dren, two of whom, daughters, still survive. Agreeably to the wishes of these ladies, however, who found that Dr. Gregory could not write of them without praise, the biographer determined reluctantly to mention their names as little as possible in the course of their father's history. In 1792 Mr. Good, either owing to "suretyship," or the imprudent practice of lending money to his friends, became embarrassed in his pecuniary affairs. This had the happy effect of stimulating him to literary exertion: he wrote plays, translations, and poetry, but without the desired effect; he then tried philosophy, but without discovering the secret of transmutation; and at last, to somewhat more purpose, opened a correspondence with a metropolitan newspaper and review.

In 1733 he removed, with his family, to London, and entered into partnership with a Mr. W. by whose misconduct the business soon after failed. "His character," says Dr. Gregory, "soon began to be duly appreciated among medical men; and, on the 7th of November he was admitted a Member of the College of Surgeons." We do not understand the conjunction here; perhaps there is a typographical mistake. However, he obtained a less questionable honour in becoming an active Member of the Medical Society, and of the General Pharmaceutic Association; and, at the suggestion of some of his colleagues in the latter, wrote a "History of Medicine, so far as it relates to the profession of the Apothecary," which was published in 1795.

In 1797 he began a translation of Lucretius; and, two years after, set himself to study the German language, having previously made considerable progress in the French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. The Arabic and Persian he afterwards added to his acquisitions. In 1799, he finished his translation of Lucretius, which was composed in the streets of London during the translator's walks to visit his patients. This is not so extraordinary a circumstance as Dr. Gregory imagines; if the business of literature stood still except when the artists are in their workshops, a weekly reviewer would not require a two-inch thick table like this before us, to support the subjects for his hebdomadal dissection.

Mr. Good's literary productions now followed each other in rapid succession till 1812. Of these, his "Song of Songs," "Translation of the Book of Job," and his contributions to the "Pantalogia," are the best known. In 1810 he began to deliver Lectures at the Surrey Institution, the first course of which treated of the nature of the Material World, the second of that of the Animate World, and the third of that of the Mind; the whole of which were afterwards published under the general title of "The Book of Nature." In 1820, by authority of a diploma, dated from the ancient and antimercenary university of Aberdeen, he began to practise as a physician; and, from the extraordinary success that attended his career from this moment, had reason to regret that he had not aspired at an earlier period to the highest branch of his profession. In the same year he published "A Physiological System of Nosology," and, in 1822, The Study of Mediof the most successful of his works.

cine," one

Up to this period, and indeed for some time after, his health had been almost uniformly good, which will not be deemed so extraordinary even in a man who read, wrote, and thought so much as Dr. Good, when it is recollected that his bodily exertions were, of necessity, almost equal to those of his mind. Even in London, when visiting his patients on foot, he must have walked enough to counterbalance the effects of more than one sheet per diem: and when the lazy luxury of a coach was substituted for this healthful exercise, it is not wonderful that the mental pressure of study should have increased, even to the extinction of life. On the 2d of January, 1827, in the 63d year of his age, John Mason Good died of a carriage, a disease of fatal, and, we believe, not very unfrequent recurrence in the history of physicians.

Dr. Good was a man of great and versatile talents. As a medical writer his name stands high; and as a physician his practice was extensive and successful. He was not, and, from his education and opportunities, could not be profoundly learned; but the stores of knowledge, collected by unwearied industry, carried on with a kind of enthusiasm in research, were in him as valuable, for all practical purposes, as abstruse learning. In religion, he began by being a Trinitarian, in the sequel he was a Socinian, and in conclusion, a strict Christian according to the doctrines of the Church of England. It is not known at what precise period his mind reverted to the truth; but, in 1807, he intimated by letter to the minister he had been in the habit of attending, that he could no longer countenance by his presence" a system which, even admitting it to be right, was at least repugnant to his own heart and his own understanding." The terms in which this renunciation was made are, at the least, ill-chosen, and among verbal critics might be made the subject of some controversy. In private life be was a good husband, a good father, and a good

man.

Such is the groundwork on which this heavy superstructure of letter-press has been raised. As it partakes, however, more of the nature of the fungus than of any thing more tough or solid, it will not prove such a crux lectorum as might be imagined. Let the religious part be abridged, the miserable verses that occupy a great part of the volume, under the felonious alias of poetry, cancelled, and nine-tenths of the reflections omitted, and the residuum will prove just such a volume as Dr. Good deserves, and as a rational friend would desire to consecrate to his memory.

From the London Weekly Review. MORNINGS IN SPRING; or Retrospections, Biographical, Critical, and Historical. By Nathan Drake, M. D. H. A. L., Author of" Essays on Periodical Literature," &c. 2 vols. fep. 8vo. London, 1828. Murray.

THESE two volumes are the production of an amiable literary veteran, whose name has long been familiar to the public as the author of nu

"That such a man, though living in an age of extreme bigotry, should be an object of ardent attachment to those who best knew him, may "It is probable that the attention of our im- be readily conceived. We shall not be surmortal countryman had been peculiarly direct- prised, therefore, to learn that he was enthued to this illustrious victim of bigotry and su-siastically beloved by his pupils, and that when perstition, by the compassionate sympathy of Hugo Grotius, who, during the very month in which the poet was introduced to him by Lord Scudamore, then our ambassador at the court of Paris, thus mentions Galileo in a letter to his friend Vossius: This old man, to whom the universe is so deeply indebted, worn out with maladies, and still more with anguish of mind, gives us little reason to hope that his life can be long; common prudence, therefore, suggests to us to make the utmost of the time, while we can yet avail ourselves of such an in

bable, that the poet's deep-rooted abhorrence of bigotry and oppression was first imbibed on beholding this illustrious martyr of intolerance.

There can also be little doubt but that the conference which, on this occasion, took place between the philosopher and the bard, led, as the Italian biographer of Milton has remarked, to those ideas in the Paradise Lost which approximate to the Newtonian doctrine of the planetary system. It can also admit of less, that, when Milton, old and deprived of sight, was composing his immortal poem, he must often have recalled to memory this interview with the blind and suffering Galileo, under feelings of peculiar sympathy and commiseration; and with the same Christian patience and firmness which so remarkably distinguished the great Florentine, he could truly say,

'I argue not

Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward.

"Independent of a succinct annunciation, in the eighth book of his poem, of the system of the universe as taught by Galileo, he has twice by name distinctly alluded to him: thus in the first book, when describing the shield of Satan, he says, its

'broad circumference

Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose
orb

Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening from the top of Fesolé,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers, or mountains in her spotty globe.'
"And again in his fifth book:

'As when by night the glass
Of Galileo, less assured, observes
Imagined lands and regions in the moon.'

tions to the world of a single person, of Galileo, of unperishing memory."

"This great and good man died at Arcetri, near Florence, in 1642, three years after Milton's visit, and in the same year which gave birth to Sir Isaac Newton, who, as hath been well observed, took up from Galileo the thread of astronomical science, and carried it from world to world, through regions as yet unexplored and unknown." vol. ii. p. 313-321.

From the Athenæum.

SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. The reputation of this writer is very disproportionate to the extent of his definite and tangible performances. He stands, in general estimation, among the highest names of our day for speculative science, for politics, legislation, history, and rhetoric. Yet the works which have gained for him this high character are few and small-two or three pamphlets, a score of speeches, and as many anonymous papers in the Edinburgh Review.. The merit of these, both for ability of thought and beauty of composition, is a sufficient warrant for the nature of the source from which they came; and we only lament that so bright a water should flow forth in such scanty streams. These writings have been sufficient to convince the world that Sir James Mackintosh is one of a small neglected class, the lovers of wisdom. But men have done him more justice than they ordinarily render to his brethren; for he is thought of, almost on all hands, not as a dreamer of dreams, a wanderer through a limbo of vanity, but as rich in all recorded knowledge, and an honest and eloquent teacher. This fame has been obtained, not by the size of his writings, but the loftiness of the ground on which they are placed, that pure and philosophical elevation from which even the smallest object will project its shadow over an empire: and, though vigour and perseverance are necessary to attain that height, how much larger does it make the circle of vision, than, when, standing among the paths of common men, our eyes are strained by gazing into the distance. It is not merely by the talent displayed in his works, brilliant and powerful as it is, nor by the quantity of his information, however various and profound, that he has obtained his present celebrity; but, in a great degree, by the tone of dignity and candour, which is so conspicuous a characteristic of his mind. He has less of the spirit of party than almost any partisan we remember.

"It is somewhat remarkable that Milton, who appears to have been well acquainted with the Copernican theory of the world as taught, and, I may say, indeed, demonstrated by Galileo, should have hesitated a moment in his choice between the system of his great contemporary and that of Ptolemy; yet this dubiety, this trimming, as it were, between the ancient and modern doctrines, is but too apparent in his sublime account of the creation, and interrupts in some measure the satisfaction of the philosophical reader. If Pliny in regard to Hipparchus,' says a pleasing and popular writer, 'could extravagantly say, Ausus rem Deo improbam annumerare posteris stellas, what would that historian of nature have said, had it been foretold him, that in the His greatest talent is the power of acquiring latter days a man would arise who should ena- knowledge from the thoughts of others. Of ble posterity to enumerate more new stars than the politicians of our day, if not of all living Hipparchus had counted of the old; who should Englishmen whatever, he is incomparably the assign four moons to Jupiter, and in our moon most learned. His acquaintance with the hispoint out higher mountains than any here be-tory of the human mind, both in the study of its low; who should in the sun, the fountain of light, discover dark spots as broad as two quarters of the earth, and, by these spots, ascertain his motion round his axis; who, by the varying phases of the planets, should compose the shortest and plainest demonstration of the solar sysYet these were but part of the annuncia

* "Adam's Lectures on Natural and Experimental Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 477."

+ If we remember right, it is said, that, from one of the Swiss mountains, the traveller may see his own shadow thrown at sunrise to a distance of many leagues.

has slain a hundred systems, and united their lifeless limbs into a single figure. But the vital spirit is not his to give. It is not the living hand of Plato or Bacon, which points out to him the sanctuary; but the monuments and dead statues of philosophers block up the entrance to the Temple of Wisdom. His mind is made up of the shreds and parings of other thinkers. The body of his philosophic garment is half taken from the gown of Locke, and half from the cassock of Butler; the sleeves are torn from the robe of Leibnitz, and the cape is of the ermine of Shaftesbury; and wearing the cowl of Aquinas, and shod in the sandals of Aristotle, he comes out before the world with the trumpet of Cicero at his lips, the club of Hobbes in one hand, and the mace of Bacon in the other.

Having thus formed his opinions from books, without having nourished any predominant feeling or belief in his own mind, his creed is far too much a matter of subtleties and diffi

own laws, and in action, is greater than that of any contemporary writer of our country: and his intimacy with the revolutions and progress of modern Europe, both in politics and literature, is, indeed, perfectly marvellous. He is also the more to be trusted in his writings on these points, because he is not very exclusively wedded to any peculiar system or even science. Many of the chroniclers or commentators of particular tracts in the wide empire of knowledge, seem to consider that their own department is the only important one, or, even that their own view of it is incalculably and beyond dispute, the most deserving of attention; their works thus resemble some oriental maps, in which the Indian ocean is a creek of the Persian gulf, and Europe, Asia, and Africa, are paltry appendages to Arabia. Sir James Mackintosh is, in a great degree, free from this error and we are inclined to think, that the most valuable service, he has it in his power to render to the world, would be by publishing a history of philosophy from the tenth to the seven-culties, and nicely balanced systems. It is all teenth century; not because he has thought the thoughts, or felt the feelings, of those ages, but because he would give us fair and candid abstracts of the books which he had studied, and would supply questions to be answered by the oracle, of which he is not himself a priest; so that men of a more catholic, and less latitudinarian spirit, might find in his pages the elements of a wisdom to which he can minister, though he cannot teach it. He knows whatever has been produced in other men by the strong and restless workings of the principles of their nature. But he seems himself to have felt but little of such prompting. The original sincerity and goodness of his mind, display themselves unconsciously in much of his writing; but they do not appear to have given him that earnest impulsion which would have made him an apostle of truth, and a reformer of mankind. He is in all things a follower of some previously recognised opinions, because he has neither the boldness which would carry him beyond the limits consecrated by habit, nor the feeling of a moral want unsatisfied, which would have urged him thus to take a wider range. But having an acute intellectual vision, and a wish to arrive at conviction, he has chosen the best of what was before him, within the region of pre-power breathing in the voices of their teachers. cedent and authority. He has plucked the fairest produce of the domain of our ancestors from the trees that they planted, and which have been cultivated till now in their accustomed methods. But he has not leaped the boundaries, and gone forth to search for nobler plants and richer fruit, nor has he dared to touch even the tree of knowledge which flourishes within the garden. He has looked for truth among the speculations of a thousand minds, and he has found little but its outward forms. He has abstracted something here, and added something there; he has classed opinions, and brought them into comparison; and picked out this from one, and joined on that to another; now wavered to the right, now faltered to the left; and scarce rejecting or believing any thing strongly, has become learned with unprofitable learning, and filled his mind with elaborate and costly furniture, which chokes up its passages, and darkens its windows. He

arranged and polished, and prepared against objection, and carefully compacted together like a delicate Mosaic; but it is not a portion of the living substance of his mind. It is easy to perceive, to learn, to talk about a principle, and the man of the highest talent will do this best. But, to know it, it must be felt. And here the man of talent is often at fault, while some one without instruction, or even intellectual power, may not only apprehend the truth, as if by intuition, rather than by thought, but embrace and cherish it in his inmost heart, and make it the spring of his whole being. Sir James Mackintosh has, unfortunately, buried the seeds of this kind of wisdom under heaps of learned research and difficult casuistry. He has given no way to the free expansion of his nature; nor rendered himself up to be the minister and organ of good, which will needs speak boldly wherever there are lips willing to interpret it. This, perhaps, is not seen clearly by the world. But the want is felt; and the most disciplined metaphysician, be the strength and width of his comprehension what it may, will inevitably find, that men can reap no comfort nor hope in doubts and speculations, however ingenious, or however brilliant, unless they hear a diviner

The understanding can speak only to the understanding. The memory can enrich only the memory. But there is that within us, of which both understanding and memory are instruments; and he who addresses it can alone be certain that his words will thrill through all the borders of the world, and utter consolation to all his kind.

He seems to us to be a man of doubting and qualifying mind, who would willingly find out the best if he had courage to despise the throng, to desert their paths, and boldly go in search of it. He heads the crowd in the road they are travelling; but he will not seek to lead them in a new direction. Nor is it only in any one particular department of thought that he seeks to support himself by the doctrines of his predecessors, and the prejudices of his contemporaries; in short, to move the future by the rotten lever of the past. It is a propensity which guides and governs him in all his labours.