1S27.J Letter on Affairs in general. 297 



entirely to deprive him of that of speaking English, which, up to the 

 moment previous to bis fall, he had possessed completely. 



Now this stoiy, at first sight, seems to be rather too good. If it were 

 offered as a burlesque case upon the doctrines of the Phrenologists, it would 

 be voted excellent. And yet a great many very strong facts and well 

 authenticated may be found in support of it. There is a case which I 

 believe may be fully relied on, of a gentleman who went out to dine 

 (it was in the country) at the house of a friend ; and in returning home 

 at night, was thrown out of his gig, and fell upon his head. He was a 

 good deal hurt, and lay for some hours stunned by the blow ; and, on his 

 recovery' never could recollect the fact of his having gone out to dinner. 



Another case came within my own knowledge ; arising, not from sudden 

 violence, but from an affection of the brain by temporary disease. An 

 officer on service in Spain, with whom I was well acquainted, became ill 

 from brain fever. I had known this man from his youth; and I fully 

 believe that he had never thought of turning a rhyme in his life, much less 

 of composing poetry. On the second day after his head became aifected, 

 he, to every appearance, composed, and certainly uttered, verses, which 

 no one about him had ever heard before. The matter was rambling ; 

 but the rhyme was generally correct ; and this process was continued for 

 many hours with the most inconceivable rapidity. As this gentleman 

 recovered, his poetic fever left him ; and with it I believe the faculty he 

 could make no verses afterwards^ 



Mr. Southey's second volume of the History of the Peninsular War 

 which is just published, contains an account too of two very curious in- 

 stances, pretty nearly to the same purpose. 



" Two singular cases of contusion of the brain was observed at this time 

 in the hospitals." (This was at the siege of Gerona.) " One man did 

 nothing but count, with a loud and deliberate voice, from forty to seventy, 

 always beginning with the one number and ending with the other, during 

 the whole night. Another continually uttered the most extraordinary 

 'blasphemies and curses, exhausting the whole vocabulary of malediction, 

 without any apparent emotion of anger." 



I certainly never myself found a Phrenologist, who could state a single 

 rule in his science that he (or any body else) could maintain. But, on the 

 other hand, there is nothing within our physiological knowledge at all 

 capable of explaining facts like these. 



I see by the play bills that Miss Fanny Ayton, who was a " Miss" (I 

 believe) when she lived next door to me three years ago in Berner's-street, 

 since she has been at the Opera House, has become " Mademoiselle 

 Fanny Ayton." I don't well understand this. I should like to know the 

 nature of the process which turns a " Miss" into a " Mademoiselle." 



The barbers of London are getting to be great people now. Their shops 

 are almost as numerous, and as splendidly fitted, as those of the chemists; 

 and, in every one bolt upright behind the counter you see either the 

 master or the journeyman with his hair in most overpowering buckle- 

 stuck up for a sign ! I always wondered how it was on what sort of cus- 

 tomers for practice that the apprentice boys to this calling acquired the 

 power of frizzing and curling running a pair of red hot pincers open along 

 within half a line of a man's ear^ and never scathing the "listener" in 

 their progress : until the other day, passing a shop in the Strand which has 

 an area before it, I happened to cast my eyes downwards and saw, 

 through the kitchen window two urchins in the very act of a first expe- 



M,M. New Series, VOL. III. No. 15. 2 Q 



