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SPECIMENS OF A PATENT POCKET DICTIONARY, For the use of those who wish to understand the meaning of things as well as words.

NO. II.

"These lost the sense their learning to display,

And those explain'd the meaning quite away."-POPE.

Damme!-An expletive of style, used to fill up vacancies of matter, and therefore of perpetual occurrence in the conversation of the high and low vulgar.

Dandy.-A fool who is vain of being the lay-figure of some fashionable tailor, and thinks the wealth of his wardrobe will conceal the poverty of his ideas; though, like his long-eared brother in the lion's skin, he is betrayed as soon as he opens his mouth.

Dangler.-An androgynous insect that flutters about ladies' toilettes, and buzzes impertinently in their ears.

Day and Martin.-See "Handwriting on the wall."

Debt, National.-Mortgaging the property of our posterity that we may be better enabled to destroy our contemporaries.

Debates. An useless wagging of tongues where the noses have been already counted.

Delay. See Chancery court.

Destiny. The scapegoat which we make responsible for all our crimes and follies; a Necessity which we set down for invincible when we have no wish to strive against it.

Dice.-Playthings which the Devil sets in motion when he wants a new supply of knaves, beggars, and suicides.

Diplomatist.-A privileged cheat, hired to undermine, overreach, and circumvent his opponent, and rewarded with court dignities in proportion as he is deficient in all the moral ones.

Dinner.-A meal taken at supper-time; formerly considered as a means of enjoying society, and therefore moderate in expense and frequent in occurrence; now given to display yourself, not to see your friends, and inhospitably rare because it is foolishly extravagant.

Discipline, military.-That subordination which is maintained upon the Continent by the hope of distinction, in England by the fear of the cat-o-nine-tails.

Disguise. That which we all of us wear on our hearts, and many of us on our faces.

Doctor. According to Voltaire, one whose business it is to pour drugs, of which he knows little, into a body of which he knows less. Ditch.-A place in which those who have taken too much wine are apt to take a little water.

Dog.-A quadruped of great use in leading bipeds that have lost any of their senses, such as blind beggars, sportsmen, &c.

Dowager.-A titled old lady, who sometimes survives herself as well as her husband, and generally sticks to the card-table till she is carried to the coffin.

Doze.-A short nap enjoyed by many people after dinner on a week day, and after the text on a Sunday.

Dram.-A small quantity taken in immoderate quantities by those who have few grains of sobriety and no scruples of conscience.

Drama, modern.-Every thing except comedy and tragedy; such as melodrama, hippodrama, &c.

Dream.-All those invisible visions to which we are awake in our

sleep.

Dress.-External gentility, frequently used to disguise internal vul

garity.

Drum.-An instrument which Death commands to be played at all his great feasts.

Duty.-Financially, a tax which we pay to the public excise and customs; morally, that which we are very apt to excise in our private

customs.

Dynasty. Sovereignty, by which a particular family claim a whole people as their property; of which the beneficial effects may be seen in France, Spain, and Naples-the patrimony of the Bourbons.

Eccentricity, of appearance.—The pleasure of being personally known to those who do not know you by name.

Echo.-The shadow of a sound.

Edition, third or fourth.--See Title pages of the first.
Education, dangers of.-See Humbug.

Egotism.-Suffering the private I to be too much in the public eye.
Elbow. That part of the body which it is most dangerous to shake.
Elopement.-Beginning in disobedience that which commonly ends in

misery.

Embalming.-Perpetuating the perishable with more pains than we take to save that which is immortal.

Enthusiasm.-Spiritual intoxication.

Envy. The way in which we punish ourselves for being inferior to others.

Ephemeral. The whole of modern literature.

Epicure.-One who lives to eat instead of eating to live.

Episcopacy.-The power, pomp, and vanity of those who have for

sworn all three.

Equal. That which a man of talent will seldom find among his superiors.

Errata.-Deathbed confessions of a book.

Etymology.-Sending vagrant words back to their own parish.
Exquisite. A dandy taken at his own valuation.

Extempore.-A premeditated impromptu.

Eyeglass.-A toy which enables a coxcomb not to see.

Esquire. A title much in use among the lower orders.

Fables, Esop's.-Giving human intellects to brutes, in imitation of Nature, who sometimes gives brute intellects to men.

Face. The silent echo of the heart.

Facetiousness.-According to Lord Norbury, cutting jokes upon the death of a fellow-creature, and quoting Joe Miller instead of Blackstone from the seat of justice.

Faction. Any party out of power.

Fame.-Being known by name to those who do not know you personally.

Fan. A plaything, from whose motion a flirt derives her name, and which serves to hide her face when she ought to blush and cannot.

Fancy, gentlemen of the.-See Blackguard.

Fashion. The voluntary slavery which leads us to think, act, and dress according to the judgment of fools and the caprice of coxcombs. Fee, Doctor's.-An attempt to purchase health from one who cannot secure his own. See Fee-simple.

Felicity. The horizon of the heart, which is always receding as we advance towards it.

Finance.-Legerdemain performed by figures.

Finger.-An appendage worn in a ring, and of great use in taking

snuff.

Fishery. The agriculture of the sea.

Flattery.-Throwing dust in people's eyes, generally for the purpose of picking their pockets.

Fool. What a fop sees in the looking-glass.

Fortune, a man of.-One who is so unfortunate as to be released from the necessity of employment for the mind and exercise for the body, the two great constituents of happiness and health; who has every thing to fear and nothing to hope; and who consequently pays in anxiety and ennui more than the value of his money.

Forty. The ne plus ultra of a lady's age.
Foxhunting.-Tossing up for lives with a fox.

Friend, fashionable.-One who will dine with you, game with you, walk or ride out with you, borrow money of you, escort your wife to public places if she be handsome, stand by and see you fairly shot if you happen to be engaged in a duel, and slink away and see you quietly clapped in a prison if you experience a reverse of fortune.

Friend, real.-One who will tell you of your faults and follies in prosperity, and assist you with his hand and heart in adversity. See Black Swan.

Frown.-Writing the confession of a bad passion with an eyebrow. Funding System.-Saddling posterity, that when the present age is a beggar it may get on horseback and ride to the devil.

Funeral.-Posthumous vanity. The pride, pomp, and circumstance of" ashes to ashes and dust to dust."

Future. In this world, the unexecuted copy of the past; in the next, what we are to be, determined by what we have been. Gain.-Losing life to win money. Gallipot.--An Apothecary's bank.

Gallows. The remedy which society has provided for roguery; a cure without being a prevention.

Gaming.-See Beggar and Suicide.

Gastronomy.-The religion of those who make a god of their bellies. Genealogy, the boast of.-Generally, the poor expedient of those who, having nothing to be proud of in their own persons, are obliged to be proud of others.

Gentleman.-A name often bestowed upon a well-dressed blackguard, and withheld from the right owner, who only wears its qualifications in his heart.

Gengan.-See the Pagoda at Brighton.

Gin. The worm of the still; the spirituous enemy of mankind. Glory.-Sharing with plague, pestilence, and famine the honour of

destroying your species; and participating with Alexander's horse the pleasure of transmitting your name to posterity.

Gold.-Dead earth, for which many men sacrifice life and lose heaven. Goosequill.-A little tube which, in the hands of modern dramatists, seems to have the power of reproducing its parental hisses. Grandmother's Review.--See the British.

Grape.-Nature's bottle, which the perverse ingenuity of man not unfrequently converts into Pandora's box.

Grave. The gate through which we pass from the visible into the invisible world.

Grub-street garret.-The poetical Parnassus before authors wrote books by the acre, bought land by the mile, and resided upon their H.

own estates.

THE MAID OF ORKNEY.

"My lost, lost love!"-the frantic cry
Died in the thunders of the wave;
The rock was near, the storm was high-
The gallant ship has found her grave!

One flash lit up the reeling bark

O'er the black breakers hurrying on;
A moment's pause, and all was dark-
Another flash-the bark is gone!
-"Look on yon cliff-the awful light
Shows one who kneels all lonely there:
How looks she, stranger, on that sight?"—
"Oh, beautiful amid despair!"—
"She cannot feel the piercing blast,
She cannot fear the maddening surge;

That moment was her lover's last,

That wild wind howls his passing dirge." "But who the reft one, kneeling there

At this bleak midnight's stormy hour?”—
"The fairest of the island fair,

Dark Orkney's pride, and Ocean's flower."-
-Morn-evening-came; the sunset smiled,
The calm sea sought in gold the shore,
As though it ne'er had man beguiled,
Or never would beguile him more.

For his lost child, bower, haunt and home,
The stern sire search'd that mournful day,
While, by the lone deep's golden foam,
The flower of Ocean fading lay.

Oh, there her young and fond heart broke,
Beside her native islet's wave;

And, dying there, her latest look

Was on her lover's bright-blue grave.
-Sweet be her rest within the tomb,
And dear her memory in the bower,
And pure the tear that mourns the doom
Of Orkney's pride and Ocean's flower!

J.

THE PHYSICIAN. NO. XV.

Of the Diseases occasioned by dry Heat.

AGREEABLY to the intimation given in my last paper, I shall devote the present to the consideration of the dangers incident to health from great heat and drought, and the precautions necessary to be observed in order to avoid them.

Boerhaave caused a sparrow in a cage to be put into a room in which sugar-bakers dry their sugar-loaves, and where the thermometer indicated a temperature of 146 degrees. In one minute the bird began to breathe with difficulty and opened its bill. Its respiration became quicker every moment, and its strength decreased in the same ratio, so that it soon dropped from the perch to the bottom of the cage, where it expired in seven minutes. A dog was doomed to undergo the same experiment with the sparrow. When he had been exposed to the heat for seven minutes, he began to pant, lolled out his tongue, drew breath very quickly, but continued to lie quietly in his kennel. In about an hour his respiration was accompanied with a loud rattling, and he made all possible efforts to escape from his prison; but it was not long before his strength forsook him, and he began to draw breath so slowly and softly that, at length, it was scarcely perceptible. During the whole time, the animal discharged from the mouth a great quantity of foam, which was of a reddish colour, and had so fetid a smell that the bystanders could not endure it: at the same time it was of so deleterious a nature, though so recently produced in the animal, that a person who approached him for a moment became insensible, and it was necessary to employ spirits of wine and myrrh to bring him again to himself. In this intense heat the dog did not perspire a single drop, and after he was dead, the thermometer being put into his mouth, stood at 110 degrees. A cat, which died in a quarter of an hour in this heat under nearly the same circumstances as the dog, was as wet with perspiration as if she had been dipped in water. These cruel experiments were repeated on various animals by M. Dunze, and the results in every instance were nearly the same.

This rapid putrefaction and speedy death are occasioned by the overheating of the blood; and though our atmosphere never contracts so intolerable a degree of heat, still these experiments enable us to infer from its effects the operation of an inferior degree. In the year 1665 the hot wind, called Samiel, caused the death of 4000 persons within twenty days, at Bassora in Persia; and, according to Thevenot, the heat there is always so intense from July to September, that, in order not to sink under it, people are obliged to keep fresh water constantly in their mouths.

How can it be otherwise than that very great heat in summer should decompose the blood and dispose it to putrefaction, since we see that it has the same effect on all fluid bodies which are compounded of particles of totally different kinds? Heat possesses the property of expanding all bodies, and consequently of separating their constituent parts from one another. Hence it is obvious why the blood, expanded by heat in summer, swells the veins, and is liable to an increased action, which soon degenerates into inflammatory and putrid fevers.

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