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Life of John Rheinhold Forfter.

metans call God Abdi. The Gauls Diez. The Tufcans Efar. The Spaniards Dios. The Teutones Golt. The Hetrufci call him Signor Idio, that is Lord God. The Arabians, Turks, and Saracens Alla Ibel, that is, God the fuf. In the Sclavonian tongue he is called Boeg, from Goodness. In Chaldea and India he is called Efgi Abir, that is the fabricator of the unierfe. The name of the fupreme Jupiter among the Egyptians is Amun, which by corruption came to be called Ammon. This word, according to Manetho, fignifies the concealed and concealing. According to Jamblichus ("De Myfteriis, fect. 8."), this god is the demiurgic intellect, who prefides over truth and wifdom, defcends into generation, and leads into light the unapparent power of cencealed reason. By the Greeks God was called Theos; and by the Romans Deus. The proper name of God with the Hebrews is Adon, or Adni. By the Dutch he is called Godt: and with us the word Lord is fynonimous with God. By the Chinese too, the fupreme God is called Tien, and by the Danes Goed.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

SIR,

PRESUME it will not be unacceptable to you to receive fome additions to, and corrections of, the account of George Forster, printed in your last Magazine. You may rely upon their accu

racy.

M, POUGENS feems very ftrangely ignorant of the history of JOHN REINHOLD FORSTER, the father of George, a man more diftinguished as a literary character than his fon. He did not fend, but brought his fon George, along with the rest of his numerous family, into England, in search of a better fettlement than his own country afforded. It was one of thofe fpirited, though finally unfuccefsful, attempts to promote the profperity of the Warrington Academy, to engage this perfon as tutor in the modern languages, with the occafional office of lecturing in various branches of natural hiftory. For the first department he was by no means well qualified; his extraordinary knowledge of languages, ancient and modern, being unaccompanied by a particle of tafte; and his ufe of them all being barbarous, though fluent. As a natural hiftorian, a critic, geographer, and antiquary, he ranked much higher; but, unfortunately, thefe were acquifitions of little value in his academical department,

403

George refided with him fome years at Warrington, and foon acquired a very perfect ufe of the English tongue. He alfo diftinguished himself greatly by his attainments in fcience and literature in general; adding to an excellent memory, quick parts and a fertile imagination. His temper was mild and amiable; in which he much differed from his father, one of the most quarrelfome and irritable of men; by which difpofition, joined to a total want of prudence in common concerns, he loft alinoft all the friends his talents had acquired him, and involved himfelf and family in perpetual difficulties. At length John Reinhold obtained the appointment of naturalift and philofopher (if the word may be fo ufed) to the fecond voyage of difcovery undertaken by the celebrated Cook; and his fon George was affociated with him in his office. That M. POUGENS fhould entirely have loft fight of the father, the undoubted principal on this occafion, is not a little extraordinary; nor would it be easy to parallel the abfurdity of the epithet of the « illustrious rival of Cook," bestowed by that writer on his young hero, not a navigator, but a naturalift of inferior rank. On their return, the two Forfters publifhed jointly a botanical work in Latin, containing the characters of a number of new genera of plants difcovered by them in their circumnavigation. The account of the voyage itself was published in the name of George alone, in evasion of some obligation under which the father lay, not to publifh feparately from the narrative authorifed by government. That the lun guage, which was correct and elegant, was furnished by the fon alone, could not be doubted; any more than that the matter proceeded from the joint ftock of their obfervations and reflections. Several parts, particularly the elaborate inveftigations relative to the languages spoken by the natives of the South-fea islands, and the fpeculations concerning their origin and fucceffive migrations, were strongly impreffed with the genius of the elder Forfter. I have nothing to add to the fubfequent hiftory of George, as given by M. POUGENS. To criticife on the French fentimentality difplayed in the delicately ambiguous relation of his nexion with Mifs HEYNE, is far beyond my reach; nor am I at all difpofed to inquire into the juftnefs of his "revolutionary principles." But with respect to his travels into Brabant, Holland, &c. (in the preface to his French tranflation of which, M. POUGENS has given the

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biogra

404
biographical narrative in question), I will
venture to affert my opinion, that it is a
moft flimfy and conceited performance,
equally difgufting by a parade of philo.
fophy, and by a hyperbolical expreffion
of feeling.

Defence of Birmingham and Dr. Parr.

The death of Forfter, the father, in his poft of profeffor in the University of Halle, has lately been announced in the periodical publications. Authentic memoirs of his life would be curious and valuable. Your's, &c.

June 5.

J. A.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

SIR,

HE malevolent fatire of the author

with Birmingham, whe a few conventicles, and not a few private houses blazed in devotion to the Church and King? It is to be feared that an act of intemperance, which we fhal long deplore," is viewed by this critical bigot with complacency, or he would not have neglected to gratify his malignant appetite with fo delicious a morfel.

Here, fir, we love temperate liberty and focial harmony; and, with exception of the one instance of infuriated mistaken zeal, we fupport both, careless of Dr. PARR, but preferring writings of that divine, to the crude effufions which dif play more acrimony, with the cowardice of not being owned by the author. I am, B. R.

Emingham, June 16, 1798.

of the "Purfuits of Literature," has your's, &c. been pointed out too frequently to have efcaped the knowledge of even those who defpife his fpecies of wit, and confequently do not perufe his work; but the unjust attacks of this cauftic critic are not con

fined to individual names, he fires grape and canister, and fweeps away whole coJumns, led only by affociation of ideas. What but the name of PARR drew down his infidious notice of my favourite town, more populous, and more diftinguished by the variety and perfection of mechanical improvements than any in the king

dom hear his words;

Birmingham, renown'd afar "At once for halfpence and for Doctor Parr." Are we known only by those frivolous appendages? Dr. PARR's fhining talents are unobferved where the active genius of mechanics produces a conftant fource of inventions, and the most useful improvements; at once giving honor to the artift, and extensive opulence and credit to the empire.

Birmingham has been called the "Toyfhop of Europe," but Europe is well acquainted with comforts and elegancies which never could have been enjoyed without the existence of machinery which shortens labou, and enables the merchant to fend the product to the remotest markets.

The readers of your valuable Mifcellany are not ignorant of the commercial importance which the arts acquire in their progrefs, or of the value which philofophy will ever attach to the difcoveries arifing out of the industry of the mechanic genius but the anonymous fatirift is ignorant of thefe comprehenfive effects, and eftimates the human understanding according to its acquaintance with the fibres of Greek roots. Was he fatisfied

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

Ν

SIR,

N your Magazine for the month of

May laft, I obferve a letter from Mr. remarks on my method of making and RUPP, of Manchester, containing fome ufing oxygenated muriate of lime, for the purpose of bleaching.

In this letter Mr. Rupp attempts to

prove that the liquor fo made, is more expensive than that prepared by the usual method, with alkaline falts; and that both are inferior to the fimple oxygenated muriatic acid for the purpofe of bleaching, In justice to myself, and that the public may not be milled by this gentleman's too hafty conclufions, I beg leave to make the following obfervations.

Mr. RUPP very justly observes, that in order to prove the fuperiority of this to the ufual liquor made with afhes, it must either be better in point of quality, or cheaper, In order to prove that it is not cheaper, he ftates, the quantity of pearl afhes neceffary for fixing the oxygenated gas, produced from 30 lb. of common falt, at 71lb. Mr. RUPP cannot here mean faturation by the word fixing, for he furely knows that the pot afh in 71lb. of pearl afhes is not fufficient to faturate the oxygenated acid that may be produced from 30 lb. of falt. Indeed he afferts in the fubfequent part of his letter, that it will not faturate fuch a quantity of gas. The meaning therefore of the affertion mult be, that fuch a portion of pearl afhes diffolved in a proper quantity of water, will to far reprefs the volatility of the gas, that is producible from 30lb. of common falt, as to form an eligible, or perhaps the most eligible bleaching li

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Mr. Tennant's Defence of his Bleaching Liquor.

quor prepared with afhes. Now, every chemift knows that this liquor will confift of the folution of the usual falts, produced by receiving the oxygenated muriatic acid gas into a folution of pot afh, together with a quantity of oxygenated muriatic, acid, in an uncombined state. It is likewife perfectly well known, that fuch liquor will deftroy dyed colours. This liquor therefore with which Mr. RUPP compares that made of lime, is totally unfit for bleaching any kinds of goods into which dyed colours enter, and confequently, wherever these are to be bleached, his ftatement does not apply. The fact is, that where fuch goods are bleached, three times this quantity of afhes, or even more, is univerfally used.

Wherever, therefore, fuch coloured goods are to be bleached (and fuch goods conftitute a great proportion of the cotton manufactory in Britain), his statement will not apply. But befides this, it is to be obferved (as Mr. RUPP would have feen if he had read the fpecification, or applied for information to any of the refpectable bleachers in his own neighbourhood who use the procefs, and who keep their doing so no fecret), that the introduction of common falt along with the lime in my procefs, was merely to increafe the fpecific gravity of the water, for the better fufpenfion of the lime; and as an addition, that afterwards might or might not be made, as experience should direct. The falt, therefore, is now regularly omitted; mere agitation being found perfectly fufficient to keep the lime in fufpenfion. With this correction, therefore, even with Mr. RUPP's proportion of afhes, the comparative value of this part of the ingredients of the liquor made with afhes, and that made with lime, will be as 3s. 9d. to 7d. and in all cafes, the faving brought about by ufing the lime liquor in preference to that made with ashes, will be equal to the dif. ference of price between the afhes and lime, and even fome diminution of the quantity of lime may with fafety be admitted. With regard to the additional labour in preparing the liquor, it is a mere trifle. A workman must attend while the liquor with ashes is preparing; when he makes the liquor with lime, he needs only to add to his ufual attendance a very moderate portion of bodily labour, applied to agitate the liquor in the receiver. Several of the bleachers in this country have now even faved him this, by connecting their agitators with their plash-mill, or other moving machinery.

405

Mr. RUPP next attempts to prove, that both this and the ufual liquor prepared with afhes, are inferior to the fimple oxygenated muriatic acid for the purpofes of bleaching.

I have already ftated, that bleaching liquor, containing the ufual falts formed from the oxygenated muriatic acid gas and pot afh, together with uncombined oxygenated muriatic acid, was totally unfit for bleaching goods which contained dyed colours. The fimple oxygenated acid is confequently totally unfit for bleaching fuch goods. If, therefore, we fet afide the liquor made with a full proportion of afhes and also that made with lime, a great proportion of the cotton goods manufactured in Lancashire, and almoft the whole of the Glasgow fabrics will be deprived of this great improvement in the art of bleaching. It must be allowed, therefore, that even on the fuppofition of the inferiority of the power poffeffed by the alkaline and lime liquors, they must be retained for the purposes of bleaching goods containing dyed colours. Also, that we must prefer lime to the alkaline liquor, because it is cheaper, by the difference of price between the alkali and lime, and that this difference will be very confiderable, because a very large proportion of afhes must be used, in order to preferve the dyed colours that enter the compofition of the goods.

It still remains to determine, whether the fimple oxygenated muriatic acid is more applicable to the purposes of bleaching, where no dyed colours enter the fabric, than alkaline or lime liquor.

In favour of the fimple oxygenated acid, Mr. RUPP quotes his experiments in the last vol. of the "Manchester Memoirs." Where experiments are made only on a few grains, and where we have no better teft of their relative differences or agreements, than a difference of colour induced by a few drops, as it appears to the eye of an experimenter, perhaps, from fome preconceived theory, inclined to fa your a particular conclufion, I would build but little on fuch experiments; if we add to this, the great danger to the fabric, univerfally allowed by bleachers, in every attempt made with the fimple oxygenated acid, either in a fluid, or gazeous form; the impoffibility of work men operating with it on account of its fuffocating vapours, and the doubtfulness of overcoming that, even by Mr. RUPP's ingenious contrivance (for he cannot fuppofe, that a bleacher can calculate fo exactly, as to have exhausted the oxyge

nated

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The Sacrament an Ancient Jewish Rite.

nated acid every time he finds it neceffary to remove the goods, from its action, and I fee no other way of preventing the efcape of the gas in Mr. Rupp's machine, whenever this operation becomes neceffary), we must conclude in favour of the liquor made with lime, and the more especially, as even the bleachers, who operate on white goods, now, in general, find it neceffary to be at the expence of ashes in their bleaching liquor.

Mr. RUPP has next drawn an objection to the liquor made with lime, from a very fertile fource of every kind of ar gument, viz. from chemical theory, and Jufpects that the lime, or muriate of lime, may become a mordant, and so make the goods liable to become yellow after bleaching with this liquor; or unfit them for being used in printing. Befides the matter of fact, which totally contradicts this, as has been afcertained by the experience of feveral printfields, particularly by that at Meffrs. FINLAY and Co's, in this neighbourhood, and at the field of Meffrs. ORR's, at Stratford, in Ireland, I am unacquainted with any proof, that lime, or any of its faline compounds, were ever found to poffefs any power in fixing colours in dying either cotton or linen, in as far as relates at least to the madder and weld coppers.

These observations will, I hope, fatisfy the public, with regard to the force of Mr. RUPP's objections to my method of preparing bleaching liquor; and the approbation it has received from numerous and refpectable bleachers in England, Scotland, and Ireland, will still be allowed to establish the character of a fimple invention, which, in whatever manner it may benefit me, will, I have no doubt, foon appear a great national benefit,

I have no doubt, if Mr. RUPP had known, that from the date of my letters patent, I have been ready to treat with all bleachers upon the moit moderate terms, for the fale of licences to practile my invention; he would have taken the trouble to investigate a little more fully into its merits himfelf, and likewife to have heard the report of the very eminent bleachers who are employing my procefs in his own immediate neighbourhood, before he had condemned it in fo unqualified

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my bleaching works here. I am, fir
your most humble fervant,
Darnly, CHAS. TENNANT,

13th June, 1798.

Bleacher,

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

SIR,

AMONG the moft curious topics of
theological difquifitions, the origin
of tranfubftantiation, or the belief of the
real prefence, has never,. I think, been yet
fufficiently cleared; but, to ourselves and
to this age, it is of
little importance. In
the eye of every chriftian, but the catholic,
it is an obfolete fuperftition, and only
now ferves to remind one of a fanguinary
epocha, in the annals of modern Europe,
when the human race was thinned for one
of the moft abfurd of idolatries, that of
cooking a God, and of eating him up
alive; affuredly, when the Egyptians
worshipped the onions growing in their
garden, they were more rational.

But the RITE still remains, although, in the bread and wine, we do not any more imagine we eat the real body, or drink the real blood of Jefus. I have long been defirous of difcovering the origin of this extraordinary ceremony; but my in quiries have hitherto been baffled, among the learned. In a very eccentric work, lately published, among a mafs of other matter, there is a note on this curious topic, which, as I know not to deny, I would wish to offer it to your theological correfpondents, either to refute, or to explain. The note in question, is the fol lowing, literally transcribed.

bread

The SA

"Christianity is nothing but improved Judaifm. I will give one inftance, which I have never obferved remarked, CRAMENT, for which fo many have fuffered, is a fimple rite, Now performed every fabbath night by the religious Jew. Wine and houfe; after a benediction, he hands the cup are placed before the mafter of the round, and breaking the bread, gives to each a portion. Jefus, amidst his difciples, was performing this rite, called KEEDUSH, and in the allegorical ftyle of a young Rabbin, faid of the bread and wine," This is my blood, and this is my body," which they certainly were, when affimilated in his perfon. To this fimple circumftance, we owe all the idiocy and cruelty of tranfubftantiation !"

VAURIEN, vol ii. p. 219.

According to this account, the modern Jew, while he refuses to take the facrament, actually performs it hebdomadally; and the modern Chriftian, while he ima gines it a teft of his creed, in fact, only joins in a very ancient Jewish ceremony. I am, Sir, your obedient Servant, York, June 4, 1798,

C. P.

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On the Perfonification of Abstract Ideas in Poetry.

For the Monthly Magazine.

An ESSAY on the PERSONIFICATION of

A

ABSTRACT IDEAS in POETRY. MONG the various artifices which poets have employed in order to produce that novelty which is effential to a high degree of pleasure or furprise, none is more remarkable than the exhibition of new forms of animated beings, endowed with peculiar powers and qualities, by which they are rendered actors in the fcenes into which they are introduced. Of thefe, there are two principal fpecies; the one, comprising thofe fupernatural beings which derive their origin from popular fuperftition or philofophical doctrine, modified by the poet's imagination; the other, confifting of creatures merely of poetical invention, formed, by means of the process called perfonification, from abftrast ideas of the mind.

Of

these last, Addison, in one of his elegant papers "On the Pleafures of the Imagi❤ nation" (Spectator, No. 420), fpeaks in the following manner : "There is another fort of imaginary beings, that we fometimes meet with in the poets, when the author reprefents any paffion, appetite, virtue, or vice, under a visible fhape, and makes it a perfon or an actor in his, poem." To this enumeration, however, might have been added some abstract ideas personified; fuch as nature, time, death, fleep, and the like, which equally come under this head of poetical creation. Of fuch, then, it is the purpose of the prefent Effay to treat; and it is the manner in which these fictitious perfonages are formed, rather than the propriety of their introduction into the poem, that I mean at prefent to confider; not excluding, however, fome remarks on their immediate agency; which, in fact, may be regarded as part of their description and character.

On comparing a number of examples of this kind of perfonification, it prefently appears, that there are two general methods by which it is effected. Either a fimply human form is drawn, impreffed in a fuper-eminent degree with the quality or circumftance intended to be perfonified; or a creature of the fancy is exhibited, the character and defign of which is expreffed by certain typical adjuncts or emblems. The firft of these may be termed a natural, the second, an emblematical, figure. From the union of thefe two modes, a third, or mixed fpecies is produced. That thefe diftinctions may be immediately conceived, I fhall MONTHLY MAG, No. XXXII,

407

briefly elucidate them by well-known which human faces are marked with the examples. The paffions of Le Brun, in ftrongeft expreffions of anger, terror, defire, &c. are merely natural perfonifications. The common female figure of Juftice with her fword, fcales and bandage, is purely emblematical. That of Plenty, reprefented by a full-fed, cheerful figure, bearing a cornucopia, is of the mixed fpecies. Thefe illuftrations are taken from painting; but the ideas may equally be conveyed by words. Under each of the preceding heads I fhall adduce a variety of examples from the poets, which will give scope to fuch critical remarks, as may tend to establish clear and precife notions concerning the refpective excellence of the feveral kinds. The natural species of perfonification will first be confidered; then by an infenfible gradation we fhall flide into the mixed, and conclude with the purely emblematical.

rage,

1. It may be proper before entering upon the particulars of this festion, to anticipate a doubt which will readily fuggelt itself to a reflecting mind. In what, it may be asked, confifts the merit or advantage of a kind of fiction which approaches fo nearly to reality? If for instance, be depicted only by the figure of a man in a violent fit of fury, what are the inventive powers exerted by the poet, or what is gained by the perfonification? It is to be acknowledged, that in these cafes, the merit of invention, peculiarly fo termed, can scarcely be claimed. Yet fince every circumstance must be accumulated by the poet which can give force and life to the piece, and a general character be formed out of the detached features of a number of individuals, to which must frequently be added fcenery and accompaniments contrived to correspond with, and enhance the effects of, the leading figure, the neceflity of fuperior defcriptive talents in order to fucceed in fuch reprefentations cannot be difputed. Then, with respect to the use of fuch fictions, it is to be confidered, that thefe imaginary beings are not merely human agents, circumfcribed by known laws in their operations: they are a kind of genii, whose sphere of action is only limited by a congruity dependent on their several characters. But the truth of these observations will be fufficiently illuftrated during the investigation of each particular example.

I shall begin with the perfonified figure of FAMINE, or rather, HUNGER, as 3 G reprefented

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