After having practised physic some years, he was admitted Expectant at the Hotel Dieu, where he was regularly to have been made Pensionary physician upon the first vacancy; but mere unassisted merit advances slowly, if, what is not very common, it advances at all. Morin had no acquaintance with the arts necessary to carry on schemes of preferment; the moderation of his desires preserved him from the necessity of studying them, and the privacy of his life debarred him from any opportunity.

At last, however, justice was done him in spite of artifice and partiality; but his advancement added nothing to his condition, except the power of more extensive charity; for all the money which he received as a salary, he put into the chest of the hospital, always, as he imagined, without being observed. Not content with serving the poor for nothing, he paid them for being served.

His reputation rose so high in Paris, that Mademoiselle de Guise was desirous to make him her physician; but it was not without difficulty that he was prevailed upon by his friend, Dr. Dodart, to accept the place. He was by this new advancement laid under the necessity of keeping a chariot, an equipage very unsuitable to his temper; but while he complied with those exterior appearances which the public had a right to demand from him, he remitted nothing of his former austerity in the more private and essential parts of his life, which he had always the power of regulating according to his own disposition.

In two years and a half the Princess fell sick, and was despaired of by Morin, who was a great master of prognostics. At the time when she thought herself in no danger, he pronounced her death inevitable; a declaration to the highest degree disagreeable, but which was made more easy to him than to any other by his piety and artless simplicity. Nor did his sincerity produce any ill consequences to himself; for the Princess, affected by his zeal, taking a ring from her finger, gave it him as the last pledge of her affection, and rewarded him still more to his satisfaction, by preparing for death with a true christian piety. She left him by will a yearly pension of two thousand livres, which was always regularly paid him.

No sooner was the Princess dead, but he freed himself from the incumbrance of his chariot, and retired to St. Victor without a servant; having, however, augmented his daily allowance with a little rice boiled in water.

Dodart, who had undertaken the charge of be. ing ambitious on his account, procured him, at the restoration of the academy in 1699, to be nominated associate botanist; not knowing, what he would doubtless have been pleased with the knowledge of, that he introduced into that assembly the man that was to succeed him in his place of Pensionary.

Dr. Morin was not one who had upon his hands the labour of adapting himself to the duties of his condition, but always found himself naturally adapted to them. He had, therefore, no difficulty in being constant at the assemblies of the academy, notwithstanding the distance of places, while he had strength enough to support the journey. But his regimen was not equally effectual to produce vigour as to prevent distempers; and being 64 years old at his admission, he could not continue his assiduity more than a year after the death of Dodart, whom he succeeded in 1707.

When Mr. Tournefort went to pursue his botanical inquiries in the Levant, he desired Dr. Morin to supply his place of Demonstrator of the Plants in the Royal Garden, and rewarded him for the trouble, by inscribing to him a new plant which he brought from the east, by the name of Morina Orientalis, as he named others the Dodarto, the Fagonne, the Bignonne, the Phelipee. These are compliments proper to be made by the bo tanists, not only to those of their own rank, but to the greatest persons; for a plant is a monument of a more durable nature than a medal or an obelisk; and yet, as a proof that even these vehicles are not always sufficient to transmit to futurity the name conjoined with them, the Nicotiana is now scarcely known by any other name than that of tobacco.

Dr. Morin, advancing far in age, was now forced to take a servant, and, what was yet a more essential alteration, prevailed upon himself to take an ounce of wine a day, which he measured with the same exactness as a medicine bordering upon poison. He quitted at the same time all his practice in the city, and confined it to the poor of his neighbourhood, and his visits to the Hotel Dieu; but his weakness increasing, he was forced to increase his quantity of wine, which yet he always continued to adjust by weight.*

At 78, his legs could carry him no longer, and he scarcely left his bed; but his intellects continued unimpaired, except in the last six months of his life. He expired, or to use a more proper term, went out, on the 1st of March, 1714, at the age of 30 years, without any distemper, and mere. ly for want of strength, having enjoyed by the benefit of his regimen a long and healthy life, and a gentle and easy death.

This extraordinary regimen was but part of the daily regulation of his life, of which all the offices were carried on with a regularity and exactness nearly approaching to that of the planetary motions.

He went to bed at seven, and rose at two, throughout the year. He spent in the morning three hours at his devotions, and went to the Hotel Dieu in the summer between five and six, and in the winter between six and seven, hearing mass for the most part at Notre Dame. After his return he read the holy scripture, dined at eleven, and when it was fair weather walked till two in the royal garden, where he examined the new plants, and gratified his earliest and strongest passion. For the remaining part of the day, if he had no poor to visit, he shut himself up, and read books of literature or physic, but chiefly physic, as the duty of his profession required. This likewise was the time he received visits, if any were paid him. He often used this expression, "Those that come to see me, do me honour; those that stay away, do me a favour." It is easy to conceive that a man of this temper was not crowded with salutations: there was only now and then an Antony that would pay Paul a visit.

The practice of Dr. Morin is forbidden, I believe, by every writer that has left rules for the preservation of health, and is directly opposite to that of Conaro, who by his regimen repaired a broken constitution, and pro tracted his life, without any painful infirmities, or any decay of his intellectual abilities, to more than a hundred years; it is generally agreed, that as men advance in years, they ought to take lighter sustenance, and in leeg the concoctive powers grow weaker, they ought to labour quantities; and reason seems easily to discover that as less.-Orig. Edit.

BURMAN.†

PETER BURMAN was born at Utrecht, on the | in literature is expected from a student, request26th day of June, 1668. The family from which he descended has for several generations produced men of great eminence for piety and learning; and his father, who was professor of divinity in the university, and pastor of the city of Utrecht, was equally celebrated for the strictness of his life, the efficacy and orthodoxy of his sermons, and the learning and perspicuity of his academi-philological lectures and exercises, to which, in cal lectures.

From the assistance and instruction which such The English scheme of education, which with a father would doubtless have been encouraged regard to academical studies is more rigorous, and by the genius of this son not to have omitted, he sets literary honours at a higher price than that was unhappily cut off at eleven years of age, being of any other country, exacts from the youth, who at that time by his father's death thrown entirely are initiated in our colleges, a degree of philologiunder the care of his mother, by whose diligence, cal knowledge sufficient to qualify them for lecpiety, and prudence, his education was so regu-tures in philosophy, which are read to them in lated, that he had scarcely any reason but filial tenderness to regret the loss of his father.

sical knowledge to qualify him for inquiries into | lived to console their mother for their father's other sciences, he applied himself to the study of death. the law, and published a dissertation, “De Vicesima Hæreditatum," which he publicly defended, under the professor Van Muyden, with such learning and eloquence, as procured him great applause.

Imagining, then, that the conversation of other men of learning might be of use towards his farther improvement, and rightly judging that notions formed in any single seminary are for the greatest part contracted and partial; he went to Leyden, where he studied philosophy for a year, under M. de Volder, whose celebrity was so great, that the schools assigned to the sciences, which it was his province to teach, were not sufficient, though very spacious, to contain the audience that crowded his lectures from all parts of Europe. Yet he did not suffer himself to be engrossed by philosophical disquisitions, to the neglect of those studies in which he was more early engaged, and to which he was perhaps by nature better adapted; for he attended at the same time Ryckius's explanations of Tacitus, and James Gronovius's lectures on the Greek writers, and has often been heard to acknowledge, at an advanced age, the assistance which he received from them. Having thus passed a year at Leyden with great advantage, he returned to Utrecht, and once more applied himself to philological studies, by the assistance of Grævius, whose early hopes of his genius were now raised to a full confidence of that excellence, at which he afterwards arrived.

At Utrecht, in March, 1688, in the twentieth year of his age, he was advanced to the degree of doctor of laws; on which occasion he published a learned dissertation, "De Transactionibus," and defended it with his usual eloquence, learning, and success.

Neither public business nor domestic cares detained Burman from the prosecution of his literary inquiries; by which he so much endeared himself to Grævius, that he was recommended by him to the regard of the university of Utrecht, and accordingly, in 1696, was chosen professor of eloquence and history, to which was added, after some time, the professorship of the Greek language, and afterwards that of politics; so various did they conceive his abilities, and so extensive his knowledge.

At his entrance upon this new province, he pronounced an oration upon eloquence and poetry.

Having now more frequent opportunities of displaying his learning, he arose, in a short time, to a high reputation, of which the great number of his auditors was a sufficient proof, and which the proficiency of his pupils showed not to be accidental or undeserved.

In 1714 he formed a resolution of visiting Paris, not only for the sake of conferring in person, upon questions of literature, with the learned men of that place, and of gratifying his curiosity with a more familiar knowledge of those writers whose works he admired, but with a view more important, of visiting the libraries, and making those inquiries which might be of advantage to his darling study.

The vacation of the university allowed him to stay at Paris but six weeks, which he employed with so much dexterity and industry, that he had searched the principal libraries, collated a great number of manuscripts and printed copies, and brought back a great treasure of curious observations.

In this visit to Paris he contracted an acquaintance, among other learned men, with the celebrated Father Montfaucon; with whom he conversed, at his first interview, with no other character but that of a traveller; but their discourse turning upon ancient learning, the stran

The attainment of this honour was far from having upon Burman that effect which has been too often observed to be produced in others, who, having in their own opinion no higher object of ambition, have relapsed into idleness and security, and spent the rest of their lives in a lazy enjoy-ger soon gave such proofs of his attainments, that ment of their academical dignities. Burman aspired to farther improvements, and, not satisfied with the opportunities of literary conversation which Utrecht afforded, travelled into Switzerland and Germany, where he gained an increase both of fame and learning.

At his return from this excursion, he engaged in the practice of the law, and pleaded several causes with such reputation, as might be hoped by a man who had joined to his knowledge of the law, the embellishments of polite literature, and the strict ratiocination of true philosophy, and who was able to employ on every occasion the graces of eloquence and the power of argumentation.

While Burman was hastening to high reputation in the courts of justice, and to those riches and honours which always follow it, he was summoned in 1691, by the magistrates of Utrecht, to undertake the charge of collector of the tenths, an office in that place of great honour, and which he accepted therefore as a proof of their confidence and esteem.

While he was engaged in this employment, he married Eve Clotterboke, a young lady of a good family, and uncommon genius and beauty, by whom he had ten children, of which eight died young; and only two sons, Francis and Caspar,

Montfaucon declared him a very uncommon traveller, and confessed his curiosity to know his name; which he no sooner heard, than he rose from his seat, and embracing him with the utmost ardour, expressed his satisfaction at having seen the man whose productions of various kinds he had so often praised; and, as a real proof of his regard, offered not only to procure him an immediate admission to all the libraries of Paris, but to those in remoter provinces, which are not generally open to strangers, and undertook to ease the expenses of his journey by procuring him entertainment in all the monasteries of his order.

This favour Burman was hindered from accepting, by the necessity of returning to Utrecht at the usual time of beginning a new course of lectures, to which there was always so great a concourse of students, as much increased the dignity and fame of the university in which he taught.

He had already extended, to distant parts, his reputation for knowledge of ancient history, by a treatise "de Vectigalibus Populi Romani," on the revenues of the Romans; and for his skill in Greek learning, and in ancient coins, by a tract called "Jupiter Fulgurator ;" and after his return from Paris, he published "Phædrus," first with the notes of various commentators, and after

wards with his own. He printed many poems, made many oratio.s upon different subjects, and procured an impression of the epistles of Gudius and Sanavius.

While he was thus employed, the professorships of history, eloquence, and the Greek language, became vacant at Leyden, by the death of Perizonius, which Burman's reputation incited the curators of the university to offer him upon very generous terms, and which after some struggles with his fondness for his native place, his friends and his colleagues, he was prevailed on to accept, finding the solicitations from Leyden warm and urgent, and his friends at Utrecht, though unwilling to be deprived of him, yet not zealous enough for the honour and advantage of their university, to endeavour to detain him by great liberality.

At his entrance upon this new professorship, which was conferred upon him in 1715, he pronounced an oration upon the duty and office of a professor of polite literature; "De publici humanioris Disciplinæ professoris proprio officio et munere;" and showed, by the usefulness and perspicuity of his lectures, that he was not confined to speculative notions on that subject, having a very happy method of accommodating his instructions to the different abilities and attainments of his pupils.

an account of the promotion of two of his grandsons, and a catalogue of the King of France's library, presented to him by the command of the King himself, and expressed some satisfaction on all these occasions; but soon diverted his thoughts to the more important consideration of his eternal state, into which he passed on the 31st of March, 1741, in the 73d year of his age.

He was a man of moderate stature, of great strength and activity, which he preserved by tem perate diet, without medical exactness, and by allotting proportions of his time to relaxation and amusement, not suffering his studies to exhaust his strength, but relieving them by frequent intermissions; a practice consistent with the most exemplary diligence, and which he that omits will find at last, that time may be lost, like money, by unseasonable avarice.

In his hours of relaxation he was gay, and sometimes gave way so far to his temper, natu rally satirical, that he drew upon himself the illwill of those who had been unfortunately the subjects of his mirth; but enemies so provoked he thought it beneath him to regard or to pacify; for he was fiery, but not malicious, disdained dissimu lation, and in his gay or serious hours preserved a settled detestation of falsehood. So that he was an open and undisguised friend or enemy, Nor did he suffer the public duties of this sta entirely unacquainted with the artifices of flatter tion to hinder him from promoting learning by la-ers, but so judicious in the choice of friends, and bours of a different kind; for besides many poems and orations which he recited on different occa sions, he wrote several prefaces to the works of others, and published many useful editions of the best Latin writers, with large collections of notes from various commentators.

He was twice rector, or chief governor of the university, and discharged that important office with equal equity and ability, and gained by his conduct in every station so much esteem, that when the professorship of history of the United Provinces became vacant, it was conferred on him, as an addition to his honours and revenues, which he might justly claim; and afterwards, as a proof of the continuance of their regard, and a testimony that his reputation was still increas ing, they made him chief librarian, an office which was the more acceptable to him, as it united his business with his pleasure, and gave him an opportunity at the same time of super intending the library, and carrying on his studies. Such was the course of his life, till, in his old age, leaving off his practice of walking and other exercises, he began to be afflicted with the scurvy, which discovered itself by very tormenting symptoms of various kinds; sometimes disturbing his head with vertigoes, sometimes causing faintness in his limbs, and sometimes attacking his legs with anguish so excruciating that all his vigour was destroyed, and the power of walking entirely taken away, till at length his left foot became motionless. The violence of his pain produced irregular fevers, deprived him of rest, and entirely debilitated his whole frame.

This tormenting disease he bore, though not without some degree of impatience, yet without any unbecoming or irrational despondency, and applied himself in the intermission of his pains to seek for comfort in the duties of religion.

While he lay in this state of misery he received

so constant in his affection to them, that those with whom he had contracted familiarity in his youth, had for the greatest part his confidence in his old age.

His abilities, which would probably have ena bled him to have excelled in any kind of learning, were chiefly employed, as his station required, on polite literature, in which he arrived at very uncommon knowledge, which, however, appears rather from judicious compilations than original productions. His style is lively and masculine, but not without harshness and constraint, nor perhaps, always polished to that purity which some writers have attained. He was at least instrumental to the instruction of mankind by the publication of many valuable performances, which lay neglected by the greatest part of the learned world; and, if reputation be estimated by usefulness, he may claim a higher degree in the ranks of learning than some others of hap pier elocution, or more vigorous imagination.

The malice or suspicion of those who either did not know, or did not love him, had given rise to some doubts about his religion, which he took an opportunity of removing on his death-bed by a voluntary declaration of his faith, his hope of everlasting salvation from the revealed promises of God, and his confidence in the merits of our Redeemer, of the sincerity of which declaration his whole behaviour in his long illness was an incontestable proof; and he concluded his life, which had been illustrious for many virtues, by exhibiting an example of true piety.

Of his works we have not been able to procure a complete catalogue: he published, "Quintilianus,” 2 vols. 4to. "Valerius Flaccus," "Ovidius," 3 vols. 4to. "Poetæ Latini Minores," 2 v. 4to. "Buchanani Opera," 2 vols. 4to.

Cum notis variorum.

SYDENHAM.*

THOMAS SYDENHAM was born in the year 1624, at Windford Eagle in Dorsetshire, where his father, William Sydenham, Esq. had a large fortune. Under whose care he was educated, or in what manner he passed his childhood, whether he made any early discoveries of a genius peculiarly adapted to the study of nature, or gave any presages of his future eminence in medicine, no information is to be obtained. We must therefore repress that curiosity which would naturally incline us to watch the first attempts of so vigorous a mind, to pursue it in its childish inquiries, and see it struggling with rustic prejudices, breaking on trifling occasions the shackles of credulity, and giving proofs, in its casual excursions, that it was formed to shake off the yoke of prescription, and dispel the phantoms of hypothesis.

That the strength of Sydenham's understanding, the accuracy of his discernment, and ardour of his curiosity, might have been remarked from his infancy by a diligent observer, there is no reason to doubt. For there is no instance of any man, whose history has been minutely related, that did not in every part of life discover the same proportion of intellectual vigour; but it has been the lot of the greatest part of those who have excelled in science, to be known only by their own writings, and to have left behind them no remembrance of their domestic life, or private transactions, or only such memorials of particular passages as are, on certain occasions, necessarily recorded in public registers.

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count, or with what arguments, it is not related; but his persuasions were so effectual, that Sydenham determined to follow his advice, and retired to Oxford for leisure and opportunity to pursue his studies.

It is evident that this conversation must have happened before his promotion to any degree in physic, because he himself fixes it in the interval of his absence from the university, a circumstance which will enable us to confute many false reports relating to Dr. Sydenham, which have been confidently inculcated, and implicitly believed.

It is the general opinion that he was made a physician by accident and necessity, and Sir Richard Blackmore reports in plain terms, [Preface to his Treatise on the Small Pox,] that he engaged in practice without any preparatory study, or previous knowledge, of the medicinal sciences and affirms, that, when he was consulted by him what books he should read to qualify him for the same profession, he recommended Don Quixote.

That he recommended Don Quixote to Blackmore we are not allowed to doubt: but the relater is hindered by that self-love which dazzles all mankind from discovering that he might intend a satire very different from a general censure of all the ancient and modern writers on medicine, since he might perhaps mean, either seriously or in jest, to insinuate that Blackmore was not adapted by nature to the study of physic, and that, whether he should read Cervantes or Hippocrates, he would be equally unqualified for prac tice, and equally unsuccessful in it.

From these it is discovered, that at the age of eighteen, in 1642, he commenced a commoner of Whatsoever was his meaning, nothing is more Magdalen-Hall in Oxford, where it is not pro- evident than that it was a transient sally of an bable that he continued long; for he informs us imagination warmed with gayety, or the negligent himself, that he was withheld from the university effusion of a mind intent upon some other emby the commencement of the war; nor is it known ployment, and in haste to dismiss a troublesome in what state of life he engaged, or where he re-intruder; for it is certain that Sydenham did not sided during that long series of public commotion. It is indeed reported that he had a commission in the King's army, but no particular account is given of his military conduct, nor are we told what rank he obtained when he entered into the army, or when, or on what occasion, he retired from it.

think it impossible to write usefully on medicine, because he has himself written upon it; and it is not probable that he carried his vanity so far, as to imagine that no man had ever acquired the same qualifications besides himself. He could not but know that he rather restored than invented most of his principles, and therefore could not but acknowledge the value of those writers whose doctrines he adopted and enforced.

That he engaged in the practice of physic without any acquaintance with the theory, or knowledge of the opinions or precepts of former writers, is undoubtedly false; for he declares, that after he had, in pursuance of his conversation with Dr. Cox, determined upon the profession of physic, he applied himself in earnest to it, and spent several years in the university, [aliquot annos in academica palæstra,] before he began to practice in London.

His application to the study of physic was, as he himself relates, produced by an accidental acquaintance with Dr. Cox, a physician eminent at that time in London, who in some sickness prescribed to his brother, and, attending him frequently on that occasion, inquired of him what Nor was he satisfied with the opportunities of profession he designed to follow. The young knowledge which Oxford afforded, but travelled man answering that he was undetermined, the to Montpellier, as Desault relates, [Dissertation Doctor recommended physic to him, on what ac-on Consumptions,] in quest of farther information; Montpellier being at that time the most Originally prefixed to the New Translation of Dr. ham from any contempt of academical institucelebrated school of physic; so far was SydenSydenham's Works, by John Swan, M. D. of Newcastle,tions, and so far from thinking it reasonable to

in Staffordshire, 1742.-H.