Offering to every weary traveller

His orient liquor in a crystal glass,

65

To quench the drought of Phoebus, which, as

they taste,

(For most do taste through fond intemperate thirst,)

(67) This line points to the necessity of drinking the water bad or good, from the urgency of thirst; and the lines that follow, intimate that those who do drink of it, become identified with the unwholesome soil that produces it, and contract, thereby, various sorts of horrible fevers; which are stated to unman them and reduce them to a level with the brute creation; by a poetical reference to the numerous resemblances to the heads of various animals which may be seen, on inspection, to be exhibited, by different parts of the outline of the coasts of Cuba: the word comely evidently involves a pun upon the name of Comus, and a pun thus early resorted to may lead one to expect many more hereafter.

That the drinking of unwholesome, impure, brackish waters, is really adequate to the generation

Soon as the poison works, their human count'

nance,

of malignant fevers, as above supposed there is too much reason to believe. Dr. Mead, " on Poisonous Airs and Waters," 154, quotes from Lucretius's Account of the Plague of Athens the following passage, B. vi. 1002.

Atque ea vis omnis morborum pestilitasque,
Aut extrinsecus, ut nubes nebulæque supernè
Per cœlum veniunt, aut ipsâ sæpe coorta
De terrâ surgunt, ubi putrorem humida nacta est
Intempestivis pluviisque et solibus acta."

He then proceeds to state, in pages 168, 169, how natural it is that impure waters taken in at the stomach should make unhealthy impressions on the human frame; and, treating the subject like a physician, says that the drinking of stagnating well-waters has the effect of enlarging the milt or spleen, and of producing calculous concretions if those waters are drawn from clayey

The express image of the Gods, is chang'd
Into some brutish form of wolf or bear,

70

soils; and finally states that Hippocrates, who, in his opinion, wrote the best book on the subject that ever was published, accounts for the diseases of several countries from the difference of the waters with which nature has supplied them.

Mr. Hope's ancient and well known picture of the plague, or pestilence, of Athens, contains a strong illustration of Dr. Mead's reasoning; for, in the back-ground of it there is a fountain in a publick street or market-place, at which are seen people drinking water, with reference probably to the origin of their disease; in conformity with which it may be fit to put the reader in mind that Thucydides, in treating of that disease, expressly notices that the Athenians charged their enemies, the Peloponnesians, with poisoning their wells ωστε και ελέχθη υπ' αυτών ως οι Πελοποννη σιοι φαρμακα εσβεβληκοιεν ες τα φρέατα. In relation to this same subject, it is observed in a note to Mr. Howard's account of the principal

Or ounce or tiger, hog or bearded goat,
All other parts remaining as they were;
And they, so perfect is their misery,

Not once perceive their foul disfigurement,

But boast themselves more comely than before,75
And all their friends and native home forget,
To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.
Therefore when any favour'd of high Jove

Lazarettos in Europe," p. 42, that Dr. Schotte, in a Treatise on a Contagious Fever, which raged at Senegal in the year 1778, enumerates among other predisposing causes of the malady," the brackish well-water, in which the victuals of the garrison were boiled, and which served them as constant drink ;" and I believe it is very generally admitted that the like cause produced the like effect to the destruction of so many of our gallant troops in the late expedition to the Isle of Walcheren.

(76) This alludes to the pleasures of the table, and of women, which are so seducing to young people on their first going to the West Indies.

Chances to pass thro' this adventurous glade,
Swift as the sparkle of a glancing star,

80

I shoot from heav'n, to give him safe convoy
As now I do but first I must put off
These my sky robes, spun out of Iris' woof
And take the weeds and likeness of a swain
That to the service of this house belongs,
Who with his soft pipe and smooth-dittied song
Well knows to still the wild winds when they roar,
And in this office of his mountain watch

85

(81) I take this to be referable to the tradewinds.

(84) A Swain (or shepherd-swain, as he is presently called). The true character indeed of the Attendant Spirit is, as observed in note on line 15, to represent the river Mamore, the stream-line of which strongly resembles a shepherd's crook; and so far as he wears sky-robes, (83) or stands for the air or wind, it was observed above that that river lies in the midst of the region of Eolus, whose poetical function it is to preside over the winds.

(88) Nor of less faith. This relates to the