petually which noble discovery proved the happy occasion of the invention of the wonderful Newtonian philosophy. Though we have already embraced more than the usual number of names in our present remarks, we have still to notice Arbuthnot and Defoe in this connection. JOHN ARBUTHNOT, one of the most celebrated wits in the reign of Queen Anne, and the son of an Episcopal clergyman of Scotland, nearly allied to the noble family of that name, was born at Arbuthnot, near Montrose, soon after the Restoration, and educated at the university of Aberdeen, where he took the degree of doctor of medicine, about 1685. The Revolution deprived his father of his church preferment, and though he possessed a small paternal estate, yet necessity obliged the son to seek his fortune abroad. He accordingly went to London, and for some years supported himself by teaching mathematics; but in 1695, on the appearance of Dr. Woodward's Essay towards a Natural History of the Earth, he published An Examination of that work, which at once gave him no small degree of literary fame. His extensive learning, and facetious and agreeable conversation, gradually introduced him into practice, and he eventually became eminent in his profession, the immediate introduction to which was the following incident: At Epsom, where Dr. Arbuthnot was passing a short time, Prince George of Denmark was suddenly taken ill, and there being no more distinguished physician in the place, he was called in to his assistance. His treatment was happily successful, and his Highness having recovered, thenceforth employed Arbuthnot as his physician. In 1709 he was appointed physician in ordinary, to Queen Anne, and admitted a fellow of the Medical College, having some time previous obtained admission into the Royal Society. His gentle manners, polite learning, and excellent talents, now introduced him to the friendship of Pope, Swift, and Gay; and in 1714 he engaged with the two former, in a design to write a satire on the general abuse of human learning, under the history of feigned adventures. The death of Queen Anne, however, at this critical period, frustrated their design, and nothing ever appeared of the intended performance, but the commencement of the memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus. Dr. Warburton informs us that Gulliver's Travels, the treatise of the Profound of Literary Criticism on Virgil, and the Memoirs of a Parish Clerk, are only so many detached fragments of this work. The queen's death, and the disasters which attended that sad event, to Arbuthnot and many of his friends, sunk so deeply upon his spirits, that to relieve his melancholy, he paid a visit to his brother, who was a banker in Paris. The effect which he had anticipated from his visit was not, however, realized, and he therefore soon returned to London, and resumed his ordinary occupations. Towards the close of his life he was greatly afflicted with the asthma, and with the hope of finding some relief from this disorder, he retired, in 1734, to Hempstead; but he died soon after, in the month of February, 1735. The wit and humor of Dr. Arbuthnot were unbounded. In his History of John Bull, published in 1712, he designed to ridicule the Duke of Marlborough, and render the war then prevailing unpopular. His Treatise concerning the Altercation or Scolding of the Ancients, and his Art of Political Lying, are of the same nature. In these pieces his wit is always pointed, and rich in classical allusion, without being acrimonious or personally of fensive. Of the serious performances of this author, the most valuable is a series of dissertations on ancient coins, weights, and measures. He published also some medical works of much value. The most severe and dignified of Arbuthnot's occasional productions, is the following epitaph on Colonel Chartres, a notorious gambler and money-lender of the day, who was tried and condemned for one of the most revolting of crimes :— Here continueth to rot the body of Francis Chartres, who, with an inflexible constancy, and inimitable uniformity of life, persisted, in spite of age and infirmities, in the practice of every human vice, excepting prodigality and hypocrisy; his insatiable avarice exempted him from the first, his matchless impudence from the second. Nor was he more singular in the undeviating pravity of his manners than successful in accumulating wealth; for, without trade or profession, without trust of public money, and without bribe-worthy service, he acquired, or more properly created, a ministerial estate. He was the only person of his time who could cheat with the mask of honesty, retain his primeval meanness when possessed of ten thousand a-year, and having daily deserved the gibbet for what he did, was at last condemned to it for what he could not do. Oh, indignant reader! think not his life useless to mankind. Providence connived at his execrable designs, to give to afterages a conspicuous proof and example of how small estimation is exorbitant wealth in the sight of God, by his bestowing it on the most unworthy of all mortals. As a specimen of the serious composition of Dr. Arbuthnot, we present the following extract from one of his essays :— USEFULNESS OF MATHEMATICAL LEARNING. The advantages which accrue to the mind by mathematical studies, consist chiefly in these things: 1st. In accustoming it to attention. 2d. In giving it a habit of close and demonstrative reasoning. 3d. In freeing it from prejudice, credulity, and super stition. First, the mathematics make the mind attentive to the objects which it considers. This they do by entertaining it with a great variety of truths, which are delightful and evident, but not obvious. Truth is the same thing to the understanding as music to the ear and beauty to the eye. The pursuit of it does really as much gratify a natural faculty implanted in us by our wise Creator, as the pleasing of our senses: only in the former case, as the object and faculty are more spiritual, the delight is the more pure, free from the regret, turpitude, lassitude, and intemperance, that commonly attend sensual pleasures. The most part of other sciences consisting only of probable reasonings, the mind has not where to fix, and wanting sufficient principles to pursue its searches upon, gives them over as impossible. Again, as in mathematical investigations truth may be found, so it is not always obvious. This spurs the mind, and makes it diligent and attentive. The second advantage which the mind reaps from mathematical knowledge, is a habit of clear, demonstrative, and methodical reasoning. We are contrived by nature to learn by imitation more than by precept; and I believe in that respect reasoning is much like other inferior arts (as dancing, singing, &c.) acquired by practice. By accustoming ourselves to reason closely about quantity, we acquire a habit of doing so in other things. It is surprising to see what superficial inconsequential reasonings satisfy the most part of mankind. A piece of wit, a jest, a simile, or a quotation of an author, pass as for a mighty argument; with such things as these are the most part of authors stuffed; and from these weighty premises they infer their conclusions. This weakness and effeminacy of mankind, in being persuaded where they are delighted, have made them the sport of orators, poets, and men of wit. Those lumina orationis are indeed very good diversion for fancy, but are not the proper business of the understanding; and where a man pretends to write on abstract subjects in a scientifical method, he ought not to debauch in them. Logical precepts are more useful, nay, they are absolutely necessary, for a rule of formal arguing in public disputations, and confounding an obstinate and perverse adversary, and exposing him to the audience or readers. But, in search of truth, an imitation of the method of the geometers will carry a man farther than all the dialectical rules. Their analysis is the proper model we ought to form ourselves upon, and imitate in the regular disposition and progress of our inquiries; and even he who is ignorant of the nature of mathematical analysis, uses method somewhat analogous to it. The composition of the geometers, or their method of demonstrating truths already found out, namely, by definitions of words agreed upon, by self-evident truths, and propositions that have been already demonstrated, is practicable in other subjects, though not to the same perfection, the natural want of evidence in the things themselves not allowing it; but it is imitable to a considerable degree. I dare appeal to some writings of our own age and nation, the authors of which have been mathematically inclined. I shall add no more on this head, but that one who is accustomed to the methodical systems of truth which the geometers have reared up in the several branches of those sciences which they have cultivated, will hardly bear with the confusion and disorder of other sciences, but endeavour, as far as he can, to reform them. Thirdly, mathematical knowledge adds vigour to the mind, frees it from prejudice, credulity, and superstition. This it does in two ways: 1st. By accustoming us to examine, and not to take things upon trust. 2d. By giving us a clear and extensive knowledge of the system of the world, which, as it creates in us the most profound reverence of the Almighty and wise Creator, so it frees us from the mean and narrow thoughts which ignorance and superstition are apt to beget. **The mathematics are friends to religion, inasmuch as they charm the passions, restrain the impetuosity of imagination, and purge the mind from error and prejudice. Vice is error, confusion, and false reasoning; and all truth is more or less opposite to it. Besides, mathematical studies may serve for a pleasant entertainment for those hours which young men are apt to throw away upon their vices; the delightfulness of them being such as to make solitude not only easy, but desirable. DANIEL DEFOE, the founder of the English novel, was the son of a butcher, and born in London, in 1661. He was intended by his father, who was a Dissenter, for a Presbyterian minister; but that design being soon abandoned, he entered into trade, and was successively a hosier, a tilemaker, and a woollen-merchant. Not being successful in either of these callings, he resolved to turn author; and, after various other attempts, produced, in 1699, his True-born Englishman, a poetical satire on foreigners, and a defence of King William and the Dutch, which had an almost unexampled run of popularity. Defoe had, in reality, little or no poetic genius; but he could reason in verse, and had an unlimited command of homely and forcible language. The following opening lines of the satire have often been quoted:— Wherever God erects a house of prayer, Various political tracts rapidly followed this satire. In 1702, the author wrote an ironical treatise against the High Church party, entitled The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, which was voted a libel by the House of Commons; and Defoe being apprehended, was fined, pilloried, and imprisoned. He wrote a hymn to the pillory, which he wittily styled A hieroglyphic state-machine, The political victim lay nearly two years in Newgate, during which he conducted a periodical work, The Review, which was published twice a week, and was the forerunner of the Tatler and the Spectator. The character of Defoe, notwithstanding his political persecutions, must have stood high; for he was employed by the cabinet of Queen Anne on a mission to Scotland to advance the great measure of the Union, of which he afterwards wrote a history. He again turned his attention to political irony, and was again thrown into prison, and fined eight hundred pounds. His confinement at this time lasted, however, only a few months, and, admonished by dear-bought experience, he now abandoned politics altogether, and, in 1719, produced his far-famed Robinson Crusoe. The extraordinary success of this work, induced him to write a variety of other fictitious narratives, such as Moll Flanders, Captain Singleton, Duncan Campbell, Colonel Jack, and The History of the Great Plague in London. When he had exhausted this vein, he applied himself to a Political History of the Devil, A System of Magic, The Complete English Tradesman, A Tour Through Great Britain, and other works. The life of this voluminous writer closed at his residence in Islington, on the twenty-fourth of April, 1731. Defoe is now chiefly remembered for his works of fiction. There is an air of truth, and a simple natural beauty of style running through his fictitious works, which has rarely, if ever, been surpassed. As a novelist he was the precursor of Richardson, and partly of Fielding; and as an essayist, he suggested the Tatler' and the Spectator.' Of great originality, and of strong and clear conceptions, which he was able to embody in language of equal perspicuity and force, he has the power of feigning reality or forging the handwriting of nature, as it has been forcibly termed, and of giving to fic tion all the appearance of truth. The account of the 'Plague in London' has often been taken for a genuine and authentic history, and even Lord Chatham is said to have believed the Memoirs of a Cavalier to be a true narrative. But of all his fictions, Robinson Crusoe' possesses the most permanent and lasting merit. The circumstances of the hero, his shipwreck and residence in a solitary island, invest that incomparable tale with a deeper romance than any of his other works. Hence the truth of Dr. Johnson's remark, that'Nobody ever laid it down without wishing it were longer.' From this interesting work we might select many passages illustrative of the author's peculiar style and manner of writing; but we think the following extract more appropriate to our purpose:— THE GREAT PLAGUE IN LONDON. Much about the same time I walked out into the fields towards Bow, for I had a great mind to see how things were managed in the river, and among the ships; and as I had some concern in shipping, I had a notion that it had been one of the best ways of securing one's self from the infection, to have retired into a ship; and musing how to satisfy my curiosity in that point, I turned away over the fields, from Bow to Bromley, and down to Blackwall, to the stairs that are there for landing or taking water. Here I saw a poor man walking on the bank or sea-wall, as they call it, by himself. I walked awhile also about, seeing the houses all shut up; at last I fell into some talk, at a distance, with this poor man. First I asked him how people did thereabouts? Alas! sir, says he, almost desolate; all dead or sick. Here are very few families in this part, or in that village, pointing at Popler, where half of them are not dead already, and the rest sick. Then he, pointing to one house, there they are all dead, said he, and the house stands open; nobody dares go into it. A poor thief, says he, ventured in to steal something, but he paid dear for his theft, for he was carried to the churchyard too, last night. Then he pointed to several other houses. There, says he, they are all dead, the man, and his wife, and five children. There, says he, they are shut up; you see a watchman at the door; and so of other houses. Why, says I, what do you here all alone? Why, says he, I am a poor desolate man; it hath pleased God I am not yet visited, though my family is, and one of my children dead. How do you mean then, said I, that you are not visited? Why, says he, that is my house, pointing to a very little low boarded house, and there my poor wife and two children live, said he, if they may be said to live; for my wife and one of the children are visited, but I do not come at them. And with that word I saw the tears run very plentifully down his face; and so they did down mine too, I assure you. But, said I, why do you not come at them? How can you abandon your own flesh and blood? Oh, sir, says he, the Lord forbid; I do not abandon them; I work for them as much as I am able; and blessed be the Lord, I keep them from want. And with that I observed he lifted up his eyes to heaven with a countenance that presently told me I had happened on a man that was no hypocrite, but a serious, religious, good man; and his ejaculation was an expression of thankfulness, that, in such a condition as he was in, he should be able to say his family did not want. Well, says I, honest man, that is a great mercy, as things go now with the poor. But how do you live then, and how are you kept from the dreadful calamity that is now upon us all? Why, sir, says he, I am a waterman, and there is my boat, says he, and the boat serves me for a house; I work in it in the day, and I sleep in it in the night, and what I get I lay it down upon that stone, says he, showing me a broad stone on the other side of the street, a good way from his house; and then, says he, I halloo and call to them till I make them hear, and they come and fetch it. |