weeks before he died, pays the like general compliment :

"There is no end of my kind treatment from the faculty. They are, in general, the most amiable companions, and the best friends, as well as most learned men I know."

We are sorry we cannot quote a similar testimony from Johnson, in one of his very best passages; but we have not his "Lives of the Poets" at hand, and cannot find it in any similar book. It was to Johnson that Dr. Brocklesby offered not only apartments in his house, but an annuity; and the same amiable man is known to have given a considerable sum of money to his friend Burke. The extension of obligations of this latter kind is, for many obvious reasons, not to be desired. The necessity on the one side must be of as peculiar and, so to speak, of as noble a kind as the generosity on the other; and special care would be taken by a necessity of that kind, that the generosity should be equalled by the means. But where the circumstances have occurred, it is delightful to record them. And we have no doubt, that in proportion to the eminence of physicians' names in the connection of their art with other liberal studies, the records would be found numerous with all, if we had the luck to discover them. There is not a medical name connected with literature, which is not that of a generous man in regard to money matters, and, commonly speaking, in all others. Blackmore himself, however dull as a poet and pedantic as a moralist,

enjoyed, we believe, the usual reputation of the faculty for benevolence. We know not whether

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Cowley is to be mentioned among the physicians who have taken their degrees in wit or poetry, for perhaps he never practised. But the annals of our minor poetry abound in medical names, all of them eminent for kindness. Arbuthnot, as well as Garth, wrote verses, and no feeble ones either, as may be seen by a composition of his in the first volume of Dodsley's Collection," entitled "Know Thyself." Akenside was a physician; Armstrong, Goldsmith, and Smollett were physicians; Dr. Cotton, poor Cowper's friend, author of the " Visions," was another; and so was Grainger, the translator of "Tibullus," who wrote the thoughtful "Ode on Solitude," and the beautiful ballad entitled "Bryan and Pereene." Percy (who inserted the ballad with more feeling than propriety in his "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry") says of Grainger, that he was "one of the most friendly, generous, and benevolent men he ever knew." Goldsmith, even in his own poverty, was known to have given guineas to the poor, by way of prescriptions; and when he died, his staircase in the Temple was beset by a crowd of mourners out of Fleet-street, such as Dives in his prosperity would sooner have laughed at, than Lazarus would, or Mary Magdalen. Smollett had his full portion of generosity in money matters, though he does not appear to have possessed so much of the customary delicacy; otherwise he never would have given "os

tentatious" Sunday dinners to poor authors, upon whose heads he took the opportunity of cracking sarcastic jokes! But he was a diseased subject, and probably had a blood as bad as his heart was good. Of Armstrong and Akenside we are not aware that any particular instances of generosity have been recorded, but they both had the usual reputation for benevolence, and wrote of it as if they deserved it. Akenside also excited the enthusiastic generosity of a friend; which an ungenerous man is not likely to do, though undoubtedly it is possible he might, considering the warmth of the heart in which it is excited. The debt of scholarship and friendship to the profession was handsomely acknowledged in his instance by the affection of Dyson, who, when Akenside was commencing practice, assisted him with three hundred a year. That was the most magnificent fee ever given !

We know not, indeed, who is calculated to excite a liberal enthusiasm, if a liberal physician is not. There is not a fine corner in the mind and heart to which he does not appeal; and in relieving the frame, he is too often the only means of making virtue itself comfortable. The physician is welleducated, well-bred, has been accustomed to the infirmities of his fellow-creatures, therefore understands how much there is in them to be excused as well as relieved; his manners are rendered soft by the gentleness required in sick-rooms; he learns a Shakspearian value for a smile and a jest, by know

ing how grateful to suffering is the smallest drop of balm; and the whole circle of his feelings and his knowledge (generally of his success too, but that is not necessary) gives him a sort of divine superiority to the mercenary disgracers of his profession. There are pretenders and quacks, and foolish favourites in this as in all professions, and the world may occasionally be startled by discovering that there is such a phenomenon as a physician at once skilful and mean, eminent and selfish. But the ordinary jests on the profession are never echoed with greater good-will than by those who do not deserve them; and to complete the merit of the real physician,—of the man whose heart and behaviour do good, as well as his prescriptions, he possesses that humility in his knowledge which candidly owns the limit of it, and which is at once the proudest, most modest, and most engaging proof of his attainments, because it shows that what he does know he knows truly, and that he holds brotherhood with the least instructed of his fellow-creatures.

It is a pity that some one, who loves the literature of the age of Queen Anne, and the sprightly fathers of English essay-writing, does not make a selection from the numerous smaller periodical works which were set up by Steele, and which in some instances were carried on but to a few numbers,-such as this of the "Lover" above mentioned, the "Spinster," the "Theatre," &c. They were generally, it is true, the offspring of haste and necessity; but the ne

cessity was that of a genius full of wit and readiness; and a small volume of the kind, prefaced with some hearty semibiographical retrospect of the man and his writings, would really, we believe, contain as good a specimen of the volatile extract of Steele (if the reader will allow us what seems a pun) as of his finest second-best papers out of the Tatler. We speak, we must own, chiefly from a knowledge of the " Lover," never having even seen some of the others; which is another reason for conjecturing that such a volume might be acceptable to many who are acquainted with his principal works.

But there is another volume which has long been suggested to us by the "Lover," and which would surpass in interest whatever might be thus collected out of the whole literature of that day; and that is (we here make a present of the suggestion to any one who has as much love, and more time for the work than we have) a Collection of Genuine LoveLetters; not such stuff as Mrs. Behn and others have given to the world, but genuine in every sense of the word,-authentic, well written, and full of heart. Even those in which the heart is not so abundant, but in which it is yet to be found, elevating gallantry into its sphere, might be admitted; such as one or two of Pope's to Lady Mary, and a pleasant one (if our memory does not deceive us) of Congreve's to Arabella Hunt the singer. Eloisa's should be there by all means (not Abelard's, except by way of note or so, for they are far inferior; as he