No. XXI.

To Mr WILLIAM SMELLIE from **

DEAR SMELLIE,

**

YOUR account of the stoppage of the breath is extremely satisfactory; only I think the stoppage of the trachea is not the effect of neglect, but rather of set purpose for the effects which you have very well explained. There is a query or two in your penult letter, for which I have at present little other answer than what is commonly given. "If a man is in love to the very back-bone, and has got a taste which will by no means keep pace with his purse?"-In such a case, I should think that the emptiness of his purse will prevent the indulgence of his extravagant taste.-Again, "If the passion is reciprocal, whether is it better to run all risks, or to drag out years in painful expectation ?" -I say neither is the better way-For to run all risks is a very female-like proposalaltogether extravagant.-It is repeating in miniature the deed of EVE and ADAM; risk

ing the happiness of yourselves and your posterity on a very perilous adventure.Again, to drag out years in tedious expectation, is to throw away the man, to extinguish your little spark of divinity, and say to every one, "I am a fool." What then should be done, but divert the current of the soul into another channel. The ways of doing this, you know better than I can tell. And now I think I have noticed every thing but the queritur of that admodum reverendus hoarybarbed sage; the which, if it bears the ensample of his noddles furniture, my thoughts enter not into their secret.

Yours, &c,

No. XXII.

To Mr WILLIAM SMELLIE from *

DEAR SMELLIe,

**

I RECEIVED your Christmas pye in its season, and shall be glad you lay in for some future Christmas. My only thought on it is, that people have instituted the change of the year as a time of merriment to dispel the gloomy reflections of old age and death, which

it naturally tends to suggest. In like manner the feast of ingatherings, to prevent moralizing on the fall of the leaf. Simili modo, the military, who are daily threatened with destruction, are your only men of perpetual gaiety, who complete the parallelogram of dissipation. "Not a cranny crank or crevice of his crazed cranium, but is crammed and crayoned with a crowd of crusts, crumbs, and crudities, of creekers cribbage and cricket, crabbed crambos and craven crapulency." I believe I have got you to the dictionary with my c's. Well, we should always be learning something; for, as the pick-pocket in the play says, Every lanes end, every shop, church, session, hanging, yield a careful man work. Be not, therefore, unthrifty to your knowledge, as the same pocket-picking pedlar says, but note down and pocket up every thing that can possibly serve the purpose; for it is not in the way of study, but in the way of the world, that materials are to be sought for. Be more than ever on the look-out for speculations, and on the look-in too. It is wonderful how much one may gather out of himself by a long, and close, and nice attention. I am afraid we shall not be so soon at work as this

time twelvemonths. Materials come in but slowly; and it is really a matter of much time and thought to compose in such a style and manner as not to be ashamed of it. ADDISON had travelled, and STEELE had been in the army, before they published; but in this our progress will determine us. I have one piece made, but not reduced to style or order, and is at present only in the form of a club discourse. I am very happy you are yoked with the amotary passion, and very impatient to peruse your lucubration; you must search the matter very deep, if I have not the honour to subjoin notulæ quædam: But what have you to do with anxious love? Away! it is not for men of your kidney. Persevere and scrutinize the passion; but you have no right to meddle with anxious love. Yours, &c.

4

No. XXIII.

Mr WILLIAM SMELLIE to ******

DEAR SIR,

You are pleased to observe, that I only answered the first page of your last. In re

turn, you have sharply hit me off, by taking notice of only one single query out of a dozen. No more quartos; I hate them abominably. Let folio be the word! I scorn to make reprisals; and I shall, therefore, give you my thoughts upon hard and soft water, than which I know not a more difficult theme*. In order to this investigation, I must call in the assistance of a few chemical terms, which I shall endeavour to bring down to the level of your slender capacity †.

or,

WATERS are divided into pure and impure;

in other words, into such as are, and such as are not, impregnated with fossile substances. It is from hence easy to conceive, that those waters which run along hard channels,

This, it is to be noticed, was in the infancy of chemistry; before our great BLACK gave the first example of accurate analysis, so excellently followed by the celebrated BERGMAN and SCHEEL; and, in consequence of the verification of the discoveries of BLACK, CAVENDISH, and PRIESTLEY, the illustrious and unfortunate LAVOISIER in a manner created a new science, out of a chaotic mass of ancient nonsense and modern confusion.

Our readers will be pleased to notice, that this expression is in the unreserved freedom of friendly correspondence; and that his correspondent had declared his unacquaintance with such principles of chemistry as were then known, at that time almost exclusively attended to by medical students.