460 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



there will be legislators ; what then is the meaning of this use of the word 

 " legislator" in a noxious sense ? 



Our author is one of the many half-formed and presumptuous meddlers in 

 politics whom circumstances like the present, or a state of things like that which 

 has just now past, and, we hope, is ere this subsiding, call into feverish and 

 unquiet being. The race of political and superficial sciolists is never so numer- 

 ous as when the state requires men of a far higher order ; just as a man is never 

 so certain of being pestered by quacks as when he is at the last gasp, or in the 

 most urgent extremity. 



THE LIFE OF ANDREEW MARVELL. BY JOHN DOVE. LONDON : ]832. 



WE heartily thank Mr. Dove for this well-timed publication ; not but that we 

 think a more copious and discriminating life of the patriot might easily have 

 been compiled ; at the same time that we are grateful for any account of a man 

 who, far above the temptations of power or the allurements of place, kept 

 his political faith unshaken and his political integrity unseduced and unmoved 

 during as corrupt arid unprincipled a reign as ever disgraced our English History 

 that of Charles II. 



We think that the author of this interesting little book has hardly dwelt with 

 sufficient earnestness of regard upon the friendship that subsisted between Mar- 

 veil and the illustrious Milton, not only during the life of Cromwell but until 

 the death of the poet. To have gained the confidence of Milton, and to have de- 

 served his friendship, are of themselves sufficient evidence that Marvell was no 

 common man. 



Marvell was not only a signal friend to his country and to the people, but, 

 emphatically, the real representative of his constituents. Had not his successors, 

 at the same time that they guarded the best interests of their country, vigilantly 

 watched over and enforced the peculiar claims of their constituents, as Marvell 

 invariably did, we should never have heard the recent outcry for pledges, which, 

 while they convert a deliberative assembly into a hapless mob of passive dele- 

 gates, afford the anomalous spectacle of a synod of slaves sent to legislate for a 

 nation of free men. 



We strongly recommend the life of Marvell to the perusal of our readers. 



A TREATISE ON THE EPIDEMIC CHOLERA. BY FRED. CORBYN. CALCUTTA : 



1832. 



OUR readers must bear with us while we record our opinion of this work. 

 We know full well that the subject is not a little repulsive, and that the bare 

 mention of it is sufficient to derange the propriety of the family circle. They 

 may, perhaps, be prone to imagine that, 



Though we are not choleric nor rash, 

 Yet have we in us something dangerous ; 



but we assure them that we are the most uncontagious of mortals, and that our 

 blue stage is at most but a periodical visitation of ague demons by which the 

 brotherhood of the quill and inkhorn are especially afflicted. 



Mr. Corbyn's work is the most elaborate treatise which we have ever had 

 shall we say the pleasure ? of meeting with, upon the epidemic cholera of India. 

 We must confess our inability to decide the disputes between the contagionists 

 and infectionists ; nor can we settle to a certainty the point at issue with the 

 faculty, whether the English cholera be a modification of the Indian pestilence, 

 or a disease set up on its own account. We should, probably, by our decision, 

 even if we felt our own competence, more embroil the fray. 



We can only say that Mr. Corbyn's book not only comprises a history of the 

 Indian cholera, but is fraught with all the conceivable information upon the sub- 

 ject which a long residence in India, and a most extensive practice, have furnished 

 him with the means of obtaining. 



