moved to put on hair sackcloth, and to besmear his face, and to tell them," So would the Lord besmear all their religion as he was besmeared.” "Great sufferings," says Fox, " did that poor man undergo, sore whippings with horsewhips and coachwhips on his bare body, grievous stonings and imprisonments in three years' time, before the King came in, that they might have taken warning; but they would not, and rewarded his love with cruel usage. One woman being on the scaffold at Boston in America, where she suffered death, declared," that she had been in Paradise." The Quakers, indeed, knew no bounds either to their zeal or extravagance.* Some went forth as Missionaries to America, *Hume has given a brief but masterly account of the Quakers, and of the mad extravagance of Nayler; but he is not quite correct in saying that imprisonment, labour, and bread and water, brought the latter to his senses, and that he was content to come out of prison an ordinary man, and return to his usual occupation. Nayler lived but a short time after, and he both taught and wrote, in that short time, in favour of the doctrine of the Quakers. The Quakers, too, though condemning his extravagance, that is to say his difference with themselves, are very guarded in what they say of him. In the language of one, "His gift in the ministry was eminent, his experience in divine things truly great." One of his greatest burthens, and of which he most repented, was, says Fox, "his resisting the power of God in me." The account of Nayler given by the Quakers is this: He was a man in very high repute among them, but " he became exalted above measure, through abundance of revelation," and the flatteries of ignorant enthusiasts. These people addressed him as " the everlasting son of righteousness-the only begotten son of God." This was the common language of his followers; and when he was in prison at Exeter they knelt before him, and kissed his feet; and proclaimed every where that he there raised up one Dorcas Ebury, after she had been two days dead; to which the woman herself testified on oath, before a magistrate. After his liberation they accompanied him in procession, and on his entering Bristol, some walked bare-headed before him, while others strewed their garments in the way, and all went singing "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God of Hosts, &c." The "dissipation of the illusion," that Hume alludes to, was not that Nayler ever saw the total fallacy of opinions which led, in their result, to these extravagancies, but that he confessed his error in permitting others to run such extreme lengths in shewing him honor; for the Quakers say he never declared himself to be Christ; and he said," he did not receive them as done to himself, but to Christ in him." Even to the raising of Ebury, Nayler gives a gloss, that, if we understand it, shews no very lucid interval. "And that report, as though I had raised Dorcas Ebury from the dead carnally, this I deny also, and condemn that testimony to be out of the truth; though that power which quickens the dead, I deny not, which is the word of eternal Syria, India, China, and " Prester John's country. Among these a great many were women. Others went to Malta, Egypt, and even Rome itself, where they were thrust into the Inquisition, the jails, and the madhouses. There could certainly have been no other end to the extravagancies of a sect who admitted no authority to control the license of individuals; to whom creeds, councils, experience, and the wisdom of past ages, were as nothing to; whom the scriptures were no measure of the truth of their doctrine, but their doctrine of the scriptures, nor of their conduct, for they at first held that the commands of scripture were no further' obligatory on any man, than as he found conviction on his conscience, though they afterwards qualified this opinion; than their separation as a body, with the universal contempt and reprobation of other men. As Fox grew older he became sensible of this. The "light within," which was "sufficient to enlighten every man that cometh into the world," would sometimes, as in Penot, Nayler, Keith, Bugg, and others, outblazon, or outbrazen, the light in George himself:-Sewel, speaking of one of these, says, innocently enough, he "so far complied with his vain imaginations that he thought himself further enlightened than George Fox, and his friends:-every man became an oracle, and oracles were sometimes contradictory; accordingly, councils were called; a select body was established, over which Fox was chosen to preside. This council was to be infallible; its light was to illuminate the whole body; in "best wisdom," it was to judge the doctrine of every man; and thus that "light within," which when a solitary, obscure glimmering, visible only through the cracks in the scull of a poor, ignorant, fanatical shoemaker, was sufficient to shew the errors of all the established religions in Europe; which, as one of the reclaimed Quakers afterwards urged, they "in order to bring us over to them, and to decoy us, told us was a sufficient guide, teacher, and leader, and sufficient to lead us to salvation, yea, above scriptures, above fathers, above councils, and above churches;" was at once, and for ever, put out, and Pope George and his Cardinals established in lieu of it. life." One piece of justice let us do Nayler; he was mad in good company. The council of a nation that could sit ten days in judging this miserable creature, and eventually sentence him to be twice put in the pillory, twice whipped, to have his tongue bored through, and be branded on the forehead with hot irons, was equally in want of a bread and water regimen. ART. II.-The Honour of the Gout, or a Rational Discourse; demonstrating that the Gout is one of the greatest Blessings which can befal Mortal Man: That all Gentlemen who are weary of it, are their own Enemies; and that those Practitioners who offer at the cure, are the vainest and most mischievous Cheats in Nature: By way of Letter to an eminent Citizen; wrote in the heat of a violent Paroxysm, and now published for the common Good by Philander Misaurus: London, 1720. How comes it to pass that so many people regard the gout as a subject of merriment? If any one is lying sick of a fever, his friends make their inquiries after him with all requisite concern and solemnity. Dropsy and phthisis, too, excite a due degree of sorrow and sympathy. But the public, aye, the "thinking public," hear of the pains of the Arthritic with careless unconcern; and it is ten to one but the neighbour who visits his couch of torment is unmoved by the sight of flannel or of crutches. Nay, the countenance distorted by agony, moves him not; but he approaches the patient, who may, per-. adventure, be more correctly denominated the impatient, with a smiling visage, and a ready joke. In vain does the sufferer tell a dismal tale of symptoms-of distressing flatulencies-of a toe burning with fires hotter than any which are to be found in purgatory-of sleepless nights, during the lingering hours of which each variation of posture has only produced a variation of pain. All these complaints are uttered to the winds. The unrelenting auditor still" smiles and smiles," and treats this calamity as matter of congratulation rather than of condolence. Again we ask, how comes this to pass? How are we to account for this insensibility to human sufferings? Is it a sign of the degeneracy of the age in which we live?-We apprehend not; for we can trace jests upon the gout to a remote period of antiquity. In ridicule of this complaint, Lucian wrote his Tragopodagra, and his Ocypus, the latter of which closes with the following Job's comfort to the unfortunate Arthritic Πᾶς ἀεχέσθω τῶν πασχόντων Which is, being interpreted— "So grin and abide, The apparently hard-hearted propensity which we are analysing, is not, then, peculiar to the present times, or to this best of all possible countries. It seems to arise from causes so universal, that it may be said to be founded in the nature of things; and without recurring to the saturnine maxim of Rochefoucault, that "men always find something comfortable to themselves in the woes of others," we think it may be accounted for more creditably to human nature upon the following principles-In the first place, whatever may be its ultimate effects, the gout is seldom or ever mortal in its first attacks, or in its very violent paroxysms; and therefore, in the case of those who are struggling with its fury, the acquaintance and friends of the parties are free from that apprehension and sympathy which arises from the idea of life being endangered. In point of fact, we frequently meet at the social board some corpulent, jovial, boon companion or other, in whose rubicund visage it requires a discriminating eye to distinguish the bilious tinge, who, descanting on his last fit, informs us that he is limited in his beverage to Particular Madeira. Now, when we tickle our palate with a glass of the aforesaid Particular, we really do not find any thing so very dreadful in this limitation in question, and think that we could ourselves submit to it with a good grace, especially as that oracle of all oracles, Dr. Scudamore (et sapit et mecum facit") allows a modicum of claret to be thereto superadded. Again, much sympathy is denied to the Arthritic, in consequence of a common notion, (and common notions generally have their foundation in fact,) that the gout keeps off all other disorders. And, indeed, when "the toe of libertine excess,' as Cowper terms the locus in quo of this disorder, has been wrung to some purpose, and the patient, profiting by this severe process of discipline, takes warning, and, like Falstaff, begins to live cleanly, and to leave off sack, it is truly marvellous to behold what a change is effected in his looks, and what vigour is infused into his constitution. And this leads us to observe, that in a multitude of instances sympathy is refused to the gouty, from a persuasion that they have brought on the calamity, under which they labour, upon themselves. Mankind, in general, have a high sense of poetical justice. When the tyrant has blustered and bellowed, and committed robbery and murder for four acts and three quarters, how are the audience delighted with the catastrophe of his fate! What thunders of applause do they lavish on the hero or the heroine, who, when the measure of his crimes is full, plunges a sword or a dagger into his bosom! And this sense of poetical justice they carry into the affairs of common life; and regard the swollen and inflamed foot of an alderman, brightened, as it were, by the glossiness which vouches for the genuineness of his gout, as the patina vouches for the genuineness of an ancient coin, as a retribution as due to his exploits at city feasts, as death by the trusty steel of Richmond is to the crimes of crook-backed Richard.There is a greater approach to equality in the distribution of good and evil in this world than people are generally aware of. The teeth of many a gourmand in velle have watered at the sight of a haunch of venison, or of a tureen of turtle, of which the narrowness of his circumstances have forbidden him to partake. But should he, peradventure, see the dire diseases which lie in ambush in these tempting viands, like the crocodile in the waters of the Nile, he will bless that poverty which saves his frame from those numerous ills which result from that indulgence of the appetite which produces an overflowing of the bile; and, like the spectator described by Lucretius, as viewing, not without a secret pleasure, a vessel labouring under the fury of a tempest, he will behold with sentiments of self-satisfaction, which somewhat deaden the emotions of sympathy, the Arthritic tossing to and fro on his bed of pain. Our discontented radicals may, perhaps, be soothed by the reflection, that the sins of their arch enemy, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, are visited upon his great toe; and they may retaliate the numerous gibes which he is wont to pass upon them, by making his twinges a matter of jest. We are persuaded that the pains of the gout are the less object of compassion, because they are generally deemed the exclusive property of the privileged orders, the rich and the fashionable; so that the occurrence of this disorder to persons who occupy a sort of debateable ground in the ranks of society, seems to be prima facie evidence that they ought to be enumerated among the magnates, the envied few. We do, indeed, remember an individual thus equivocally circumstanced, who endured the assault of his first fit (and a very rude one it was) with great magnanimity, and with an illdisguised pride and satisfaction, till he, unfortunately, heard that a journeyman glazier, in his vicinage, was afflicted with that very complaint which he fondly regarded as a mark of gentility. We have made these preliminary observations, by way of plea in apology for Philander Misaurus, who, in the tract now under our consideration, has made the gout "a subject for his mirth, yea, for his laughter," and also in excuse for ourselves, for reviving the public attention to his lucubrations. Who the individual was who thought it expedient to assume this nom de guerre, after many painful researches, we have been unable to discover. From a brief advertisement which is prefixed to it, we should be led to conclude that it was a posthumous publication; for the notice in question states, that this piece was wrote, as appears from many passages in it, |