306 
The same Swift, speaking of the Dean’s 
works, says— 
As for the Journal to Stella, not one line of it 
would ever have been printed, if it had not been 
for me.—In short, I was the person who about the 
year 1740 saved all that part of the journal from 
the flames, which was published by Hawkesworth. 
In the next place, the first paragraph in Hawkes- 
worth’s preface is really and truly a confounded 
lie, for Swift never in his days gave one line of 
his writings to that Dr. Lyon, who had no more 
capacity to judge of Swift’s productions, either in 
prose or verse, than he had to write an Tliad. 
Neither had Swift any the least intention that his 
letters to Stella, which now go by the title of his 
journal, or perhaps any other letters in that col- 
lection, should ever be published. And now I 
must tell you, that if Hawkesworth had not pub- 
lished that part of the journal,I neyer should have 
published the rest of it, &c. 
But he was plainly a hot-headed person ; 
and little is the reliance to be placed on a 
memory, or a judgment, which passion is so 
likely to over-rule. 
Specimens of the Lyrical, Descriptive, 
and Narrative Poets of Great Britain, 
From Chaucer to the present Day, by John 
Johnstone. One small volume; 1828.— 
This is a companion to the Specimens of 
Sacred and Serious Poetry published a short 
time since by the same editor. To the se- 
lections are added an animated sketch of 
the history of early English poetry, and 
short biographical accounts of the more dis- 
tinguished poets. Remarkable for neatness 
of construction, the absence of prejudice, 
and independence of tone, the selections 
themselves give evidence of the editor’s 
sound judgment. 
His object is to put into the hands of 
young people, with whom poetry is a pas- 
sion, but whose tastes are necessarily false or 
unripe, a volume of specimens calculated to 
raise their poetical feelings to a higher stand- 
ard —even to the highest of all—that 
formed by the fathers of English poetry. No 
specimen is introduced which has not stood 
the test of time, or been allowed to possess 
enduring qualities. The volume contains, 
in the editor’s judgment, more beautiful 
verse—far more of the very highest order 
—than is, likely to appear in all the periodi- 
cal volumes that shall be published for the 
next hundred years—glancing, we suppose, 
at the annuals. The larger extracts are 
taken from the early poets, for the purpose 
of diffusing a more intimate knowledge of 
them—such as Herrick, Caren, Lovelace, 
and the Nut-brown Maid. The specimens 
from living poets are very defective. We 
were struck by some omissions. Amongthe 
ladies, we do not find Miss Mitford ; and, 
by the way, we are not sure Mr. Dyer, in 
his collections of poets, has noticed her; and 
certainly his reviewer, Leigh -Hunt, has 
not. 
In his preface, Mr. Johnstone expresses a 
wish it were possible, by some short-hand 
Monthly Review of Literature, 
(Serr. 
process of printing yet undiscovered, to 
compress half the pages of Wordsworth into 
a cheap work, adapted to the daily house- 
hold use of the people of England—it would 
gladly have been done in the warm and sin- 
cere conviction, that no poems of nearly 
equal merit now remain to be freely diffused 
among them; and among the specimens so 
fitted for popular use, is Ruth—which ends, 
the reader may remember, with the follow- 
ing doggerel :—_ 
Farewell! and when thy days are told, 
Ill-fated Ruth! in hallow’d mould 
Thy corpse shall buried be; 
For thee a funeral bell shall ring, 
And all the congregation sing 
A Christian psalm for thee. 
On Indigestion, by David Uwins, M.D. ; 
1828.—Some men indulge their vanity by 
professing to know more than others—Dr 
Uwins gratifies his by professing to know 
less, and the gratification, we venture to 
say, is at least equally exquisite. The book 
before us is as full of conceit, to use a vul- 
gar but expressive illustration, ‘as an egg’s 
full of meat.’ His very abnegations become 
as pretty affirmances as even he, in the full- 
ness of pride, could desire. Ingeniously 
and delightfully this contempt for cotem- 
poraries involves a self-superiority, which 
shines through the liquid veil of his hu- 
mility with a brilliancy perfectly unclouded. 
Refusing, as this important person does, to 
affirm one thing to be fact, or to adopt 
another, or admit a third, or indeed any 
thing at all, Truth herself, delighted with his 
fastidiousness, in her own naked charms, 
rushes to the Doctor’s exclusive embrace. 
To reject is all the art he knows to make 
men wise and keep them so—what is left, 
at the bottom of the crucible, is the evenxe— 
though it be often nothing but a caput mor- 
tuum. Others, at a pinch, take the reverse of 
wrong for right ; but Dr. Uwins will neither 
accede to the one, nor take to the opposite ; 
no, nor turn ina middle path, if that should 
be one which another could trace; he will 
have nothing to do with what is common, 
nor scarcely with what is uncommon—he 
will take no precedent, nor is he inclined to 
make one. 
This is the general complexion of the 
book. Now and then the author starts a 
paradox—rather of the oldest too: for in« — 
stance—seeing is not always believing, even 
in medicine; for disorders of the skin, which 
are most obvious to sight, are the least un- 
derstood ; or a truism, as—disorder is not 
the same thing in every body—the idiosyn- 
erasy of the individual makes a new dis- 
ease. Whatthen? Why, then, Dr. Uwins 
will have no classing for it—no naming it— 
no vulgar treatment of it. EXvery case be- 
comes thus a new case—one swi generis— 
not to be judged of by others, but exclu- 
sively on its own merits, and all experience — 
must go for nothing, for you never meet — 
with a case a seeond time. For our own — 
; 
parts, ignorant as we confessedly are of — 
i 
“4 
ae 
