Oh! could I sing Haygarth's chef d'œuvre, state his magnanimous conduct to them, and their ungracious return. Dr. H. in great condescension to the poor wretches of the United States, who, through the ignorance and inexperience of their medical practitioners, were likely to be extirpated by the yellow fever, addressed them in an affectionate letter, and proclaimed the barbarity and unskilfulness of their physicians, in a very appropriate and becoming manner. He even kindly apprized the Academy of Medicine, at Philadelphia, that their proceedings and reasonings on the disease among them were “ frivolous, inadequate, and groundless," and communicated many other facts equally useful and important. Now, whether his statements were true or false, thosė foreigners ought to have been grateful to Dr. H. for honouring them with the information. But, on the contrary, they say that " a poison, which, in the city of New-York, has destroyed, within three months, the lives of more than twenty practitioners of medicine, well deserves to be traced and understood by the survivers." They even have the audacity to assert, that "American physicians and philosophers, who have viewed the rise and progress of pestilence, walked amidst it by day and by night, year after year, and endured its violence on their own persons, almost to the extinction of their lives," ought to be as competent judges of the cause and cure of the disease as Dr. Haygarth, who has never seen a case of it. After entering into a copious (about 20 pages) and what they seem to think a learned investigation of my That feat, than which, you'll own, if candid, But ere I “ sweep the sounding lyre," great friend's theory and sentiments, they have dared to refute his reasoning, and turn it to ridicule. These presumptuous writers finally close their unreasonable account of Dr. Haygarth in quotations from Dr. Caldwell, who, it appears, is a fellow of the college of physicians of Philadelphia, and a very ungentleman-like fellow too, for he has also had the rashness to descant on some of the works of Dr. Haygarth in terms following. Per "Perhaps he (Dr. Haygarth) may found the boldness of his pretensions as an author on the maturity of his years Many writers less youthful are more modest; and it is to be lamented that grey hairs give no infallible earnest of either wisdom or liberality. We will not positively assert that he is not a man of profound erudition; but we have no reason whatever to convince us that he is. haps he may pride himself on being a native of the same country which produced a Harvey, a Sydenham, a Cullen, and a Hunter. We entreat him to remember, that weeds may infest the same ground which has been overshadowed by the lordly adansonia, and that the same clime gives birth to the lion and the jackal." Medical Repository, vol. v. p. 333. Oh, fie! fie! “O THOU!” who soar'dst to heights sublimer Than e'er before attain'd by rhymer, Till even my good friend Apollo At distance gaz'd, but dar'd not follow, "GENIUS, or MUSE," who had'st propensity (Although it seems, the deuce is in't, O come, and bring (delightful things) May "STEM THE CATARACT OF LIGHT." Then condescend to be my crony, And guide my wild Parnassian pony, Till our aerial cutter runs 20 Athwart " A WILDERNESS OF SUNS!" 21 20 Till our aerial cutter runs. My mode of commencing an airy tour, mounted, Muse But Gifford comes, with why and wherefore; 22 and Co. on a poetical pony, which by the way is metamorphosed into a cutter, may, perhaps, be objected to by your fastidious criticks, as a liberty even beyond a poet's licentiousness. But there is nothing which we men of genius more thoroughly detest than any attempt to fetter our faculties with the frigid rules of criticism. Besides, sense or nonsense, poetry or gingling, it is perfectly Della Cruscan. 21" WILDERNESS OF SUNS!" This "proud" passage, together with "Ο THOU !" "GENIUS or MUSE!" and "CATARACT OF LIGHT!"are the legitimate offspring of that prince of poets, who rose to such a towering pitch of poetry, "That oft Hibernian opticks bright I should have been happy to have fascinated your worships with further specimens of the same sort of sublimity, could I have retained them in memory. I have been so solicitous for your gratification in this particular, that I have made a painful, though bootless search, throughout the metropolis and its suburbs, for these more than sybiline oracles. Indeed I have reason to fear that all Della Crusca's effusions, are irretrievably lost, except the few fragments which I have here pickled for the behoof of posterity. 22 But Gifford comes, with why and wherefore. The admirers of your polite poetry can never sufficiently anathematize the author of the Baviad and Meviud for extirpating, root and branch, a species of sentimental ditty, which might be scribbled, without the trouble of " sense Then tells a tale about the town, Says, if we rise but one inch higher, Then I and Clio, as the case is, to pose;" an object certainly of no small consequence with your bon ton readers and writers of rhyme. How could a sentimental ensign or love-lorn lieutenant be better employed than in sobbing over " Laura's tinkling trash," or weeping in concert with the "mad jangle of Matilda's lyre?" Besides, there ought to be whipped syllabub adapted to the palates of those who cannot relish " Burns' pure healthful nurture" Mr. Gifford should be sensible, that reducing poetry to the standard of common sense is clipping the wings of genius. For example; there is no describing what sublime and Della Cruscan-like capers I should myself have been cutting in this " Wilderness of suns;" for I was about to prepare a nosegay of comets, and string the spheres like beads for a lady's necklace; but was not a little apprehensive lest Mr. G. or some other malignant critick should persuade the publick, that my effusions of fancy were little better than the rant of a bed lamite. |