French, in spite of Montcalm's earnest request to be allowed to substitute a beeve for each man, the Indians, his Jesuit friend told him, said 'they were not such fools as to prefer beeves to Englishmen.' And there are places in Africa where human flesh is exposed in the market like beef or mutton. Deaf-mutism is a valuable proof of original human speechlessness. The wild boy of Hanover is discussed; and Monboddo made a journey expressly to catechise the wild French girl of Champagne, her neighbours, and the abbess under whose charge she was put (Monboddo spoke French with fluency since his three years' stay in Groningen). The thing that specially caused judicious friends to grieve and the enemy to blaspheme was Monboddo's calmly arguing that the orang-utans of Angola are undeveloped specimens of the human species, and that a race of men had been visited in 1647 by an apparently reliable Swedish skipper (he wrote to Linnæus for particulars about him) who had long hairy tails and were, apparently, speechless. In spite of his veneration for antiquity, Monboddo's anthropological method of studying the growth of civilisation, not by deductions from genesis and ethical theory, but by studying authentic savage races, their ways and languages, was in his own time sufficiently rare; and we cannot but regret that he did not live to execute A History of Man, which he had long in contemplation. Of course many ridiculous and entirely apocryphal additions were made to Monboddo's thesis-as that the tails had got worn off by much sitting; his statements were parodied and his arguments utterly misrepresented-as by Boswell and Johnson. Monboddo returned Johnson's dislike with hearty contempt charged Johnson with being unable to read Greek texts, said in his opinion he was neither a scholar nor a man of taste, and said that dictionary-making, however necessary an occupation, required neither genius nor learning. Many of Monboddo's jokes were misunderstood. Thus he was said to have carried his reverence for antiquity so far that, finding carriages were not in use among the ancients, he never would enter one, but till he was upwards of eighty made his annual journey to London on horseback; it was, he said, a degradation of the genuine dignity of human nature to be dragged at the tail of a horse instead of mounting upon his back. The anthropological discussions, it should be added, are almost wholly confined to the first volume of the Essay; the rest is taken up with discussions not unlike those in Harris's Hermes; the sixth volume deals with rhetoric. Antient Metaphysics is, of course, a plea in favour of Greek philosophy against all modern systems whatsoever. Monboddo, as we have seen, bridges over the gulf between men and animals in two ways—both by recognising anthropoid apes (the seven-foot high. ones would seem to be gorillas) as undeveloped human beings, and, on the other hand, by proving that there are unmistakably men who have longish tails and other undesirable peculiarities generally accounted bestial. The extracts are both from the first volume of the Essay: It is a clear case that we do not speak in that state which of all others best deserves the appellation of natural, I mean when we are born, nor for a considerable time after; and even then we learn but slowly, and with a great deal of labour and difficulty. About the same time also we begin to form ideas. But the same answer, I know, is made to serve for both; namely, that our minds as well as our bodily organs are then weak, and therefore are unable to perform several of their natural functions; but as soon as they become strong and confirmed by age, then we both think and speak. That this is not true with respect to thinking I have already endeavoured to show; and with respect to speaking, I say, in the first place, that of all those savages which have been caught in different parts of Europe, not one had the use of speech, though they had all the organs of pronunciation such as we have them, and the understanding of a man, at least as much as was possible, when it is considered that their minds were not culti vated by any kind of conversation or intercourse with their own species; nor had they come the length, according to my hypothesis, of forming ideas, or thinking at all. One of these was catched in the woods of Hanover as late as the reign of George I., and for any thing I know is yet alive; at least I am sure he was so some years ago. He was a man in mind as well as body, as I have been informed by a person who lived for a considerable time in the neighbourhood of a farmer's house where he was kept, and had an oppor tunity of seeing him almost every day; not an idiot, as he has been represented by some who cannot make allowance for the difference that education makes upon men's minds; yet he was not only mute when first caught, but he never learned to speak, though at the time the gentleman from whom I have my information saw him, he had been above thirty years in England. Further, not only solitary savages, but a whole nation, if I may call them so, have been found without the use of speech. This is the case of the Ouran Outangs that are found in the kingdom of Angola in Africa, and in several parts of Asia. They are exactly of the human form; walking erect, not upon all-four, like the savages that have been found in Europe; they use sticks for weapons; they live in society; they make huts of branches of trees, and they carry off negroe girls, whom they make slaves of. . . These facts are related of them by Mons. Buffon in his natural history; and I was further told by a gentleman who had been in Angola, that there were some of them seven feet high, and that the negroes were extremely afraid of them; for when they did any mischief to the Ouran Outangs, they were sure to be heartily cudgelled when they were catched. But though from the particulars above mentioned it appears certain that they are of our species, and though they have made some progress in the arts of life, they have not come the length of language; and accordingly none of them that have been brought to Europe could speak, and what seems strange, never learned to speak. I myself saw at Paris one of them, whose skin was stuffed, standing upon a shelf in the king's cabinet of natural curiosities. He had exactly the shape and features of a man; and particularly I was informed, that he had organs of pronunciation as perfect as we have. He lived several years at Versailles, and died by drinking spirits. He had as much of the understanding of a man as could be expected from his education, and performed many little offices to the lady with whom he lived; but never learned to speak. I was well informed too, of one of them belonging to a French gentleman in India, who used to go to market for him, but was likewise mute. He follows up this by discussing the difficulty Frenchmen and Huron Indians have in learning to utter some sounds of the English language, and detailing the information he had himself obtained from the Abbè de l'Epée and Mr Braidwood, by cross-examining them as to the pains they had to get deaf people to articulate. Next we have his travellers' tales, ancient and modern, of tribes of men living in what he regards as the natural state, without arts or civility,' and behaving in almost all respects like mere brutes. Then comes his crucial instance : His Before I conclude this article of travels, I will quote one traveller more, who is very little known, though he reports a very extraordinary fact concerning our species, and which well deserves the attention of naturalists. name is Keoping, a Swede by birth, who, in the year 1647, went to the East Indies, and there served aboard a Dutch ship of force, belonging to the Dutch East-India company, in quality of lieutenant. In sailing through those seas they had occasion to come upon the coast of an island in the gulf of Bengal called Nicobar, where they saw men with tails like those of cats, and which they moved in the same manner. They came in canoes alongside of the ship, with an intention to trade with them, and to give them parrots in exchange for iron, which they wanted very much. Several of them came aboard the ship, and many more would have come; but the Dutch were afraid of being overpowered by their numbers, and therefore they fired their great guns, and frightened them away. The next day they sent ashore a boat with five men; but they not having returned the following night, the day after the captain sent a larger boat ashore with more hands, and two pieces of cannon. When they landed, the men with the tails came about them in great numbers; but by firing their cannon they chased them away: but found only the bones of their companions, who had been devoured by the savages; and the boat in which they had landed they found taken to pieces, and the iron of it carried away. The author who relates this is, as I am well informed, an author of very good credit. He writes in a simple plain manner, not like a man who intended to impose a lie upon the world, merely for the silly pleasure of making people stare; and if it be a lie (for it cannot be a mistake), it is the only lie in his book; for every thing else that he has related of animals and vegetables has been found to be true. I am sensible, however, that those who believe that men are, and always have been, the same in all ages and nations of the world, and such as we see them in Europe, will think this story quite incredible ; but for my own part I am convinced, that we have not yet discovered all the variety of nature, not even in species; and the most incredible thing, in my our own apprehension, that could be told, even if there were no facts to contradict it, would be, that all the men in the different parts of the earth were the same in size, figure, shape, and colour. I am therefore disposed to believe, upon credible evidence, that there are still greater varieties in our species than what is mentioned by this traveller for that there are men with tails, such as the antients gave to their satyrs, is a fact so well attested that I think it cannot be doubted. But our Swedish traveller, so far as I know, is the only one who speaks of tails of such length as those of the inhabitants of Nicobar. : That these animals were men, as they trafficked, and used the art of navigation, I think cannot be denied. It appears that they herded together, and lived in some kind of society; but whether they had the use of language or not, does not appear from our author's relation : and I should incline to think that they had not, and that in this respect they resembled the Ouran Outangs, though in other respects they appeared to be farther advanced in the arts of life; for I do not think that any traveller has said that the Ouran Outangs practised navigation or commerce. They live, however, in society, act together in concert, particularly in attacking elephants, build huts, and no doubt practise other arts, both for sustenance and defence; so that they may be reckoned to be in the first stage of the human progression, being associated, and practising certain arts of life; but not so far advanced as to have invented the great art of language, to which I think the inhabitants of Nicobar must have approached nearer (if they have not already found it out), as they are so much farther advanced in other arts. This he fortifies by a long and elaborate note to the following effect: The story is told in the 6th volume of Linnæus's Amanitates academica, in an academical oration of one Hoppius, a scholar, as I suppose, of Linnæus, who relates the story upon the credit of this Keoping, with several more circumstances than I have mentioned. As I knew nothing then of any other author who had spoken of men with tails, I thought the fact extraordinary, and was not disposed to believe it without knowing who this Keoping was, and what credit he deserved. I therefore wrote to Linnæus, inquiring about him, and desiring to know where his book was to be found. He returned me a very polite answer, informing me that the book was lately reprinted at Stockholm, 1743, apud Salvium; that the author was 'natione Suecus, secutus naves Belgicas per plures annos, imprimis ad insulas India Orientalis. Incepit iter 1647. Erat Lieutenant navalis rei. Habet multa de animalibus et plantis sparsa, simplici stylo; sed omnia reliqua quæ retulit de his, simplicitate et fide summa recenset; quorum omnia reliqua hodie notissima et confirmata.' Upon this information I got the book from Stockholm. It is in the Swedish language, which I do not understand; but that passage of it having been translated to me by a Swedish gentleman, I found it to agree exactly with the story told by Hoppius. And the gentleman, who was very well acquainted with the book, confirmed what Linnæus says, of its being written in a plain and simple style, bearing intrinsic marks of truth. As this is a matter of great curiosity, I will subjoin what Linnæus further says in his letter to me. [And he adds six other cases of tailed men reported by Linnæus.] Richard Jago (1715-81), son of a Warwickshire rector, was a servitor at University College, Oxford (where Shenstone, then a commoner, was his intimate friend), and became vicar of Snitterfield near Stratford-on-Avon. He wrote an elegy on The Blackbirds (1753); Edgehill, or the Rural Prospect Delineated and Moralised (1767); Labour and Genius, or the Mill-Stream and the Cascade, a Fable (1768); Adam, an oratorio (mainly from Paradise Lost), and other poetical pieces, all collected and published in one volume in 1784. Absence. With leaden foot Time creeps along, While Delia is away; With her, nor plaintive was the song, Ah! envious power, reverse my doom, Strain every nerve, stretch every plume, Thomas Blacklock (1721-91), the blind poet, attracted sympathy and interest, but, though he was an amiable and excellent man, his verse is almost wholly tame, languid, and commonplace. The son of a Cumberland bricklayer who had settled at Annan in Dumfriesshire, he completely lost his sight by smallpox when only six months old; but his worthy father, assisted by neighbours, amused his solitary boyhood by reading to him; and before he was twenty he was familiar with Spenser, Milton, Pope, Addison, Thomson, and Allan Ramsay, from whom he largely derived his images and impressions of nature and natural objects. His father was accidentally killed when the studious youth was about nineteen; but Dr Stevenson, an Edinburgh physician, having seen some of his attempts at verse, brought their blind author to the Scottish capital, where he was enrolled as a student of divinity. In 1746 he published a volume of his poems, which was reprinted with additions in 1754 and 1756. He was licensed in 1759, and in 1762 was by the Earl of Selkirk nominated minister of Kirkcudbright. But the parishioners were opposed both to Church patronage in the abstract and to this exercise of it in favour of a blind man, and the poet relinquished the appointment for an annuity. He now resided in Edinburgh, and took in boarders, but suffered from depression of spirits, supposing that his powers were failing him; his generous ardour in 1786 on behalf of Burns showed no diminution of taste or sensibility. He published some sermons and theological treatises, and an article on Blindness for the Encyclopædia Britannica. Terrors of a Guilty Conscience. No more the meads their vernal bloom, If night his lonely walks surprise, Ode to Aurora on Melissa's Birthday. And chase from heaven night's envious shade, Of time and nature eldest born, But, as thou lead'st the radiant sphere, So when, through life's protracted day, Blessed with her rays, though robbed of thine. Of this ode Henry Mackenzie said it was 'a compliment and tribute of affection to the tender assiduity of an excellent wife, which I have not anywhere seen more happily conceived or more elegantly expressed.' Sir William Blackstone (1723-80), a Londoner born, made choice of the law for his profession, entered himself a student of the Middle Temple, and took formal leave of poetry in verses published in Dodsley's Miscellany. But though he had forsaken his muse, he still-like Charles Lamb, when he had given up the use of the 'great plant' tobacco-'loved to live in the suburbs of her graces.' Blackstone, who was called to the Bar in 1746, became Vinerian Professor of Law at Oxford, where he delivered the lectures afterwards published as the famous Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69). After refusing the SolicitorGeneralship, he was knighted, and died a judge in the Court of Common Pleas. The Commentaries that arose out of his lectures as first professor of English law at Oxford (the Civil or Roman law had always been taught) were the first attempt to popularise and systematise the law of England. Though he had not an original or independent mind, and was not profoundly versed in either Civil or Common law, he produced an unequalled compendium of what was known on his chosen subject, admirably written in a style always clear and generally dignified, though somewhat formal. Junius attacked him for leaning too much to the side of prerogative, and abiding rather by precedents than by sense and justice; Priestley protested against his statement and defence of the law as against Dissenters; and Bentham later assailed his view on the nature of law in general. But the work took, maintained an unique place in English law, and erelong was cited not as a mere statement of the law, but as an original authority. As the standard exposition it was edited and re-edited (down to 1840 in England, to 1884 in the United States); and even now modern statements are in part adaptations of Blackstone, who thus sums up the relative merits of an elective and hereditary monarchy: It must be owned, an elective monarchy seems to be the most obvious and best suited of any to the rational principles of government and the freedom of human nature; and accordingly, we find from history that, in the infancy and first rudiments of almost every state, the leader, chief-magistrate, or prince hath usually been elective. And if the individuals who compose that state could always continue true to first principles, uninfluenced by passion or prejudice, unassailed by corruption, and unawed by violence, elective succession were as much to be desired in a kingdom as in other inferior communities. The best, the wisest, and the bravest man would then be sure of receiving that crown which his endowments have merited; and the sense of an unbiassed majority would be dutifully acquiesced in by the few who were of different opinions. But history and observation will inform us that elections of every kind, in the present state of human nature, are too frequently brought about by influence, partiality, and artifice; and even where the case is otherwise, these practices will be often suspected, and as constantly charged upon the successful, by a splenetic disappointed minority. This is an evil to which all societies are liable; as well those of a private and domestic kind, as the great community of the public, which regulates and includes the rest. But in the former there is this advan tage, that such suspicions, if false, proceed no further than jealousies and murmurs, which time will effectually suppress; and, if true, the injustice may be remedied by legal means, by an appeal to those tribunals to which every member of society has (by becoming such) virtu ally engaged to submit. Whereas, in the great and independent society which every nation composes, there is no superior to resort to but the law of nature; no method to redress the infringements of that law but the actual exertion of private force. As, therefore, between two nations complaining of mutual injuries, the quarrel can only be decided by the law of arms, so in one and the same nation, when the fundamental principles of their common union are supposed to be invaded, and more especially when the appointment of their chiefmagistrate is alleged to be unduly made, the only tribunal to which the complainants can appeal is that of the God of battles; the only process by which the appeal can be carried on is that of a civil and intestine A hereditary succession to the crown is therefore now established in this and most other countries, in order to prevent that periodical bloodshed and misery which the history of ancient imperial Rome and the more modern experience of Poland and Germany may show us are the consequences of elective kingdoms. war. The Lawyer's Farewell to his Muse. As by some tyrant's stern command Then all was joyous, all was young, Me wrangling courts, and stubborn law, Shakspeare, no more, thy sylvan son, Nor all the art of Addison, Pope's heaven-strung lyre, nor Waller's ease, In furs and coifs around me stand; That grate the soul of harmony, And points with tottering hand the ways In that pure spring the bottom view, Thus to the grave in peace descend. Albania was one of two Scottish descriptive poems (The Clyde the other) belonging to this period, which were reprinted in 1803 in John Leyden's collection. Albania, an anonymous work of two hundred and ninety-six lines in blank verse, in praise of Scotland, was published in London in 1737, its author apparently being a Scottish minister who had lately died young. Aaron Hill prefixed some highly encomiastic lines to the editor, but the little volume seems to have remained unnoticed and unknown till 1783, when Dr Beattie, in one of his Essays on Poetry and Music, quoted a picturesque passage, praised also by Sir Walter Scott, which describes 'invisible hunting,' a superstition formerly prevalent in the Highlands, and not unknown elsewhere. The Invisible Hunting. E'er since of old the haughty thanes of Ross (So to the simple swain tradition tells) Starts at the noise, and both the herdsman's ears John Wilson (1720–89), parish schoolmaster at Lesmahagow and Greenock, was the author of The Clyde, another descriptive poem included by Leyden in the same volume with Albania. In 1767 the magistrates and minister of Greenock, before they admitted Wilson to the superintendence of the grammar-school, stipulated that he abandon the profane and unprofitable art of poemmaking'! He complied, burned his unfinished manuscripts, and faithfully kept his word. The world probably lost little through the barbarism of the Greenock functionaries. For though Wilson had a good command of the heroic couplet, a keen love for scenery, and in the Clyde produced what Leyden called 'the first loco-descriptive poem of any merit,' he had none of the originality of the true 'maker'—as will be seen from the challenge to Forth, quoted below. The Clyde, which extends to nearly two thousand lines, was published in 1764, along with a 'dramatic sketch,' Earl Douglas, which in its original form Wilson had issued in 1760. Boast not, great Forth, thy broad majestic tide, |