the renewed Whig supremacy, his letters became plentiful once more. Literary and social topics took the place of politics as matters of the first importance. In 1718, with the help of Lord Harley and other wealthy friends, he published the enormous folio which is the editio princeps of his poetry. The task of seeing it through the press had occupied him in the closing months of the previous year. There were difficulties to be surmounted, and he wrote to Harley: 'I have not seen Wanley; Tonson has; and the Dragon, I suppose, has convinced Your Lordship of the vellum as impracticable, improbable, impossible. The supplement to this defect is paper imperial, and the largest in England, of which due care shall be taken. Morley was with me this morning, madder than ever about Fiske the apothecary and his copper plate. Tonson and Drift have a little appeased him, and we shall have a plate as big as has been formed since the days of Alexander the coppersmith. Will that do?'* It seems to have been a case of too many cooks. But the book appeared; and, in spite of the grumbles of Swift, who collected subscriptions in Ireland and got less than 2001. out of that hedge country,' the author was richer by 40001. About the same time Harley purchased him Down Hall in Essex, which not only added materially to Prior's comfort, but supplied him with the theme of a most excellent ballad. To the notorious land-agent, John Morley, immortalised in that poem, there are various uncomplimentary references in Prior's later letters. The poet had a grievance against the business man. The ballad is echoed in the following gibe. 'Squire Morley is in health, I hope, and by travel and experience knows a strong brick house from one built with rotten loam.'† Prior's own exclusion from the Act of Grace of 1717 may have been in his mind when he wrote, 'I intend to issue out a general pardon to all who have injured me except Morley, whose delightful face I have not seen since the first morning he came to town.'‡ In 1720 Prior started to improve Down Hall, and, in view of the fact that work of his is still said to exist there, the *Nov. 30-Dec. 11, 1717. Longleat Mss, iii, 450. following evidences of his projects and difficulties are of interest: 'I have been at Down, surveyed the estate, and done everything as to taking a rent-roll, discoursing my tenant, etc.— that Morley calls wisdom. It is impossible to tell you how beautiful a situation Down is, and how fine the wood may be made; but for the house, as all the cross unmathematical devils upon earth first put it together, all the thought and contrivance of man cannot make a window to be looked out of, or a door to be shut, in case it were made otherwise habitable so sooner or later I foresee destruit domum; but of this, as the divines say, at another opportunity.' 'As to Down, it is really fine; to make it habitable will be the question. Deus providebit, to which I shall add all human means by commensuration, hortification and edification, but nothing more than projection upon paper till I have seen you [Harley], which I very much desire to do.' † 'We have laid out squares, rounds and diagonals, and planted quincunxes at Down. Chacun à sa marotte, and that farm will turn my brain.' ‡ It appears to be the general impression that the poet spent the most part of his latter years at Down Hall, but this does not seem to have been the case. From his letters he does not appear to have installed himself there until the summer of the year in which he died. Indeed, the place was not ready for him, for, when it came into his possession, it was uninhabitable. In June 1721 he writes thence to Lord Harley, inviting him, when driving from London to Wimpole, to break his journey at Down, 'which I hope may be effected in eighteen months, for I have already lopped the tree that is to saw the timber that is to make the plank that is to floor the room where I hope you will be within the time aforesaid. . . . You may laugh at my solitude as much as you please, but I like it infinitely, and shall do more so when the noise of the axes and the hammers to the tune of five pound a week grows less tumultuous.' § A week later he resumes in the same strain. 'I repeat to you that Down, being your halfway house to Wimpole, will save your cattle, and be the best inn you can *To the same, July 2-13, 1720. Longleat MSS, iii, 483. To the same, July 9-20, 1720. Ib. iii, 484. To the same, Dec. 29-Jan. 9. 1720-1. Ib. iii, 492. § June 8-19, 1721. Ib. iii, 504. 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. Ib. v, 611. To the same, Aug. 31-Sept. 11, 1721. Longleat Mss, 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 MSS, 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. '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. The ungrateful strumpet is very free of telling it, and gives such accounts as afford much diversion. You know I suspected such things.'t 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. 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 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 up. 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 |