idea of impertinence, and excite no very pleasant degree of remark in the party with whom he was walking. Of all these he took rude sketches at the moment; from which a lady of his acquaintance, whose name I have forgot ten, but who was possessed of much skill in drawing, made more finished designs at her leisure: they were then duly systematised and arranged into classes, genera, and species. He had perfected his theory, and completed his observations upon it, about the year 1796, and nothing but the expense of the engravings prevented him from presenting it to the public.

"It may appear to many readers that this new system of risiognomy, or nosology, as we used sportively to denominate it, was found ed less on fact than on fancy. I will not oppose such an assertion, having never profoundly engaged in the science; but it is well known that the author of it has been able, by the application of its principles, to make some very shrewd guesses at the tempers of persons who were total strangers to him. One instance indeed deserves to be recorded: a young lady, who was a particular friend of the doctor's, was addressed on the subject of matrimony by a gentleman of ample fortune and good person, and she was on the point of accepting his offers. She first of all introduced her lover to Dr. Geddes, and solicited in private his risiognomonie opinion of his predominant character and disposition. The doctor replied, that such an opinion was not to be expected from him; that he studied the science of the nose (as we would advise every other person to study it) for individual use alone; and that if he were to communi

cate his ideas to the public, whe ther just or unjust, he should soon make more than half the world his enemies. The lady was however importunate, and our physiognomist, really believing he might render her an essential service, at length told her in confidence, that the man was a confirmed miser, and that if she mar ried hinr she would find he would soon grudge her the very clothes on her back. The lady departed with much dissatisfaction, and, for the first time in her life, discredited the infallibility of her oracle. She, who had had better opportu nities of knowing her lover, was convinced that he was possessed of generosity, frankness of heart, and every amiable qualification. She gave him her hand, and in three months afterwards found the prediction she had extorted verified in its utmost extent, and only regretted her infidelity at the time of its having been delivered.

"Dr. Geddes himself, however, does not seem to have been so sanguine in his own system towards the last three or four years of his life, as at an earlier period: he spoke less of its powers as a general standard of equitable decision; and, upon his death, not a single scrap of paper relative to the subject could be detected among his writings. He had either despaired of offering it to the pub. lic in the manner he designed, or had been chagrined at repeated miscalculations, and in a fit of ir ritability had committed the whole of it to the flames. The cynic may perhaps observe that the public has sustained no great loss by such a conflagration. As a curiosity, the work must nevertheless have been entertaining; and, as exhibiting a deep and accurate

study

"Our author, who had hitherto contented himself with lodgings in different parts of the town, finding his library begin to swell to a magnitude that required more space than lodgings could easily afford, engaged, about this time, a house in Alsop's Buildings, New Road, Mary-le-bone, which promised him every convenience his heart could desire: it possessed a garden before and behind; and, while pleasant in front, commanded for its back view the whole compass of the sister hills of Highgate and Hampstead, affording one of the most lovely and luxuriant sceneries in the neighbourhood of the metropolis. Dr. Geddes, who was too independent a man, to be indebted to any one, even a mechanic, for any thing he could perform himself, now found as much labour carved out for him as Alexander Selkirk, when thrown without a companion upon the island of Juan Fernandez. His first object was to arrange his library; and having no one to please but himself, he extended it to every room in the house, excepting the

kitchen

kitchen and a chamber for his housekeeper. He purchased a large box of carpenters' tools, laid in a considerable stock of deals and mahogany, and began to renew the building system pursued at Auchinhalrig. He planed, sawed, and completed his shelvés, which he equally hung round parlours, drawing-rooms, and chambers; and which, though not finished with all the skill of the professional cabinet-maker, were neat and commodious, and, being edged with mahogany, by no means deficient in elegance. One contrivance introduced into the room in which he commonly wrote was peculiarly advantageous to the purposes of study. Our book cases in general, after allowing space for two tiers of folios from the floor, recede, and become narrower, for books of smaller dimensions; leaving at the point of recess a kind of shelf of too little width to be of any real utility. This shelf or covering for the folios below, which he formed of mahogany slab, our self-taught artist projected a few inches over the folios themselves, and carried the projection regularly all round. the room; by which means he more effectually secured them from dust, and obtained a kind of circular desk (for, by such contrivance, it was rendered wide enough for this purpose), on which to open the various books he might have occasion to consult, while he himself sat in the centre at his table. By this ingenious scheme, he a

1802.

voided a considerable portion of labour; since, instead of examining a few volumes at once, and making manuscript references to particular passages as he closed them, to admit others to his table in their stead, he opened at one time all the books for which he had occasion, and consulting each in rotation as he passed round the room, reverted instantaneously to that he was determined to follow, copied it without trouble, and with the same facility gave references in his text to several others, without the necessity of a single previous memorandum, or having repeatedly to open and close the same volume before he had done with it.

SOTHEBY.

from the cultivation of indigenous plants, our indefatigable labourer now began to think of adding the luxury of a little green-house, and a few exotics. He thought, resolved, and executed. The expense of such an additional indulgence under his management was but trifling, for he was once more his own mason and carpenter, and the green-houses or gardens of his friends supplied him with a parent stock. This conservatory he erect ed in the front of his house, and so completely adjoining the house itself, that one of the parlour windows served him for an entrance into it. Here, by a variety of little plans which the fertility of his fancy perpetually suggested and as perpetually induced him to exchange for others, he considerably amused himself during the months of winter. At one time his flue was heated by a stove opening into the front area; at another time, in a fit of economy, he annulled the stove altogether, and by carrying the flue to the parlour chimney, endeavoured to heat it from the fire of his own room. At one period he chose to moisten his plants with a common water-pot; at a second, by a pipe communicating with the cistern; and at a third, attempting boldly to imitate the reviving dews of the atmosphere, he contrived, by a large copper vessel, and a long copper pipe, to supply them with water in the form of tepid vapour. In this manner invention succeeded invention; and though no one satisfied him long, it at least be

stowed its share of amusement, and afforded him that interchange of nugatory recreation which the mind occasionally requires in the midst of severe and habitual study; and has frequently recalled to my memory an observation of the amiable but unfortunate Cowper, who, with a fancy still idler, was often accustomed, at the close of day, to watch in solitude the bright-red cinders of his fire, assuming to his imagination the fantastic forms of trees, towers, churches, and uncouth visages; or from the sooty films that played pendulously upon the bars, to calculate by the laws of old English tradition the arrival of letters or the approach of strangers ::

""Tis thus the understanding takes re

pose

And sleeps, and is refreshed.
In indolent vacuity of thought,

"Yet Dr. Geddes was by no means a recluse. No man was fonder of society than himself, and, excepting when under the influence of high-wrought irritability, no man was possessed of more companionable qualities. His anecdote was always ready, his wit always brilliant: there was an originality of thought, a shrewdness of remark, an epigrammatic turn of expression in almost every thing which escaped him, that was. sure to captivate his companions, and to induce those who had once met him, notwithstanding his habitual infirmity, to wish earnestly to meet him again."

DR.

RITICISM is, however, most ungraciously employed in hunting after defects either in this or in any other piece which he occasionally composed at the present period; for the doctor was now labouring not merely under incidental depressions of spirit, but violent paroxysms of corporeal pain, arising from a cancerous affection of the rectum; a pain in Ideed which was at times so excessive as to be almost insupportable. I am idling away my time,' said he to me, while he was composing this very ode; I can do nothing else—I shall never be fit for study any more, and my only object at present is amusement.'

6

"It was about the month of June 1801, the year at which we have now arrived, that he first became sensible of this dreadful disease. As is too customary in incipient cases, he paid but little attention to it; it increased, therefore, without opposition, and in a few weeks afterwards he was compelled, by excess of torture, to think of applying seriously for surgical assistance. On informing me confidentially of his situation, I was considerably alarmed for the consequence, and strenuously advised him to consult our common friend Mr. Ring, who had long preceded me in familiarity with him, whom he had been in the regular habit of consulting from the commencement of their acquaintance, and of whose professional talents and veneration for himself, I was well convinced.

Medical or chirurgical advice was by this time, however, equally become useless; and although, through the anxiety of his friends that he should obtain relief, he was compelled to receive progressively the opinion, and submit to the skill of almost every physician as well as surgeon of eminence in the metropolis, it was all to no purpose-and he often lamented to me in priyate the additional trouble which such a multiplicity of advisers imposed upon him. The pro-egumenal or immediate cause of this complaint I know not, but it is at least indubitable, that the augmented irritability of his nervous system, which he had uniformly and progressively evinced ever since the decease of his friend lord Petre, considerably tended to exacerbate it, and consequently to diminish every hope of cure.

"The alternations from excruciating torture to tolerable ease were, nevertheless, for a long time abrupt and frequent; and often, upon visiting him the ensuing day after that on which I had heard it was impossible he could ever more rise from his bed, I have been surprised to find him not only below stairs, but reassuming his habits of agility, and in the very act of carpentering, or cultivating his garden. It was in an interval of this kind that he composed his Elegy on the Death of our friend Mr. Wakefield; the last piece, I believe, either in Latin or English, that ever proceeded from his pen, and the only piece in which he has C 2 uniformly