and tinted the whole with the proper colours. This manner, though slight, in many instances was most effective; and it is known, on indubitable authority, that the late Sir Joshua Reynolds and his successor to the chair of the Royal academy have each declared, that some of his drawings would have done honour to the greatest masters of design of the old schools.

For many years, for he was too idle to seek new employment, his kind friend and best adviser, Mr Ackerman, supplied him with ample subject for the exercise of his talent. The many works which his pencil illustrated are existing evidences of this. Many successions of plates for new editions of those popular volumes, Dr Syntax in Search of the Picturesque,' 'The Dance of Death,' 'The Dance of Life,' and other well-known productions of the versatile pen of Mr Coomb, will hereafter be regarded as mementos of his graphic humour. No artist of the past or present school, perhaps, ever expressed so much as Rowlandson, with so little effort, or with so small and evident an appearance of the absence of labour. '

John Mason Good.

BORN A. D. 1764.-DIED A. D. 1827.

JOHN MASON GOOD was born of reputable parents, at Epping, on the 25th of May, 1764. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to a surgeon-apothecary at Gosport, where, with an activity peculiar to himself, he set himself immediately to pound medicines, play cricket and the German flute, practise fencing and poetry, study Italian, and compose a Dictionary of Poetic Endings, besides sundry other literary pieces. In 1783 and 1784 he attended lectures in London, and wrote a treatise on the theory of Earthquakes, containing a great deal of reasoning as elaborate as it was erroneous. In 1784 he entered into partnership with a surgeon at Sudbury.

In 1792 Mr Good, either owing to "suretiship," or the imprudent practice of lending money to his friends, became embarrassed in his pecuniary affairs. This had the happy effect of stimulating him to literary exertion: he wrote plays, translations, and poetry, but without the desired effect; he then tried philosophy, but without discovering the secret of transmutation; and at last, to somewhat more purpose, opened a correspondence with a metropolitan newspaper and review. In 1793 he removed, with his family, to London, and entered into partnership with a Mr W., by whose misconduct the business soon after failed. On the 7th of November he was admitted a member of the College of Surgeons, and soon after became an active member of the Medical Society, and of the General Pharmaceutic Association; at the suggestion of some of his colleagues in the latter, he wrote a History of Medicine, so far as it relates to the profession of an Apothecary,' which was published in 1795.

In 1797 he began a translation of Lucretius; and, two years after, set himself to study the German language, having previously made

1 New Monthly Magazine.

considerable progress in the French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, The Arabic and Persian he afterwards added to his acquisitions. In 1799 he finished his translation of Lucretius, which was composed in the streets of London during the translator's walks to visit his patients. Mr Good's literary productions now followed each other in rapid succession till 1812. Of these, his Song of Songs,' 'Translation of the Book of Job,' and his contributions to the Pantalogia,' are the best known. In 1810 he began to deliver lectures at the Surrey Institution, the first course of which treated of the nature of the Material World, the second of that of the Animate World, and the third of that of the Mind, the whole of which were afterwards published under the general title of The Book of Nature.' In 1820, by authority of a diploma, dated from the ancient and anti-mercenary university of Aberdeen, he began to practise as a physician; and from the extraordinary success that attended his career from this moment, had reason to regret that he had not aspired at an earlier period to the highest branch of his profession. In the same year he published A Physiological System of Nosology,' and, in 1822, The Study of Medicine,' one of the most successful of his works.

Up to this period, and indeed for some time after, his health had been almost uniformly good, which will not be deemed so extraordinary even in a man who read, wrote, and thought so much as Dr Good, when it is recollected that his bodily exertions were, of necessity, almost equal to those of his mind. Even in London, when visiting his patients on foot, he must have walked enough to counterbalance the effects of more than one sheet per diem; and when the lazy luxury of a coach was substituted for this healthful exercise, it is not wonderful that the mental pressure of study should have increased, even to the extinction of life. He died on the 2d of January, 1827, in the sixty-third year of his age. Dr Good was a man of great and versatile talents. As a medical writer his name stands high; and as a physician his practice was extensive and successful. He was not, and, from his education and opportunities, could not be, profoundly learned; but the stores of knowledge, collected by unwearied industry, carried on with a kind of enthusiasm in research, were in him as valuable for all practical purposes as abstruse learning.

The following passages, in a letter received by Dr Gregory, from Dr Good's eldest daughter, Mrs Neale, will assist the reader in forming his estimate of the private character of the subject of this memoir :-" You will doubtless have learned much from my mother and sister of my dear father's affectionate deportment in his family, and especially of his parental kindness; yet I cannot avoid mentioning one way in which, during my childhood, this was frequently manifested towards myself. My dear father, after a hurried meal at dinner, occupying but a very few minutes, would often spend a considerable portion of what should have been his resting time in teaching me to play at battledore, or some active game, thinking the exercise conducive to my health. I never saw in any individual so rare a union as he possessed of thorough enjoyment of what are usually termed the good things of this life, with the most perfect indifference respecting them when they were not within his reach. In the articles of food and drink he always took, with relish and cheerfulness, such delicacies as the kindness of a friend

or accident might throw in his way; but he was quite as well satisfied with the plainest provision that could be set before him, often indeed seeming unconscious of the difference. His love of society made him most to enjoy his meals with his family or among friends; yet, as his employments of necessity produced uncertainty in the time of his retur home, his constant request was to have something set apart for him, but on no account to wait for his arrival. I perhaps am best qualified to speak of his extreme kindness to all his grandchildren. One example will serve to show that it was self-denying and active. My fourth little one, when an infant of two months old, was dangerously ill with the hooping-cough. My father was informed of this. It was in the beginning of a cold winter, and we were living sixty miles from town, in a retired village in Essex. Immediately on receiving the news of our affliction, my father quitted home; and what was our surprise, at eleven o'clock on a very dark night, to hear a chaise drive fast up to the door and to see our affectionate parent step out of it. He had been detained, and narrowly escaped an overthrow, by the driver having mistaken his way, and attempted to drive through rough ploughed fields. We greatly feared that he would suffer severely from an attack of the gout, to which he had then become seriously subject, and which was generally brought ou by exposure to cold and damp such as he had experienced; and we urged in consequence the due precautions; but his first care was to go at once to the nursery, ascertain the real state of the disease, and prescribe for the infant. Strangers have often remarked to me that they were struck with the affectionate kindness with which he encouraged all my dear children to ask him questions upon any subject, and the delight which he exhibited when they manifested a desire to gain knowledge. Indeed I do not once remember to have heard them silenced in their questions, however apparently unseasonable the time, in a hasty manner, or without some kind notice in answer. He never seemed annoyed by any interruption which they occasioned, whether during his studies, or while he was engaged in that conversation which he so much enjoyed. Whenever he silenced their questions by the promise of a future answer, he regarded the promise as inviolable, and uniformly satisfied their inquiries on the first moment of leisure, without waiting to be reminded by themselves or others of the expectations he had thus excited. These are simple domestic facts; not perhaps suited to every taste, but as they serve to illustrate character I transmit them, to be employed or not as you may think best."

Of Dr Good's intellectual character, the following is Dr Gregory's summary:-"The leading faculty was that of acquisition, which he possessed in a remarkable measure, and which was constantly employed, from the earliest age, in augmenting his mental stores. United with this, were the faculties of retention, of orderly arrangement, and of fruitful and diversified combination. If genius be rightly termed 'the power of making new combinations pleasing or elevating to the mind, or useful to mankind,' he possessed it in a high degree. He was always fertile in the production of new trains of thought, new selections and groupings of imagery, new expedients for the extension of human good. But if genius be restricted to the power of discovery or of creative invention,' whether in philosophy or the arts, they who have most closely examined Dr Good's works, will be least inclined to claim for him that

distinction. Be this however as it may, there can be no question that his intellectual powers were of the first order; that in the main they were nicely equipoised, and that he could exercise them with an unusual buoyancy and elasticity. His memory was very extraordinary; doubtless much aided by the habits of arrangement, so firmly established by sedulous parental instruction. His early acquired fondness for classical and elegant literature laid his youthful fancy open to the liveliest impressions, and made him draw

"The inspiring breath of ancient arts,

and tread the sacred walks, Where at each step imagination burns :'

and this undoubtedly again aided his memory; the pictures being reproduced by constant warmth of feeling. The facility with which on all occasions (as I have probably before remarked) he could recall and relate detached and insulated facts, was peculiarly attractive, and not less useful. But the reason is very obvious: however diverse and even exuberant the stores of his knowledge often appeared, the whole were methodised and connected together in his memory by principles of association that flowed from the real nature of things; in other words, philosophical principles, by means of which the particular truths are classified in order under the general heads to which they really belong, serving effectually to endow the mind that thoroughly comprehends the principles with an extensive command over those particular truths, whatever be their variety or importance. With the mathematical sciences he was almost entirely unacquainted; but, making this exception, there was scarcely a region of human knowledge which he had not entered, and but few indeed into which he had not made considerable advances; and wherever he found an entrance there he retained a permanent possession; for to the last he never forgot what he once knew. In short, had he published nothing but his Translation of Lucretius,' he would have acquired a high character for free, varied, and elegant versification, for exalted acquisitions as a philosopher and a linguist, and for singular felicity in the choice and exhibition of materials in a rich store of critical and tasteful illustration. Had he published nothing but his Translation of the Book of Job,' he would have obtained an eminent station amongst Hebrew scholars, and the promoters of biblical criticism. And bad he published nothing but his Study of Medicine,' his name would, in the opinion of one of his ablest professional correspondents, have 'gone down to posterity, associated with the science of medicine itself, as one of its most skilful practitioners, and one of its most learned promoters.' I know not how to name another individual who has arrived at equal eminence in three such totally distinct departments of mental application. Let this be duly weighed in connexion with the marked inadequacy of his early education (notwithstanding its peculiar advantages in some respects), to form either a scientific and skilful medical practitioner or an excellent scholar, and there cannot but result a high estimate of the original powers with which he was endowed, and of the inextinguishable ardour with which through life he augmented their energy and enlarged their sphere of action."

William Mitford.

BORN A. D. 1743.—died a. D. 1827.

WILLIAM MITFORD was the eldest son of John Mitford, Esq. of Lincoln's inn. He was born in London, February 10, 1743-4; and was educated at Cheam school in Surrey, under the venerable and excellent William Gilpin, on whom he bestowed the living where he resided and died. When yet a schoolboy, his brother informs us, he took a fancy "to the Greek in preference to the Latin language, and to the Grecian character in preference to the Roman; but rather as that character was offered to his youthful imagination in other works than those of the most authoritative Greek historians; in Plutarch, rather than Thucydides and Xenophon. A severe illness, which occasioned his removal from school, and denied him the advantage of other instruction during a year, at the critical age of fifteen, and the necessity, for some time after, of careful attention to health, checked his progress in his favourite study; and the bar having been proposed as his future profession, he was discouraged in his pursuit of the Greek, and urged to attend more to the Latin language, as that to which his studies might be more advantageously applied."

From Cheam he went to Queen's college, Oxford. He left the university without taking a degree, and, entering the Middle Temple, commenced the study of the law; but his brother was the member of the family that was destined to acquire eminence in that profession, and Mr Mitford early quitted it, on obtaining a commission in the South Hampshire militia.' He first joined it as captain, May 22, 1769; was appointed lieutenant-colonel November 22, 1779; and from August 9, 1805, to the date of his resignation, October 15, 1806, held the colonelcy. It was in the same regiment that Gibbon was lieutenant-colonel. When Mr Mitford first had a company, that distinguished writer was his commanding officer, and it was to the lieutenant-colonelcy that had been held by the historian of Rome, that the historian of Greece succeeded in 1779. "Their conversations," says his brother, "in those hours of leisure which the militia service afforded, frequently turned on ancient history; and Mr Gibbon, finding the eagerness of his friend in the pursuit of Grecian literature, urged him to undertake the History of Greece.' These circumstances led to the compilation and publication of the first volume." Mr Mitford's father died in 1761, when he succeeded to the family estate at Exbury. Mr Mitford's first publication appeared anonymously in 1774. It was An Essay on the Harmony of Language, intended principally to illustrate that of the English Language.' It was much admired; Horne Tooke is said to have frequently expressed a wish that he had been its author. "At two and thirty, the loss of an amiable wife interrupted all his purposes at home. A violent illness followed;

It was said by the Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, that scarcely any person, amongst his early acquaintance, had persevered in the study of the law, who had competent means of support without the profits of the bar; and the author's father, and his mother's brother and father, all educated for and called to the bar, having quitted the profession when they respectively succeeded to moderate paternal estates, he thought himself justified, by their example, in leaving the bar to his younger brother, whom necessity compelled to persevere.