the jaundice, the stone, the diabetes, and the plague. Of those
books, if I had read them, it could nor be expected that I should be
able to give a critical account. I have been told that there is
something in them of vexation and discontent, discovered by a
perpetual attempt to degrade physic from its sublimity, and to
represent it as attainable without much previous or concomitant
learning. By the transient glances which I have thrown upon them I
have observed an affected contempt of the ancients, and a
supercilious derision of transmitted knowledge. Of this indecent
arrogance the following quotation from his preface to the "Treatise
on the Small-pox" will afford a specimen, in which, when the reader
finds what I fear is true, that, when he was censuring Hippocrates,
he did not know the difference between aphorism and apophthegm, he
will not pay much regard to his determinations concerning ancient
learning.

"As for this book of aphorisms, it is like my Lord Bacon's of the
same title, a book of jests, or a grave collection of trite and
trifling observations; of which, though many are true and certain,
yet they signify nothing, and may afford diversion, but no
instruction, most of them being much inferior to the sayings of the
wise men of Greece, which yet are so low and mean, that we are
entertained every day with more valuable sentiments at the table
conversation of ingenious and learned men."

I am unwilling, however, to leave him in total disgrace, and will
therefore quote from another preface a passage less reprehensible.

"Some gentlemen have been disingenuous and unjust to me, by wresting
and forcing my meaning, in the preface to another book, as if I