have perceived how wonderfully he recovered from a fit of apoplexy is not extraordinary; but it is remarkable that Calamy, and his modern editor, should relate the case without suspecting its real nature.

But does any nosologist record an instance of exalted pleasurable tranquillity during the stupor of an apoplectic fit? If any, this of Flavel's must have been apoplexia sanguinea, the symptoms of which, as accurately detailed by Dr. W. Sainsbury, jun., in his "Doctrinal Thesis," pp. 7, 8, are scarcely compatible with symptoms of voluptuous tranquillity. I rather incline to conjecture that the hæmorrhages, from intense thought, acted as opium is often known to do on persons new to its influence, when it produces no disorder in its first action on the stomach. The loss of blood would be sedative, and the action of the reproductive secretories would balance the sedative effect in the nature of a stimulant. Now all pleasure rests on the equatorial point of satisfaction-indifference at one, and rapture at the other pole, i. e., is a balance. I doubt not that by this law, applied to the lungs, we must account for the effects of the nitrous oxygen of Davy.

Written at the end of the Article.

Southey writes nothing that is not replete with point and amusing facts; but this review is less happily put together than almost any of his longer articles for, with all his defects and deficiencies, he is the very king of reviewers, quotque sunt et fuêre.

CORSHAM, Dec. 1814.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

157

NOTES ON BIOGRAPHIA SCOTICANA.*

Page 14. Preface. Note.

This doctrine of original sin is plainly evinced from Scripand by our British poets excellently

ture

*

described.

*

*

* *

Thus

Adam, now ope thine eyes, and first behold
Th' effects which thy original crime hath wrought
In some, to spring from thee, who never touched
Th' excepted tree, nor with the snake conspired,
Nor sinned thy sins; yet from that sin derive
Corruption to bring forth more violent deeds.
Paradise Lost, Lib. ix.

Conceived in sin (oh wretched state !)

Before we draw our breath:
The first young pulse begins to beat
Iniquity and death.

66

Dr. Watts.

British Poets. Capital! He ought to have meant Taliessin, Hoel, &c. But your true Scot could not bring himself to say our English Poets "-even while he is imagining himself to be writing English. And then the Dual. Milton and DOCTOR WATTS!

Life of Mr. David Black. P. 60.

The liberties of the Church, and discipline presently exercised, were confirmed by divers Acts of Parliament,

* Biographia Scoticana; or, an Historical Account of the Lives, Characters, and Memorable Transactions of the most Eminent Scots Worthies. Leith, 1816.

approved of by the Confession of Faith, and the office-bearers of the Church were now in peaceable possession thereof; that the question of his preaching ought first, according to grounds and practice foresaid to be judged by the Ecclesiastical Senate, as competent judges thereof at the first instance.

This and numerous similar attempts to form an absolute theocracy in Scotland, are pregnant with instruction. It is observable, that all theocracy commences with an assertion, express or implied, of infallibility in one or more individuals, without proof. If A. be an Ambassador from the King of Kings, all Kings must yield obedience to his words, and not pretend to be his Judges. But I, A., am an Ambassador-ergo, negatur minor: till proved. The proof was not given, nor could be given, but by some exertion of miraculous power that would have made A. a King, and the King A.'s Subject; and thus superseded the necessity of a proof. Facile prescribit, qui proscribere possit.

Life of Mr. Patrick Simpson. P. 82.

On a Tuesday morning, about day-break, he went into his garden as private as possible, and one Helen Gardiner, wife to one of the bailies of the town, a godly woman, who had sat up that night with Mrs. Simpson, being concerned at the melancholy condition he was in, climbed over the garden wall to observe him in this retirement; but, coming near the place where she was, she was terrified with a noise that she heard, of multitudes of people together, with a most melodious sound intermixed; she fell on her knees, and prayed that the Lord would pardon her rashness, which her regard for his servant had caused. Afterwards she went forward, and found him lying on the ground; she entreated him to tell her what had happened

to him; and after many promises of secrecy, and an obligation, that she should not reveal it in his lifetime, but, if she survived him, she should be at liberty, he then said, "Oh what am I but dust and ashes, that holy ministering spirits should be sent with a message to me!" And then told her that he had a vision of angels, who gave him an audible answer from the Lord respecting his wife's condition; and then returning to the house, he said to the people who attended his wife, "Be of good comfort, for I am sure that ere ten hours of the day that brand shall be plucked from the fire."

God keep me from uncharitable thoughts. It may have been a posthumous fancy, or a prose epic, of Mrs. Helen Gardiner, suggested perhaps by the wind in a Scotch fir at the moment she was peeping at her pious pastor, on his knees in his garden. But it does look horribly like a pio-fraudish confabricatum. If intended only for Mr. Simpson's solace, and as enabling him to predict with confidence, what need of the rushing of a mob of Spirits, or of the melodious voice intermixed? And if intended for a bono-publico miracle to the honour and glory of Misepiscopy (no worse word than Misanthropy), why the injunction of silence till after the death of the only person who might have contradicted it, and who alone could have confirmed it? At all events, this excuse for posthumous testimony (which is of frequent occurrence in Puritan Biography) is an injudicious, not to say, profane imitation of our Lord's prohibition to his Disciples respecting his Messiahship, his Crucifixion, and Resurrection on the third day. For here the motives for enjoining silence were evident, and the suggestions of mercy no less than of wisdom. For to have proclaimed himself the Messiahi.e., King of the Jews, would have been high treason to the civil government-i. e., the Roman Magistrates,

and to have declared that the Messiah would be hung would have justified his apprehension for blasphemy by the Sanhedrim, in the exertion of the privileges accorded to them by the Roman Emperor and Senate.

S. T. COLERIDGE,

Who intreats and trusts in Allan Cunningham's pardon for thus bescrawling a leaf of his book. A. C. may be assured that S. T. C. is not so devoid either of genial taste, or of gratitude for pleasures enjoyed, as to have treated a book of A. Cunningham's own creation so irreverentially.

Life of Mr. Josias Welch. P. 118.

He had a very notable faculty in searching the Scriptures, and explaining the most obscure mysteries therein; and was a man who had much inward exercise of conscience anent his own personal cases, and was often assaulted anent that grand fundamental truth, the being of a God; in so much that it was almost customary to him to say, as when he first spoke in the pulpit, "I think it a great matter to believe that there is a God;" and by this he was the more likely to deal with others under the like temptations.*

Martin Luther was of the same mind; and I am persuaded that the notion inculcated from childhood and the after-confirmed habit of considering the existence and attributes of God as a sort of selfevident truth, so little beset with difficulties, that it is a doubt with them whether there ever was such a creature as an Atheist-I am persuaded, I say, that this prepossession among the learned and those educated for the Ministry has been most injurious to

* Mr. Blair says that he told him, that for three years he durst not say "my God," and that his conscience smote him for the same.Blair's Memoirs, p. 29.