Dr. Ferriar. 177 



to small currents or eddies in a great stream, in which 

 nature carries everything along with it — the great law. 



Dr. Ferriar wrote a volume entitled ' Essay towards a 

 Theory of Apparitions,' many of which also are easily ex- 

 plained by the imagination method. 



As a very curious instance of this class of explanation 

 Dr. Ferriar gives (see Mem. vol. iii. p. 113) some account 

 of Marcus Marci (a physician in Prag), who held ' that ideas 

 are substantial and everywhere in the constituent atoms of 

 their subject, although its organisation be destroyed. Thus 

 spectres and redivivi were explained, without any other 

 difficulty than that of believing the theory. It was a 

 question amongst philosophers last century, how the rain- 

 ing of frogs could be explained ; for that frogs were rained 

 nobody presumed to doubt before Rhedi. Marci roundly 

 affirmed that the ideas of frogs were brought down by the 

 rain, and that they put on a covering of mud after their 

 descent. This rain of ideas is a thought that would have 

 been much celebrated in a poet. Sterne has hit on some- 

 thing like it, but the congelation of minds, which furnishes 

 the subject of two very amusing papers in the " Tatler," is a 

 stretch of fancy capable of making any poet's fortune. . . . 

 That singular and beautiful appearance the Fata Morgana, 

 was a happy confirmation of Marci's hypotheses ; he sup- 

 posed them to consist of the ideas of dead animals.' 



Probably this is a perversion of Plato's theory of ideas, 

 it certainly goes beyond all reason. 



Another paper read by Dr. Ferriar is entitled ' Essay 

 on the Dramatic Writings of Massinger.' This essay 

 shows a great attention to and a full appreciation of the 

 dramatic poets of England, and modern writers have given 

 to Massinger the place which our author has assigned. 



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