4S4 



ON TEMPERAMENTS. 



varieties afforded by this genus are almost innumerable, for the causes are 

 pecuharlydivei sified. Hereditary disease, long-continued sorrow, incessant 

 study, habitual gluttopy, the abuse of pleasures of various kinds, and a 

 thousand other circumstances, may equally become sources of this dis- 

 tressing condition, under some shape or other. And perhaps Le Clerc 

 is correct in regarding it, in his Natural History of Man, as in every in- 

 stance a morbid ufTection, rather than a natural and primitive constitution. 



The character of Tiberius, of Louis XL, and of Pygmalion, as drawn 

 by the nice hand of Fenelon in his Telemachus, give striking elucidations 

 of this temperament in its moral bearings. M. Richerand has also pointed 

 out examples in^Torquato Tasso, Pascal, Gilbert, and Zimmerman ; but 

 perhaps the most perfect picture that has been furnished to the world 

 is to be found m the life of the celebrated Jean-Jaques Rousseau. 



IV. Let us pass on to the fourth temperament — the phlegmatic, 

 LYMPHATIC, piTUiTOus, or WATERY, for the tcrms are all synonymous, and 

 by all these terms it has been denominated. The proportion of fluids is 

 here too considerable for that of the solids, or, in other words, theexcernent 

 system which secretes them from the general mass of the blood is in pecu- 

 liar activity ; and the result is, that the body obtains an increased bulk 

 from the repletion of the cellular texture. The fleshy parts are soft ; the 

 skin fair ; the hair flaxen or sandy ; the pulse weak and slow ; the figure 

 plump, but without expression ; all the vital actions more or less languid ^ 

 the memory little tenacious, and the attention wavering ; there is an insur- 

 mountable desire of indolence, and aversion to both mental and corporeal 

 exercise. 



It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that, among the illustrious lives 

 of Plutarch, we do not meet with an individual of this character. They 

 . are for the most part a good-natured group, not formed for the transaction 

 of public aff'airs, who have never disturbed the earth by their negotiations 

 or their conquests, and are rather to be sought for in the bosom of private 

 life than at the helm of states. The Emperor Theodosius may, perhaps, 

 be offered as an example of earlier times ; and in our own day the deposed 

 Charles IV. of Spain, who resigned himself altogether into the hands of 

 the infamous Godoy, surnamed Prince of the Peace ; Augustus king of 

 Saxony, who resigned himself equally into the hands of Buonaparte ; and 

 Ferdinand of Sicily, who in a lucky hour, but of too short duration, at 

 length surrendered the government of his people to our own country. 



V. The last temperament I have noticed is the nervous or irritable; 

 as it has been sometimes, but incorrectly denominated. In this consti- 

 tution the sentient system, or that susceptible to external impressions, is 

 predominant over all the rest. Like the melancholic, it is seldom natural or 

 primitive, but morbid and secondary, acquired by a sedentary life, reiterated 

 pleasures, romantic ideas excited by a long train of novel or other fictitious 

 and elevated histories ; and peculiarly distinguished by a promptitude but 

 fickleness of determination, vivacity of sensations, small, soft, and wasted 

 muscles, and generally, though not always, a slender form. The diseases 

 chiefly incident to it are hysterical and other convulsive afl^ections. 



Let us close v*'ith two brief remarks upon the general survey before us. 

 The first is, that these temperaments or generic constitutions are pepetu- 

 ally running into each other ; and consequently, that not one of them, 

 perhaps, is to be found in a state of full perfection in any individual. 

 Strictly speaking, Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox belonged equally in the main to 

 the second of them ; there was the same ardour, genius, and comprehep- 



