THE following letters, addressed by the late Mr. Fox, before the formation of the late ministry, to Mr. Phillips, the bookseller, will explain his original views relative to the entire work, of which a posthumous fragment has been recently announced, under the title of "A History of the early part of the Reign of James the Second."

SIR,

I RECEIVED a few days since, your's of the 11th. I am about a history of the times immediately preceding and succeeding the revolution, but I have made very little progress; and, as it is chiefly a matter of amusement to me, it may be a long time before I publish, and, of course, the time when it may happen is altogether uncertain. I should, therefore, be very sorry to have any thing announced upon the subject at present. When the work is in more forwardness, I may give notice of it. I am, Sir,

Your humble servant,
C. J. Fox.

St. Anne's Hill, Wednesday.

To MR. PHILLIPS.

SIR,

I RECEIVED, yesterday, your's of the 27th. I am sorry to say, in answer to it, that your information with respect to the rapidity of my progress is wholly unfounded. It will be at least year before I shall be ready to publish any part of the work, and then it will not be, as I guess, more than one quarto volume,

with a small appendix, which may be added to the volume, or printed separately, according to the bulk of the volume itself.

I am still unengaged with respect to a publisher, and mean to remain so for some time. I have not given any other person any reason to expect that I shall employ them. I am, Sir,

Your obedient servant,
C. J. Fox.

St. Anne's Hill, Sunday.

you

SIR,

I am exceedingly obliged to for your letter, with the communication with respect to the late Pretender's papers. I have often heard of them, and I have little doubt, but if they could be obtained, they would prove a valuable publication. But as I have many years work before me, before I can come to the Brunswick reigns, to which only, as I imagine, these papers can relate; and, as I very much doubt even whether I shall ever go beyond the reign of Anne, they are not to me particularly material. I should think, as you seem to do, that money would be the best means of coming at them. I am, Sir,

Your most obedient servant,
C. J. Fox.

St. Anne's Hill, Thursday.

SIR,

My time has been so taken up this last week, that I could not find a moment to read your inclosure till this day, nor of course to answer

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER'S PLAYS.

A new edition of the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, is preparing for publication. The tasks of col lation and criticism will be executed with the editor's greatest industry and best judgment, and ample recourse will be had to the manuscript notes of the late Dr. Farmer, written in the folio edition of that author, of which the editor is in possession. Whilst elaborate editions of Massinger, Jonson, and even Shirley, are announcing, the publick will surely attend to any attempt to retrieve from the trifling comments of Theobald, Sympson, and Seward, or the more careless ones of Colman, authors, who, in the opinion of some criticks deserve to rank next to Shakespeare.

Dr. Carpenter, of Exeter, will, in a few days, publish a small work, entitled, The Plan, Rules, and Catalogue of a Library for young persons, with observations on some of the principal branches of science and literature, and occasional remarks on the books selected in tended to assist in the formation of literary institutions, and to aid young persons in the choice of objects of mental pursuit.

A new translation of the Georgicks of Virgil, in blank verse, is in the press, and may shortly be expected to be published.

The first folio edition of the plays of Shakespeare, published in 1623, being considered by the commentators on that great dramatick poet, as by far more authentick and valuable than the succeeding ones, but from its scarcity and consequent high price, only being accessible to few, it has been thought proper to reprint it; and accordingly a copy of this edition has been a considerable time in the press, and is now nearly ready for publication. The

greatest care has been taken to ensure its fidelity, and during the time it has been in hand, three separate copies of the original edition have been constantly consulted. The new edition is printed in the common roman type, but in arrangement, orthography and punctuation, is literally and scrupulously page for page, throughout, an exact copy of the edition of 1623, with all its peculiarities, not a word being added, altered, or omitted.

The Rev. T. F. Dibdin, is about to publish a new variorum edition of Sir Thomas More's Utopia. The text is from the first English edition of 1551; a book of considerable rarity, and scarcely known to bibliographers and lexicographers. Beneath the text, will be copious notes, and various readings from the Latin, French, and English editions, including the whole of Dr. Warner's. The Utopia will be preceded by a biographical and Literary Introduction; comprehending, among other subjects, a complete Catalogue Raisonne of the various editions of the Utopia, hitherto published. The work will be ornamented with some fac-simile wood cuts.

A copy of Opie's well known painting of Belisarius, executed by Mr. Wm. Cantrill, the Marquis of Stafford's porter, was lately disposed of. It is an accurate representation of the fine original, and does infinite credit to this self-taught artist. The head of the neglected veteran, and the boy who holds the helmet for the donations of the passengers, are peculiarly well painted, and exhibits touches of a very superiour kind.

It is impossible. to view the picture, and at the same time to consider the circumstances and situation of the artist, without much interest and admiration.

FLOWERS, says the most learned of poets, spirits odorous breathe. On what does this odour depend? The chemists give us this vague answer, that it depends on the oil of the plant. But a vegetable distils two kinds of oil, differing very much from each other; the one is fixed, the other volatile. The fixed oil is combined with mucilage; the volatile with the aroma, or spiritus reetor of the plant. The fixed oil is found only in the seeds; and is confined almost entirely to those, which have two cotyledons, as flax-seed, almonds, and rape-seed; but the volatile oil is found in every part of a plant, except the cotyledons of the seeds, where it never occurs, and is distinguished pre-eminently in the flower.

When we say, that the fine odour of a flower depends on its volatile cil, or that its aromatick virtue is contained in it, and is therefore called its essential oil, we go not quite Vol. V. No. VI. 2 M

MILTON.

far enough.* This essential oil contains something more subtile and active than itself, viz. an exceedingly minute, volatile and scarcely ponderable spirit, which, when separated, leaves nothing peculiar in the remaining oil. This is the spiritus rector of the old chemists, the predominant, prevailing, paramount or ruling spirit of the plant. This spirit, which is inimitable by art, imparts that smell, taste, and medicinal virtue to that particular species of plant, and is found in no other. The fixed oil is innate; but the es

"We are so far from being admitted into the secrets of nature, that we scarcely approach the first entrance. We overlook the operations of those invisible fluids, which encompass them, upon whose motions and operations depend those qualities, for which they are most

remarkable. "LOCKE on Human Understanding. Vol. II p. 207.

+ What Locke calls QUALITIES, some of the ancients called FORMS.

sential oil is the vegetable œconomy, operating in perfect health, and in full perfection, while drawing its sustentation from the earth, and from the air. The essential oils of plants have their respective characteristicks from these aroma, or spirits alone; the volatile oil, serves, in some degree, for enveloping, arresting and preventing a too sudden and copious expenditure of them; while the fixed oil serves only for connecting the solid parts together, like the oil or fat in animals. The difference therefore of these two oils is very wide.

Should any one object, that, by fixing our eyes too intently on the poetical phrase of Milton, we have strayed from the enlightened path of modern chemistry into a thicket of fragrant flowers, and are there stupified and bewildered, we answer, that it may be so, notwithstanding the limits which we assign to the meaning of the term spirit. We mean by it the finest and most subtle parts of bodies; the most active part of matter, with regard to its facility of motion, in comparison with the grosser parts; that which is discoverable by the smartness to the smell, and which rises first in distillation. The name of "spirit" was formerly given to any subtle volatile substance, that exhaled from bodies in a given degree of heat; and by a sort of imaginary analogy, was transferred to the human system; hence the term animal spirits, which was ingeniously supposed to reside in the nervous fluid, as the spiritus rector resides in the essential oil of plants.

If the term spirit, or spiritus rector, should displease the fastidious cri

See the effects of flowers on the human system, when in a confined place,

in our thirteenth number.

an

tick, we would remind him, that spirit, in the German language, is geist, or as Juncker has it gascht, whence is derived the English word ghost, or spirit; and hence our fashionable chemical word gas, or gaz, by which we are to understand" exceedingly rare, highly elastick, and invisible fluid, not condensible by cold." Should the critick persist in refusing his imprimatur to the term spirit, we will compound with him, by giving him, in its stead, the word quintessence, by which we mean the specifick essence, the active principle, by the power of which medicines operate. 'Tis the distinguishing part of medicinal simples, which can be separated, in imagination, from the tangible body, leaving its organization entire. To be still more particular. The ancient philosophers and the old chemists conceived that fire, air, water and earth, contributed to the composition of all vegetables; to all which was added, a fifth thing, or ens, which enriched and distinguished the whole, by its own particular efficacy; and on which the odour, taste and virtue of each plant depend. ed: they, therefore, asserted, that each species of plants was made up of the four common elements; but to these was added a fifth, which, though small in quantity, was the most powerful, efficacious, and predominant of its ingredients: this, therefore, they called the fifth essence, or, as expressed in Latin, the quinta essentia. The knowledge of quintessences was considered, two hundred years ago, as the utmost bounds of chemical perfection. Is not this precisely the case, at present, with the knowledge of gasses, or spirits?

We have said, that all aromatick plants contain a volatile oil; but this aromatick oil does not reside in the same part in every kind of plant,