0H Phyjiagnomy. 429 



retic lucubration, than the well founded re- 

 marks of men converfant with the world. A 

 fufficient fpecimen of the phyfiognomic writings 

 of the time may be feen in the quotations which 

 L.avater has felefted.* 



About the commencement of the eighteenth 

 century and thence forward, the occult fciences 

 as they are called, had declined confiderably 

 in eftimatioA ; and the authors who noticed the 

 fcience of phyfiognomy forbore to difgracc it 

 by a connection with thofe branches of fuppofed 

 knowledge which had formerly been its compa- 

 nions. Among us Dr. Gwither noticed it with 

 approbation in the eighteenth volunfie of the 

 l*hilofophical Tranfaftions. f Dr. Parfons alio 

 chofe the fame fubjedl for the Croonean Lec- 

 tures, publifhed at firft in the fecond fupple- 

 ment to the forty-fourth volume of the fame 

 'I'ranfaftions, and afterwards (1747) J repub- 

 liflied in Englifh : btit thefe as well as the cur- 



• Vol. III. p. 243. French tranflation, quarto. 



f No. zo. Thefe remarks of Dr. Gwither are copied into 

 Chambers's Diftionary and the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 

 but without reference. The importance of works of that 

 kind would be increafed tenfold by a proper reference to 

 the writers and authorities made ufe of. 



I Under the title of " Human Phyfiogn.oroy explained. " 



Tory 



