audience. From this employment, however, he was dis-. lodged by the envy of Dr. Rosen, and was obliged to accept the governor of Dalarne's offer, to travel in that province, which occupied him for a little time. By the advice of his friends, Linnæus now made a most unscientific effort to obtain a rich wife, that be might travel for his improvement, and afterwards settle in Sweden. The lady was willing, but her mother was not, and he was forced to set off without his bride, He went to Holland, with fifteen pounds in his pocket, and took his degree of Doctor, and contrived by the patrons whom his talents gained him, to obtain pecuniary supplies. He there became acquainted with various eminent men, and made great advances in botanical knowledge: in 1786, he also passed over to Eugland, and afterwards visited Paris. From Holland, to which Linnæus returned, he was suddenly called home by a report that a friend of his own was laying close siege to his betrothed in Sweden, upon which account he set out on his journey as soon as he was cured of an ague, which he took from fear of his rival's success. During his three years residence in Holland, we are assured Linnæus did more in botany than any body had done before in his whole life.

On his arrival at Stockholm, he could find nobody to employ him, which was very natural; but by dint of confidence, he at last got two patients, and through his success with them, very soon obtained a certain share of practice. After this, Linnæus's progress was more rapid, and he speedily was appointed to a professorship of natural science. Haying conducted him to this point, it becomes less necessary to pursue a minute detail. But Linnæus belied the adage that a prophet has no honor at home; for never was a man more caressed and distinguished than our author. Medals were struck to immortalize his memory; he was pensioned, ennobled, and made a knight of the Polar Star. His pupils became numerous and distinguished, and by their travels in every part of the world enlarged the limits of science, and illustrated the Swedish name. Throughout every part of this performance, Linnæus appears in the character of a vain man, much more so than his friends would desire. Undoubtedly he did much, very much, to promote the knowledge and facilitate the study of the various branches of natural science, but he was according to this document conscious of the fullest extent of his merit. As far, however, as it is possible to judge of style through the medium of translation, we are disposed to think, that there is a considerable resemblance between the language of this document, and that of

"

the unquestioned parts of the works of Linnæus. At this part of the volume we observe a childish story of curing the gout by eating strawberries, which is surely inconsistent with all experience of the power of that fruit.

Towards the end of the Diary, Linnæus becomes very amusing; Diet,' he assures us, nobody has treated in a more solid and satisfactory manner.' He piques himself also on his discovery of the mystical powers of the number five: he found that there were five bodily vices, five nervous vices, and five sapida and odora, with as many contraries. He proved all this by examples. What can be stronger?" Students, he asserts, were lucky, who before his time could learn much. He proved the sexes of plants so clearly as to silence all his adversaries, and who could do it better than Linné ?* We could fill whole pages with such extracts, and yet leave abundance to gratify the curiosity of the reader, who would peruse the work himself.

His description of his own person is singularly diverting. Ile proceeds to give the generic and specific characters of every limb and member, as if he had been employed to compare the genealogy of a horse with his personal qualifica tions, and affords a specimen how far a great man will go when he talks of himself. Immediately following this description, are a great number of short and pithy sentences, in which with great piety and particularity he enumerates every good thing of body and of mind that had ever befallen him. Indeed, Linnæus seems to have possessed a genuine spirit of devotion, and to have left his aversion to theology at the threshold of his college. The style of this part may be conceived from the subjoined specimens.

The Lord has led him with his own almighty hand;

He hath caused him to spring from a trunk without root, and planted him again in a distant and more delightful spot, and caused him to rise up to a considerable tree;

Hath inspired him with an inclination for science, so pas

sionate as to become the most gratifying of all others;

'Honoured him with the titles of

'Nobleman, and with

'Distinction in the learned world,

'Protected him from fire,

• Preserved his life above sixty years,

Given him a greater knowledge of natural history than

any one had hitherto acquired.

No person has ever had a more solid knowledge of all the three kingdoms of nature,

"No person has ever proved himself a greater botanist or zoolo

gist;

'So completely reformed a whole science and created therein

a new æra ;

Become so celebrated all over the world;

'Sowed in any academical garden so many seeds;

Discovered so many animals (in fact he discovered as many as all preceding naturalists put together.)'

He then proceeds to congratulate himself on being styled Princeps Botanicorum, and vindicates himself from a supposed charge of having an itch of writing, to which, however, the best answer is to be found in the utility and excellence of his various productions.

The most remarkable thing of this Diary is, that Linnæus should have given it to the archbishop Menander to be corrected, pro tua sapientia,' to be translated into Latin, and preseated or read to the French Academy-a procedure, considering the contents of the Diary itself, not easily reconcileable with that modesty, which generally is the attendant of genius. But it appears that the author, at the age of sixty, began to forget proper names, for which he makes the apology that no man ever before had so many in his head, and as the greater part of this autobiography was the work of subsequent years, we ought, in fairness, to make some allowance for the decay of mind, which may reasonably be supposed to have occurred, And in truth, had all this been said by any one but himself, it would in our opinion, and we believe in that of the greater part of the lovers of natural knowledge, have been regarded, rather as an inadequate than an excessive tribute to his genius, to his acquirements, and to his unparalleled and astonishing industry. Perhaps, however, there is something not very favourable to our sentiments of this great naturalist, in the eulogium which he has pronounced upon his own merits, considerable as these confessedly were, and it would be a bad example set before the lower ranks of the scientific world, to receive with unlimited approval this self-enunciation of praise. In an inferior man indeed it would have been so completely ridiculous, as to have altogether defeated its own ends and purposes, and to have converted the shield of the defender into the spear of his enemy. We need not fear, therefore, that this practice should become general, and may allow the manes of Linnæus to repose undisturbed by the biting taunts of enraged criticism. With regard to the authenticity of this document, we have already stated our grounds of opinion, and though there may be some inconsistencies, which it is the business of the editor to reconcile if he can, we are disposed to believe the greater part to be really the composition of the CRIT. REV. Vol. 7. January, 1806;

F

author to whom it is attributed. To this judgment we are induced, by the respectable manner in which it is brought forward, by the evidence with which it is accompanied, and by the similarity of style and sentiments which we imagine that we discern in this to those of the undoubted compositions of Linnæus.

The whole work is a modern quarto, that is, a book of high price, containing little matter. Every part of this publication might have been readily compressed into a moderate octavo, in which case it might have been a convenient, and desirable ornament to the libraries of many, who will shrink from the enormous size and heavy expence of the present work. If the public, however, will purchase works of this description, we see no remedy for the misfortune. We must content ourselves with an occasional remonstrance against a practice, the very generality of which, is one of its principal evils.

ART. VIII.-ETEа лтEρоEνтa; or, The Diversions of Purley; l'art II. By John Horne Tooke. 4to. Johnson. 1805.

THE author of this work, with no common abilities and extensive learning, with an indefatigable spirit of intrigue, and with the art of covering private views with public pretences, has acquired considerable celebrity.

Having been many years the pupil and the associate of John Wilkes, one of the most consummate impostors that Britain ever produced, he became early a master of that system of popular delusion which has been called patriotism, which interests the multitude in all the movements of the impostor, which provokes slight inconveniences and sufferings to heighten that interest, until he is either purchased by the government he has been opposing, or provided for by the dupes of his pretensions.

It is not our intention to impeach the noble but rare virtue of patriotism. Those who, standing themselves within the lines of the constitution and the law, resist aud check the occasional encroachments of power; and those who would undermine that constitution, and shake the foundations of all law, are characters totally different. The views of the former are directed to the public happiness; those of the latter are confined to their own interest, and to their own spurious renown and fame.

The author of this work has appeared in all the great contentions with government from the commencement of the

American war, to that of the French revolution; and though the professed patriots never bestowed on him what he wanted, the lead and the command-be yet contrived to obtain detached parties, and acted always in the true spirit of a partizan, sometimes harrassing the enemy, and sometimes his pretended friends.

In one of these enterprizes he was taken, and General Mansfield would not let him have his liberty on his parole, from a misconception, or, as Mr. Tooke affirins, from the perversion of the meaning of a conjunction, that conjunction having no meaning in the Anglo-Saxon, and another, or perhaps no meaning, in the modern English.

Mr. Tooke insisted and clamoured that he ought to have had the benefit of an Anglo-Saxon interpretation; Mansfield, who was a Scotchman, and had left his Anglo-Saxon on the northern side of the Tweed, adhered to the English dialect, and strictly as it was spoken at St. James's.

Mr. Tooke then resolved, in the manner of his master (John Wilkes), to appeal to the public, and he published his Letter to Dunning,' which contains the germ of the present work, and which made a considerable impresion on etymologists, as it announced something like a discovery, that conjunctions, prepositions, &c. had each an appropriate signification, and were not indebted for a meaning to their places in a sentence.

The advantage of this impression was immediately felt by Mr. Tooke; the arts he had exercised in the common tracks of patriotism, were transferred into a new path; and the credulous apostles of pseudo-patriotism were sent forth to proclaim, that though wicked governments had withstood clubs and associations, they would sink under an army of Anglo-Saxon conjunctions and prepositions, when disenchanted from their unmeaning and torpid state, each formed into a genuine Wimbledon hero, and all conducted in battlearray by John Horne Tooke.

The old miser of Purley put his hand half-way towards his pocket, but contented himself with a promise of the house and estate of Purity, the ancient residence* of the regicide Bradshaw ; and it was resolved that the projected work, developing this mighty undertaking, and the ancient habitation of the regicide, should share in the admiration of future ages.

We do not under ake to vouch for the authenticity of this fact, although it. is Lena ly believed.