1819.]

1

Mr. Hill on the Case of Bellingham.

moment in their decision on BELLING HAM's case: the short history of his pob. lic conduct, anterior to his letter to Bow street; the threat contained in that letter; his preparation for the immolation of a victim to his (as he conceived) wounded feelings; his indifference who that-victim was; his mode of gratifying that irresisa uble propensity to shed bloed, which so many convalescent madmen have declared it impossible to counteract; his speech and conduct inmediately subsequent to the horrid act; the opening of his address to the Jury; his letters to Liverpool; finally, his behaviour on the scaffold, are sufficient proofs of his insanity: more might be readily collected. I shall not, on this uccasion, multiply them; being more so licitous to excite attention to the melancholy causes which have led to the sud den destruction of two fellow creatures, an event which has taken so firm a hold of the general humane feeling, before that feeling becomes directed into soine new channel.

When an earthquake, an inundation, or a dreadful fire, have committed immense ravages, the astonished survivors, upon recovering the use of their faculties, inquire how they shall prevent posterity from suf fering similar miseries, how they shall render a calamitous event subservient to a be neficial result: hence the late Attorneygeneral, wiren addressing the Jury, says, "I ask you to take care, by your verdict, that the public shall not be left open in future to sucli detested murders." Now this request, however judiciously made, cold only have reference to the madman then at the bar; for what verdict of the most enlightened tribunal can secure the world from the direfal consequences of neglected insanity? No punishment, how ever terrific to the sane observer, will deter the insane from executing his once firmly determined purpose: a more extended knowledge of the prelusive evidences leading to confirmed lunacy; and secondly, a anore thumane, prompt, and decisive mode of conduct towards the subjects of this most dreadful of diseases, constitute the only rational measures that can be adopted to prevent "such detested murders," and likewise diminish the black catalogue of self-destroyers, whose histories almost diurnally stain our Journals; e. g. the very newspaper of the week which records the trial of Beling. ham, oliserves, "On Sunday evening, 3d May, Mr. O. spent the afternoon at a friend's house, with his wife, and left her to come home and cut the throats MONTHLY MAG. No. 258.

113

of his two children and shoot himself." This short history, and that of the mur deress of the unfortunate Barrister Er rington, a few years since, are the history of numbers which have almost weekly been recorded for hair a century past: the last mentioned lunatic, like Belling ham, displayed. similar loftiness of con duct, and tenacity of opinion; she wrote a threatening letter, made arrangements for a journey, took that journey, and fatally executed her threat, with as much order and regularity as the most correct judgment could have effected; yet, of her chronic partial insanity, who ever enter tained a single doubt?

Insanity is an increasing evil; it is a neglected, as it has ever been a despised, malady. Other alarming and dangerous diseases attract towards the sufferers of them all the assistance that can be procured; but a repulsive atmosphere ex tends its baleful influence around the un fortůnate lunatic, hence, those who are nearest them in consanguinity stand aghast, and become awe-struck; whilst madness is silently sapping the founda tions of a mind most dear to them, roin." ing God's image in the most awful manner, and preparing for the survivors of the suicide or murderer ceaseless remorse and unavailing regret.

Will any intelligent reflecting mind. now assert, that, if the letter sent to the magistrates by Bellingham had received the attention it merited, all the sad business which has followed would not have been prevented, and the principal actor in it have been committed to the care of the keeper of Hadfield? Or, will sucli minds believe, that, had the latter maniac effected his horrible intentions, he would have been now in existence? Let then the gentle voice of humanity be heard whilst the subject is fresh in every memory-for in what corner of the empire breathes the man who is not inte. rested in this moinentous discussion-and not heard alous, but acted upon in every endeared domestic circle, where the sanity of an individual is merely suspected; and, where this happily is not the case, let it never be out of the pale of remembrance that insanity is not a declining disease, and that its facility of entrance into any family is greater than is commonly suspected; that, like other enormous evils, it must be nipped in the bud, the first dawnings of the approach of the foul fiend alone affording a period when the impending mischief will admit of com plete arrestation.

Some

which at length annihilates every moral tie, extinguishes every tender affection; the man lives but for himself: hence ori ginates the dreadful impulse to destroy a supposed enemy, or to lift the hand to self-destruction.

These few observations, selected from the history of insanity, are demonstratively conclusive that every person labouring under the general changes above specified, becoming an advocate for summary justice being executed, by some desperate mode, upon their supposed enemies, for imaginary or trifling affronts or neglects; or who is frequently defending the lawfulness of suicide, and ob liquely hinting at the most feasible methods of executing his purposes; ought to be instantly and energetically secluded from society, and subjected to appropriate physical and moral treatment in an insulated retirement; for thus, and thus alone, can the public be effectually secured from the dreadfully mischievous consequences of suicide, and from the appalling shocks of assassinations so often occurring, as the bitter fruits of neglected insanity.

Some of the public papers have said that assassination is abhorrent to the English character, " even when goaded to insanity by real or imaginary evils." Such an assertion must be considered as made relative to sanity; for insanity is as tyrannical a leveller as death. An immense majority of suicides and assassina. tors are precisely of Bellingham's description; and those who are competent judges of mental aberration well know that the partially insane are the most to he dreaded. Why the history of this man's physical and mental constitution was not minutely inquired into by the proper investigators, I know not, but it may be asked, without offence, were the two medical men called upon, according to the statement of the learned counsel, properly subpæned, or were sufficient steps taken to excite their humanity in behalf of the due administration of strict impartial justice according to law, on be half of the injurer as well as the injured? Notwithstanding the apparently convineing proofs of deliberation, method, and contrivance, with which an act of insane destruction has been perpetrated, and which have been adduced as proofs of the presence of sanity at the awful moment, such evidence is not supported by facts deduced from the history of madness; for, when the antecedent history of a suspected subject, with the evidences of corporeal ailment, which in a greater or less degree attend every suicide and destroyer of his species, can be fairly brought into the view of a calm, qualifred, and unprejudiced inquirer, the pre-vent, the so frequent recurrence of

sence of actual insanity will be disco. vered, and the mischief found to have taken place mechanically.

But the subject opens to view an almost boundless scene for contemplative inquiry; a letter is too contracted a space to admit of that extended discussion which so serious an event deserves. Having ventured to break the ground, I hope its cultivation on this much-neglected matter will be ardently pursued, and that vigour of attention inspired, which alone can diminish, if not wholly prescenes which produce such agonizing consequences. Chester. GEORGE NESSE HILL.

The two men who have furnished so much food for reflecting minds during To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. the last three weeks, will not have died

in vain, if the survivors can be rouzed to devote more attention than has hitherto been paid to the bodily and mental symptonas which always inark predisposition to insanity. The changes indi. cating the approach of actual disease are manifest in the countenance, particularly the eyes, in the irregularity of the performance of all the natural functions, in the domestic habits; the general manners, common mode of conversation, and tone of voice,-all these, with many, other circumstances admitting enumeration, are now reversed; mental irritation, combined with a certain physical state, produces dread of want or of suffering, attended by a goading desire to escape,

I

SIR,

KNOW not whether your correspon

dent, Mr. JAMES PARRY, will allow me to be classed among the "discerning public;" but, be that as it may, I have a faculty of looking about me, which I occasionally exercise by reading your valuable Magazine; and I farther endea. vour to "discern between things that differ;" by virtue of which faculty I think I have "discerned" that your said cor respondent has been hurried on by pre cipitance, while he fancies he has been guided by candour: in which too, I ap prehend, "a discerning public" will go with me in opinion.

For, first, I venture to state it as the opinion of " a discerning public," that it

1813.] Mr. Adamson's Specimens of Portuguese Poetry.

is precipitate for a man to write on a subject which he does not thoroughly comprehend, which appears to me to be precisely the predicament in which Mr. Parry, the bridge-builder, has placed himself. This gentleman makes the resistance, or (as Dr. Hatton terms it in the proposition which has called forth Mr. P.'s strictures,) "the efficacious force of the pier to prevent its being overturned by the arch," to depend in great mensure upon the weight and magnitude of the arch itself: this is just as reasonable as it would have been for a dozen people to have taken "the great Lambert," and, after heaving him over the battlements of a church tower, to say, "There, there! don't be afraid! you are a heavy man, 'tis true, but that will keep you from falling." With such notions of pressure and resistance, a man may be well fitted for a "castle-builder," in the air I mean: bur, if Mr. P. endeavour to reduce his theory into practice, in bridge-building, I would gladly travel from the Lincolnshire fens into Somersetshire, for the purpose of "discerning" the stability of some of his erections.

Secondly, the "discerning public" will agree with me in considering it precipitate, and precipitately uncandid too, to hunt out and expose what Mr. P. thinks "reprehensible," in a work which was avowedly given to the public in haste, without endeavouring to ascertain whether the author have ever been able to

115

lished early last year, and there entirely remodelled the section on piers; where was his candour when he sat down to write strictures upon the edition of 1801?

I beg leave to recommend this first valume of Tracts to Mr. Parry's serious attention: and, if he will excuse a very friendly hint, I would farther advise him, however inuch he may be devoted to the practice of his art, no more to write on the theory, till he so far understands it, at least, as to be convinced that the matter, which, by its pressure upon a pier tends to overset it, does not, by means of the same pressure, prevent its being overturned.

Woolwich, OLINTHUS GREGORY. February 8, 1813.

For the Monthly Magazine. MEMORANDA LUSITANICA; by JOHN

ADAMSON.

Luis de Camöens.

HAVING in hand a

life of Camöens,

upon a much more extended scale thau has hitherto been attempted, I refer such of your readers as honour my Memoranda with their perusal, to the sketches which preface the volumes of Mickle and Lord Strangford; and, after giving a few specimens of the sonnets of this much injured bard, crave your indulgence to inake some queries as to the books which are necessary for the completion of my intended Memoirs.

SONETO xxx.

Está o lascivo, e doce passarinho,

Com o biquinho as pennas ordenando;
O verso sem medida, alegre, e brando,
Despedindo no rustico raminho.
O cruel caçador, que do caminho,

Se vem callado, e manso desviando,
Com prompta vista a sétta endireitando,
Lhe da no Estygio Lago eterno ninho.
Deste arte o coraçaō, que livre andava,
(Postoque já de longe destinado.)

Onde menos temia, foi ferido,
Porque o frécheiro cego me esperara
Para que me tomasse descuidado,
Em vossos claros olhos escondido.

publish his more matured investigations on the subject. In the second edition of Dr. Hutton's Principles of Bridges, the preface is thus terininated: "This little work, which was hastily composed on a particular occasion, having been long out of print, is now as suddenly reprinted in the same form, on the present occasion, of the report of a new bridge proposed to be thrown across the Thames at London: reserving the long-intended edition, on a much larger and more improved plan, till a more convenient opportunity." This, the "discerning public" will observe, was written and published twelve years ago. Did it never occur to Mr. Parry's mind, as a possible thing, that, in the course of these twelve years, Dr. Hutton might have actually given to the world his long-promised improved and enlarged edition? If not, he has been most indefensibly and "undiscerningly" precipitate. If, on the other hand, he did know that the doctor had given a greatly enlarged and improved edition, in the first volume of his "Tracts," pub- Consigns the little trembler to his doom.

SONNET XXX.

Behold yon little songster, sportive, gay, Which, warbling sweet his tuneful woodland note,

With slender beak decks out his feather'd
coat,

And hops unfearful on from spray to spray.
Then see the savage fowler, softly come
Ou tip-toe, stealing----cautious in his art
He draws the fatal string-the death-
plum'd dart

Q2

Jsut

Thy distance long to wail?-Ah, who, that

view'd

My short liv'd hours of peace, when For-
tune's smile

Was kind, and hid my cares beneath its
gnile-

Could think to see me thus by fate subdued?
But fortune chang'd, and made me feel her

smart,

And robb'd me of the bliss, which now
these eyes

Deplore for loss of which are heav'd
my sighs-

For vain against her pow'r is himan art;
And 'tis faltacions hope and idle pain,
To fly the evils that her stars ordain.

For the under-inentioned books the fol

lowing prices will be given, and the pos.

sessors are requested to communicate,

by letter, with me at Newcastle upon

Tyne.

For a complete set of the Lu

siada y Rimas Varias de Ca-
möens, commentadas por Ma- L. s. d.
nuel de Faria

...

550

110

For the ditto of M. de la Harpe;

London, 1776

For the Bibliotheca Lusitanica,
by the Abba de Diogo Barbo-
sa Machada, complete

117

0.15 0

10 100

I shall feel extremely obliged by any communication relative to a medal struck by Sir Johu Dillon, in 1782, in honour of Camöens, of which an engraving is ipserted in vol. 54 of the Gentleman's Mas gazine, and where, I am of opinion, there is a mistake in the spelling of the first word on the reverse.

JOHN ADAMSON. Newcastle upon Tyne, Jan. 23, 1813.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

I

SIR,

T is evident, that, upon several occasions, Pope has been ambitious to enter the lists against Dryden, not as an envious rival, sed propter amorem, as inspired with a noble emulation of his fame. And even those critics who most eagerly assert his inferiority to his great predecessor, will not say that he has ingloriously failed. Pope's translation of the Iliad certainly rises, upon the whole, much above Dryden's version of the Eneid. If his Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, will not endure a comparison with the matchless effusion of Dryden's Muse on the same occasion, the Essay on Manmust ever rank as a production of far higher value than the Scholastic Hind

and Panther, or the more philosophic

Religio Laici; ennobled as they both are

by many passages of glowing and genuine

poetry. The Dunciad, however inauspicious and even disgusting the subject, displays more genius than the keen and exquisite satire of the Mac Flecknoe, from which it is manifestly borrowed; and the light texture of which, though affecting no splendor of ornament, is indeed better adapted to the triviality of

the purpose. 110

1 11

1 11

110

6

Pope's Temple of Fame, imitated from Chaucer, is unquestionably not equal to Dryden's Palamon and Arcite, the Knight's Tale of the venerable old bard modernized: but the Epistles to Arbuth not, Addison, and Jervas, may surely vie in poetic excellence with those of Dryden, to his kinsman Dryden of Chesterton, to Congreve and Kneller." The Epistle to Arbuthnot abounds too much with egotism, and borders upon pride and spleen; but it is full of wit, interest, 0 15 Q and animation. That of Dryden to D, is dignified and tranquil, and 110 presents some delightful rural images:

110

and