ning, may nevertheless effect the deftruction of it by fires by means of the great heat which it may have acquired in the conducting of an extraordinary quantity of the electric matter, or in confequence of the infufficient fize of the conductor, or the difcontinuity of its parts.

ART. XII. The io TRLADS; or, the Tenth Mufe; wherein the Origin, Nature, and Connexion of the facred Symbols, Sounds, Words, Ideas, and Things, are difcovered and inveftigated, according to the Platonic Numbers. And the Principles of all Human Knorrledge, as well as the Firft Language, are retrieved in the English, &c. &c. By Rowland Jones, Efq. 8vo. 2 s. 6d. Robinfon.

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1773

T is a humiliating reflection to a body of profeffed and welleftablished Critics, who have exercised their trade for near 25 years paft, with fome kind of credit in the world, to find themfelves under fuch a mortifying predicament, as to be obliged fairly to acknowledge that they have been carrying it on without any acquaintance with the firft or primitive language, or even a knowledge of the very fignificant import of the four andtwenty members of the Chrift-cross-row, the very horn-book of their mother tongue. The prefent effay has been indeed a hard cruft for us Critics, and of fo refractory a texture, that so far from digefting it, our whole toothlefs corps have been ineffectually mumbling over it for near a year paft, without having been able to make the leaft fenfible impreffion on it.

In other works when we occafionally find ourfelves at a fault, we can have recourfe to the kindly affiftance of a lexicon, or fome New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, to lead us into the right fcent: but, in the prefent cafe, every help of this fort was denied us; except, indeed, where we were at firft led to expect it, in the Alphabetical Vocabulary which we foon efpied in the body of the prefent work. Immediately and eagerly laying hold of this key of knowledge, to learn the meaning of the firft word in the title-page, the import of which we honeftly confefs we did not underftand, we read as follows:

lo TRIADS, The fluxion of a point, or burning bush in ftrait lines every way, expanding an infinite circle in a triad, or three divifions of the point, line, and circle, whofe divifions and combinations as exhibited in the quaternion of elements, or Jove, the four lettered name, comprehend all things, with their names or fymbols, &c. &c.'

Not finding fatisfaction in this and fome other articles which we confulted, and fufpecting that the difcovery of the primitive language might poffibly, and aptly enough, be promulgated in fuch form, as to require a different mode of reading from that to which we are accustomed in modern times, we tried various

experiments

experiments on the text of this work. We at firft imagined that it might be the learned Author's intention to divulge the arcana of the first language by a reading from the right hand to the left, after the manner of the Hebrews: and indeed fome of our first essays feemed greatly to favour this hypothes; but on further trial, we found caufe to reject it. The fame dilappointment, we confefs, attended our attempts to read after the more modern, but ftill very ancient, zig zag manner, called by the learned Burgoondov, or that which is ufed in the celebrated Sigean and other Greek infcriptions of the highest antiquity. Laftly-for why fhould we be ashamed to own our making random and whimfical experiments, on the text of a great philological discoverer, who deals in ftrange types, and fymbols, and other fingular devices-we attempted the perufal of thefe Sibyline leaves, by cafting our eyes in a perpendicular line from the bottom to the top, after the manner of the Chinefe; and vice verfa. On the whole, however, as the rules of grammar and common fenfe were, in general, fomewhat lefs frequently violated in pursuing the vulgar or modern course of reading, than any of the former, we found ourselves obliged to give the preference to it; and we accordingly recommend it to be followed by thofe who mean to fit down feriously to the ftudy of this profound treatife.

As there is no point, however, fo clear, but that if may be contraverted by carping critics, we fhall give a few quotations from the work, which may at the fame time furnish the Reader with a taste of the Author's manner, and a sketch of the nature of his discoveries. Thefe fpecimens are the more valuable, as this, which is the fixth of his productions, is here declared to be the last which the Author means to give the world, on this important fubject;' and comprehends the whole of his interefting discoveries,' condensed into a half-crown pamphlet. Our extracts are indeed given in a fomewhat mutilated itate; but the Author's paragraphs poffefs this peculiar excellence that they do not fuffer by mutilation.-You may here cut and flash a sentence into as many pieces as you do a polype, and every piece will be as much a whole, as when the parts were all together.

Speech, the found part action. Spirit, the feeing fire part property. Spring, the lower or other parts in, as those of water, seasons, vegetables, &c.' p. 39.

In the Sigean and other very ancient monuments of Grecian antiquity, the first line is read, as with us, from the left to the right; the next in a contrary direction, and fo on, to the end. We need not inform our learned Readers that the term is derived from the turns made by the plough.

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• Devil,

Devil, deprived of life and free volition, a fallen angel, or a ray of a light frozen into matter, and evil is the privation of will. P. 24

br.

The foregoing extracts are taken from the Vocabulary abovementioned. The following are fpecimens of the grounds or elements, on which fuch explanations as the foregoing are founded

An, en, na, ne, exprefs mere exiftences in earth and water, and their primitives, affirmations, and negatives, as in an or a in, and or a in divifion, animal, annals, annual, &,' P. 19. N. B. This is one of the many paffages that at one time strongly inclined us to try the reading a la Busgoondor, t

Ic expreffes the first motion; or ic er-at, motion flowing from the point of ì to the furface of the water or creat ing; as does its derivative and inflectory ig, the like emanative motion in the generation of animals and vegetables, or ig-en-er at, and be-eg-in; and uc and ug, the return, emotions, and fpringing up of these emanations, as in genu.' P. 15, 16.

Od, ot, do, to, fignify the feveral divifions or things, fides, and mizmaze, comprehended within a circle or fyftem, together with their motions and actions, and covering inclofing, and bordering parts, as hod, hodge-podge, odd, ode, other, &c.— Os, fo, the circle or extent, feen or founded, and affirming by the fame.'

Our mother tongue Mr. Jones conceives to approach the nearest to the primitive language, as any one,' he fays, may be convinced of by the farther difcoveries now made therein; more particularly where the b, f, c and d are joined with the i and u, which are truly primitive, and unmatchable. It is no lels, he adds, than that moft genuine remains of the Japhetan language, which efcaped the Babylonian confufion.'—It is really, after all, not a little hard on our mother tongue, that the old lady, after having efcaped found, wind and limb, as we are here told, from the great crash at the downfal of the tower of Babel, fhould be thus hamftrung, crippled, and beat about the head and eyes, by a modern Efquire, who all the time, forfooth, pretends to be making violent love to her,—But to proceed.

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To clear up any difficulties that may yet remain on this fubject, after all his labours, the Author has, he tells us, literally reprefented Adam ftanding in the garden of Eden,' in what he calls a map, prefixed to the work; where his legs, correfpond with JL, the division of T or his thighs with the transverse line at top, with n the joint buttocks of the human pain, with their earth and water parts, which are again divided into death and life by db, forming a new io of man, in the way of propagation

3

"

propagation on their fall; and connected with the human mortal body, or trunk m, as is m with another io of life, the head and neck, as he is literally reprefented ftanding in the of Eden, in the annexed map.

garden

In this map, however, we can perceive nothing that looks like Adam, or any of his prefent progeny. We fee indeed a circle, divided by two lines into four quarters, with certain ftrange fymbols, and letters turned topfy turvy, annexed. But the mystery "of the circle seems to be cleared up afterwards, when the Author compares the great world,' or macrocofm, with the human,' or microcofm, and affirms that the figures and names of the one fyftem may, and do ferve for those of the other ;'explaining the circle in the map by observing (p. 11) that the world is round like the buttocks of the human pair joined together; they both generate, degenerate, and regenerate, &c.'

.

Thus has our Author, if we rightly interpret this fublime conundrum, put the pofteriors of our two venerable ancestors into a very unfeemly attitude indeed! In this fymbol the two good old folks feem, in fact, to ufe lago's blunt fpeech to Brabantio, to be employed in making the beast with two backs * ?and yet we must own that, without the explanation, the chastest eye will not be offended, that beholds only Mr. Jones's fymboliYeal reprefentation of their dalliance in the map.-The drawing, Ladies, is as chafte as any diagram in Euclid.

In his preface, Mr. Jones inveighs bitterly against certain Vefcholaftic traders, and Bibliopagans'-a cramp and ugly looking word, this laft, and of dubious import! we fhall therefore not be in hafte to apply it to ourselves. But at the conclusion of his effay, he brings a charge directly home to us, and affirms, that the audacious declaration of the Monthly Reviewers that our" Circles of Gomer," on the origin and languages of those great nations' (our ancestors) was only a dictionary refolving every word into fpring water, is a grofs and palpable falsehood, and impofture."

Though thefe are hard words to digeft, yet as Mr. Jones has now taken an everlasting leave of the prefs, and confequently of us, we are willing to part on friendly terms with him. We therefore readily acknowledge our former overfight, and confefs that befides the numerous water and Spring water parts, into which he has refolved the original names of many places and things according to their archetypes, and the frame' and mystic meaning of the few letters of our alphabet;' he has likewife, with unwearied diligence, analysed numberless others into high parts, and kw parts;' into erecting, building, and inclofing parts into emanations, and fhuts or inclofed parts; Othello, A&I.

Cc. 4

ing

into divifions or things, fides, and mizmaze, &c.' The omiffion was owing to mere ignorance and ofcitancy on our parts; and not, as the Author feems to fufpect, to our joining in the general dread and alarm which, it seems, has feized our Grammarians and Lexicographers,' our Bookfellers' and our • Seminaries,' left thefe his moft momentous discoveries ‹ should overturn the prefent fyftems of things."

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ART. XIII. An Efay on the Nature and Circulation of the Blood, in Tron Parts. I. On its Nature and Ufès. II On its Circulation." By Marmaduke Berdoe, M. D. 8vo. 1 s. 6 d. Robinson. 1772. ART, XIV. Theory of the Human Senfations. By Marmaduke Berdoe, M. D. 8vo. IS. Lowndes. 1773.

DR

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R. Berdoe writes fo frequently, and on fo many fubjects, that he must excufe ús for taking the liberty of lumping his two tracts together; efpecially as we actually find ourselves unqualified to give any clear, diftinct, or confiftent account of their contents. We really can feldom difcover what he would be at; and, though converfant in his writings, are still in a great measure ignorant of the language in which he wraps up his new and myfterious doctrines. We are utterly unacquainted, for inftance, with the animating etherial offence, which, he tells us, the arteries convey in mucual streams to the different organs; though we have read and ftudied his explanatory note on this paffage, in which he informs us that the atherial effence means the fixed air, or the air, or aerial particles contained in the blood, which is fuppofed to be the fame with what is called elementary fire. This note, however, conveys to us no other information than what we were already poffeffed of; that the Doctor has an excellent knack at playing off a set of newfangled phrafes, of dealing out his ather plentifully, and of jumbling the elements together by a dafh or two of his pen.

We have indeed, by this time, learnt that his exterior organ' -a grand and active agent in the Doctor's phyfiology, is neither more nor less than what we and others fimply call the fkin;but as to his phrenic centers'-his centers, and his points, of appuy-which are continually occurring in the fecond of these tracts, and his difgregations in the organical forces'-together with many other choice and recondite terms and phrases-they furpafs our comprehenfion nearly as much as his brother Jones's quaternion of elements,' or his burning bush in ftrait lines, expanding an infinite circle in a triad, recorded in the preceding article. All thefe phrafes, we doubt not, have ideas tacked to them, in the congenial heads of thefe two writers: but though Dr. Berdoe's exterior organ, mucual freams,' and difgregaions, doubtless ferve many important purposes in his Theory of Human Senfations; an account of them, or of their myftic agency.

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