to the study of Natural History. He had now nothing to depend upon for a livelihood but the precarious profits of his botanic garden and his publications. The Flora Londinensis was an object of universal admiration; and on this he bestowed unwearied care. But the sale of the work never equalled its unrivalled merit; the number of copies sold scarcely ever exceeded three hundred. This was owing partly to the work coming out (a great advantage to it in point of accuracy) so slowly; partly to its being but little known abroad in consequence of this slowness; and at length to the horrid revolution of France, that vortex in which all arts, literature, urbanity of manners, freedom of communication, regard to learning, taste, humanity, wealth, and every thing that is held valuable and comfortable to mortality, has been swallowed up, and for a time lost. The day seems dawning when they may all be allowed to revive with increased lustre. May God in his goodness hasten this happy period!

Mr. Curtis disdained to have the usual recourse to artifice and increased price to enable him to carry on the sale, But by a happy judgment, about the year 1787, he projected the plan of his Botanical Magazine. What the sterling merit of his Flora could not accomplish, this, comparatively speaking, inferior performance, procured him most readily. The nature of this publication had in it such a captivating appearance, was so easily purchaseable, and was executed with so much taste and accuracy, that it at once became popular; and, from its unvaried continuance in excellence and popularity, continued to be a mine of wealth to him to the very day of his death, contributing at the same time not a little to the increase of his botanical fame, from the number of original and excellent observa tions interspersed through the work.

The mode of publication adopted in the Botanical Magazine held out a tempting lure to similar productions, Hence, among others, the charming, inestimable English Botany of Dr. Smith and Mr. Sowerby took its origin. Unfortunately, Mr. Curtis considered the publication of this work as an act of hostility against himself; neither would he allow himself to be persuaded to the contrary. It was an unfortunate circumstance, and prevented him from communicating with Dr. Smith, a real friend to him, and even with the Linnæan Society, of which he was one of the oldest members, and in which he had a very large number of his personal friends. No mischief arose from this unto

ward misconception; the interposition of friends at length softening, if not entirely healing, the rankling wound.

There was not a Naturalist of any eminence who did not court his acquaintance. He was ever glorying in the friendship of Sir Joseph Banks, Mr. Dryander, Dr. John Sims, to whom he committed memoirs of his life, Dr. Goodenough, Mr. Marsham, Sir Thomas Frankland, Dr. Withering, Dr. Hope, Dr. Hunter, Dr. Lettsom, Dr. Darwin, Dr. Gwyn, Mr. Woodward, professors Martin and Schreber, Mr. Dickson, Mons. L'Heritier, Mr. Wickham, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Capel, the late Dr. Sibthorp, Mr. Lightfoot, Dr. Davall, &c. &c. &c. and their attachment to him was reciprocal.

There never was a pleasanter companion than Mr. Curtis: he abounded in innocent mirth; and good-humour ever floating uppermost gave a pleasant cast to every thing he said or did. Few people have been known to form so cor rect an opinion of themselves as he. "I have no pretensions," said he, in the memoirs which he left with Dr. Sims, "to be considered as a man of letters, or of great mental powers: I know myself and my imperfections. A consciousness of my inabilities makes me diffident, and produces in me a shyness, which some have been ready to con→ strue into pride." He was sensible that his excellence con. sisted in his superior discernment when applied to objects of Natural History; in that respect he had few equals. The following circumstances bear witness to the truth of this remark. Mr. Curtis first discovered the membranous calyptra in mosses, overlooked by Dillenius. To him we owe the discovery that the Violas and Oxalises produce seeds all the year through, though the latter produce no petals except in the spring, the former only sparingly in the autumn. The distinction between Poa pratensis and trivialis by the intrafoliaceous membrane, is the result of Mr. Curtis's accurate discernment. Many others might be mentioned. From this mode of viewing objects other writers took the hint; and, undoubtedly, the science of botany has been much improved by these and such like at tentions within these few last years.

*

In Ornithology Mr. Curtis was no mean adept. Although his musical powers were by no means at all beyond the common level, yet in one respect he shewed a most exact ear. No bird could utter a note, whether its usual one, or

* See Mr. Curtis's description of the Polytrichum commune and nonum in the Flora Londinensis,

that of love, or that of fear and surprise, but he could from the sound determine from what species it proceeded. He ⚫ has often regretted to the writer of this article that he had not the power of imparting this knowledge. His skill in this particular has enlivened many a herborization both in waste wilds and thick embarrassing woods.

Entomology was always a favourite study with him. Few men have observed more: it is only to be regretted that he committed so little to paper. He was so familiar with the motions of insects, that he could almost always declare what was the intent of those busy and playful (as it should seem to ignorant observers) actions, in which they were so perpetually employed. He made a most notable discovery of the cause of what is called the honeydew on plants. From repeated observations he determined it to be no other thanthe excrement of Aphides. Some observations on this subject are left behind him, and it is to be hoped will one day be given to the public.

Had Mr. Curtis received a polished education, it would have proved a public benefit. One evil almost always arises from this defect. The mind, untutored, does not know how to fix itself; conscious of great and various powers, it runs from subject to subject, and never pursues any to the limit at which it is enabled to arrive. Mr. Curtis was perpetually forming some new design or other, without completing any one. This versatility must

Thus

* Mr. Curtis intended that his Flora Londinensis should contain all the plants growing wild within ten miles of London; and, afterwards, others of more distant situations. But he published only seventy-two numbers, of which seventy were of the former description, and two only of the latter. He began with publishing two little tracts upon Entomology; but added nothing farther to Entomology except his tract on the brown-tailed Moth, and an unpublished tract upon the Aphis, and that upon the Sphex fabulosa, which was given in to the Society for promoting the study of Natural History. This was a curious and valuable paper, and gave a very full detail of the history of that animal. Aristotle himself has left similar observations upon either the same insect, or certainly one of that genus, of manners precisely the same. He began a new illustration of the botanical terms, &c. but he did not put out above two or three numbers. When the English Botany began to be popular, he thought to counteract the injury (as he thought it) of that work, by giving diminished figures of the plates of his Flora Londinensis; but this work also was stopped before many numbers were published. He gave an account of many of the English grasses; but he did not carry on that plan to the end which he originally proposed. The only work to which he steadily adhered was his Botanical Magazine. Here he found an estate, and every thing depended upon the regularity of the publication in all its points. Here he was compelled to punctuality; and who is there who does not rejoice at such a necessity so existing, and so preVailing! The Botanical Magazine, and most probably the Flora Londinensis, will be carried on for the benefit of his wife and daughter,

not be imputed to him as a fault; it may rather be called the consequence of (what in his case, and from the circumstances of his family, was unavoidable) an incorrect education. They whom God has blessed with affluence may profit from remarks of this kind, and do their duty, by giving their children not half-finished, new-fangled, and superficial, but regular and sound educations.

All Mr. Curtis's ideas were turned to the benefit of mankind. He was the first botanist of note in this country who applied botany to the purposes of agriculture. By perpetually cultivating plants, he possessed advantages superior to any that had preceded him, and was thereby enabled to point out to the agriculturist the noxious as well as the useful qualities of plants; a branch of agriculture rarely attended to.

Although, as has been before stated, Mr. Curtis's education was very confined, he had acquired some taste for classic literature both ancient and modern; and somewhat of elegance and neatness pervaded whatever he took in hand. The form of his mind was pourtrayed in his garden, his library, his aviary; and even a dry catalogue of plants* became from his pen an amusing and instructive little volume. His delicacy never forsook him; nor would he willingly adopt the coarse vulgar namest of some of the elder botanists, though sanctioned by the authority of Linnæus himself. In short, Mr. Curtis was an honest, laborious, worthy man, gentle, humane, kind to every body, a pleasant companion, a good master, and a steady friend. His Flora Londinensis will be a monumentum ære perennius. The size, the accuracy of the work, the masterly exemplification of dissection of flowers, will do as much for the establishment of the Linnæan system as any work which ever appeared. The few mosses which he undertook to illustrate have their minute parts so well displayed, that these very plates would of themselves initiate any one into the knowledge of that branch of the Cryptogamia. But I beg pardon for running into such length; for, whoever touches upon the abilities and suavity of manners in Mr. Curtis, cannot end his subject in a few words.

1799, Aug.

Yours, &c.

KEWENSIS.

*See Catalogue of British Plants cultivated in the London Botanic Garden-1783.

+ Hence he gave the name of Olidum to a species of Chenopodium, rejecung the indelicate one adopted by Linnæus.

LXI. Anecdotes of FRANCIS STUART.

MR. URBAN,

THE following note on Captain Grose's Olio may, per haps, be acceptable to the lovers of biography. You may rely on its authenticity.

Yours, &c.

W. N.

P. 161. A porter-drinking man, Steward.] This Steward was Francis Stuart. He was the son of a shop-keeper in Edinburgh, and was brought up to the law. For several years he was employed as a writer in some of the principal offices of Edinburgh; and being a man of good natural parts, and given to literature, he frequently assisted in digesting and arranging MSS. for the press; and, among other employments of this sort, he used to boast of assisting or copying some of the juvenile productions of the afterwards celebrated Lord Kaims, when he was very young, and a correspondent with the Edinburgh Magazine, When he came to London, he stuck more closely to the press; and in this walk of copying or arranging for the press, he got recommended to Dr. Johnson, who then lived in Gough-square. Frank was a great admirer of the Doctor, and upon all occasions consulted him; and the Doctor had also a very respectable opinion of his amanuensis Frank Stuart, as he always familiarly called him. But it was not only in collecting authorities that Frank was employed, he was the man who did every thing in the writing way for him, and managed all his affairs between the Doctor, his bookseller, and his creditors, who were then often very troublesome, and every species of business the Doctor had to do out of doors; and for this he was much better qualified than the Doctor himself, as he had been more accustomed to common business, and more conversant in the ways of men.

That he was a porter-drinking man, as Captain Grose says, may be admitted; for he usually spent his evenings at the Bible, in Shire-lane, a house of call for bookbinders and printers; where Frank was in good esteem among some creditable neighbours that frequented the back-room; for, except his fuddling, he was a very wortby character.

his drinking and conviviality, he used to say, he left behind