salvation by Christ Jesus. " I dare not say that this esoteric but most important sense is adumbrated in every individual psalm ; because I well know that there are many in which it is not to be found without a very licentious exercise of the fancy, and even then without any advantage from the supposed discovery. But the numerous references to this spiritual signification, which occur in the New Testament, and the striking parallelism of these as well as other passages, in the eye of every one, to particular parts of the great drama that is unfolded in the Gospel dispensation, form an incontrovertible proof, that, in the pre-ordinance of infinite wisdom, the first was from the beginning designed to be a general type of the second." Unquestionably, however, an extraordinary circumspec- tion is required in applying the Psalms, as well as some of the other Old Testament prophecies, to the Messiah, and the events which took place when he appeared on earth. Bishop Home has often failed greatly in this cir- cumspection ; and Bishop Horsley, with his own peculiar boldness, indulged in a license which is utterly repugnant to the principles of sober Biblical interpretation. Dr. Good has, now and then, found difficulty in escaping the seductions of these great names, and especially that of Home, the charm of whose devotional sweetness had, long ago, won his esteem, and, of late years, his warmest affection. If, on this point, I have formed a correct opinion, there are but two rules for the safe and satisfac- 204 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF tory application of passages in the Old Testament to the Messiah ; namely, the undisputed authority of the New Testament, in the way of reference or of quotation ; and the fact that the specific terms of a passage, in their plain, manifest, unforced acceptation, and in the fair scope of the context, so apply to the Saviour, as not to admit of other application but by a violation of ordinary rules of judgment or of grammatical construction. A neglect of these principles has led many excellent men to apply various passages of the Old Testament to the primitive "Gospel times" generally and exclusively, (such as Amos ix. 11 14 ; Isaiah xxviii. 20. xlix. 14 26. \\\. 4 6. Ixvi. 5 24.) which evidently, however they may be partially verified in that early season, can only receive their entire accomplishment in the ulterior recovery of the Jews on their final and universal conversion to Christ. In selecting a few specimens of Dr. Good's translations and introductory or connected remarks, I shall commence with that which, in a chronological arrangement, would be placed first in the series. After adverting to various portions of Scripture, which are evidently rhythmical, and as evidently composed by Moses, he proceeds thus : " There is no great difficulty in assigning the precise occasion on which the present psalm was composed. It is called " The Prayer of Moses," and was manifestly written during the visitation of some judicial pestilence or other calamity, that produced a tremendous destruction among the people, in which, according to the words of the psalm, Thou ovenvhelmedst them with a look.* So are we consumed by thine ire, And hurried away by thy wrath. And if we turn to the book of Numbers, we shall find the PRAYER here adverted to, and the calamity so feelingly described, related in an historical detail of the plague of fiery serpents inflicted upon the Israelites on account of their murmuring and refractory spirit at Zalmonah, or Pum, where the people died in great multitudes. The * For an explanation of this or any other deviation from the common ivndering. the reader must consult the explanatory notes upon the several passages. DR. MASON GOOD. 205 words of the historian are, ' Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned against the Lord and against thee ; PUAY THOU unto the Lord that he take away the serpents from us :' AND MOSES PRAYED FOR THE PEOPLE.* " The subject of the prayer is in perfect unison with the occasion. The holy supplicant begins with adoring the almighty power of God, and pleads with him as the dwelling-place or home of his people in all generations : he draws a forcible picture of the vanity and feebleness of man, and the inequality of the contest between the creature and the Creator. He urges the penitence and abasement of the assembled congregation ; and implores for grace to make a due improvement of the awful ca- lamity : So teach MA- to number our days That we may apply our hearts to wisdom :t and closes with a humble trust in God's mercy for a re- moval of the scourge, and a restoration of the divine favor. | " Dr. Kennicott, however, and various other critics, disbelieved this psalm to have been the production of Moses, and refer it to a much later age, though they can- not agree as to what other age it is expressly adapted : some of them even going so late as to the return from the Babylonian captivity. The chief ground for this dissent from the date assigned in the Bible, is an idea that the term of man's life was, at the Mosaic era, much longer than that of seventy or eighty years, as intimated in the present psalm. But such an opinion seems founded on the exceptions from the general rule, rather than the rule itself. The life of Aaron, Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, un- questionably exceeded the age of fourscore considerably, and ran on from a hundred and ten, to a hundred and twenty ; but all these were probably instances of special favor. The decree which abbreviated the life of man, as a general rule, to seventy or eighty years, was given as a chastisement upon the whole race of Israelites in the wil- derness ; and with these few exceptions, none of them, * Num. xxi. 7. t Psalm xc. 12. | Psalm xc. 1317. 18 206 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF at the date of this psalm, as here conjectured, could have reached more than seventy, and few of them so high a number. But it does not appear that the term of life was lengthened afterwards. Samuel died about seventy years old, David under seventy-one, and Solomon under sixty : and the history of the world shews us that the abbrevia- tion of life in other countries was nearly in the same pro- portion. " In few words, the very fact of this curtailment of man's duration, as occurring at the period before us, to- gether with the nature of the crime for which the refrac- tory Israelites were punished, their lusting after other food than that they were miraculously supplied with, is clearly hinted at in the eighth and ninth verses of the psalm, and seems very sufficiently to support the present appropriation : Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, Our SECRET LUSTING in the light of thy countenance. HOW UTTERLY ARE OUR DAYS CHANGED BV THINE IRE! WE RUN THROUGH OUR YEARS AS A TALE : whilst the rapidity of the change, the suddenness as well as the extent of the mortality that passed upon them, is forcibly as well as fearfully expressed in the third verse as well as the fifth : Thou turnest man to dust as thou sayest. Return ye sons of the* ground ! Thou overwhelmest them with a look." PSALM XC. The prayer of Moses, the Man of God. 1. O Lord, thou art our dwelling-place From generation to generation. 2. Before the mountains were brought forth, Or thou hadst formed the earth or the world. From everlasting to everlasting thou art God. 3. Thou turnest man to dust, as thou sayest ' Return, ye sons of the ground !' 4. While in thy view a thousand years are as a day, A yesterday, when it is by-gone, Or a watch in the night : * Consult the explanatory note for this rendering. DR. MASON GOOD. 5. Thou overwhelmest them with a look. In the morning they were like grass, they were fresh : 6. In the morning it was flourishing and fresh ; By the evening it is cut down and withered. 7. So are we consumed by thine anger ! And hurried away by thy wrath ! 8. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee ; Our secret lusting in the light of thy countenance. 9. How utterly are our days changed by thine ire ! We run through our years as a tale. 10. The days of our years are seventy years at their utmost ; And if by dint of strength they be eighty years, Yet is their recruiting weariness and vanity ; So soon is it cut down, and we are gone. 11. But who regardeth the power of thine anger ? With a reverence of thee, thine indignation ? 12. So teach us to number our days That we may apply our hearts to wisdom. 13. Return, O Jehovah ! how long first ? And relent thou concerning thy people. 14. O soon let thy loving-kindness replenish us, That we may exult and rejoice all our days. 15. Let us rejoice according to the days thou hast afflicted us, The years we have seen of adversity. 16. Let thy dealing be displayed to thy servants ; And thy glory to their children. 17. And let the pleasure of the Lord our God be upon us ; And establish thou the work we take in hand, Yea, the work we take in hand, do thou establish. Some portions of the 49th psalm have, I believe, pre- sented greater difficulties to translators than almost any part of the Hebrew scriptures. This psalm, in Dr. Good's opinion, was consecrated to the service of the passover, and refers to a divine ransom, and the utter impossibility of man's finding or making an atonement for himself, or for any one else. The psalmist invites universal atten- tion to this important truth " And hence proceeds to show the folly and brutish- ness of toiling for the body and accumulating wealth and estates, while the care of the soul, ' the one thing need- ful,' is neglected and forgotten. And it concludes with the striking observation, that the worldling himself, how much soever he may labor to inculcate his maxims and practice upon all around him in a time of health and pros- perity, will yet do justice, when leaving the world, to the higher and more dignified pursuits of the good man, in 208 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF the midst of that besottedness of his rational powers which has sunk him to a level with the beasts that perish." The propriety of this view will depend principally upon the correctness with which Dr. Good assumes sons of the ground, or groundlings, for the due rendering of the ori- ginal. His reasons are given in the notes, and the He- brew critic will decide as to their force and validity. PSALM XLIX. ON THE SUPREME. A Psalm by the Sons of Korah. 1. Hear this, all ye peoples, Give ear, all ye inhabitants of the world ; 2. Both sons of the ground, and sons of substance ; Ye rich and ye poor together. 3. My mouth shall discourse of wisdom, Yea, the theme of my heart shall be understanding. 4. I will bend mine ear to a parable ; I will utter my burden upon the harp. 5. Why should I fear in these days of evil That the iniquity of my supplanters should circumvent me ? 6. They that trust in their riches, That boast of the greatness of their wealth, 7. No man can pay the ransom of his brother, Or offer to God his own atonement ; 8. (So costly is the redemption of their souls ! So faileth it continually !) 9. That he should still live on, That he should never see corruption. 10. For one beholdcth the wise die As well as the fool and the brutish. They perish, and leave to others their riches. 11. Their houses arc their subject for ever, Their mansions from generation to generation. They call their grounds after their names : 12. But the GROUNDLING in the midst of splendor endureth not ; He is like the beasts they are on a level. 13. Such is their conduct their folly, Yet will their posterity incline to their course. (Selah.) 14. They are stowed like sheep in the grave ; Death shall feed upon them ; And the just shall triumph over them in the morning: For their STRENGTH is utter DISSOLUTION ; The grave is their home. 15. But God shall redeem my soul : DR. MASON GOOD. 209 From the grasp of the grave Assuredly shall he take me away. (Selah.) 16. Fear not thou when one is made rich ; When the glory of his house is increased. 17. For in his death he shall carry off nothing whatever ; His glory shall not descend after him. 18. Though while he lived he gratified his own soul, Then shall he laud thee for acting well for thyself. 19. He shall go to the generation of his fathers ; Never more shall they see the light. 20. The GROUNDLING in the midst of splendor, but without understanding, Is like the beasts they are on a level. Of psalm ii. Dr. Good thus speaks " This psalm has descended to us without a title ; but its exact place in the Jewish chronology is obvious, and we have the authority of the New Testament that it was composed by David himself, and with a more emphatic reference to the great Son of David than to his own per- sonal history. It is impossible, indeed, to read it in the present day, without tracing out much of that secondary or esoteric meaning which is so common to the language of the book of Psalms ; or without perceiving that by the ' multitudes that murmur in vain' is strikingly typified the fickle and ungrateful people of Israel ; by ' the rulers that took counsel together,' the Jewish Sanhedrim ; and by ' the heathen' that joined in the ' rage,' Herod and his followers, who sought to destroy our Saviour when an in- fant, and Pilate who condemned him, and the Roman soldiers who crucified him. While in the general triumph which pervades the poem, and especially in the para- mount decree of universal empire which it announces, we have a clear anticipation of the glorious events of our own times, and the still more glorious successes of which they are but the harbingers." Dr. Good's translation is as follows. PSALM II. 1. Why do the heathen rage ; And the people murmur in vain ; 2. The kings of the earth array themselves ; And the rulers take counsel together Against Jehovah, and against his Anointed? 3. ' Let us break their bands asunder, *18 210 ACCOUNT OF THE WORKS OF And cast their cords away from us.' 4. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh : The Lord shall have them in derision. 5. Thus shall he accost them in his wrath, And confound them in his indignation : 6. ' Verily have I invested my king Upon my holy hill of Zion.' 7. I will proclaim the decree Jehovah hath announced concerning me ; ' Thou art my Son ! This day have 1 begotten thee. i 8. Ask of me and I will give The heathen for thine inheritance ; Yea, the limits of the earth for thy possession. 9. Thou shalt crush them with a rod of iron ; Thou shalt shiver them like a potter's vessel.' 10. Be wise now, therefore, O ye kings ! Be admonished, ye judges of the land ! 11. Obey Jehovah with fear, And rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son lest he be angry, And ye perish straightway When his wrath is but just kindled. Blessed are all they that take refuge in him ! The fourteenth and fifty-third psalms, which are almost verbally alike throughout, are generally thought to have been composed by David ; and Dr. G. supposes in a time when profligacy, everywhere gaining ground, had be- come almost universal. If it were in this fearful state of things that the royal prophet composed these psalms, they cannot but be regarded as peculiarly expressive. I shall here present Dr. Good's translation of PSALM XIV. ON THE SUPREME : BY DAVID. 1. 'No God !' saith the profligate in his heart. They are corrupters: they practise abominable ascendancy. Not one doeth good. 2. Jehovah looked down upon mankind from heaven, To see if there were any that had understanding To seek after God. 3.. They are all led astray ; They are altogether contaminated : Not one doeth good not even one. DR. MASON GOOD. 211 4. Have all the dealers in iniquity no sense, Devouring my people as they devour bread ? They call not upon Jehovah ! 5. Fearfully therefore shall they fear. Behold, God is in the community of the just. 6. Ye would put to shame the adversary of the helpless ! Behold, Jehovah is their refuge : 7. Who shall give forth from Zion salvation unto Israel : Then shall he reverse the bondage of his people ; Jacob shall exult, Israel shall leap for joy. The 110th psalm, which was also composed by David himself, has every indication of its prophetic character. It forms a striking parallelism with the 2d psalm. " Both (says Dr. Good) relate to the priesthood and kingly dignity, to the exaltation and enthronement of Messiah, and to his triumphant career over his enemies. Both also contain the solemn adjuration of Jehovah, upon his installation, in the words of the Almighty speaker himself, confirmed by a repetition of the oath, King David being also, in both odes, the utterer of all the rest in his own person. The chief distinction consists in the clear and exclusive application of the whole of the pre- sent psalm to the history of the Messiah." PSALM CX. A Psalm of David. 1. Jehovah hath proclaimed to my Lord, ' Be thou seated on my right hand Until I make thine enemies thy footstool.' 2. From Zion shall Jehovah stretch forth The sceptre of thy might ; Triumphantly in the midst of thine enemies. 3. Exuberant shall be thy people In the day of thy power ; In the glories of holiness. Beyond the womb of the morning Shall flow forth the dew of thine increase. 4. Jehovah hath sworn, and he will not repent, ' For evermore art thou a Priest After the order of Melchisedcc.' 5. At THY right hand shall my Lord Strike through kings in the day of his wrath : 6. He shall give judgment among the heathen. 212 ACCOUNT OP THE WORKS OF The chief glutted with carnage Shall he smite throughout the wide earth. 7. The occupier in the way shall he set on high, So that he shall be exalted a chief. The psalms being obviously intended for the public worship of the Jews, are many of them adapted to choral and responsive singing; it is evident, therefore, that an attention to this peculiarity in their structure, will often serve to give them additional spirit and energy, and often, indeed, to elucidate their meaning. Some striking and elegant attempts to develope the minutire of structure in this respect have been made by Delany, in his " Life of King David," by Kennicott, Horsley, and others; but the process requires the utmost caution, lest the imagina- tion should take the lead of the judgment. Dr. Good, with his anxious desire to exfoliate the true meaning of these divine compositions, has, on various occasions, ex- hibited his view of the probable choral division of the poem. Thus, in psalm cxviii. which he regards as written by David, for a thanksgiving ode on a successful termina- tion of the wars in which he had been engaged, to be sung by the assembled Israelites, with the priests, &c. David himself taking a part ; he presents the following, as the most probable choral divisions. PSALM CXVIII. (General Chorus, or House of Israel.) 1. O give thanks to Jehovah, for he is good : For his tender mercy is to everlasting. (Chorus of Priests, or House of Aaron.) 2. Let Israel, now, declare That his tender mercy is to everlasting. (General Chorus.) 3. Let the house of Aaron, now, declare That his tender mercy is to everlasting. (Chorus of Priests.) 4. Let them, now, that fear Jehovah, declare That his tender mercy is to everlasting. (King David.) 5. I called upon Jehovah in distress ; Jehovah answered me at large. DR. MASON GOOD. 213 6. Let Jehovah be for me, I will not fear Whatever man may do unto me. 7. Let Jehovah be for me, be with my succour ; And of mine adversaries I will never be afraid. (Chorus of Priests.) 8. It is better to trust in Jehovah Than to put confidence in man. 9. It is better to trust in Jehovah Than to put confidence in princes. (King David.) 10. Let all the nations beset me round about, In the name of Jehovah, behold, I would destroy them. 11. Let them beset me, yea, round about let them beset me, In the name of Jehovah, behold, I would destroy them. 12. They have beset me as bees ; They are quenched as the blaze of thorns.* In the name of Jehovah, bohold, I have destroyed them. 13. Forcibly didst thou thrust at me ; But Jehovah succoured me in the assault. 14. Jehovah is my strength and my song : Verily, he is become my salvation. (Chorus of Priests.) 15. Let the voice of triumph and salvation Be in the tabernacle of the righteous. The right hand of Jehovah hath displayed prowess. (General Chorus.) 16. The right hand of Jehovah is exalted : The right hand of Jehovah hath displayed prowess. (King David.) 17. I shall not die ; but live, And tell forth the deeds of Jehovah. * Dr. Delany, in his " Life of King David," (vol. i. p. 373.) dilates very forcibly upon the rich and beautiful imagery of this celebrated " epinicion." " It is familar (he says) with David, to couch such images in three words, as would, in the hands of Homer, be the materials of his noblest, most en- larged, and most dignified descriptions." Thus, he takes two examples from this twelfth verse : " They (that is, all nations) compassed me about like bees ; " They are quenched as the Jire of thorns. " The reader (says the Doctor) has here, in miniature, two of the finest images in Homer," and he quotes two passages from Pope's Homer, book ii. ver. 209, &c. ver. 534,