mentioned that of being admitted a fellow of the Royal society, on account of his essay on Poisons, and an analysis of the researches of Bononio On the Cutaneous Worms which generate the Itch.' In 1721 he was employed by the prince of Wales to make experiments on the inoculation of the small-pox. This he had long before been a supporter of, and the success of the plan was proved at this time by his experiments upon some condemned criminals who submitted to them as a ransom for their lives. He was also consulted respecting the contagious nature of the plague, at that time a subject of more than usual interest, which he discussed in his work on 'Pestilential Contagion, and the Means to be used to prevent it.' In 1727 he was appointed physician to the king. His reputation and practice now increased rapidly, and was in no degree inferior to that of Dr Radcliffe whom he succeeded. In 1744 the college of physicians offered him the highest honour in their power to bestow, the office of president, which his desire of retirement, arising from the infirmities of age, obliged him to decline. Next year he was appointed an honorary fellow of the Edinburgh college of physicians. He died on the 16th of February, 1754, in the 81st year of his age. A monument to his memory stands in the north aisle of Westminster abbey, executed in marble by Roubilliac.

In the elevated situation to which Dr Mead rose, few medical men have appeared who claim so large a portion of our respect. Nothing is known of his character which would not have adorned any station; and it is fortunate that such individuals are sometimes found to occupy the station to which they are so justly entitled. He was a patron of the arts and of learning. His library, containing 10,000 volumes, with many valuable MSS., his paintings, and other works of art of high value, were not selfishly appropriated to his sole use, but were open to all. Among his friends were Pope, Halley, and Newton; and the most learned of the continental physicians were proud to be reckoned among his correspondents. He was honoured by the notice of the kings of Naples and France, the former of whom sent him the great work on the antiquities of Herculaneum, and requested in return a copy of his treatises, inviting him also to his palace. The author of the Biographia Medica' says of him," He was a very generous patron of learning, and learned men in all sciences and in every country; by the peculiar magnificence of his disposition, making the private gains of his profession answer the end of a princely fortune, and valuing them only as they enabled him to become more extensively useful, and thereby to satisfy that greatness of mind, which will transmit his name to posterity with a lustre not inferior to that which attends the most distinguished characters of antiquity." He was equally remarkable for liberality of sentiment, and when a kindness was to be done, a difference in political opinions had not the slightest influence upon his exertions. His friendship for Garth, Arbuthnot, and Freind, was a remarkable instance of this. To the latter, when in difficulties, he was unbounded in his attentions. He visited him when imprisoned in the Tower, used every exertion to obtain his liberation, and having attended his patients, presented him with the sum of money thus acquired. Except on one oc. casion he never took a fee from a clergyman, and in that instance the reason assigned was, you have been pleased, contrary to what I have met with in any other gentleman of your profession, to prescribe to me,

66

rather than to follow my prescription, when you committed the care of your recovery to my skill and trust." The works of Dr Mead have been several times published. The last edition appeared in London, 1772, with a mezzotinto engraving of the author. They consist of an 'Essay on Poisons,' Of the Influence of the Sun and Moon upon Human Bodies,'-'A Discourse on the Plague,'-Treatises on the Measles and Small-pox,'-'On a Method of extracting the Foul Air out of Ships, A series of Medical Precepts and Cautions,'-An attempt to show of what nature those diseases are which are mentioned in scripture, entitled, Medica Sacra,'-An elegant Harveian Oration,'—and a few other smaller pieces. In these there is much learning, and much useful information, especially in the Medical Precepts.' Of course they exhibit many of the erroneous notions which prevailed in his day, but in many cases we see his powerful mind rising superior to the prejudices of his education.

Edward Cave.

BORN A. D. 1691.-DIED A. D. 1754.

EDWARD CAVE, the enterprising printer, to whom we owe the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' with its varied fund of information and talent, was born at Newton in Warwickshire, on the 29th of February, 1691. His father, the youngest son of Mr Edward Cave of Cave's in the Hole,' was a poor descendant of a respectable family, and compelled to earn his livelihood as a shoemaker in Rugby. Under the Rev. Mr Holyock, the school of Rugby, to which young Cave was entitled to admission on the foundation, had acquired some celebrity, and he found himself gratuitously educated among the sons of gentlemen of considerable rank, while his good qualities gained the esteem of his preceptor The former of these advantages, however, was probably the means of destroying the other. His literary powers are said to have attracted the envy of his more illustrious companions, and by one means or other he became the marked individual, on whom the burden of every piece of devilry committed in the neighbourhood of the school could be conveniently thrown. His faults were brought to a climax by the loss of a favourite cock belonging to the schoolmaster's wife, the crime of stealing or murdering which was naturally fixed on him, until it could be proved against some other,—a circumstance which never happened. From that period, his days at school became unhappy, and relinquishing the idea of a literary education, he accepted a situation as assistant to a collector of excise. Here again he was subject to female annoyance, and was obliged to relinquish his situation, disgusted by the drudgery imposed on him by the collector's wife. His next attempt to acquire a livelihood was in the employment of a timber merchant; but this situation he left before he had commenced a permanent engagement, and he afterwards entered a profession more suitable to his taste and abilities, by binding himself to a printer of the name of Collins, who had acquired some reputation in his profession, and was a deputyalderman. Here he was, for a third time, subjected to annoyance from the more unamiable part of the feminine disposition which seemed to

have been doomed to imbitter his life; the printer and his wife enjoyed a state of eternal discord, of the effects of which Cave could not avoid partaking; but after two years' study, he had so far mastered his art, that he was relieved from his troubles by being appointed to conduct a printing establishment at Norwich, and a weekly paper. Some opposition to this establishment engaged him in controversy, and first called forth his literary abilities. His master dying before the apprenticeship was terminated, Cave felt unwilling to subjugate himself to the termagant wife, and having obtained a stipulated allowance, married a young widow, with whom he lived at Bow. When his apprenticeship had expired, he was employed as a journeyman by Mr Barber, a printer connected with the tories. This circumstance appears to have wrought on Cave a political bias so far in favour of that party, that he occasionally contributed to Mist's Journal; but circumstances or conviction made him gradually turn towards the opposite party, although he never exceeded the extent of political partizanship which a man of calm feelings, whose mind was completely absorbed in his own projects, would naturally adopt. He exchanged the printing-house for a subordinate situation in the post-office, during which he found leisure sufficient to correct the Gradus ad Parnassum,'-a labour which certainly required no mean classical knowledge, and to write what Johnson briefly terms, 'An account of the Criminals,' which had for some time a considerable sale. From the period of his connection with the printing-office at Norwich, he had formed an idea of the practicability and utility of publishing the parliamentary debates,—a scheme which he afterwards accomplished with some difficulty and risk. "He had an opportunity," says Nichols," whilst engaged in a situation at the post-office, not only, as stated by Dr Johnson, of supplying his London friends with the provincial papers, but he also contrived to furnish the country printers with those written minutes of the proceedings in the two houses of parliament, which, within my own remembrance, were regularly circulated in the coffee-houses before the daily papers were tacitly permitted to report the debates."' Cave was afterwards advanced to be clerk of the franks, and with a laudable wish to restrict the privilege, of which he superintended the exercise, to its proper public purposes, he took the rather unauthorized plan of stopping franks given by members of parliament to their friends. Such a proceeding was naturally called in question, and he was cited before the house to answer for a breach of privilege, in having stopped a frank given by Mr Plummer to the old duchess of Marlborough. Under the sanction of his oath of secrecy, he refused to answer questions, and was dismissed from his employment. It was remarked that he would never make use of the opportunity thus afforded him, of explaining to any one the private affairs of the office from which he had been so dismissed.

The sum which his economy and prudence had enabled him to collect in his varied employments, now enabled him to purchase a small printing-office, and to establish the famous Gentleman's Magazine.' The new literary system he had thus framed, embracing within the compass of one pamphlet, political news and discussion, criticism, original literature, anecdotes, and general information, did not first meet

1 Literary Anecdotes, vol. v. p. 9.

with much encouragement from the patrons of literature; but the public readily purchased the work, and the proprietor found himself increasing in fortune, and able to add such attractions as might still farther increase the circulation. He was soon enabled to dispose of 10,000 copies. It outlived many rivals, and, after a century of existence, still continues in being, now holding a secondary place in literature, and stalking unnoticed about the world, unchanged in form or substance, except by decay, like those old gentlemen who still wear the fashionable wigs and waistcoats of the last century, unmindful of the changes that surround them, the persons who have seen some of the better days of the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' and by whom it is probably still esteemed. In 1734 Cave became acquainted and formed a connection with Dr Johnson, which tended to enlighten the darker days of that remarkable man, whose eminent genius was then struggling to provide his body with food and clothing. He became an extensive contributor to the magazine, while some of his earlier works were published by Cave, of whose liberality he frequently speaks with praise. Cave bestowed on his magazine scrupulous personal care and attention. At its most prosperous period, if he heard any one talk of discontinuing it, he would say, "Let us have something good next month;" and Johnson remarked, that "he scarcely ever looked out at the window, but with a view to its improvement." The firmness and patience with which Cave gradually vindicated the privilege of publishing the parliamentary debates in the magazine, form an important feature of his life, and must not be forgotten by a posterity to whom he at least smoothened the task of watching the proceedings of their representatives. He commenced operations in July, 1736, of procuring access to the house along with one or two friends; and the few notes they were enabled to collect, were adjusted, with the assistance of memory, to something like a summary of the proceedings, at a neighbouring tavern. These afterwards passed through the amplifying and improving hand of William Guthrie, the author of the well-known Geographical Grammar,' and a person better known for the number and variety, than for the excellence of his works. He proceeded without molestation until April, 1738, when the numerous reports, published in various directions, attracted the notice of the house, and a resolution was passed to the effect of punishing future offenders. Cave then adopted the well-known device of prefacing his reports, with an Appendix to Captain Lemuel Gulliver's account of the famous Empire of Lilliput,' and terming them 'Debates in the Senate of Great Lilliput,' at the same time publishing his maga zine in the name of his nephew, Edward Cave, junior. From 1740, when the dying efforts of Sir Robert Walpole's administration formed a subject of peculiar interest, Johnson superseded Guthrie as ornamenter of the reports, and the speeches of British senators became, from that period, renowned for redolent majesty of expression, a strong tinge of moral reflection, and a peculiar sameness. In April, 1747, he was cited before the house of lords for publishing a report of the trial of Lord Lovat; and, after an examination before a committee, in which was elicited his method of procuring reports, he was finally discharged with a reprimand, on paying his fees. After the yaer 1745, the debates

6

2

Hawkins' Life of Johnson.

were discontinued, until they appeared in 1749, in the form of a letter from a member of parliament, to his country friend; and, after 1752, they were plainly printed with the initials of the speakers.

Besides maintaining a magazine, Cave had other means of patronizing literature, among which was the disposal of one or two prizes, of from £40 to £50 each, for the best poems on given subjects. The death of his wife in 1751 appears to have preyed upon his spirits; he lost his sleep and his appetite," and lingering," says Johnson, "two years, fell, by drinking acid liquors, into a diarrhoea, and afterwards into a kind of lethargic insensibility, in which one of the last acts of reason he exerted was fondly to press the hand that is now writing this little narrative." He died on the 10th of January, 1754, in the 63d year of his age.

Henry Fielding.

BORN A. d. 1707.-DIED A. D. 1754.

HENRY FIELDING was born at Sharpham, near Glastonbury, in Somersetshire, on the 22d of April, 1707. He was connected with families of considerable hereditary rank. His father, lieutenant-general Fielding, who died in 1740, was grandson to George Fielding, earl of Desmond, brother to William, third earl of Denbigh, and his mother, Sarah Gould, the first of General Fielding's four wives, was daughter to Sir Henry Gould, knight, one of the judges of the court of king's bench. Henry received the earlier part of his education from the private tuition of the Rev. Mr Oliver, an individual, of whose character he is said to have branded his opinion in the scene with Parson Trulliber in Joseph Andrews, one of the most unredeeming pictures of a harsh, barbarous, and sordid mind, which his luxuriant pen ever drew. His education was afterwards continued at Eton-school, where chance threw him among such schoolfellows as Lyttleton, Fox, Pitt, and Winnington. At this period of comparatively extreme youth, he is said to have shown a greedy desire for the acquisition of classical literature; and it is probably more to this period of his life than to the after years which he spent in alternate dissipation and labour for subsistence, that we owe that minute critical knowledge of Greek and Roman writers, so frequently displayed in his novels. On leaving Eton, he went to the university of Leyden, where, for two years, he studied civil law, whether as an accomplishment, or for professional purposes, we are not told. Vehement animal passions distinguished him during his whole life, and the license of a university town, where he had no one particularly to superintend his actions, permitted him to commence a course of deep dissipation. Meanwhile, General Fielding's increasing family and moderate fortune prevented him from being regular in his remittances to his son. Henry's allowance was nominally £200 a year; but, as he used to remark, 66 any body might pay it that would." Unwilling, therefore, to harass his father, or to run deeply in debt, he found it expedient to return to London before the termination of his twentyfirst year. To Fielding, dissipation seems never to have brought its companion, idleness. At the early age at which he returned to Bri