JUNE3, I920] 



NATURE 



415 



musical things. The song about " How many 

 times do I love thee, dear? " is not to be for- 

 s^-otten ; nor do those who have read it ever forget 

 his exquisite " Dream-pedlary "- — " If there were 

 dreams to sell, What would you buy? " 



To another order of poets belongs a little cluster 

 of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century physicians. 

 Garth and Akenside and John Armstrong and 

 Erasmus Darwin. They are of that quiet, humour- 

 less, didactic school for which we have lost our 

 relish, and for which Dr. Johnson (apart from his 

 bitter quarrel with the last, the Lichfield, 

 physician) had all too kindly a word. 



We no longer read Garth's "Dispensary," any 

 more than we read his once celebrated Harveian 

 oration, although the poem was "on the side of 

 charity against the intrigues of interest, and of 

 regular learning against licentious usurpation of 

 medical authority." In other words, it was a 

 pedantic account of a quarrel between the College 

 of Physicians and the Society of Apothecaries. " It 

 appears," says Johnson, "to want something of 

 poetical ardour, and something of general delecta- 

 tion " — a fair and honest verdict, which we might 

 illustrate and support by any stray line or two — 

 by those, for instance, where the poet describes 

 "Why bilious juice a golden light puts on. And 

 floods of chyle in silver currents run ; How the 

 dim speck of entity began T' expand its recent 

 form and stretch to Man." 



Akenside was a much better poet, and seems 

 also to have been a more learned physician. His 

 "Discourse on the Dysentery" "entitled him to 

 the same height of place among the scholars as he 

 possessed before among the wits " ; and " The 

 Pleasures of the Imagination " is still worth our 

 while to read, if it be only for some few noble 

 and exalted passages. We may lay it down, as 

 Pope did, with the feeling that "this is no every- 

 day writer ! " There runs through it a sincere and 

 almost prophetic belief in the value of research 

 and the progress of science — in " Science herself 

 . . . the substitute Of God's own wisdom in this 

 toilsome world, The Providence of Man." Of 

 Armstrong, who contributed some "medical 

 stanzas" to "The Castle of Indolence," and wrote 

 his "Art of Pursuing Health" in indolent Thom- 

 sonian verse, we need scarcely speak. He was 

 admired in an age by no means devoid of polished 

 culture, but content to read and even eager to 

 buy such dreary, sluggish blank verse as " Hail 

 sacred flood, May still thy hospitable swains be 

 blessed In rural Innocence," and so on, to the 

 end of the quarto volume. 



Erasmus Darwin's "Botanic Garden" and 

 " Loves of the Plants " have merits of their own, 

 NO. 2640, VOL. 105] 



and an historic interest not to be gainsaid; but 

 in his poetry there is a \e ne sais quoi qui mauque, 

 though it was wont at one time to be spoken of 

 in the same breath with Cowper's "Task," and 

 even with "Paradise Lost." They are the most 

 didactic of didactic poems. The good doctor 

 revels in facts, in the communication of know- 

 ledge, or rather of information. The world is ran- 

 sacked for objects of wonder and contemplation. 

 As his biographer. Miss Anna Seward, tells us, 

 " the operations of the weather-glass and air- 

 pump are described with philosophic accuracy and 

 poetic elegance." There is "a grahd picture, 

 though of somewhat forced introduction," of the 

 crocodile bursting from its egg on the banks of 

 the Nile. The embryo plant is introduced to us 

 by " Lo ! on each seed, within the tender rind, 

 Life's golden threads in endless circles wind, etc." 

 We turn the page and come to. " where the 

 humming-bird, in Chili's bowers. On fluttering 

 pinions robs the pendent flowers ; Seeks where 

 fine pores their dulcet balms distil. And sucks the 

 treasures with proboscis bill." The sinuous track 

 of the serpent glides, with no apparent reluctance, 

 into " So, with • strong arm, immortal Brindley 

 leads His long canals, and parts the velvet 

 meads." Yet the simple mind of this old poet- 

 physician, utterly destitute of humour or romance, 

 had (as we all know) a vast deal of wisdom com- 

 mingled with its simplicity. 



In our own day, or within our immediate 

 recollection, there have been many members of 

 the medical profession who could put on their 

 singing robes once in a way, and write creditable 

 verse or sing still better convivial songs. There 

 was a whole brotherhood of them in Edinburgh 

 a generation ago, with such men as Douglas 

 Maclagan and Andrew Wood and James Sidey 

 and J. D. Gillespie and John Smith, who touched 

 art with the humour, and now and then with the 

 pathos, of their post-prandial lyrics. But we had 

 better not pause over the "Nugae Canorae 

 Medicae," or "Mistura Curiosa," or "Alter 

 Ejusdem " — certainly not over that triumphant 

 outburst of "old Sidey 's" hilarious conviviality, 

 "The Cat's got the measles and it's deid, pair 

 thing ! " scarcely even over the soft lowland accent 

 and the tender lilt of "The burnie that wins to 

 the sea " — " Up near the scaur where the hoodie- 

 craw bides, Up near the foot of the keelie-craig 

 hie, Deep in the hidie-heugh, riv'd frae its sides, 

 Rises the burnie that wins to the sea." In the 

 same town of Edinburgh we had very lately the 

 Cornishman, Ricardo Stephens, another poet- 

 physician, writer of strange ballads and dreamer 

 of rich, imaginative dreams. It was he who 



