ALENTINE GREAT

VAL

RAKES, a native of Ireland, in the early part of the 17th century, and clerk of the peace for the county of Cork, during the reign of Cromwell.

Having been dismissed at the restoration, he retired to a small farm he inherited from his father, at Affane, in the county of Waterford; in this sequestered spot, which was the place of his birth, exchanging an active life and animating objects for solitude and books, he became melancholy, and devoted himself to the mysteries of religious contemplation.

After six years seclusion from the business and the amusements of human life, in a moment as he said of inspiration, but as his enemies asserted of crafty finesse and political leger-de-main, he felt a strong persuasion that he possessed the gift of curing many obstinate, dangerous and painful diseases, without the help of internal medicines.

His first attempts proving successful, gradually established and diffused his reputation, the country people repaired to his house in crowds, and his time and attention were fully occupied in removing their complaints and visiting the wealthier classes of society, who required his assistance in different parts of Ireland.

But his fame was not confined to that kingdom. Several eminent and noble persons earnestly requested his presence in England, and on his arrival in London, King Charles the Second sent for him several times, to enquire concerning his method of cure, had many long conversations with him, and being pleased with his manners and deportment, made him an honourable present. Greatrakes was also patronized by the Honourable Robert Boyle, Dr. Whichcote, and Dr. Patrick. Cudworth, author of the Intellectual System, and Mr. Flamstead, the astronomer, were his patients.

With these gentlemen he conversed unreservedly on the subject of his gift of healing. No medicines as I have before observed were given internally, or externally applied.

The only means he employed were gentle friction with the palm of his hand (which is said to have been remarkably white and soft,) and prayer.

He succeeded in a great number of cases, and differed in one respect from the common run of irregular medical practitioners; he was diffident, modest and unassuming, and owned without scruple that he was himself no more able to account for his success than others, but from super

natural

natural interposition. After practising several years with profit and repute, he candidly confessed that his gift was departed. We are not now able to deter mine whether independence had cooled his zeal. Perhaps some circumstance with which we are unacquainted or the caprice of public opinion had diminished the faith of his patients.

A modern writer has compared the manual applications of Greatrakes to the flourishes of animal magnetism; which a few years since excited considerable attention at Paris, and afterwards in the English metropolis.

Although much more was made and said on this subject than was really true, one of the principles on which the theory depends, nervous susceptibility, as producing important effects on the animal œconomy, cannot be denied this also must have been powerfully assisted by the strong faith, the implicit confidence and enthusiastic zeal of its ardent votaries.

With such powerful aid have not prepared toads, powder of post or of human scull, has not the touch of a dead man's hand hanging from a gallows actually wrought wonderful cures ?

In a case where a desperate wound had been inflicted, did not Sir Kenelm Digby disbelieve

the patient's death, when told that the weapon had been rubbed with his sympathetic powder?

As to the susceptibility of the nervous system, many of my readers must recollect in the puerile ecstacy of their early sports, the powerful and often the distressing effect of being threatened to be tickled, accompanied by a correspondent motion of the hand, often without being touched.

This and much more we are willing to allow; but what must be the feelings of a parent and where was the integrity of a friend who in a putrid fever could be prevailed on to delay means incontestibly useful, and to send for an operator, at eighty miles distance, to an only, a much loved child, expiring under a disease which the unhappy father was convinced, alas, when it was too late, might have been conquered by the timely exhibition of Peruvian bark, and half a dozen bottles of port wine!!

Pompous words, mysterious motions, wonderful tales, and shaded rooms may help to lighten the burthensome leisure of languid amateurs and feeble valetudinarians; but to rely on doubtful means in cases where a few hours delay is irrecoverably fatal, and where the instruments for restoring health are long estab

lished,

lished, certain and precisely pointed out. To hold out a broken reed for sinking nature to rest against, when a strong pillar of support is within our reach

IS COMMITTING MURDER.

VIRGIL

was not author of the Æneis, Horace of the Odes ascribed to him; and to descend somewhat in the literary scale, Garth did not write his own Dispensary. These and other singular assertions have at various times been seriously made and elaborately defended by modern critics.

One of the arguments produced for the purpose of depriving the Mantuan bard of so important a part of his poetic fame, is, that a sufficient space of time did not occur between the finishing the Georgics, evidently first written, and Virgil's death.

This was five years, a space of time surely long enough for a leisure man properly qualified to compose the poem in question.

The second argument adduced is, that in the Georgics, the true Virgil supposed the Trojans to have been conducted into Italy by Tithonus, instead of Eneas, who is their leader in the fabricated poem; thirdly, that in the former, the metempsychosis or translation of souls, as taught by

Pythagoras, is rejected, but supported in the sixth book of the Eneis.

Fourthly, that the critics' great literary oracle PLINY is wholly silent on the subject of any epic poem written by Virgil, but often quotes the Eclogues and Georgics.

This assailer of the authenticity of a composition which has descended to us through a long vista of more than fifteen hundred years, and which to a mind endued with any portion of classical taste bears internal evidence of the Augustan age, this clear-work critic will not allow any weight to the joint evidence of Ovid, Juvenal, Statius, Martial and Tacitus; all of whose supposed works he insists are the creation of modern artists.

In a word, he asserts that its. numerous faults, without any, other evidence, prove it to be wholly unworthy of Virgil. The space of time occupied by the action of the poem, a whole year, is excessive beyond the duration of any of the great ancient epics; the Iliad and Odyssey occupying only forty days; the anachronism in Dido's story; the versification unequal; unmeaning and often inapplicable epithets; pious Æneas for instance debauching and then basely deserting the woman who had so hospitably

pitably sheltered him and his companions; solecisms, Gallicisms and Italicisms without end, and absurd comparisons; such are the charges alledged against

branches, and finally to substitute their own base dogmas for the pure sterling of the primitive Church.

acrimony was sharpened and made the collateral instrument of religious rancour.

The literary frauds so rashly produced and so confidently supported, if we give any credit to the accuser, were contrived and carried on by Severus Archontius, a learned impostor of the twelfth century, whose existence has been frequently doubted.

Should any rational enquirer demand what purpose could be answered by imposing on the world fabricated productions of prophane writers, the reply is, that ancient learning and ecclesiastical antiquities (I mean of the pure primitive ages of Christianity) were found to be great obstructors of Popery and traditional imposture.

It was therefore thought important to shake the credit of fathers, councils, ancient historians; but to prevent any suspicion of any particular enmity against ecclesiastic writers only, it was artfully resolved first to disgrace profane writers, and when a triumph was obtained over polite literature, to proceed in a similar way with other

former volume, I have recorded an instance in which a silver one was dragged by a fisherman from the bottom of the Rhone.

In the early part of the 18th century, another precious relict of antiquity and of a similar species was dislodged from the earth by a farmer of Dauphiny, in breaking up a waste, which had never been cultivated.

Having frequently been admonished by the proprietor to pay particular attention to subterraneous articles, the rustic immediately carried what he had found to his landlord.

This gentleman, after a little examination, saw the value of what was brought from his farın, and giving the man a receipt for half a year's rent, dismissed him, with strict injunctions of secresy. The tenant promised and kept his word, thinking himself richly paid for what he called a rusty old iron dish.

The possessor of this treasure acting like the possessors of other treasures, locked it up in his strong box, where it remained more than twenty years, when,