the issue and conclusion of all was, that he had a preparation, which, if they took such a quantity of, every morning, he would pawn his life that they should never have the plague, no, though they lived in the house with people that were infected. This made the people all resolve to have it, but then, the price of that was so much, I think it was half-a-crown; But, sir, says one poor woman, I am a poor almswoman, and am kept by the parish, and your bills say, you give the poor your help for nothing. Ay, good woman, says the doctor, so I do, as I published there, I give my advice, but not my physic! Alas, sir, says she, that is a snare laid for the poor then, for you give them your advice for nothing; that is to say, you advise them gratis, to buy your physic for their money, so does every shopkeeper his wares. Here the woman began to give him ill words, and stood at his door all that day, telling her tale to all the people that came, till the doctor, finding she turned away his customers, was obliged to call her up stairs again and gave her his box of physic for nothing, which, perhaps too, was good for nothing when she had it.

But, to return to the people, whose confusions fitted them to be imposed upon by all sorts of pretenders and by every mountebank. There is no doubt but these quacking sort of fellows raised great gains out of the miserable people, for we daily found the crowds that ran after them were infinitely greater, and their doors were more thronged than those of Dr. Brooks, Dr. Upton, Dr. Hodges, Dr. Berwick, or any, though the most famous men of the time; and I was told that some of them got 57. a day by their physic.

But there was still another madness beyond all this, which may serve to give an idea of the distracted humour of the poor people at that time, and this was their following a worse sort of deceivers than any of these, for these petty thieves only deluded them to pick their pockets and get their money, in which their wickedness, whatever it was, lay chiefly on the side of the deceiver's deceiving, not upon the deceived; but in this part I am going to mention, it lay chiefly in the people deceived, or equally in both; and

this was in wearing charms, philters, exorcisms, amulets, and I know not what preparations to fortify the body against the plague, as if the plague was not the hand of God, but a kind of a possession of an evil spirit, and it was to be kept off with crossings, signs of the zodiac, papers tied up with so many knots, and certain words or figures written on them, as particularly the word Abracadabra, formed in triangle or pyramid, thus:

I might spend a great deal of my time in exclamations against the follies, and indeed the wickedness of those things, in a time of such danger, in a matter of such consequence as this of a national infection; but my memorandums of these things relate rather to take notice of the fact, and mention only that it was so. How the poor people found the insufficiency of those things, and how many of them were afterwards carried away in the dead-carts, and thrown into the common graves of every parish with these hellish charms and trumpery hanging about their necks, remains to be spoken of as we go along.

All this was the effect of the hurry the people were in, after the first notion of the plague being at hand was among them, and which may be said to be from about Michaelmas, 1664, but more particularly after the two men died in St. Giles's in the beginning of December; and again after another alarm in February, for when

the plague evidently spread itself, they soon began to see the folly of trusting to these unperforming creatures, who had gulled them of their money, and then their fears worked another way, namely, to amazement and stupidity, not knowing what course to take or what to do, either to help or to relieve themselves, but they ran about from one neighbour's house to another, and even in the streets, from one door to another, with repeated cries of, Lord, have mercy upon us, what shall we do?

I am supposing now the plague to have begun, as I have said, and that the magistrates began to take the condition of the people into their serious consideration; what they did as to the regula tion of the inhabitants, and of infected families, I shall speak to by itself; but, as to the affair of health, it is proper to mention here my having seen the foolish humour of the people in running after quacks, mountebanks, wizards, and fortune-tellers, which they did as above even to madness. The lord mayor, a very sober and religious gentleman, appointed physicians and surgeons for the relief of the poor, I mean the diseased poor, and, in particular, ordered the college of physicians to publish directions for cheap remedies for the poor in all the circumstances of the distemper. This indeed was one of the most charitable and judicious things that could be done at that time, for this drove the people from haunting the doors of every disperser of bills, and from taking down blindly and without consideration, poison for physic, and death instead of life.

This direction of the physicians was done by a consultation of the whole college, and as it was particularly calculated for the use of the poor, and for cheap medicines, it was made public, so that everybody might see it, and copies were given gratis to all that desired it but as it is public and to be seen on all occasions, I need not give the reader of this the trouble of it.

XVIII.

HENRY ST. JOHN, VISCOUNT BOLING

BROKE.

(1678-1751.)

LETTERS ON THE STUDY AND USE OF HISTORY.

[Written in 1735.]

OF THE STUDY OF HISTORY.

LETTER II.

Concerning the true use and advantages of it.

LET me say something of history in general before I descend into the consideration of particular parts of it, or of the various methods of study, or of the different views of those that apply themselves to it, as I had begun to do in my former letter.

The love of history seems inseparable from human nature because it seems inseparable from self-love. The same principle in this instance carries us forward and backward, to future and to past ages. We imagine that the things which affect us, must affect posterity: this sentiment runs through mankind, from Cæsar down to the parish clerk in Pope's Miscellany. We are fond of preserving, as far as it is in our frail power, the memory of our own adventures, of those of our own time, and of those that preceded it. Rude heaps of stone have been raised, and ruder hymns have been composed for this purpose, by nations who had not yet the use of arts and letters. To go no farther back, the triumphs of Odin were celebrated in runic songs, and the feats of our British ancestors were recorded in those of their bards.

The

savages of America have the same custom at this day: and long historical ballads of their huntings and their wars are sung at all their festivals. There is no need of saying how this passion grows, among civilized nations, in proportion to the means of gratifying it but let us observe that the same principle of nature directs us as strongly, and more generally as well as more early, to indulge our own curiosity, instead of preparing to gratify that of others. The child hearkens with delight to the tales of his nurse: he learns to read, and he devours with eagerness fabulous legends and novels: in riper years he applies himself to history, or to that which he takes for history, to authorized romance: and, even in age, the desire of knowing what has happened to other men, yields to the desire alone of relating what has happened to ourselves. Thus history, true or false, speaks to our passions always. What pity is it, my lord, that even the best should speak to our understanding so seldom? That it does so, we have none to blame but ourselves. Nature has done her part. She has opened this study to every man who can read and think: and what she has made the most agreeable, reason can make the most useful, application of our minds. But if we consult our reason, we shall be far from following the examples of our fellow-creatures, in this as in most other cases, who are so proud of being rational. We shall neither read to soothe our indolence, nor to gratify our vanity as little shall we content ourselves to drudge like grammarians and critics, that others may be able to study with greater ease and profit, like philosophers and statesmen : as little shall we affect the slender merit of becoming great scholars at the expense of groping all our lives in the dark mazes of antiquity. All these mistake the true drift of study, and the true use of history. Nature gave us curiosity to excite the industry of our minds; but she never intended it should be made the principal, much less the sole, object of their application. The true and proper object of this application is a constant improvement in private and in public virtue. An application to any study, that tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and better citizens,