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grave fulness, not exhaling, we very honestly prepare tartarous matter for the gout, for the beneficial gout, which gives us pain without danger." "Second, The gout is no constant companion, but allows his patients lucid joyous intervals.

"Human nature is so framed, that no one thing is agreeable to it always, therefore it is well for us, that the world is so full of changes. It is true, that there is some pain in the gout, and ought to be, for constant health has no relish, 'tis an insipid dull thing. That reverend Calvinist, Dr. Twiss, affirms, that 'tis better to be damned than annihilated. I might, I suppose, with less offence, affirm, that 'twere better to be dead, than never to be sick of the gout. How often have I heard a grave adviser, one that had tried health and sickness for many years, tell the robust, young, riotous fellow, that he knew not the value of health. No, how should he, having never been sick? But why should his sober adviser press him to be careful of his health? That's the way never to understand the deliciousness of it— by that time he gets the gout, he'll thoroughly understand the matter, I'll warrant him! Who would spoil the refined pleasure of his recovery, by wishing to have one angry throb, one heavy groan abated him? Si parvis componere magna liceret, the gout is to health, as ham and tongue to wine, or rather, as Zon kai vxn to the lover's congress. I am much of the mind, sir, that by what I have said already, you are a coming proselyte; but before I have done with you, you shall chuse to part with your eyes rather than your true friend the gout.

"Third, The gout presents you with a perpetual almanack.

"Barometers, thermometers, and other inventions of men, not yet perfect masters of their art, serve more for delight than the use of the curious; but the useful pains of the gout give your honour trusty prognostics of the seasons. Spinoza will have it, that when a Jewish prophet foretold any thing, he gave a sign, a present sign, which was a confirmation of his prophesy; you have the sign within you, sir, in the internodia of your bones, and are a true prophet all over.

"The gout never twitches their nerves, but they will be telling others what changes are towards. Now, that which I propose is this, that people should not think it enough to know thus much of the gout, but study to improve and increase their knowledge; for no doubt more may be made of this blessing, than ever yet was done by the happy man that has enjoyed it longest. I am persuaded, that if the fortunate patient would be at the pains to observe all the motions of the gout, in his pinchings, smartings, galling accesses, in his gnawing, stabbing, burning paroxysms, he might quickly come to wind a storm, so long before, that in a short time no owners would think their ship safe, but with a gouty master, nor would any experienced seaman, that wanted a ship, offer himself to the merchants but on crutches.

"Fourth, Gouty persons are most free from the head-ach.

"The heavy recrements of the blood and nervous juice always fall downward to the gouty joints. The nerves of the head, the fibres and the membranes, and lastly, the skin itself, are all freed from a world of torment by means of the medicinal gout, which attracts to exterior remote parts vicious humours, and there sets them on fire, wastes and evacuates them. Persons much favoured by the gout are at this happy period quite freed from headach. It is possible, says Confucius, for a lame gouty person to be a knave, even in our own country have I known some such; but who ever knew a gouty cripple that was a fool? A Mandarin of the same race remarks that, natural fools never acquire the gout; the sons of gouty persons are defended from dulness and folly, by the sins of their parents, or if in their minority their understandings happen to lie a little backward, they shall no sooner enter on their gouty inheritance, but a bright illumination brings the same forward. The brain becomes so defecated by the gout, that I knew a gentleman but an ordinary writer in common, who, when he had the gout, wrote like an angel.

"Fifth. The gout preserves its patients from the great danger of fevers. "Gouty persons, by reason of a fixed dyscrasy of the blood, are not

obnoxious to fevers. As they live free from the dreadful pains of the headach, so likewise from the scorching heat of fevers. I pity the young and healthy not for their present ease, but because of their imminent danger. A cheerful glass may perchance throw him into a fever, and that fever perchance cost him his life; whereas the man that's blest with the gout, fearlessly ventures the duty of the table, well knowing that when the worst comes to the worst, 'tis but roaring in purgatory some forty days or so, and by that time the gout has carried off clean all food for fever. They turn out, like burnt tobacco pipes, clean and pure, and fit for paradise. Such is a true picture of the fire of the gout which spends the morbific matter that might otherwise throw the body into a hellish fever. So that 'tis a truth, clear as the sun, if more people had the gout, fewer would die of a fever. Having placed these things in so clear a light, I am strongly persuaded that not your Worship only, but the generality of the age will set their prejudices aside, and yield to the happy force of the many useful truths, which by the bright illumination of a violent gout-paroxysm, I have here discovered; so that hereafter, instead of the old parting compliments-save you, sir; God keep you in good health-I question not but we shall say-the gout defend you, sir; God give you the gout:-for we ought not to hope for a blessing without the means. To wish a man the gout is to wish him that, which withdraws fuel from diseases, and preserves life at so cheap a rate, it costs a man not a penny more than patience.

"It has been the opinion of some writers, that none can be saved who die of the plague, but in judging of the future state of others, I think it best to venture being mistaken on the charitable side; and, therefore, I would sooner believe that none can be damned who have the gout.

"Sixth. To crown the honour of the gout, it is not to be cured.

"The gout defies all your gross galenical methods, and all your exalted chemical preparations; for the conjunct causes thereof, as the learned WILLIS Confesses, lie in parts so very remote that the virtues of no medicines can reach them; and heaven be praised for it, for why, sir, would you cure (as you call it) the gout, which gives you pain without danger, a better taste of health by an acquaintance with pain; a knowledge of future things; freedom from the head-ach, and from fevers? The doctor and not the gout is your enemy. We may say of every medicaster, whether a college or a stage doctor, habemus confitentem reum; the whole clan of them are homicides by their own confession. The principles of their art, they say, are difficult to be understood, and uncertain to be relied on; and then also the temperament of the body, on which they practise, can be but guessed at ; so that the success of the most learned practitioner can be but casual. Now, that after this, these men should be entertained, and so general admittance given to their practice, does evidently prove that the generality of men, when they lose their health, lose their wits too.

"GALEN, who is still revered as a God by modern practitioners, acknowledges it impossible to find out a medicine that shall do any great good one way, and not do as much hurt another. Trust to nature. Nature throwing off morbific matter to the remoter parts of the body does designedly beget the gout, and make use of that admirable remedy to cure diseases already gotten, and to prevent others. But it is not mere reason which I rely on, when I advise men to trust nature alone for their recovery, and never go to a doctor; I have the greatest authority to support my advice.

"2 Chron. 16. 12.-Asa, in the 39th year of his reign, was diseased in his feet (as I am now, which hinders me from running to my commentators) but I remember the phrase of the Septuagint is εμαλακισθη της πόδας, his feet were soft and tender-swelled with the gout; that must be the meaning; until his disease was exceeding great, yet in his disease, ev ry paλakia_avre, in the extreme softness and tenderness of his gout, he sought not to the Lord, but to the physician. I do not see how our doctors of physic can evade the force of this text, in defence of their profession; for it is a very weak and precarious reply, which they make, when they tell us that Asa is blamed, not directly for secking to the physicians, but for not trusting in the Lord, when he sought to them. Now I will grant these gentlemen, that it is the duty

of patients to trust in the Lord, when they seek to the physicians; nay, it is their duty to trust in the Lord then, above any other time; for then they run themselves into those hazards, that, if the Lord does not help them, they play against the long odds. But I would have these physicians, who make but sorry interpreters of Scripture, to consider that the text sets seeking the Lord, and seeking the physician, in opposition to one another; plainly enough implying that the former was his duty, the latter his fault. But our physicians, it seems, would have the sick seek to the Lord and them both; as if the Lord could not do his own work without them. Let all honest gentlemen, who are preserved by the salutary gout in the land of the living, prefer a bill in parliament against this destructive order of men, that by a strong cathartic act, they may be purged out of his Majesty's dominions: I will engage that there's never a family in the nation, but shall by this means, besides their health, save their taxes.

on, is the superlative The fear of losing a

"But I digress. What I ought chiefly to insist excellence of the gout, which is never to be removed. blessing takes off from the pleasure of enjoying it. Thieves may plunder your house, age will ruin your beauty, envy may asperse your reputation, bribes corrupt your faith, but the gout is a sure inheritance; neither thieves nor knaves; neither time, nor envy, nor any thing else, can despoil you of it. A man may himself, if he has a mind to it, squander his estate, blemish his comely form, injure his fame, and renounce his honesty ; but let him get rid of the gout if he can-that blessing he may take comfort in, being secure that it is for his life. They say there's more care and trouble in keeping an estate than getting it; as for the gout, there may be some trouble in getting it, tho' that is mixt with pleasure too, but no man is put to the least care or trouble for the safe keeping of the gout. Possibly a wise and worthy person may secure his virtue against dangerous temptations, but then he must be always upon his guard; but let him take as little care of himself as he pleases, he shall never have the less gout for his loose way of living." Our author now concludes his epistle of 70 pages, by professing that he is unable to proceed in consequence of an abatement of his paroxysms, sensible," as he observes, "that no man can do honour to the gout by a just and adequate panegyric, except he, at the time of writing, feels it in extremity."

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Considering that a work must be written before it is dedicated, he chuses advisedly to place the dedication at the end. It is, " to all the numerous offspring of Apollo, whether dogmatical sons of art, or empirical by-blows;" and conceiving that his epistle will spoil their trade, he recommends them" to travel"

to Botany Bay probably, as an excellent spot for the study of simples. "You have known," says he, 66 an overgrown farrier from abroad make a great doctor in England;" and, as one good turn deserves another, he adds, "why should not you make as good farriers abroad as they do doctors here?" The fees, it is true, will not be so high, but "you can't," he exclaims, “in conscience expect as much for killing a horse, as a man." And should they be at a loss for an apology for this professional change, he directs them to say, "that when the devils were ejected out of human bodies, they were suffered to enter into swine.”

E. D.

SKETCH OF FOREIGN LITERATURE.

GERMANY.

The Easter Fair at Leipsig. In a letter from Professor B

WHATEVER Complaints may sometimes be made of the decline of literature, it must be owned that they do not appear to be countenanced by the German book fair at Leipsig,

which is a central point of innumerable ramifications. Besides 60 houses in the town itself, (half of which, however, rather carry on business as commissioners for other houses in different parts of Germany,) there are in Germany, and other countries where German is spoken, no less than 300, the greater of which send their

representatives to this fair; nay, we had partners of four Paris houses (among which we must particularly mention the highly respected firm of Treuttel and Wurtz), two from London, Black and Bohte, and eight from houses in Denmark, Sweden, St. Petersburg, aud the Russian provinces on the Baltic, who attended in person. It is true, indeed, that the voluminous catalogue contains many trifling articles, many old friends with new faces (i. e. new titles), and a great deal of literary rubbish. But even the mere manufacture gives subsistence to a multitude of papermakers, printers, book-binders, &c. &c. How many thousand blossoms fall, in each succeeding spring, unproductive, to the ground! But, at the same time, the fairest fruit thrives and comes to maturity, et pleno defundit Copia cornu. The standing complaints of the German booksellers, viz. the plunder of literary property by piracy, and the restrictions of the censorship, were heard as usual on this occasion; but there was nowhere any impediment to the most active interchange of ideas (let us recollect the sixth edition of the Lexicon of Conversation, and of the fourth division of the ample and accurate Supplements, from which the article Greece was immediately translated into English); and freedom of expression, within legal bounds, is every where admitted. Cheap editions are printed to counteract the manoeuvres of those who thrive by pirating the property of the rightful publisher. That of Schiller is now completed. The works of Klopstock and Wieland, on the same plan, are now publishing by Goschen, and those of Jacobi by a house at Zurich. Several houses have united to publish the works of esteemed authors; for instance, Heeren's works, of which the last volumes (x. xi. xii.) contain the account of the Asiatic nations of antiquity, entirely re-written. We consider it as a pleasing proof of the solidity of the instruction given to youth in the German high schools and universities, that nearly oneeighth part of the new publications appertain to the classic literature of Greece and Rome. Series of Greek and Roman authors, very various in price and size, appear at once at ten different publishers; among these the stereotype editions of Tauchnitz, and

those of Weigel and Teutner in Leipsig, are very useful in diffusing Greek literature as much as possible. Philologers were gratified with Bahr's Ctesias, Bornemann's Symposion of Xenophon, Galen (which will make 16 volumes), the Greek tragedians (together 20 new editions), Cicero (alone occupying 16 articles), Horace (nearly completed by Döring), the Greek lexicographers, the collection of the Roman jurists, the Greek dictionaries of Riemer and Passow, now completed, and several very good translations, for instance, from the Anthology, by Jacobs, in the Life and Arts of the Ancients, and Aratus, by Voss. In ancient geography, we had the 12th sheet of Reichard's Orbis Antiquus, containing ancient Germany, and the work belonging to it-Germany under the Romans; and the new edition of the Map of Peutinger, executed by Mannert, under the auspices of the Bavarian Academy, had a great sale. Two-eighths of the new publications consist of voyages, travels, descriptions of countries, &c. in which we may observe that the attention of the Germans is particularly directed to Brazil by the Travels and plates of the Prince of Neuwied, and of the Bavarian academicians, Spix and Martins; by the accounts of Freireis and Von Eschwege, and of Schäffer, physician to the Empress of Brazil, who was sent to Vienna, and is now gone back to Rio de Janiero, his Brazil, published at Altona, may be supposed to contain the best as well as the latest information. The finest book of the fair is Baron Minutoli's Journey to the Oases and Upper Egypt, edited in a most masterly manner by Professor Tolken, and illustrated with 38 plates and maps. Nor must we omit the twelfth number of Gau's splendid work on Nubia. The great geographical work of Hassel deserves honourable mention. In theology, in which the dictionaries of Bretschneider and Gesenius are particularly to be distinguished, the controversy between Catholics and Protestants respecting mixed marriages is the order of the day; as in medical science, that between dynamic medicine, and Hahnemann's Homöopathy, with the profession; and in jurisprudence, the question of the publicity of judicial proceedings. Literary history has been enriched

by the revised edition of Wachler's Manual, now completed in three parts; the Ancient History of Greece, by Otto Müller's Dorians; and modern history by the third volume of Raumer's Princes of the house of Hohenstaufen, and Menzel's History of our Times. Regenerated Greece alone has employed the pens of 40 narrators and compilers. Almost three-eighths of our literary productions belong to the various departments of natural history, and especially botany. Göthe's Morphology has given a great impulse in this respect. There is a multitude of Encyclopedias and Historical Dictionaries, compressing wisdom into pocket books, and cutting up science into slices: we are rejoiced, however, at seeing that truly classical production of German assiduity, Ersch and Gruber's Universal Encyclopedia advanced another step by the publication of the twelfth part, which comes to the dramatic poet Brezner.

A great portion of the sum which the generality can allot to literature, as well as of the time that they can devote to reading, is absorbed by our daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals, to the multitude of which already existing, the catalogue of the present fair presents us with an addition of twenty-four new ones; one of the best of these is the Rheinische Morgenzeitung, called also "Charis," edited by Baron Von Erlach, which has been published since the beginning of this year, four times a week, by Groos, at Heïdelburg. If the insatiable appetite of the public that daily devours a novel or a tragedy (and to supply which the 300 circulating libraries of the lowest kind, scattered through Germany, possess an ample store, of novels that no person of education reads, and plays that are never performed) is not left unprovided for in this thick catalogue, there are, on the other hand, many productions of merit, by Tieck, Schilling, Laun, Van der Velde, &c.; a volume of tales by F. Jacobs; Pictures of Switzerland, by Zschokke; the New Thousand and One Nights, that is, such of the tales in the Arabian Nights as have not before been published, translated from Arabic into French, by Mr. Joseph Von Hammer, and from the French manuscript into German. Maps make JULY, 1824.

a distinct article, not only in the catalogue, but in the trade of the Leipsig booksellers. Each of the houses in this line has its own Geographer. We leave it to judges in these matters to decide, whether Weiland, for the Industriecomptoir, at Weimar; Stieler, for Perthes in Gotha; Spohr, for the Kunstcomptoir, at Brunswick; or Reichard and Mannert, for Campe, in Nuremberg, deserve the preference; but they will certainly not overlook the fine map of South Germany, by Green, publishing by Cotta; the improved Historical Atlas, by Kruse; Kärcher's Ancient Geography for Schools; and the beautiful and accurate maps published at Vienna. It is only to be lamented that the Austrian government seems to act on the principle of discouraging all kinds of literary intercourse with other countries. Thus there were only two booksellers in person at the fair, from all the extensive and flourishing states which compose the Austrian empire. Scarcely any of the numerous maps published in the Imperial capital were anywhere to be met with, and only the great topographical map of Gallicia and Lodomiria in thirteen sections was to be seen in commission at Mr. Vogel's, Leipsig. In the department of the fine arts we had, besides Gau's Nubia already mentioned, Boisserée's Cathedral of Cologne, the 8th number of Lithographic and Copper-plates, after Boisserées gallery of Ancient Paintings at Stuttgard, the 33d number of the Lithographic plates from the Royal gallery of Munich and Schleisheim. As a magnificent treat for the eye we were gratified with Mr. Whitaker's brilliant work, representing the Coronation of his Majesty the King of England, which was brought by Bohté from London. Another splendid production, such as we have not for many years had from the English press, and which is not merely a book of pictures, is a critical inquiry into Ancient Armour, by Dr. Meyrick, in 3 vols. large 4to. We have here a vast number of finely coloured plates of kings, knights, and warriors, in various costume and armour. Such a series of accurate representations chronologically arranged would be very valuable without any addition; but their value is greatly enhanced by a dissertation,

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