Where day never shuts his eye, I consider the name of the party to whom it is addressed, the Lord Brackly, heir of Lord Bridgwater, to contain an oblique intimation, that *To the Right Honourable John Lord Viscount Brackly, Son and Heir Apparent to the Earl of Bridgwater, &c. MY LORD, THIS poem, which received its first occasion of birth from yourself and others of your noble family, and much honour from your own person in the performance, now returns again to make a final dedication of itself to you. Although not openly acknowledged by the author, yet it is a legitimate offspring, so lovely and so much desired, that the often copying it hath tired my pen, to give my several friends satisfaction, and brought me to a necessity of producing it to the public view; and now to offer it up in all rightful devotion to those fair hopes and rare endowments of your much promising youth, which give a full assurance, to all that know you, of a future excellence. Live, sweet Lord, to be the honour of your There I suck the liquid air All amidst the gardens fair 990 brackish water, or bilgewater, (as brackish water is often called) is the basis of all the enigmas of the poem, being the legitimate cause of the diseases in question there; though (as insinuated in the second passage of the dedication) not commonly imagined to be so. The names of the other chief persons who presented the mask, the Egertons, if supposed to be derived from aigre, may suggest the same idea as that of Brackly; and the name of Lawes subscribed to the dedication, involves a sort of pun upon Lues, the general name for any infectious fever. The Mask's name, and receive this as your own, from the hands of him, who hath, by many favours, been long obliged to your most honoured parents, and as in this representation your Attendant Thyrsis, so now in all real expression, Your faithful and most obedient Servant, H. LAWES. Of Hesperus, and his daughters three having been presented on Michaelmas night, has relation to the circumstance that the most important incidents recorded in it, occur at that season of the year; as the waters, before stagnant and corrupt, then begin to produce their ill effects upon the countries on which, by the summer floods, they may have been scattered. Thus have I endeavoured to shew, that at the time when this poem was written, asubstance was well known in the Materia Medica, and commonly and universally applied for the cure of the most fatal and most horrible diseases with which suffering humanity is afflicted, though in modern times (to repeat what is before observed,) so far as I can learn, it is fallen into utter disuse. It will be one of the principal objects of the remaining pages of this volume to shew, that it was used likewise for the same purposes in the most ancient times known. Whether in the east, from whence this substance comes, and where its virtues, Along the crisped shades and bowers 995 one would suppose, would last cease to be remembered, it may still be used medicinally, it is not in my power to state. It is certain that they have various remedies for particular complaints in common use in different parts of Asia, which are either unknown in Europe, or having been known there, are abandoned. The note below gives an instance or two.* * Sir Everard Home, in his Treatise on Ulcers in the Legs, vol. i., p. 260, expresses himself as follows: "In the East Indies the application in this stage of the ringworm, is vinegar saturated with borax. The natives employ the juice of some plants which is sold as a secret medicine. It is made by an Hindoo doctor at Vizagapatam, and sold at the different presidencies in India. This medicine is of a very acrid nature, giving the patient excruciating pain, but removes the disease in a very short time." That there eternal summer dwells About the cedarn alleys fling Nard and Cassia's balmy smells. 1000 Another instance may be given in the gin-sem, ginseng, or ging-sing plant, which, though in universal medical use in China, is with us abandoned, if not despised. Of this plant I find the following accounts in a Letter from Père Jartoux (one of Les Lettres Edifiantes) to the Procurator-general of the Missions of India and China at Paris. Dated Peking, 12th April, 1711. "The map of Tartary, which we are now drawing by the Emperor's order, procured us an opportunity of seeing the famous plant gin-seng, so highly valued in China, and so little known in Europe. [Here is inserted the following note of Mr. Lockman the translator, viz.: We are told that among the presents which the embassadors of Siam presented to the King of France, there was a considerable quantity of gin-seng. At that time the gin-seng was little known in Europe: it is mentioned by Father Martinius in his Atlas, and by Father Kircher in his China Illustrata. According to the former, the Japoneze call the gin-seng nisi, in their language. Father Tochard also speaks of it in his first voyage. He declares that gin implies man, and |