out seeing it; nor do we believe that the oldest of its inhabitants ever heard of such a thing. Though the author has honestly attempted to deter the unlearned from approaching his translation, yet, as he must be aware of the prying nature of mankind, and their unlucky propensity to look into forbidden things, we cannot but think him somewhat accountable, in foro conscientiæ, for the wrong impressions of Roman manners, &c. which they will undoubtedly receive from his representations. For example: 'Those slaves, whose feet make white our native plains.'-p. 12. The English reader will naturally gather from this, that the Romaus used the dried feet of slaves for scrubbing-brushes: but this, we can assure him, was by no means the case. Again--what will the English reader, tremblingly alive to the purity of election, think of the story of Marius, who was sentenced by a vote inane,' a bad vote, we presume! Assuredly, while he pities the innocent sufferer, he will feel great indignation at the person whose unauthorized voice decided his fate. And he will be wrong in both. Instituitque rudes, melior Locusta, propinquas ⚫ Better than fell Locusta, she can teach Their husband's blacken'd corpse-despising vulgar speech.'-p. 10. The English reader will readily subscribe to the merits of this venerable old lady, in teaching her countrywomen to conceal such disagreeable objects. It is but fair, however, to observe that, in the original, she teaches them just the contrary. With respect to the little compliment paid to her taste in contemning vulgarity, and which is solely owing to the trauslator's good opinion of her, we shall not meddle with it. He will also be charmed with the disinterested and facetious character of the Roman legacy hunters. When told that their old friend has been suddenly carried off by an apoplectic fit, without making a will, in their favour, No visage saddens, for none feels a wound,'-p. 10. his admiration may probably suffer some abatement when he learns that they do not bear their disappointment with quite so much composure in Juvenal, where they not only feel a wound, but carry their resentment of it so far as to insult his ashes. But the translation is full of these pleasant misrepresentations : and we shall not be altogether easy, unless the author agrees to paint two snakes over the frontispiece of his next edition, to keep the unlearned completely out of his circle. We We must also intreat him to re-consider a few ideas which he appears to have somewhat hastily adopted, and which, to us, at least, savour greatly of singularity. Thus, if an epithet suits one object, he immediately concludes that it will fit every other: glowing, (for example,) which his predecessors apply to the wheels of a car, he applies to the reins, &c. If this be done to conceal his obligations, we can only say to him in the words of the original, Tam jejuna fames, cum possis honestius illic Et rapere! In another place he seems to think that filthiness is a cure for incredulity; at least, the English reader will discover no other meaning in the following exquisite couplet : Vain empty dreams! at which each boy will laugh, Save those who wash not in the public bath.'-p. 17. But enough:-before we conclude, however, we would seriously ask the author what he really proposes to himself and the public, by this undertaking? He admits that it cannot be made interesting to the mere English reader'; and how, without critical observations, it can be made either useful or agreeable to any other, we profess ourselves at a loss to conjecture. He is possessed of no new lights -here is nothing, therefore, to attract the scholar. But we go farther. These Specimens' are not a translation-nor, if the writer possessed the qualities, of which we discover no traces, pathos, dignity and humour, could he make them such: for-we must be frank with him-he does not understand the original. In no instance has he entered into the author's mind; he sees not his object; he feels not his energy; he comprehends not his dignified He begins, sarcasm. A silent hearer must I yet remain Of that hoarse Codrus, and his croaking strain? Does this poor drawl (the produce of an after dinner's sleep') contain a single spark of the sense and spirit of the original? The semper ego auditor tantum, and the nunquamne reponam, are as if they had never been. Juvenal breaks silence in a burst of general impatience; the translator restricts his somnolent interrogation to Codrus: Juvenal-but it is useless to waste another word on the matter. If, however, the writer be determined to proceed, we would intreat him not to precipitate his work. Years must apparently pass away before he can gain a competent knowledge of his author. Meanwhile the English reader will manifest no signs of impatience for what is not, after all, to interest him; and the scholar, if such a one can be supposed to waste a thought on the translator's pro gress, gress, may console himself with reflecting that every day is taking from his difficulties, and that he may ultimately hope to receive a version which, with the original at his elbow, he may possibly find intelligible in more places than, from the present attempt, he has any encouragement to expect. ART. IV. Elements of Chemical Philosophy. By Sir Humphry Davy, LL. D. Sec. R. S. Prof. Chem. R. I. and B. A. M. R, I. F. R.S. E. M.R. I. A. M. R. A. Stockh. Imp. Med. Chir. Ac. St. Pet. Am. Phil. Soc. Hon. Memb. Soc. Dubl. Manch. Phys. Soc. Ed. Med. Soc. London. Part I. Vol. I. pp. 530. Ten Plates. 8vo. London. 1812. IN attempting a review of this work, we cannot avoid professing, that we are far from entertaining the impression of sitting down as competent judges, to decide on the merits or demerits of its author: on this point the public voice, not only within our own islands, but wherever science is cultivated, has already pronounced too definitive a sentence, to be weakened or confirmed by any thing that we can suggest of exception or approbation. Our humble labours, on such an occasion, must be much more analytical and historical than critical; at the same time we are too well acquainted with the author's candour, to suppress any remark which may occur to us, as tending to correction or improvement. It has most assuredly fallen to the lot of no one individual to contribute to the progress of chemical knowledge by discoveries so numerous and important as those which have been made by Sir Humphry Davy: and with regard to mere experimental investigation, we do not hesitate to rank his researches as more splendidly successful, than any which have ever before illustrated the physical sciences in any of their departments. We are aware that the Optics of Newton will immediately occur to our readers as an exception; but without attempting to convince those who may differ from us on this point, we are disposed to abide by the opinion, that for a series of well devised experiments and brilliant discoveries, the contents of Davy's Bakerian Lectures are as much superior to those of Newton's Optics, as the Principia are superior to these, or to any other human work, for the accurate and refined application of a sublime and simple theory to the most intricate and apparently anomalous results, derived from previous observation. Discoveries so far outshining all that has been done in other countries, and constituting so marked an era in the history of chemistry, cannot be contemplated by any Englishman, who possesses a taste for science, without some degree of national, and even local exultation; although it is true that other individuals, and other countries countries have contributed largely to the success of the common cause; some, by improving the principles of other departments of physics which have been so happily applied, or by furnishing the most powerful agents and the most convenient instruments, which have been employed with so much address; and others by collateral or independent speculations and researches, which have here been blended together into one system. From all these sources our author has derived the materials of a volume, which, when compared even with the latest works of a similar nature, exhibits a inore rapid and triumphant progress of improvement than can be paralleled in the annals of human invention. He has adverted, with a very laudable modesty, to the favourable circumstances under which his researches were conducted : Nothing tends so much,' he observes, to the advancement of knowledge as the application of a new instrument. The native intellectual powers of men in different times, are not so much the causes of the different success of their labours, as the peculiar nature of the means and artificial resources in their possession. Independent of vessels of glass, there could have been no accurate manipulations in common chemistry the air pump was necessary for the investigation of the properties of gaseous matter; and without the Voltaic apparatus, there was no possibility of examining the relations of electrical polarities to chemical attractions.' It must, however, be remembered, that almost every other discovery of importance, which has been made in science, has been facilitated by some previous steps, which have rendered practicable what might otherwise have presented insuperable obstacles to human ingenuity; nor has such a preparation ever been allowed to detract from the just applause, bestowed on those who have been distinguished from their contemporaries by a more successful exertion of talent. Until the year 1806, Sir Humphry Davy had been remarkable for the industrious and ingenious application of those means of experiment only, which had been long known to chemists; he had acquired, at a very early period of his life, a well established celebrity among men of science throughout Europe, by the originality and accuracy of his researches; and at the same time the fluent and impressive delivery of his lectures had obtained him the most flattering marks of approbation from the public of the metropolis. But it was in the summer of this year, that in repeating some electrochemical experiments of very doubtful authority, he was led into a new train of reasoning and investigation, which enabled him to demonstrate the important laws of the connexion between the electrical affections of bodies and their chemical powers. This was his first great discovery: and when he was complimented on the occa sion by the Institute of France with the prize established by Buonaparte, it was only questioned, by those who were capable of appreciating its importance, whether they acted with strict impartiality in assigning to him the annual interest only; while he appeared to have a fair claim to the principal, which was allotted, by the donor, to the author of a discovery relating to electricity, paramount to that of Franklin or of Volta. Our author's next great step was the decomposition of the alkalis, which he effected the succeeding year: and this, though less interesting and important with regard to the fundamental theory of the science, was more brilliant and imposing, from its capability of being exhibited in a visible and tangible form. The third striking feature, which distinguishes the system advanced in the present work, is the assertion of the existence of at least two empyreal principles; oxygen, and the elastic fluid called the oxymuriatic acid gas, being considered as possessing equal claims to the character of simple or undecompounded sub A fourth peculiarity, which, however, is less exclusively and originally a doctrine of Sir Humphry Davy, is the theory of the simplicity of the proportions in which all bodies combine with each other; a theory respecting which hints may be found in the works of several chemists of the last century, but for the explicit illustration, and general and minute application of which, the science is principally indebted to our countryman Mr. Dalton; although the work before us tends much more to its confirmation than any other mass of evidence which has yet been collected on the subject. On each of these four principal novelties we shall make some extracts and abstracts; having first given a hasty outline of the interesting sketch of the progress of chemistry which constitutes the introduction. We shall not attempt to follow our author in his inquiries how far any of the Arabian physicians or magicians may be said to have been the founders of the science of chemistry, rather than the Greeks or Egyptians, or even to conjecture in what sense Firmicus, whom he has not mentioned, may have intended to employ the term chymia, which he simply introduces as a science or mystery: but contenting ourselves with enumerating the names of Roger Bacon and Basil Valentine, as the greatest chemists of the 18th and 15th centuries, and Paracelsus, Agricola, and Libavius, of the 16th, we shall hasten to the beginning of the 17th, as the true period of the commencement of the pneumatic chemistry, under the auspices of Van Helmont, who first distinctly observed the properties of several elastic fluids, which he denominated gases; and more especially of Rey, who, in the year 1630, expressly maintained the absorption of air by metals during their calcination; nor was it much later that Torricelli and Pascal began to investi |