OF THE BLIND: OR HE LIVES OF SUCH AS HAVE DISTINGUISHED THEMSELVES AS POETS, PHILOSOPHERS, ARTISTS, &c. BY JAMES WILSON, WHO HAS BEEN BLIND FROM HIS INFANCY. FOURTH EDITION. "But not to me returns Day, or the sweet appical of ev'n or morn, BIRMINGHAM: PRINTED BY J. W. SBOWELL, 48, New-STREET, AND SOLD ONLY BY THE AUTHOR. INTRODUCTION. THE branch of biography which the following pages exhibit, has not, until now, been entered on as a distinct subject. In all preceding works, the lives of the blind have been classed and confounded with those of others; and though individuals have been pointed out as objects of admiration and astonishment, yet no work has appeared in which they have been considered in a proper point of view, as a class of men seemingly separated from society; cut off from the whole visible world, and deprived of the most valuable faculty that man can possess; yet, in many instances, overcoming all those difficulties which would have been thought insurmountable, had not experience proved the contrary. In the pursuit of knowledge, the blind have been very successful, and many of them have acquired the first literary honours, that their own, or foreign universities could confer. If they have not excelled, they have equalled many of their contemporaries, in the different branches of philosophy, but more particularly in the science of mathematics, many of them |