See tallow candles tip the modest thorn
Candles of wax the prouder elm adorn!
See the dull clown survey with stupid stare
Where leaves once grew, now periwigs of hair!
While fluids, which a wondrous change betray,
Ooze from the vernal bud, the summer spray,
Differing from animals alone in name,
(As botanists already half exclaim).
See plants, susceptible of joy and woe,
Feel all we feel, and know whate'er we know!
View them like us inclin'd to watch or sleep,
Like us to smile, and, ah! like us to weep!
Like us behold them glow with warm desire,
And catch from Beauty's glance celestial fire!
Then, oh! ye fair, if through the shady grove
Musing on absent lovers you should rove,
And there with tempting step all heedless brush
Too near some wanton metamorphos'd bush,
Or only hear perchance the western breeze
Steal murmuring through the animated trees,
Beware, beware, lest to your cost you find
The bushes dangerous, dangerous too the wind,
Lest, ah! too late with shame and grief you feel
What your fictitious pads would ill conceal!
While plants turn animals, man, happy man,
To ages shall extend life's lengthen'd span.

If this supposition were just, might not some means be discovered to protract the period of youth and vigour indefinitely? Whether true or false, and even though we should never be able to restore new excitability to the system, there can be no doubt of the immediate practicability of prolonging life considerably; and what is much more desirable, of maintaining a firmer state of health." Observations on Calculus, &c. p. 106. "Nor, however remote medicine may be at present from such perfection, do I see any reason to doubt, that by taking advantage of various and continual accessions as they accrue to science, the same power

Bane to our bliss, no more the wrinkled face
Beauty's bewitching circles shall disgrace;
But see the reigning toast half kind, half coy,
Her rivals' envy, and her lover's joy,
Skill'd to allure, to charm us, and beguile,
In all the bloom of eighty sit and smile!
Thus shall each Belle a lovely L'ENCLOS prove,
Drive boys of future cent'ries mad with love;
The marriage table its degrees extend,

And to our great, great grandmother ascend.
Poor POPE, who griev'd" that Life could scarce supply
"More than to look about him, and to die,"
Had he but flourish'd in these Halcyon days,
Might long have bid Life's little candle blaze,
Have grown straight, handsome, brisk, and debonnair,
The Muses' favourite, favourite of the Fair!
Happy the Poet's lot, who can prolong,
Till time shall be no more, his deathless song;
And live himself to see his swelling name
Roll, like a snowball, gathering all its fame!
Happy, thrice happy he, who at his will
Can drink of Life's sweet cup his constant fill;
* Who, if excess of oxygene create

Symptoms, which lean consumption indicate,

may be acquired over living as is at present exercised over some inanimate bodies; and that not only the cure and prevention of diseases, but the art of protracting the fairest season of life, and rendering health more vigorous, will one day half realize the dream of Alchemy!"-Beddoes's Letter to Darwin, p. 29.

*Dr. Beddoes, in a little tract addreffed to the Author of this Epistle, entertains us with a long history of how he made himself very lean, very fair (his complexion having been before of an uniform brown), very pretty, and very consumptive, by the use of a certain "Cosmetic" called Oxygenous Air; and how he afterwards cured himself of the said Leanness and Consumption at his

A sure specific can procure with ease,
Rich cream and butter from his herd of trees:
Or if he find excess of hydrogene

His body load with fat, his mind with spleen,
True health and vigour to restore, can take
From some regenerate oak a savoury steak,
Sliced off the slaughter'd monster's quondam stump,
Converted now into a real rump,

And, blest with an accommodating maw,
Devour the luscious bit, red, recent, raw!

66

Now rise, my Muse, and, warm with rapture, dart
From men to manners, fancy to the heart."
Transporting sight! to view the sons of Pride
Their little heads with shame and sorrow hide,
Ranks and distinctions cease, all reeking lie
In the mean muck of low Equality!

Favourites of freedom, sons of frisky France,
Who never learnt like British bears to dance,
And, while their Premier's humdrum bagpipes sound,
Led by the nose, jog growling round and round;
But more like monkeys, airy, light, and gay,
Pleas'd on your master's head to skip and play;
Ye pious Atheists, Moralists, who deem

The Christian's Heaven and Hell an idle dream,
Delighted to deride all vulgar fears

Of Beelzebub's black claws, cropt tail, and ears,
With manly scorn and dignity to tread

On prostrate Superstition's hoary head;

Friend's, Quaker Reynolds's, in Colebrook Dale, by a diet in which Butter and Cream bore the largest proportions. See pages 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, and 55.

* To prevent our sailors from growing fat, and afterwards falling into the scurvy (of which obesity, we are informed, is the first symptom), Dr. Beddoes proposes that the jolly tars should eat their food raw! Observations, p. 60.

Who, foes to power despotic, dare defy
The King of Kings, that bugbear of the sky;
Dreading for present crimes no future rod,
Self-praise your worship, vanity your God;
Oh how my eyes with tears ecstatic fill,
What new felt transports through my bosom thrill, P.I
When I behold you with gigantic blow
The pigmy pride of Royalty lay low,

With pikes and guns this moral dogma teach→→→
Virtue consists in nudity of breech!

Soon shall we view no more the glittering things
"Bestarr'd, begarter'd, and befool'd by kings;"
The pretty twinklers that so sweetly shone,
And deem'd their lovely lustre all their own!
No more the despot view, whose mighty nods
Shook nature, and proclaim'd him God of Gods;
Drunk with applause who rais'd his rolling eyes,
And seem'd, whene'er he mov'd, to tread the skies!
Despis'd, detested, all shall wing their flight,
And sink, no more to rise, in endless night!
Arm'd with a bristled end and glittering awl,
Behold a minor Monarch in his stall!
No circling gold his royal brow surrounds,
A yard of room his sphere of action bounds;
His sole ambition and his prime pursuit,
With skill a shoe to patch, to stitch a boot!
Nor deem his fate severe! The time may come
When many a pious King in Christendom,

Dash'd from his throne, and made dame Fortune's fool,
Shall envy little Capet's cobbling stool!

*

Mark with the Peer and Prince the canting priest, Forbidden on his country's fat to feast,

"It is a law of human nature, the less of ecclesiastical inAuence, the less of deadly animosity among men.”—“ "It is rea

While peace looks down sweet smiling on the swains,
And untax'd Plenty crowns the fruitful plains!
No more that lazy lubbard shall we pay,
With phiz so farcical to preach and pray;
No more behold that harpy of the land
Lay on our largest sheaves his greedy hand;
With Bigotry's black banner wide unfurl'd,
Fright into gothic ignorance the world:

But truth and light shall come, with hostile rage,
"To drive the holy Vandal off the stage."
See tythes expire, and ancient slavery fail;
Proud Superstition turn her vanquish'd tail;
No zealous Minister the Church befriend,
But all her sorceries with the Beldame end:

sonable to presume that the majority of French Priests in England partake of the spirit of their brethren; and to a large portion of the popish priesthood, Christianity is believed, upon good grounds, to be as much foolishness as it was to the Greeks. Their faith in the advantages of the immense emoluments which those Reverend Robbers, their predecessors, had extorted from superstitious Barbarians, never suffered any abateinent; hence probably that conduct to which their sufferings are to be imputed,"-"Through all the calumny that has been vomited forth against the French, the most injured and most enlightened people upon earth, it is easy to discern some advantages which the nation owes to Liberty-Tythes, the accursed relic of Popery, have been abolished.-France is purged not only from Ecclesiastical Drones, which consumed the sweetest honey of the hive, but also from the monstrous debau chery of the richer, and the beggarly insolence of the poorer Noblesse." Dr. Beddoes's admirable Reasons for believing the Friends of Liberty in France not to be the Authors and Abettors of the crimes committed in that country; humbly addressed to those who from time to time constitute themselves Judges and Jury upon affairs public and private, and, without admitting any testimony but the gross lies of Beldame Rumour, damn their neighbours individually, and the rest of the world by the lump; the celebrated hand-bill circulated in Shropshire, which eventually occasioned his resignation of the Chemical Chair in the University of Oxford,