sup at, for which reason I am now planting salating, and setting my eggs under the miller's hen; the kitchen garden this year, the apartment of three rooms the next, and what then?'

In his last years the poet was on terms of the sincerest friendship with the Harley family. He was beloved by them, and returned their affection. His devotion to Lord Harley's little daughter Peggy is celebrated in one of his most charming poems; and his letters are full of the child's praises. He sends Lady Harley eight pigeons, 'the first tribute which I have received from Down'; and two of them must be roasted immediately for my dear little lady's private table.'t He turns a couplet in the library at Wimpole, 'and was never in my life better pleased with my own work than to hear little Mademoiselle Harley repeat them the next morning with the prettiest tone and manner imaginable.' In what was possibly the last letter which he wrote, he pays the 'noble, lovely little Peggy' a beautiful tribute.

'I return Your Lordship my humblest thanks for having mentioned me to your dear and beautiful correspondent Peggy: I never saw an angel, though I have read much of them, but I fancy she is very like one. She has no wings, indeed, but she has legs that carry her so lightly that it is a question if she flies, or no.' §

Prior died at Wimpole, Harley's house, where he had been so frequent a guest, September 18, 1721. On the following day Harley, writing to Humphrey Wanley the antiquary, described the poet's final moments.

'I am sorry you have been in want of your money, but indeed all last week I was in so much concern for Mr Prior that I could not think of writing. On Monday night, he was taken ill with a violent vomiting, he was something better on Wednesday, and thought his distemper over, that night it returned with greater violence, he had all the help this

* June 14-25. Longleat Mss, iii, 504.

+ To Lady Harley, April 14, 1721. Welbeck мss, v, 620. To the Earl of Oxford, Dec. 23, 1720.

§ To the same, Aug. 31-Sept. 11, 1721.

Ib. v, 611.

Longleat мss, iii, 508.

His health had never been robust; but there is no evidence that he was consumptive, as his friend William Stratford concluded on hearing of his death. (Welbeck мss, vii, 304.)

country and London could afford, but without effect; so that it pleased God to deliver him from his pain, for yesterday exactly at one o'clock he died. His death is of great trouble to us all here, but I have this satisfaction that nothing was wanting to preserve his life. We must all submit.'

Prior's will has long been a public document. A legacy to one Mrs Ann Cox is its most celebrated article; and the conclusions drawn therefrom receive corroboration from various sly hints and innuendoes among the poet's correspondence. Little new light would be shed by an enumeration of the references, usually obscure, to ladies of doubtful character; but the following quotation from a letter of Stratford to Harley is of some interest.

The

'I find by my letters that poor Prior's will makes a noise in town much to his disadvantage. Some malicious fellows have had the curiosity to go and enquire of the ale-house woman what sort of conversation Prior had with her. ungrateful strumpet is very free of telling it, and gives such accounts as afford much diversion. You know I suspected such things.'†

Much more might be written of Matthew Prior's latter days-of his emotions at the time of the South Sea crisis, by which he was a loser; of his political and scholarly relationships with Cambridge University; of the flattery of great men and the homage of minor poets, who quarrelled for his patronage. But those who wish to know more of a man well worth studying, a man cynical and ambitious, gay, affectionate and dazzlingly clever, should read the volume of Longleat papers so often referred to. It is a volume which, had it not appeared as an official publication, would probably have been hailed as a literary discovery.

FRANCIS BICKLEY.

* Welbeck мss, v, 625.

† Nov. 6. Ib. vii, 305.

PENGE PUBLIC LIBRARY

Art. 6.-MIND-CURES FROM A SCIENTIFIC POINT OF VIEW.

1. Illustrations of the Influence of the Mind upon the Body. By D. H. Tuke, M.D. Two vols. London: Churchill, 1884.

2. Science and Health; with Key to the Scriptures. By Mary Baker G. Eddy. Boston, U.S.A., 1902.

3. The Faith and Works of Christian Science. By Stephen Paget. London: Macmillan, 1909.

And other works.

In no two subjects has it in the past been more difficult to apply strict inductive reasoning and its conclusions than in religion and medicine. The grossest superstitions have been believed and acted on; the most absurd modes of treatment of the sick have been employed by wise men and by whole civilised communities without a single proved fact to back them up. This was no doubt partly due to the inherent difficulties and obscurities of the two subjects, partly to the want of ability to observe facts or to apply scientific reasoning to the elucidation of their problems. Primitive people and savages have few sparks of reason or truth in their religious or medical ideas; and this is true in a large degree of Egypt, Greece and Rome. Moreover, from the earliest times, and in almost all peoples, religious and medical ideas have been mixed up. In Egypt and Greece the temples were the hospitals; the god always came into the treatment of disease and largely got the credit of its cure. The religious rites as well as the baths, the sunshine and the medicines, were all essential parts of the treatment and helped its success. In the original temple of Aesculapius at Epidaurus, and in most others, the patient had the benefit of change of scene and surroundings and of the vis medicatrix naturae, plus the religious rites to give faith and hopefulness in the treatment; in fact, they had the important parts of what we modern doctors endeavour to secure in the treatment of a large number of our cases. Faith in the doctor now

takes the place of the old rites. The environments favourable to restoration of health are to a large extent common to both the old and the new methods of cure.

It is an essential and primary consideration in treating

·

this, or any other important question of the kind, to keep in mind the way in which human opinions, beliefs and conclusions are formed and the conduct that results from them is influenced. My contention will be that it has been from sheer want of accurate observation and lack of critical and reasoning capacity, and from reliance on authority, that the facts as to mind-cures' have been misunderstood and misinterpreted, with the result that large numbers of people, otherwise living a rational life, have followed most hurtful and irrational practices and entertained degrading beliefs in regard to such questions. In even the present state of our physiological, psychological and medical knowledge, imperfect though it is, I maintain that scientific and rational explanations can be given of most of such cures, and that no mystical or miraculous views need be held about them by the modern man. We do not deny the existence of those cures; we only deny that they are due to occult, mystical or unexplainable causes, and we emphatically protest against their irrational misinterpretations. We may be ignorant ; we need not be credulous.

I must here premise that human nature possesses, as an innate mental quality, and has always exhibited, but in a lessening degree as civilisation advances, a powerful fascination for the mysterious, the mystical, the miraculous and the occult in medicine. Many men and nearly all women, when ill, would rather be cured by some method which has something of this sort in it than by intelligible scientific means. 'Systems' of medicine without number have arisen, been followed for a time, and disappeared, whose basis and attraction have been some mystic theory of action absolutely devoid of any rational or scientific basis. Other systems' have had some basis of truth but, along with that, have depended chiefly on their secrecy or mystery. The authors of many of them honestly believed in their efficiency, and so exhibited the enthusiasm of the sincere zealot-this greatly aiding their acceptance. This deep-seated mystic and anti-scientific quality in human nature has been the great support of the quack, the deceiver and the charlatan in medicine, and one of the main hindrances to the advance of rational therapeutics. When looked at in connexion with another prevalent tendency in the undeveloped and

semi-irrational mind of man, which inclines to believe any statement authoritatively made, it largely accounts for the gigantic success of the obscurantist in medicine, the modern nostrum-seller and the patent-medicine proprietor. Those systems of quackery and therapeutic futility come and go, and are forgotten; but others constantly arise, as fresh, as blatant, and as credulously followed for the time as their predecessors.

This feature of human nature has not been confined to the unorthodox and irregular systems of medicine, but has haunted and hindered the progress of the healing art in its most 'regular' departments. The prescriptions and the directions for treating the sick laid down by the Doctors of the Universities, the Fellows of the learned Colleges and the Court Physicians two centuries ago, were sometimes as devoid of scientific reasons as those of the most ignorant charlatans. The ingredients of a prescription of an eighteenth century Court Physician were often just as far from rational medicine as the components of the Elixirs of Life' warranted to cure all diseases, and sold for sixpence a bottle in the market-place by a shouting impostor. Moreover, the constant association of medicine with religion in all countries before the time of Hippocrates had the effect of discouraging independent observation of nature and of strengthening the influence of mere authority and tradition.

One fact we must specially take into account in the enquiry as to why correct modes of observation and induction in regard to the cure of disease have made such slow progress in the mass of the educated, not to speak of the uneducated, among civilised men and women. A human brain and mind may be of good ancestral stock, may have received a high degree of education, and may in regard to most ordinary matters reason correctly; yet, in regard to its capacity to solve problems of innate difficulty like those of medicine, there may exist a total and congenital incompetence.

It seems that a further evolution of brain is needed to enable the generality of educated men and women to reason correctly from fixed data in regard to many such matters, and to eliminate the superstitions that seem to linger in human nature as a residuum of a primitive non-reason. So long as there exist educated men and