DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA, TO WIT:

BE IT REMEMBERED, that on the eleventh day of (L. S.) June, in the thirtieth year of the independence of the United States of America, A. D. 1806, Thomas Green Fessenden, of the said district, hath deposited in this office the title of a book, the right whereof he claims as author, in the words following, to

wit:

"The Modern Philosopher, or Terrible Tractoration! in four cantos, most respectfully addressed to the royal college of physicians, London. By Christopher Caustick, M. D. A.S.S. Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Aberdeen, and honorary member of no less than nineteen very learned societies. Second American edition, revised, corrected, and much enlarged by the

author."

In conformity to the act of the congress of the United States, entitled, "An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies during the times therein mentioned." And also to the act, entitled "An act supplementary to an act, entitled, "An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies during the times therein mentioned, and ex extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving, and etching histoJical and other prints."

D. CALDWELL,

Clerk of the district of Pennsylvania.

PREFACE

TO THE SECOND AMERICAN EDITION.

IN the preface of the publisher of the first American edition of this work, some statements relative to its origin, together with a concise biographical sketch of its author, have been presented to the publick. That preface, however, having been written before my return from England, and without my knowledge, cannot be supposed to be perfectly correct in all its particulars; and though I highly appreciate the friendly motives which appear to have actuated the publisher in penning it, yet I hope he will pardon me if, instead of an advocate, I now appear in propria persona and explain a little more at large the topicks and events of which he has taken notice.

Previous to my journey to England, for the purposes hereafter to be stated, my life had been checkered with but little variety; and I shall merely state such prominent events as may be necessary to account for my having made my literary debut in the uncommon character of an American author in London.

My father is a clergyman, who has been settled in Walpole, in New Hampshire, more than forty years. He is by no means in affluent circumstances, and I am the eldest of eight children yet living. I acquired a collegiate education, and graduated at Dartmouth college in New Hampshire, in August 1796. The expenses of my education were principally defrayed by my own exertions. During the vacations I eked out my finances by instructing a village school, and added sometimes a pittance to my purse by teaching psalmody a number of evenings in each week, after having finished my daily avocations as a pedagogue. In the autumn of the year 1796, I commenced the study of law at Rutland, in Vermont. After completing my studies I began business in partnership with Nathaniel Chipman, Esq. formerly a senator in congress, and a gentleman who is placed by his legal, literary, and scientifick attainments in the highest rank of American worthies.

While member of the university and student at law, I often amused myself and perhaps sometimes my friends, by poetical effusions, many of which were published in the Laypreacher's Gazette, edited by Joseph Dennie, Esq. and The Eagle, a newspaper printed at Dartmouth. Some of these poems I have since published in England, and they have, likewise, been republished in a work just issued from the Lorenzo Press of E. Bronson, Esq.

In the spring of the year 1801, I was employed as an agent for a respectable company, formed in Vermont for the purpose of securing a patent in London of a new invented hydraulick machine. This machine was the invention of a Mr. Langdon (not mine as has been stated by some of my good friends in this country.) I was likewise a member of this company, and thus became deeply interested in its success as one of the principals as well as agent. I was urged to hurry my departure in consequence of a report in circulation that certain persons by stealth had made them