to folve the doubts and repel the hostile attacks of a host of correfpondents.

At length, in the year 1792, he gave to the world the first volume of a new translation of the books accounted Sacred by Jews and Chriftians, otherwife called the Books of the Old and New Covenants, from corrected texts of the originals, with various readings, explanatory notes, and critical remarks." After an interval of five years, he publifhed, in 1797, a fecond volume of the tranflation, and, in 1800, there appeared a volume of Critical Remarks, correfponding to the firft of the tranflation. Had the hopes and defigns of this laborious fcholar been accomplifhed, the whole work would have been extended to, at least, eight large volumes in quarto. But this happy termination of his labours, he was deftined never to reach; and he died on the 2d of February 1802, while his verfion of the Pfalms of David was paffing through the prefs.

In eftimating the merits of Dr Geddes as a tranflator and cri-tic, we fhall not prefume to hazard any opinion of our own, upon a fubject which neceffarily demands a profound acquaintance with those studies to which his life was devoted. In fo far as a mere English reader can pretend to judge, we should have no hesitation in faying, that in the modernized phrafeology of Dr Geddes, the writings of Mofes lofe much of that venerable dignity and grace which they exhibit in the more antiquated garb of our established tranflation; and that, where the meaning of the original had not been mistaken, we should infinitely have preferred the idiomatical irregularities of Wickliff and Tyndal, and King James's tranflators, to the fmartnefs and grammatical methodifm of Dr Geddes, degraded as they certainly are in many instances by the oppofite vices of fcholaftic pedantry, and colloquial vulgarifm.

In whatever regards the more fubftantial qualities of the work, it feems impoffible to doubt that Dr Geddes is juftly entitled to a large fhare of praife. On this head, Mr Good appears to fpeak with great liberality and candour. After giving ample fpecimens of the tranflation, and questioning the critical opinions of his learned friend in various inftances, he obferves, that,

In his tranflation, our author has uniformly confined himself to the duties of a faithful interpreter. In a few doubtful paffages he may perhaps have overstepped the modefty of his office: but, in general, his corrections are well fupported by original arguments, by criticisms of prior commentators, or the common consent of approved readings. His ftyle is for the most part plain and perfpicuous, conveying the fenfe of the original in its native fimplicity But his language is occafionally unequal, and ftrongly partakes of the alternations of his own phyfical conftitution;

conftitution; in confequence of which, in the midst of a paffage, moft exquifitely rendered in the main, we are at times furprised whith scholaftic and extraneous expreffions, or difgufted with intolerable vulgarifms. It should never be forgotten, however, that the whole is the work of an individual unaffifted by fellow-labourers, and that it conftitutes his first attempt. Had he lived to have realized his own wishes, and to have revifed it by a second edition, published in twelves without his Critical Remarks, there would have been little room for many of the obfervations which the caufe of truth has thus compelled me to hazard. As it is, it offers, fo far as it proceeds, the most intelligible verfion of the facred records in the English, or perhaps in any language whatever ; and there are few obfcure paffages in our established tranflation which this verfion will not illuminate.

But though in his interpretation he faithfully restricted himself tó the duties of a tranflator, in his volume of Critical Remarks our author conceived himself at liberty to throw off every restriction whatever : and this part of his labours has, in confequence, been open to much feverity of attack, and the fource of no fmall degree of undeferved opprobrium, p. 358. 359.

Most of our readers are probably acquainted with the general nature and tendency of thofe peculiar opinions to which Mr Good here alludes. When we confider the formidable obstacles which naturally prefented themselves to the profperous iffue of his undertaking as a mere tranflator of the Sacred Writings, and to furmount which might have been fufficient triumph for any unaflifted individual, it must be matter of regret that Dr Geddes fhould have embarraffed his own progrefs, and in a great measure defeated his own laudable exertions, by rufhing impetuously into thofe general controverfies which are beyond the province of the mere philologift, and which regard not the fenfe, but the authority and divine original of thefe ancient compofitions. But on those momentous topics Dr Geddes had formed very decided opinions, derived from what he conceived to be a deliberate and extensive confideration of contending arguments; and being of a difpofition too open and intrepid to difguife or suppress his fentiments, even at the peril of martyrdom, he was prompted, in an evil hour for his own repofe, to stand forth as the avowed antagonist of the fupernatural miffion of the Jewith Lawgiver, and of the divine infpiration of those books which have defcended to us as his compofitions. On thefe fubjects, Mr Good has declared his own opinions to be in decided oppofition to thofe of Dr Geddes; at the fame time, with becoming regard to the memory of his excellent friend, he firmly upholds his claim to. rectitude of intention, and repels, with honeft indignation, the calumnies of those who would refuse to him the name of Chriftian, and who feemed piously to deplore their own inability to refute bis herefies in the flames of an auto da fé.

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We

We must refer our readers to the narrative of Mr Good for a detail of those irritating controverfies and hoftilities which but too much embitterred the remaining days, and probably abridged the life of this bold and indefatigable fcholar. It was from the divines of his own Church that he experienced the hardest and moft intolerant treatment; and as he had originally taken his ground with almoft unexampled hardihood in a Chriftian divine, even his enemies must admit that he continued to maintain it without flinching, and without fuffering the flighteft encroachment on the dignity of an independent and upright mind. In open and manly warfare, the conteft would have ferved only to invigorate his fpirits and his powers; but the infidious arts, and undermining, perfecuting policy of cowardly and bigotted adverfaries, were more than a temper of fo much natural irritability could long fultain. Neither the unbending firmnefs of his character, nor the confolations of tried friendship, nor the re-. laxations of a mind playful and innocent to an uncommon degree, could fave his fpirits and his health from finking under his unfinished tafk. Even the grave fcarcely afforded him an afylum from the attacks of his calumniators: the paltry hackneyed lie of a' deathbed recantation, studiously concealed, impudently reforted to as the laft effort of polemical cowardice and our readers will perhaps fmile to hear, that, as the last ebullition of polemical rage, the ceremony of faying public mafs for the deceafed was prohibited by an exprefs interdict of the vicar apoftolic.

was

Mr Good concludes his narrative with a general sketch of the character of his deceafed friend. A part of it may here be fubjoined, as affording a fpecimen of the execution of the work before us; from which, without further commentary, we fhall leave it to our readers to judge how far the general remarks we have already hazarded be well or ill founded.

Such, as far as I have been able to collect it, is the hiftory of the late Dr Geddes; a man of no common character, and whose energy of mind, and activity of body, feemed engaged in a perpetual conteft for the maftery. In his corporeal make he was flender, and in the bold and formidable outlines of his countenance not highly prepoffeffing on a first interview: but never was there a face or a form through which the foul developed itfelf more completely than through his own. Every feature, and indeed every limb, was in harmony with the entire fyftem, and difplayed the restlefs and indefatigable operations of the interior of the machine. A play of cheerfulnefs beamed uniformly from his cheeks, and his animated eyes rather darted than looked benevolence. Yet fuch was the irritability of his nerves, that a flight degree of oppofition to his opinions, and efpecially when advanced by perfons whofe mental powers did not warrant fuch oppofition, put to flight in a moment the natural character of his countenance, and cheerfulness and benevolence

were

were exchanged for exacerbation and tumult. Of this phyfical and irrefiftible impulfe in his conftitution, no man was more thoroughly fenfible than himself; and if no man ever lefs fucceeded in fubduing it, no man ever took more pains to obtain a victory. Let us, however, fairly trike the balance, and we fhall find, that if fuch a peculiar conftruction of body had its evil, it alfo bad its advantage; and that the very irritability of foul which occafionally hurried him, againft his confent, into a violence of controversy not perfectly confiftent with the polished manners of the day, hurried him a thousand times oftener, and with a thousand times more rapidity, because affitted inftead of oppofed by his judgement, into acts of kindness and benevolence. The moment he beheld the poffibility of doing good by his own exertions, the good was inftantly done, although it were to a man who, perhaps, had caufelessly quarrelled with him a few hours before. It was not in his nature to paufe, with our academic and cold-blooded philofophers of the prefent day, that be might firit weigh the precife demand of moral or political juftice, and inquire into the advantage that would accrue to himself, or in what manner the world at large might be benefited either by a good action or a good example: it was ftimulus enough for him that diftrefs exifted, and that he knew it-and it afterwards afforded him fatisfaction enough that he had removed or mitigated it.

In intellectual talents he had few equals, and fewer ftill who had improved the poffeffion of equal talents in an equal degree. To an ardent thirft after knowledge, in all its multitudinous ramifications, he added an aftonishing facility in acquiring and retaining it; and fo extenfive was his erudition, that it was difficult to ftart a fubject into which he could not enter, and be heard with both attention and profit. But theology was the prime object of his purfuits, the darling fcience of his heart, which he had indefatigably ftudied from his infancy, and to which every other acquifition was made to bend. From his verbal knowledge of the Bible, he might have been regarded as a living concordance; and this not with respect to any individual language alone, or the various and rival renderings of any individual language, but a concordance that fhould comprise the best exemplars of the most celebrated tongues into which the Bible has ever been tranflated. As an interpreter of it, he was strictly faithful and honeft to the meaning, or what he apprehended to be the meaning, of his original; and though, in his critical remarks upon the text, he allowed himfelf a latitude and a bolduefs which injured his popularity, and drew down upon his head a torrent of abufive appellations, how feldom have we feen a man, fyftematically educated in the characteristic tenets of any eftablifhed community whatsoever, and especially of the church of Rome, who, when he has once begun to feel his independence, and has determined to fhake off his fetters, and to think for himself, has not flown much further from the goal at which he Atarted!' p. 529-534.

To an univerfal knowlede of the Bible, Dr Geddes added a deep and elaborate acquaintance with the hiftory of his own Church; and fo thoroughly was he verfed in its annals, in its jurifprudence, in its pole

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mics,

mics, that I have good authority for afferting, that even at the Vatican it was doubted whether the papal dominions themselves could produce his fuperior.

His claffical attainments, if not of the first rate, were of a very distinguished character; and when, in his own language, he wrote with coolness and circumfpection, his diction, which was always perfpicuous, was peculiarly elegant and correct. His ftyle is nevertheless extremely variable: he often compofed precipitately, and occafionally in a ftate of high mental irritation: and though there be a character which still adheres to what he wrote, and fully decyphers the writer, his compofi. tions uniformly partake of the predominant fenfation of the moment. In few words, he was a benevolent man, an accomplished scholar, an indefatigable friend, and a fincere Chriftian. 536. 537

ART. XII. Des Pierres tombées du Ciel, ou Lithologie Atmospherique, &c. &c. Par Jofeph 1zarn, Profeffeur de Phyfique, &c. Paris, De la Lain, fils. An XI. (1803.) pp. 427, 8vo.

THIS

"HIS work is a collection of all the facts and opinions which have of late years been given to the world with refpect to the very fingular phenomenon mentioned in the title. M. Izarn's fhare of merit in the compilation is extremely fmall. He has only tranfcribed the statements of others upon the fubject, from their own words, when they happened to write in French, and from French tranflations, when the original was either English or German. He has here and there added a few remarks, of little value; and has given, at the end, a theory of his own, detailed with great prolixity, and fatiguing affectation of accuracy, but in itfelf by far the most unfatisfactory of any that has been offered, to explain the difficulties of the queftion. As the labours of chemical inquirers have now greatly augmented the many wonders of this fubject, and brought within the range of philofophical difcuffion, ideas which, a few years ago, were left to the credulous fancy of the vulgar, we fhall take the liberty of prefenting to our readers a connected view of the evidence which has been procured upon this very fingular branch of natural hiftory, and a statement of the comparative difficulties which incumber the different theories founded upon that evidence. We wish to be understood as offering this fketch as a substitute for M. Izarn's work; becaufe we conceive, that fomething more was required of him, than a mere tranfcript of the documents which contain the facts of the cafe.

The hiftories of all nations, in early times, abound with fabulous accounts of natural phenomena. Showers of blood and of feth; battles of armed men in the air; animals of different de

fcriptions