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Psalm. This author was supposed to be Pope, who published a reward for any one that would duce the coiner of the accusation, but never de nied it; and was afterwards the perpetual and incessant enemy of Blackmore.

One of his essays is upon the Spleen, which is treated by him so much to his own satisfaction, that he has published the same thoughts in the same words; first in the "Lay Monastery;" then in the Essay; and then in the preface to a Medical Treatise on the Spleen. One passage, which I have found already twice, I will here exhibit, be cause I think it better imagined, and better express ed, than could be expected from the common tenor of his prose:

entire He of the Fas St

"As the several combinations of splenetic madness and folly produce an infinite variety of irre gular understanding, so the amicable accommodation and alliance between several virtues and vices produce an equal diversity in the dispositions and manners of mankind; whence it comes to pass, that as many monstrous and absurd productions are found in the moral as in the intellectual world. How surprising is it to observe, among the least culpable men, some whose minds are attracted by heaven and earth with a seeming equal force;" some who are proud of humility; others who are censorious and uncharitable, yet self-denying and devout; some who join contempt of the world Iwith sordid avarice; and others who preserve a great degree of piety, with ill-nature and ungoverned passions! Nor are instances of this inconsis tent mixture less frequent among bad men, where we often, with admiration, see persons at once ge nerous and unjust, impious lovers of their coun try and flagitious heroes, good-natured sharpers, immoral men of honour, and libertines who will sooner die than change their religion; and though it is true that repugnant coalitions of so high a degree are found but in a part of mankind, yet

none of the whole mass, either good or bad, are
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entirely exempted from some absurd mixture."

He about this time (Aug. 22, 1716) became one
of the Elects of the College of Physicians; and
was soon after (Oct. 1) chosen Censor. He seems
to have arrived late, whatever was the reason, at
his medical honours.

Having succeeded so well in his book on "Crea
tion," by which he established the great principle
of all religion, he thought his undertaking imper-
fect, unless he likewise enforced the truth of reve-
lation; and for that purpose added another poem,
on "Redemption." He had likewise written, be-
fore his "Creation," three books on the "Nature
of Man."

The lovers of musical devotion have always
wished for a more happy metrical version than
they have yet obtained of the "Book of Psalms."
This wish the piety of Blackmore led him to gra-
tify; and he produced (1721) "A new Version of
the Psalms of David, fitted to the Tunes used in
Churches;" which, being recommended by the
archbishops and many bishops, obtained a licence
for its admission into public worship; but no ad-
mission has it yet obtained, nor has it any right to
come where Brady and Tate had got possession.
Blackmore's name must be added to those of many
others who, by the same attempt, have obtained
only the praise of meaning well.

He was not yet deterred from heroic poetry.
There was another monarch of this island (for he
did not fetch his heroes from foreign countries)
whom he considered as worthy of the epic muse;
and he dignified " Alfred" (1723) with twelve books..
But the opinion of the nation was now settled; a
hero introduced by Blackmore was not likely to
find either respect or kindness: "Alfred" took his
place by "Eliza" in silence and darkness; benevo-
lence was ashamed to favour, and malice was weary
of insulting, Of his four epic poems, the first had

such reputation and popularity as enraged the critics; the second was at least known enough to be ridiculed; the two last had neither friends nor ene mies.

Contempt is a kind of gangrene, which, if it seizes one part of a character, corrupts all the rest by degrees. Blackmore, being despised as a poet, was in time neglected as a physician; his practice, which was once invidiously great, forsook him in the latter part of his life; but being by nature, or by principle, averse from idleness, he employed his unwelcome leisure in writing. books on physic, and teaching others to cure those whom he could himself cure no longer. I know not whether I can enumerate all the treatises by. which he has endeavoured to diffuse the art of healing; for there is scarcely any distemper, of dreadful name, which he has not taught the reader how to oppose. He has written on the small-pox, with a vehement invective against inoculation; on consumptions, the spleen, the gout, the rheu-matism, the king's-eyil, the dropsy, the jaundice, the stone, the diabetes, and the plague.

Of those books, if I had read them, it could not be expected that I should be able to give a critical. account. I have been told that there is something in them of vexation and discontent, discovered by a perpetual attempt to degrade physic from its sublimity, and to represent it as attainable without. much previous or concomitant learning. By the transient glances which I have thrown upon them, I have observed an affected contempt of the an cients, and a supercilious derision of transmitted knowledge. Of this indecent arrogance the following quotation from his preface to the "Trea tise on the Small-pox" will afford a specimen: in which, when the reader finds, what I fear is true, that, when he was censuring Hippocrates, he did not know the difference between aphorism and apophthegm, he will not pay much regard to his determinations concerning ancient learning.

be

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"As for his book of Aphorisms, it is like my
Lord Bacon's of the same title, a book of jests, or
a grave collection of trite and trifling observations;
of which though many are true and certain, yet
they signify nothing, and may afford diversion, but
no instruction; most of them being much inferior
to the sayings of the wise men of Greece, which
yet are so low and mean, that we are entertained
every day with more valuable sentiments at the
table conversation of ingenious and learned men."
I am unwilling, however, to leave him in total
disgrace, and will therefore quote from another
preface a passage less reprehensible.

"Some gentlemen have been disingenuous and
unjust to me, by wresting and forcing my mean-
ing, in the preface to another book, as if I con-
demned and exposed all learning, though they
knew I declared that I greatly honoured and es-
teemed all men of superior literature and erudi-
tion; and that I only undervalued false or super-
ficial learning, that signifies nothing for the ser-
vice of mankind; and that as to physic, I express-
ly affirmed that learning must be joined with na-
tive genius to make a physician of the first rank;
"but if those talents are separated, I asserted, and
do still insist, that a man of native sagacity and
diligence will prove a more able and useful prac
tiser than a heavy notional scholar, encumbered
with a heap of confused ideas."

He was not only a poet and a physician, but
produced likewise a work of a different kind, "A
true and impartial History of the Conspiracy
against King William, of glorious Memory, in the
Year 1695." This I have never seen, but suppose
it at least compiled with integrity. He engaged
likewise in theological controversy, and wrote two
books against the Arians; "Just Prejudices against
the Arian Hypothesis;" and "Modern Arians un-
masked," Another of his works is. "Natural The-
ology, or Moral Duties considered apart from Po-

sitive; with some Observations on the Desirableness and Necessity of a supernatural Revelation." This was the last book that he published. He left behind him "The accomplished Preacher, or an Essay upon Divine Eloquence;" which was printed after his death by Mr. White, of Nayland, in Essex, the minister who attended his death-bed, and testified the fervent piety of his last hours. He died on the eighth of October, 1729.

BLACKMORE, by the unremitted enmity of the wits, whom he provoked more by his virtue than his dulness, has been exposed to worse treatment than he deserved. His name was so long used to point every epigram upon dull writers, that it be came at last a bye-word of contempt; but it de serves observation, that malignity takes hold only of his writings, and that his life passed without reproach, even when his boldness of reprehension naturally turned upon him many eyes desirous to espy faults, which many tongues would have made haste to publish. But those who could not blame could at least forbear to praise, and therefore of his private life and domestic character there are no memorials,"

As an author he may justly claim the honours of magnanimity. The incessant attacks of his enemies, whether serious or merry, are never discovered to have disturbed his quiet or to have lessened his confidence in himself; they neither awed him to silence nor to caution; they neither provoked him to petulance nor depressed him to complaint. While the distributors of literary fame were endeavouring to depreciate and degrade him, he either despised or defied them, wrote on as he had written before, and never turned aside to quiet them by civility or repress them by confutation.

He depended with great security on his own pow. ers, and perhaps was for that reason less diligent in perusing books. His literature was, I think,