624] With the small-pox, his body maim'd and marr'd. Having in the note on this line adverted to the claim of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu on the gratitude of her country, we cannot refrain from noticing another female far more illustrious in rank, and hardly less distinguished by talent, who with a magnanimity equal to her high station, and a selfdevotion superior to it, spread the blessings of inoculation throughout the length and breadth of all the Russias.

Catherine II. having by her medical board, the small-pox then raging throughout her empire, been convinced of the salutary character of the process of inoculation, and equally convinced that nothing but her own example would overcome the prejudice and superstition of her subjects, determined on submitting to the operation, thus gratuitously incurring a risk which in her position she had abundant means for guarding against.

Application was immediately made to Mr. Sutton, the original practitioner in England, to send over a skilful medical man conversant with the process; Dr. Thomas Dimsdale of Hertford was recommended by Sutton for the purpose, and he arrived with his son in St. Petersburg on July 28, 1769.

The next day the two Dimsdales were presented to the Empress, her first minister, Count Panin and Baron Cherkaskoff, who spoke English perfectly, being the only attendants. Catherine shewed great perspicacity in the questions she put concerning the practice and success of inoculation. Dr. Dimsdale was invited to dine with her the same day, and wrote home the following account of his entertainment. "The Empress sat singly at the upper end of the table, at which about twelve of her nobility were guests, the banquet consisted of a variety of excellent dishes, served up after the French manner, and was concluded by a desert of the finest fruits and sweetmeats, such as I little expected to find in that northern climate, most of these luxuries were however the produce of the Empress's own dominions.

"But what enlivened the whole entertainment was the most unaffected ease and affability of the Empress herself, Each of her guests had a share of her attention and politeness; the conversation was kept up with a freedom and

cheerfulness to be expected rather from persons of the same rank, than among subjects admitted to the honour of their sovereign's company."

On the following day another conversation with the Empress ensued, in which Dr. Dimsdale requested the assistance of the court physicians, to whom he desired to communicate every proposed regulation and medicine; but the Empress would by no means consent to any such consultation, and gave her reasons us follows:

"You come well recommended to me; the conversation I have had with you has been satisfactory; and my confidence in you is increased. I have not the least doubt of your knowledge and abilities in this practice; it is impossible that my physicians can have much skill in this operation; they want experience; their interposition may tend to embarrass you, without the probability of any assistance. My life is my own

and I shall with the utmost cheerfulness and confidence rely on your care alone. With regard to my constitution you could receive no information from them. I have had, I thank God, so good a share of health, that their advice has never been required; and you shall from myself receive every information that can be necessary. I have also to acquaint you that it is my determination to be inoculated prior to the grand duke, and as soon as you judge it convenient. At the same time I desire that this may remain secret; and that you let it be supposed that, for the present, all thoughts of my own inoculation are laid aside. The preparation for this great experiment on the grand duke will countenance your visits to the palace; and I desire to see you as often as it may seem necessary, that you may become better acquainted with my constitution, and also to adjust the time and circumstances of my own inoculation."

He promised obedience to her majesty's commands; and only proposed that some experiments might first be made by inoculating some of her own sex and age, and as near as could be of similar habit. The Empress replied, "that if the practice had been novel, or the least doubt of the general success remained, that precaution might be necessary; but as she was well satisfied in both particulars, there was no occasion to delay on any account."

The Empress, on being inoculated privately, went the next morning at Izarsko-seo. At first no other persons were there but the necessary attendants, it being given out that her meser's Journey was only to give directions about some sherations, and that her stay would be short. But several of The DoÓLLEY soon followed, and the Empress observing among them some wim she suspected not to have had the smallpox, skać w Dr. Dimsdale: "I must rely on you to give me notice when it is possible for me to communicate the disease: fer, though. I could wish to keep my inoculation a secret, yet far be in from me to conceal it a moment, when it may become hazardous to others." The Empress, during this interval, took part in every amusement with her usual affability, without shewing the least token of uneasiness or concern; constantly dined at the same table with the nobility, and enIvened the whole court with those peculiar graces of conversation, for which she was ever distinguished. The grand duke shortly after submitted to the operation, and on his recovery, Catherine rewarded the services of Dr. Dimsdale, by creating him a baron of the Russian Empire, with remainder to his heirs, and appointing him actual counsellor of state and physician to her imperial majesty, with a pension of £500 per annum, to be paid him in England, to be continued to his son, besides £10,000 which he immediately received, and also presented him with a miniature picture of herself, and another of the grand duke. Her majesty was likewise pleased to express her approbation of the conduct of his son, by ordering him to be presented with a superb gold snuff-box richly set with diamonds.-Life of Catherine II. by the Rev. W. Tooke, Vol. I. 5th Edition.

Yet this is the great sovereign, the greatest that has been known in Europe since Louis XIV. and her own predecessor Peter the Great, whom it has been the fashion among the great vulgar, and the small in English literature, to load with every opprobrious epithet. That she had foibles amounting to vices we know, but they attached to the woman rather than to the monarch. She was the second founder of Petersburg, imparting to that city the Corinthian capital of literature, science, and the arts, of all of which she was the patron, and of some an accomplished mistress; her code of criminal law

was as wise as her administration of it was humane, very few capital punishments having taken place during her long reign; she was well acquainted with most of the European languages, her correspondence with Voltaire has been published, and she wrote two or three comedies in French, which were acted at her private theatre of the Hermitage before her select coterie, comprising some of the most talented and accomplished men in Europe, Segur, Cobenzel, Fitzherbert, Prince de Ligne, and a few others who constituted her almost daily society, in the elegant and piquant conversation of which she mingled on a footing of perfect equality. At these petit soupers no attendants were present, but a dumb waiter on castors, assisted by a mechanical contrivance for a change of dishes and of plates through trap apertures in the table, to which bells were attached, supplied the deficiency of waiters.

We regret to observe that the noble and learned author of Historical Sketches of Characters during the time of George III. has marred that of Catherine II. of Russia by a very exaggerated report of her private vices, and a totally unfounded one of her public character and conduct, most inappropriately using epithets imputing severity and cruelty to a disposition and manners singularly mild, amiable, and feminine. Fortunately the beautifully engraved portrait prefixed to the sketch, and for the likeness of which portrait to the original we can of our own knowledge vouch, sufficiently negatives the charges brought against her of cruelty and fierocity, and which, therefore, in the absence of any one authority adduced in their support, must be taken rather as flights of fancy and of eloquence than as the sober dictates of historic truth.

* Of which quoting indiscriminately, we find the following specimens, "unrelenting fierceness of disposition, unscrupulous proneness to fraud, unrestrained indulgence of the passions, all the weakness and all the wickedness which can debase the worst of the human race," "constant practice of debauchery, and occasional commission of convenient murder, "Messalina," "imperial Jezebel," "tigress,' cruel, dauntless, reckless, heartless, bold, masculine," "flinty bosom,' ""childish vanity," ,"" atrocious crimes," "mighty transgressions," &c.

99 66

THE

INDEPENDENCE.

HIS poem was published in the last week of September, 1764, and is the latest of his productions that appeared in the author's life-time. He soon afterwards went to France, where he was attacked by that disorder which prematurely swept him to the grave.

The composition of the poem is slovenly, the subject hacknied, and the thoughts common-place; some scattered passages, however, display the vigour of the author, and the comparison between the bard and the lord is managed with considerable humour.

In extenuation of the faults we have noticed, it must be observed, that Churchill did not live to publish a second edition of this poem, in which he might have rendered the vein of good sense which pervades it more conspicuous, by bestowing upon it some of those manly graces of poetry, in which, when he took pains, he was so eminently successful.

Adverting to the title, we may observe, that at this time Churchill had so far acquired the Independence which he loved, as to be altogether out of debt, and had he lived, he might, what with the profits arising by the sale of his former still popular poems, and a fair prospect from his future effusions, have realized a sufficient competence for life.

Mr. Macaulay in one of his essays places Churchill in a very creditable list of authors, who, instead of paying homage to booksellers, could command their respect: Burke, Robertson, the Wartons, Gray, Mason, Gibbon, Adam Smith, Beattie, Sir W. Jones, Goldsmith, and Churchill, were, as he observes, "the most distinguished writers of what may be called the second generation of the Johnsonian age. Of these men Churchill was the only one in whom we can trace the stronger lineaments of that character which, when Johnson first came up to London, was common among authors. Of the rest scarcely any had felt the pressure of severe poverty: almost all had been early admitted into the most respectable society on an equal footing. They were men of quite a different species from the dependents of Curll and Osborne."