BLINDNESS. 



of a similar kind, both in ancient and mo- 

 dern times. 



Cicero mentions it as a fact scarcely 

 credible, with respect to his master in 

 philosophy, Diodotus, that " he exercised 

 himself in it with greater assiduity after 

 he became blind, and which he thought 

 next to impossible to be performed with- 

 out sight ; that he professed geometry, 

 and described his diagrams so accurate- 

 ly to his scholars, as to enable them to 

 draw every line in its proper direction." 



Jerome relates a more remarkable in- 

 stance of Didymus in Alexandria, who, 

 " though blind from bis infancy, and 

 therefore ignorant of the letters, appear- 

 ed so great a miracle to the world, as not 

 only to learn logic, but geometry also, to 

 perfection, which seems (he adds) the 

 most of any thing to require the help of 

 sight." 



Professor Saunderson, who was de- 

 prived of his sight by the small pox, 

 when he was only twelve months old, 

 seems to have acquired most of his ideas 

 by the sense of feeling ; and though he 

 could not distinguish colours by that 

 sense, which, after repeated trials, he 

 said was pretending to impossibilities, 

 yet he was able, with the greatest exact- 

 ness, to discriminate the minutest differ- 

 ence of rough and smooth in a surface, or 

 the least defect of polish. In a set of Ro- 

 man medals, he could distinguish the 

 genuine from the false, though they bad 

 been counterfeited in such a manner as 

 to deceive a connoisseur, who judged of 

 them by the eye His sense of feeling 

 was so acute, that he could perceive the 

 least variation in the state of the air ; and, 

 it is said, that in a garden where observa- 

 tions were made on the sun, he took no- 

 tice of every cloud that interrupted the 

 observation almost as justly as those who 

 could see it. He could tell when any 

 thing was held near his face, or when he 

 passed by a tree at no great distance, 

 provided the air was calm, and there was 

 little or no wind : this he did by the dif- 

 ferent pulse of air upon his face. He 

 possessed a sensibility of hearing to such 

 a degree, that he could distinguish even 

 the fifth part of a note ; and, by the quick- 

 ness of this .sense, he. not only discri- 

 minated persons with whom he had once 

 conversed so long as to fix in his memo- 

 ry ihe sound of their voice, but he could 

 judge of the size of a room into which 

 he was introduced, and of his distance 

 from the wall ; and if he had ever walk- 

 ed over a pavement in courts, piazzas, 

 Sec. which reflected a sound, and was 

 afterwards conducted thither again, he 



could exactly tell in what part of the 

 walk he was placed, merely by the note 

 which it sounded. 



Sculpture and painting are arts, which, 

 one would imagine, are of very difficult 

 and almost impracticable attainment to 

 blind persons, and yet instances occur, 

 which shew, that they are not excluded 

 from the pleasing, creative, and exten- 

 sive regions of fancy. 



De Files mentions a blind sculptor, who 

 thus took the likeness of the Duke de 

 Bracciano in a dark cellar, and made a 

 marble statue of King Charles I. with 

 great justness and elegance. 



However unaccountable it may appear 

 to the abstract philosophers, yet nothing 

 is more certain in fact, than that a blind 

 man may, by the inspiration of the Muses, 

 or rather by the efforts of a cultivated 

 genius, exhibit in poetry the most natural 

 images and animated descriptions even of 

 visible objects, without deservedly in- 

 curring the charge of plagiarism. .We 

 need not recur to Homer and Milton for 

 attestations to this fact : they had pro- 

 bably been long acquainted with the visi- 

 ble world before they had lost their 

 sight, and their descriptions might be 

 animated with all the rapture and enthu- 

 siasm which originally fired their bosoms, 

 when the grand and delightful objects 

 delineated by them were immediately 

 beheld. We are furnished with instances, 

 in which a similar energy and transport 

 of description, at least in a very consider- 

 able degree, have been exhibited by 

 those, on whose minds visible objects 

 were never impressed, or have been en- 

 tirely obliterated. 



Dr. Blacklock affords a surprising in- 

 stance of this kind, who, though he had 

 lost his sight before he was six months 

 old, not only made himself master of va- 

 rious languages, Greek, Latin, Italian, 

 French ; but acquired the reputation of 

 an excellent poet, whose performances 

 abound with appropriate images and ani- 

 mated descriptions. 



Another instance, which deserves be- 

 ing recorded, is that of Dr. Henry Moyes, 

 in our own country, who, though blind 

 from his infancy, by the ardour and assi- 

 duity of his application, and by the ener- 

 gy of native genius, not only made incre- 

 dible advances in mechanical operations, 

 in music, and in the languages ; but ac- 

 quired an extensive acquaintance with 

 geometry, optics, algebra, astronomy, 

 chemistry, and all other branches of na- 

 tural philosophy. 



From the account of Dr. Moyes, who 

 occasionally read lectures on philosophi- 



