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granted. But the largest form of poetry excludes, except as auxiliary ornament, the aids of positive science. The reason is perfectly clear. Poetry is an art, and as an art it deals with types unalterable and imperishable; it deals with human nature in its cardinal passions and everlasting aspirations. But science differs from art in being essentially progressive-alterable from year to year. In hydrostatics, botany, metallurgy, medicine, all our knowledge is so capricious and transitory that an encyclopædia treating on such subjects is out of date if it be ten years old. There are no revised editions of pictures and statues and works of fiction when the mind that created them has passed from earth. The fuel required for the flame of poetry is unquestionably knowledge-knowledge of the human heartknowledge of passion and sorrow and joy-of aspiration and abasement-of vice and virtue-of good and evil. In Coleridge's programme of study for an epic poem all this knowledge is left out. And if we now look critically at such examples as he has left us of his practical power to construct artistic fable in the wholeness and unity of completed form, we must acknowledge it was precisely that power which he wanted, and in which no study of truth through physical science, 'of men's minds through travels, voyages, and histories,' and no mastery of musical language and felicitous expression, could have supplied his inherent defect. For we have his tragedies finished ad unguem according to his notions of tragedy; and while these elaborated performances, whatever their detached beauties, which we would rather reverentially magnify than churlishly depreciate, suffice to show that Coleridge wanted the indispensable elements of dramatic construction, they no less convincingly show that he would have failed still more in the achievement of epic. That which he lacks is not light, but fire. He has no prolonged sustainment of passion; he can delight the imagination, he cannot enthral the heart. Had he absorbed into the laboratory of his brain all the lore contained on the shelves of the British Museum and the lost library of Alexandria, it could never have been reproduced in the form of such Dramas as, no matter on what principle of art they are constructed-whether on those conceived by Shakespeare, or on those accepted by Corneille,-still hold unlettered audiences under the master spell of pity or of terror—nor in such creations of epic fable as represent in every human community the heroic archetypes of our common race.

We see, then, no cause for regret that Coleridge did not devote twenty years of his life to manufacture 'one august poetical work' out of such raw materials as the positive sciences and books of history, voyages, and travels. Neither do we grieve

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with less poetical mourners over the embryos of philosophies unborn, that Coleridge did not concentrate the rays of an intellect so widely diffused upon some new History of the Human Mind, or gather into a completed system all his lore in English divinity, and all his speculative deductions from German metaphysics.

For works necessitating a long-continued patience, habits of methodical arrangement, a clear disentanglement of the complicated skein of contradictory opinions in various sects and schoolswith a constant and calm perception of the sage's own theory, and a lucid and forcible mode of rendering that theory intelligible to others—we have no reason to suppose that Coleridge had the requisite gifts. He wanted, perhaps, less the primary than the secondary qualifications which we find in the Philosopher who can put his whole mind into a single system, and put his whole system into a single book.

We must be contented to take even men of genius as they are, and recognize the fact that, if they had possessed the qualities they lack, it would have been to destroy or to neutralize the qualities they possess. It is enough for us that, with all his asserted indolence, Coleridge has left behind him so goodly an array of volumes, rich with such diversified spoils-enough that we retain in so many reminiscences of his conversation, in so large a remnant of his familiar correspondence, the adequate record of a Mind that has enriched the blood of the world,' vital in its influence through age-long generations, alike upon sage and poet,-kindling new conceptions of beauty, prompting new guesses into truth.

.

Goethe has been likened to a cupola lighted from below. Coleridge may rather be compared to a pharos, in which the light is placed on the summit, leaving the shadow of the tower which it crowns stretched at length on the ground immediately below. But afar, where the ships move through ocean, the shadow is invisible, the tower itself disappears, nothing is seen but the light.

Reluctantly we close the pleasant retrospect of Charles Lamb and some of his Companions,' to which, first invited by Serjeant Talfourd, we have been reattracted by the kindred genius of Mr. Procter. In his recent biography of Lamb, the Poet of • Marcian Colonna' has revived the sense of our own obligations to himself

'For heavenly tunes piped through an alien flute;'

(Lamb's verses to the Author of Poems published under the name of Barry Cornwall.)

while in his simple and touching narrative he has added much of

endearing

endearing interest to our knowledge of the exquisite writer whom he loves to honour.

In listening as it were to the uttered thoughts of a spirit so gently attuned as that of 'Elia,' so humane, yet so elevating, the

mind

'tired

Of controversy where no end appears,'

feels that sense of repose, which, to quote the words of 'Elia himself, steals over him

'whom the Sabbath bells salute,

Sudden; his heart awakes, his ears drink in
The cheering music; his relenting soul
Yearns after all the joys of social life,

And softens with the love of human kind.'

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ART. II.-1. Coloquios dos Simples. Doctor Garcia Dorta. Goa, 1563.

2. Report of Commissioners on Cholera Epidemic of 1861 in Northern India. Calcutta, 1864.

3. Etude Sommaire, &c. Par Pirondi et Fabre. Marseilles, 1865.

4. Cholera-Regulativ. Von Professoren Griesinger, Von Pettenkofer, Wunderlich. München, 1866.

5. Eighth Report of Medical Officer of Privy Council. Appendix. London, 1866.

6. Conférence Sanitaire Internationale.

Rapport sur les Questions du Programme relatives à l'Origine, à l'Endemicité, à la Transmissibilité, et à la Propagation du Cholera. Constantinople, Mai, 1866.

Rapport sur les Mesures à prendre en Orient pour prévenir de nouvelles Invasions du Choléra en Europe. Août, 1866.

Rapport sur les Mesures Quarantinaires applicables aux Provenances. Septembre, 1866.

Rapport sur les Mesures d'Hygiène à prendre pour la préservation contre le Choléra Asiatique, &c. Note additionnelle sur Hygiène Navale. Appendix au Rapport, &c. La Désinfection

- appliquée au Cholera. Par le Dr. Mühlig, &c., &c.

N 1831 there appeared in this Journal an article concerning the progress of cholera, which was at that time considered an alarmist one. There were many who regarded its pictures as overdrawn, its forebodings as too sinister. Yet the event has justified

justified its predictions. The cholera pestilence, though fortunately not always present in England, has since that period continued to be a permanent scourge to our Indian empire, and has been constantly before our eyes on the continent of Europe. Reaching Europe in 1830, it wandered from country to country, and its ravages did not cease until the year 1838. In nine years it returned to the West, and was 'present from 1847 till 1859. Since then we have had a shorter respite than on the former occasion, for in 1865 the cholera again reached us-this time from the shores of the Mediterranean; and in the course of the present year it has overrun the whole of the continent, and has attacked England.

It is scarcely necessary to insist on the seriousness of the evil. Although we are more familiar with cholera now than we were in former years, yet its terrors are none the less real. The extent of its ravages in England will be apparent from the following figures:-In 1831-32 England lost 30,924 lives by cholera; in 1848-49, 54,398; in 1853-4 about 17,000. Our short epidemic of 1866, up to the 30th September, only reached the number of 10,365.

But if the mortality with us, in its later invasions, has been comparatively small, it has not been so elsewhere. Belgium, for instance, in 1832-33 had 7984 deaths; in 1848-49, 23,027; and by the end of September in this year the deaths had reached 27,300. Other countries have not fared better. Holland has had 18,262; Hungary, 21,566; Moravia, 27,629 casualties; and it is calculated that last year the total mortality in Egypt was 61,192.*

These examples are quite sufficient to show that cholera continues to be an evil of no small magnitude, and render it no matter of surprise that the European powers should have concurred in the propriety of assembling an International Conference to consider how these periodical invasions of the disease could be averted. Such a Conference sat at Constantinople during many months of this year, and its members have embodied the result of their deliberations in a number of separate reports.†

Of

* Or take some chief cities. In the year 1865, Alexandria had 4018 deaths; Cairo, 6104; Aleppo, 10,300; Bombay, 4588; Naples. 2301; and Paris about 6000, in October alone 4653. In 1866 the following has been the mortality in some of the principal cities of Europe: London, 4714; Berlin, 5373; Breslau, 4153; St. Petersburg, 3270; Vienna about the same number, and Brussels and its suburbs 4846.

There could not well have been perfect unanimity in the large body of members

Of these it may be said generally, that they apply very fairly to the history of the disease, the most recent views on its causation and propagation, and that they suggest a very elaborate scheme of quarantine, and of cordons for preventing future inroads. But the gist of their recommendations is to attack cholera in its seat in India, and to prevent, if possible, its exportation. We have, indeed, heard it jocularly said, that the Conference at one time thought of an International Company (limited) for draining the delta of the Ganges; but however this may be, the Conference has pointed very decidedly to the Gangetic valley as the source of the disease-and this touches us very closely indeed; it involves many questions connected with the internal arrangements of India, and with the regularity of the transit through Egypt, so essential to our interests. As we believe that a review of the early history of cholera in India may help us very materially in judging of the value of some of the views of the Conference, we do not scruple to lay before the public a sketch of a subject, which has not hitherto been treated in the detail that it deserves. Although there may not be much of absolute novelty in it to those who have studied the history of the disease minutely, it will probably be entirely new to most of our readers. We allude to the history of Indian cholera before the year 1817.

Goa was in the sixteenth century by far the most important European settlement in the East. From it as a centre the Governor-General of all the Indias (a title still retained by the Portuguese Governor) commanded Cochin, and the other ports along the western coasts of India; sent his armaments to Ormuz and the Persian Gulf, and despatched his fleets to Java and the Moluccas.

In this city of Goa, (where we are told that the native physicians were held in great repute, and were permitted to have their umbrellas borne along with them, a privilege allowed only to persons of quality,) lived for many years a sagacious court physician, a certain Garcia del Huerto, as he is commonly called. In 1563 he gave to the world the work of which we have prefixed the title to this article, in which he styles himself Dorta. There is a copy of the book in the British Museum—no doubt one of the earliest works printed in India, and which does credit in every way to the Portuguese rule. It contains a great deal of information about the articles employed in medicine in those days, and incidentally gives us curious glimpses of many matters members of whom the Conference consisted, and from various propositions a few members dissented, while on others some abstained from voting.

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