"But," said he, "though I mean to proceed regularly step by step, curiosity will make me in one instance trespass upon this proper arrangement, and I shall take the earliest opportunity of paying my respects to Adam and Eve.”

CHAPTER LVII. P. I.

AN ATTEMPT IS MADE TO REMOVE THE UNPLEASANT IMPRESSION PRODUCED UPON THE LADIES BY THE DOCTOR'S TIE WIG AND HIS SUIT OF SNUFF-COLOURED DITTOS.

I MUST not allow the feminine part of my readers to suppose that the doctor, when in his prime of life, was not a very likable person in appearance, as well as in everything else, although he wore what in the middle of the last century was the costume of a respectable country practitioner in medicine. Though at Leyden he could only look at a burgemeester's daughter as a cat may look at a king, there was not a mayor or alderman's daughter in Doncaster who would have thought herself disparaged if he had fixed his eyes upon her, and made her a proffer of his hand.

Yet, as, in the opinion of many, dress "makes the man," and anything which departs widely from the standard of dress," the fellow," I must endeavour to give those young ladies who are influenced more than they ought to be, and perhaps more than they are aware, by such an opinion, a more favourable notion of the doctor's appearance, than they are likely to have if they bring him before their eyes in the fashion of his times. It will not assist this intention on my part, if I request you to look at him as you would look at a friend who was dressed in such a costume for a masquerade or a fancy ball; for your friend would expect and wish to be laughed at, having assumed the dress for that benevolent purpose. Well, then, let us take off the aforesaid sad snuffcoloured coat with broad deep cuffs; still the waistcoat with its long flaps, and the breeches that barely reach to the knee, will provoke your merriment. We must not proceed further in undressing him; and if I conceal these under a loose morning gown of green damask, the insuperable periwig

will still remain.

Let me then present him to your imagination, setting forth on horseback in that sort of weather which no man encounters voluntarily, but which men of his profession who

practise in the country are called upon to face at all seasons and all hours. Look at him in a greatcoat of the closest texture that the looms of Leeds could furnish-one of those dreadnaughts the utility of which sets fashion at defiance. You will not observe his boot-stockings coming high above the knees; the coat covers them; and if it did not, you would be far from despising them now. His tie wig is all but hidden under a hat, the brim of which is broad enough to answer in some degree the use of an umbrella. Look at him now, about to set off on some case of emergency; with haste in his expressive eyes, and a cast of thoughtful anxiety over one of the most benignant countenances that nature ever impressed with the characters of good humour and good sense!

Was he then so handsome? you say. Nay, ladies, I know not whether you would have called him so: for among the things which were too wonderful for him, yea, which he knew not, I suspect that Solomon might have included a woman's notion of handsomeness in man.

And there Horrebow, the natural historian of Iceland-if Horrebow had been his biographer—would have ended this chapter.

"Here, perchance," (observe, reader, I am speaking now in the words of the lord keeper Sir Nicholas Bacon,) "here, perchance, a question would be asked, (and yet I do marvel to hear a question made of so plain a matter,) what should be the cause of this? If it were asked," (still the lord keeper speaketh,) "thus I mean to answer: That I think no man so blind but seeth it, no man so deaf but heareth it, nor no man so ignorant but understandeth it." "Il y a des demandes si sottes qu'on ne les sçauroit resoudre par autre moyen que par la moquerie et les absurdities; afin qu'une sottise pousse l'autre."*

But some reader may ask what I have answered here, or

VOL. I.-20

* Garasse

rather what I have brought forward the great authority of the lord keeper Sir Nicholas Bacon and the arch-vituperator P. Garasse, to answer for me. Do I take it for granted that the cause wherefore there is no portrait of Dr. Daniel Dove should be thus apparent? or the reason why, there being no such portrait, Horrebow should simply have said so, and having so said, end therewith the chapter which he had commenced upon the subject?

Oh, gentle reader, you who ask this pertinent question-I entirely agree with you! there is nothing more desirable in composition than perspicuity; and in perspicuity precision is implied. Of the author who has attained it in his style, it may indeed be said, omne tulit punctum, so far as relates to style; for all other graces, those only excepted which only genius can impart, will necessarily follow. Nothing is so desirable, and yet it should seem that nothing is so difficult. He who thinks least about it when he is engaged in composition will be most likely to attain it, for no man ever attained it by labouring for it. Read all the treatises upon composition that ever were composed, and you will find nothing which conveys so much useful instruction as the account given by John Wesley of his own way of writing. "I never think of my style," says he; "but just set down the words that come first. Only when Í transcribe anything for the press, then I think it my duty to see that every phrase be clear, pure, and proper: conciseness, which is now as it were natural to me, brings quantum sufficit of strength. If after all I observe any stiff expression, I throw it out neck and shoulders." Let your words take their course freely; they will then dispose themselves in their natural order, and make your meaning plain; that is, Mr. Author, supposing you have a meaning; and that it is not an insidious, and for that reason, a covert one. With all the headwork that there is in these volumes, and all the heartwork too, I have not bitten my nails over a single sentence which they contain. I do not say that my hand has not sometimes been passed across my brow; nor that the fingers of my left hand have not played with the hair upon my forehead-like Thalaba's with the grass that grew beside Oneiza's tomb.

No people have pretended to so much precision in their language as the Turks. They have not only verbs active, passive, transitive, and reciprocal, but also verbs co-operative, verbs meditative, verbs frequentative, verbs negative, and verbs impossible; and moreover they have what are called verbs of opinion, and verbs of knowledge. The latter are used when the speaker means it to be understood that he speaks of his own sure knowledge, and is absolutely certain of what he asserts; the former when he advances it only

as what he thinks likely, or believes upon the testimony of others.

Now in the Turkish language the word whereon both the meaning and the construction of the sentence depend, is placed at the end of a sentence, which extends not unfre quently to ten, fifteen, or twenty lines. What therefore they might gain in accuracy by this nice distinction of verbs must be more than counterbalanced by the ambiguity consequent upon long-windedness. And notwithstanding their conscientious moods, they are not more remarkable for veracity than their neighbours who in ancient times made so much use of the indefinite tenses, and were said to be always liars.

We have a sect in our own country who profess to use a strict and sincere plainness of speech; they call their dialect the plain language, and yet they are notorious for making a studied precision in their words answer all the purposes of equivocation.

END OF VOL. I