Diary,' Surtees Soc., vol. lxxiii. p. 233). He acquired reputation through his skill in anatomy. He was lecturing on that branch of medical science in 1728 (Wilks and Bettany, 'Guy's Hospital,' p. 87), became F.R.C.P. of London 26 June, 1732, In 1734 and was Censor in 1735 and 1736. and again in 1736 Nicholls was Gulstonian Reader of Pathology, his subject in the former year being the heart and its circulation, and in the latter year the urinary In 1739 organs and the disease of stone. he read the Harveian Oration, which was duly printed in the next year; and for a term of five years (from 30 August, 1746) he was Lumleian Lecturer, his prælectio De Anima Medica' being printed in.1750, and reprinted in 1771 and 1773. He was appointed on 13 August, 1730, Visceral Lecturer to the United Company of Barbers and Surgeons; Osteology Lecturer on 17 July, 1735; and on 19 August, 1736, became both Osteology and Muscular Lecturer (J. F. South, Craft of Surgery,' 1886, pp. 372-3). These lectures marked a new era in the history of medicine. The young students of London, and not a few from Oxford and For Cambridge, attended them in crowds. 66 the novelty of his discoveries, the gracefulness of his manner, and the charm of his Johnson. delivery attracted both them and persons of all ranks and professions. Dr. Thomas Lawrence, his future biographer, was one of his audience, and formed there the acquaintance of Bathurst, the friend of Dr. William Hunter attended the lectures in 1742, and an autograph abridgment by him of the discourses on anatomy and physiology remains in No. 437 of the MSS. in the Hunterian Museum Library at Glasgow. The syllabus of the lectures --39 in all-of Nicholls in 1743 included anatomy, physiology, the general principles of pathology, and midwifery (Wilks and Bettany, Guy's Hospital,' p. 87). 66 Abstracts of seven of his anatomical lectures are in Addit. MS. 4018 b at the British Museum, and through the intercession of W. N. Boylston, a patron of Harvard a valuable University, with John Nicholls, part of the injected anatomic preparations made by him was presented to that institution. Stonhouse (afterwards Sir James Stonhouse, Bart., M.D.) lived with him for two years in his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and dissected with him, which was a great privilege, and for which he paid a large sum.' Stonhouse complains that Nicholls was a professed Deist, who took great pains to instil his principles into the minds of his pupils (Letters from Orton and Stonhouse,' ii. 261–2). In the early part of 1749, on the death of Dr. John Coningham, one of the eight elects, or council, of the College of Physicians, a junior to Nicholls was appointed to the place; Nicholls thereupon resigned his lectureship, and for the future took little part in the affairs of the College. Every one was surprised at the slur, and Dr. Mead, whose youngest daughter and coheiress Elizabeth was married to Nicholls in 1743, resigned in the next year his From 1753 to place among the elects. 1760 Nicholls was physician to George II. His chief paper in the Philos. Trans. was an account of the dissection of that monarch's body, which resulted in proving that he died from the bursting of the right ventricle of the heart. This paper was submitted through the Lord Chamberlain to the new monarch, who saw no reason why it should not be made public. With the accession of this new king, "Lord Bute, George III., trouble arose. said Dr. Johnson, who seems, besides giving 66 somewhere or other an account of the to have discourse 'De Anima Medica,' been personally known to our physician showed an undue partiality to Scotchmen. He turned out Dr. Nicholls, a very eminent man, from being physician to the King, to make room for one of his countrymen, a man very low in his profession [Duncan, afterwards Sir William Duncan, Bt.]." The pension which was proffered to him Nicholls rejected with disdain. told Boswell that 66 Johnson whatever a man's distemper was, Dr. Nichol would not attend him as a physician if his mind was not at ease; for he believed that no medicines He once attended a would have any influence. man in trade, upon whom he found none of the medicines he prescribed had any effect; he asked the man's wife privately whether his affairs were not in a bad way? She said, No. He continued his attendance some time, still without success. At length the man's wife told him she had discovered that her husband's affairs were in a bad way."- Boswell,' ed. Hill, ii. 354, iii. 163. Sir John Hawkins records ("Life of Johnson,' 2nd ed., p. 407), a saying of Nicholls, which Johnson had repeated to him with high commendation. "that it was a point of wisdom to form intimacies and to choose for our friends only persons of known worth and integrity, and that to do so had been the rule of his life." Philip Thicknesse preserves this anecdote: "Twenty years ago I called in Dr. Nicholls to a near and dear friend whose sudden disorder alarmed me exceedingly. The honest doctor would neither write nor take a fee, and the only thing he would give was repose and rest to my friend." minute anatomy of tissues. He was also the first to give a correct description of the mode of production of aneurism, and he distinctly recognized the existence and office of the vaso-motor nerves." His writings are set out in the Bibliotheca Thicknesse was dissatisfied, called in another doctor, but was now convinced, as was the patient, that Nicholls was right. His disinclination to give medicine in some instances" was, in the opinion of Thick-Cornub.,' the most important of them being nesse, the reason of his banishment from 1738, and 1742). The Latin of Nicholls his 'Compendium Anatomicum' (1733, 1736, royalty (Valetudinarian's Bath Guide,' in his 'De Anima Medica' is praised by Sir 2nd ed., 1780, pp. 9-10). Egerton Brydges as "perspicuous, classical, and elegant (Censura Literaria,' i. 192204). Nicholls did not continue in his profession after the loss of his appointment at Court. His son John matriculated at Oxford in 1761, and the father soon took up his residence in his old haunts at that University. The son. a year or two later, began to study in London, whereupon the father settled in Surrey, and busied himself in making experiments—“ quid lætas segetes in agro feraci faciat, quid agrum sterilem fœcundet." He owned the estate of Eversheds in Ockley, and for some years made the house his summer residence. Later he lived in a house which he had bought at Epsom, and he also acquired property in Lingfield. Nicholls was small in stature, but compact in frame and agile. He possessed a charming countenance, expressing dignity and benevolence, but his constitution never had been robust, and in his youth at Oxford he was dangerously ill of fever, from which he was rescued by the skill of two doctorsFrampton and Frewen. In after life he was afflicted with an "inveterate asthmatic cough." Dr. Johnson says that he hurt himself "extremely in his old age by lavish phlebotomy," no doubt in the hope that he might free himself from this malady. Still, he lived to a good old age, dying at Epsom on 7 January, 1778. His widow is said to have died at Epsom in the closing months of 1803 (Gent. Mag., 1803, Suppl., 1255). They had five children, three of whom died young. There survived a son John, to whom I may return at a later date, and a daughter Elizabeth, who married William Martin Trinder, at first M.D., and then in orders. By his will, dated 14 March, 1770, and proved 29 January, 1778, Nicholls confirmed his wife's jointure of 6,2697. 128. Old South Sea annuities, and of his property in Ockley, Rusper, and Ifield parishes, and left to her his lands in the parish of St. Giles-in-theFields. At her death everything came to John; to his daughter and her husband he left 201. each. Dr. Munk calls Nicholls the inventor of corroded anatomical preparations. He was one of the first to study and teach the In 1751 Nicholls brought a swarm of hornets about his head by publishing anonymously The Petition of the Unborn Babes to the Censors of the Royal College of Physicians,' in which he condemned the practice of man-midwifery by members of the College, and satirized the Scotch as well as some of his principal colleagues. An account of this pamphlet is contained in the life (pp. 124-6) by John Glaister of William Smellie, who speaks of him as "my old friend and preceptor Dr. Nicholls.” The midwives applauded him, and one of them is said to have presented him with a bank-note for 5007. The basis of the biography of Dr. Frank Nicholls is the Latin life of him by his pupil, Dr. Thomas Lawrence. Parr claimed to have found one fault in its Latinity, and he told Dr. Haviland to read and find it out by the next time he saw him (E. H. Barker, Lit. Anecdotes,' ii. 58). To this biography is prefixed an engraving of Nicholls by John Hall from a model by Isaac Gosset. W. P. COURTNEY. JUBILEE OF THE POST OFFICE A NOTE should be made of the jubilee of this institution, the only bank in the world which has 15,000 branch establishments, as stated by the PostmasterGeneral at the celebration at the Guildhall on the 3rd inst. To Gladstone its origin is due, and so rapidly did the working classes take advantage of it that within two years the amount deposited was nearly 3,500,0007. Scotland, however, had been in advance of England, for last year the Scotch Trustee Savings Bank celebrated its centenary. The last Report of the Postmaster-General shows what a marvellous success the Post Office Savings Bank has been. There were at the end of 1910 19,975,375 deposits, and the sum deposited in the year amounted to 46,205,870l., the deposits exceeding the in an anonymous letter at ** Quiddity, subtlety." ** Quillets, cavilling, chicanery,' Quidlibets.' Webster's 'Dictionary' says:— * Quiddity, a barbarous term used in school philosophy for essence." Quillet [Lat. Quidlibet, what you please], subtlety, nicety, fraudulent distinction, petty cant." withdrawals by 344.6897 The interest Clarendon Press:credited 3,949,461., to depositors was and the total amount standing to the credit of depositors on Savings Bank accounts on the 31st of December last was 168,890,2151.—an excess of 4,294,1501. over the balance due the end of the previous year. True, indeed, was Mr. Samuel's statement as to the far-seeing If we turn to a good English-German men who came forward and provided dictionary, we find quiddity translated what might be called the State stocking.' by Wesen, the German philosophical term Sir Charles W. Sikes (who, as stated in for pure being, and here we have, I think. the 'D.N.B., first broached the scheme the clue to the origin of the word. Those who to The Leeds know something of the older logic are aware Mercury in 1850), Mr. George Chetwynd, that quiddity" ("that which answers to Lord Stanley, and Mr. Gladstone-theirs the question quid? what?") is the English was the glory of having foreseen the need and utility of such an institution, and so equivalent to the first of the Aristotelian wisely framed was the Savings Bank at its categories or universal predicables, ovoía and signifies "substance." The word outset that the general principles and the quillet does not at first sight suggest chief regulations which were established anything of this kind, but the analogy of fifty years ago still prevail in the manage-"quiddit" may lead us to look a little ment of the Bank to-day. It is satisfactory further, and find in it “qualitas" or quality, to find from the Report that there was a the third of the categories, Tov. This, at decrease of 1,500l. in the management a more reasonable etyexpenses; that the amount to be voted any rate, seems by Parliament to make good the deficit of the year's working is 18,6491., as compared with 50,4811. for the year 1909; and that there is ground for hoping that the Post Office Savings Bank is once more about to show an annual surplus. The net surplus which the institution has yielded to the Exchequer since its foundation in 1861 is now 885,3831." JOHN COLLINS FRANCIS. SHAKESPEARIANA. 66 66 SHAKESPEARE'S QUIDDITS" AND QUILLETS."-These words occur in several of the plays, the first sometimes taking the form of "quiddity," thus: How now, how now, mad wag! What? in thy quips and thy quiddities? 1 Henry IV.,' I. ii. 51. 1 Henry VI.,' II. iv. 17. Timon of Athens,' IV. iii. 156. "Quiddit, quiddity, a subtle question." 66 mology than “quidlibet," to which Webster, the Globe Edition, the Clarendon Shakespeare, and the German lexicon all commit themselves. If this view is correct, and these are indeed travesties of terms occurring in the formal logic of the schools, the que tion arises, how do they come to bear the opprobrious meaning rightly attributed to them in the glossaries? To understand this, we must, I think, consider the prominent position held by logic in the older learning; it touched with one hand the common affairs of men, and reached with the other high into the realms of religion and philosophy; its phraseology found its way into literature and into all documents, including those of the law. It will be noticed that in three of the quotations given there is a direct allusion to the law or lawyers. and we can picture to ourselves a lawyer of the fifteenth or early sixteenth century defining some subject of litigation by means of the categories, thus : Quidditas, ager. Quantitas, jugera quinque. Nothing could be more natural than the use, by the uneducated, of a corruption of such terms as these--which, being quite unintelligible to them, would be stigmatized as legal jargon-to throw ridicule upon a profession which has always been credited by the masses, however unjustly, with a willingness to take advantage of any subtlety which may tell in favour of a client. Shakespeare wrote for the people, and we can find in this first scene the seeds used the people's language, but there are whence madness springs, they are to be indications that he was quite aware of the found rather in his departure from his more technical meaning of such a word, scheme of partition. for instance, as quality. In the well-known P. A. MCELWAINE. line with which Portia's speech in Merchant of Venice' begins The The quality of mercy is not strained, such a use may, I think, be found. I am aware that the line is usually regarded as meaning "Mercy is a quality which is free from constraint," but the more academic use of the word "quality" seems to give the better sense, which, if we must paraphrase a beautiful line into the baldest of prose, would stand thus: "The essential characteristic of mercy is spontaneity," ** not-strained" being united by a hyphen, as one word with a privative sense. T. P. BLUNT. LEAR, I. i.: THE DIVISION OF THE KINGDOM.-Most critics seem to think it necessary to offer some apology for Shakespeare's founding a play upon a gross improbability, and it has been pointed out by Coleridge, in justification of Shakespeare, that it was an old story rooted in the popular faith." If the declared love of his daughters be the motive of Lear's determination, and not Dublin. 'AS YOU LIKE IT,' IV. i. 172. Surely Rosalind did not say what the copies make her say "the most pathetical break-promise." "Apathetical is what she means, and what Shakespeare made her say: the prefix a privativum, which has been inadvertently omitted, should be restored to its place, if we would make the lady speak sense. PHILIP PERRING. 7, Lyndhurst Road, Exeter. 2 HENRY IV.,' II. iv. 21 (11 S. iv. 83, 243). Surely the explanation given by Steevens is by far the best. In the Cent. Dict.' utas (utis) is described as a M.E. word, derived from Old French utes ("octaves"), which means (1) an octave, the eight days of a festival; (2) bustle, excitement, carousal. Hence old utis " corresponds to the modern saying "a rare old time.' N. W. HILL. New York. Your correspondent (ante, p. 84), as I understand him, quotes Thersites as saying ́that same dog-fox, Ulysses, is not proved a mere incident in the transaction, then the worth a blackberry." May I point out that aged king is introduced to us as a light. Thersites says nothing of the kind? What frivolous, vain old man with a most bountiful he says is that the policy of Nestor and lack of good sense. But if his demand for a Ulysses [adjectives omitted] is not proved demonstration of affection be a mere after-worth a blackberry" (‘Troilus and Cressida,' V. iv. 9-12). J. FOSTER PALMER. thought, an unhappy inspiration arising out The partition of the kingdom is not "the first act of Lear's developing insanity." If 8, Royal Avenue, S.W. THE CORPORATION OF LONDON AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION.-Considering the frequency with which a medical man occupies the civic chair of a provincial town, it is certainly remarkable that in London, with a municipal history of eight centuries, one should now do so for the first time in the person of Sir Thomas Boor Crosby, the new Lord Mayor. The reason is, I believe, domestic. In London, I understand, it is the custom to select the chief magistrate from a restricted number of Livery Companies. To this number do not belong the two guilds having an affinity with the profession of medicine, namely, the Apothecaries' Company and the Barber-Surgeons' Company. Not only has the chief magistracy of London been a sort of forbidden fruit to doctors, but the occupancy by them of other high civic posts has been extremely rare. I believe it will be found that the three following instances form a complete list of the tenancy by medical men of such positions: (1) Thomas Morestede, surgeon to Henry IV. and Henry V., was Sheriff in 1436; (2) Sir John Ayliffe, sergeant-surgeon to Henry VIII. and Edward VI., was Sheriff in 1548; and (3) Edward Arris, surgeon to Oliver Cromwell, was Alderman in 1651. S. D. CLIPPINGDALE, M.D. How many poets have had acute musical perception? and how many composers have shown an artistic pleasure in the rhythm of prose or of blank verse? Was the metrical genius Swinburne strikingly musical ? People who are unable to dance, because they have no musical sense, yet appreciate the cadences of prose and poetry. Their dullness of ear in one respect does not prevent acuteness in a more general way. The person who cannot tell one tune from another may hear the high-pitched shriek of a bat when his companions are unable to A SHAKESPEARE AT BARKING, ESSEX, 1595.-At the Archdeaconry of Essex Court, held at Romford, 26 May, 1595, William Nevell brought in the inventory of Edward | do so. Snaggs of Barking, deceased. The mention of his shears and iron shows him to be a tailor. The 'flagen chare" was, no doubt, a rush-bottomed chair; and the " shurtt ban," shirt band, suggests a shirt, not included in the list, possibly because he was buried in it. "A not of the aparelle ande goodes of Edward Snagges, Praysed by Jams Shackespere, Thomas Duntone, Thomas Fisher, as fowellethe: RHYTHM AND MUSIC.-The reviewer of Mr. Sidney Low's 'De Quincey' (ante, p. 300) quotes a criticism to the effect that since Charles Lamb was deficient in musical perception, he also lacked a sense of the rhythmical in prose composition. My own personal experience is that the faculty of detecting metre has little to do with music. I have an ear so dull, musically, that I do not distinguish one note from the next above or below it in the scale, yet I still remember trivial sentences which people used in my early childhood, simply because they fell into metre. Further, in reading prose I have no difficulty in distinguishing a line which is accidentally metrical, though I have never been able to discover how sight alone tells the brain that the words are rhythmical. One of my acquaintances who has a very sensitive musical ear said to me not long ago: "What a pity it is that you are not musical! for when you hum or chant metre, you have an accurate sense of time.' This same acquaintance and others similarly gifted have no delight in the rhythmical beauty of some parts of the Old Testament. They fail to notice it, in fact. The effect of the vibrations which cause one note to be unlike another was not perceived by Lamb; but a man may fail to detect the quality of such differing vibrations, and yet exercise discrimination in verbal sounds and cadences. This discrimination, however, is not necessarily accompanied by the power of writing rhythmically. Not all the worshippers of inspired prose can attain to beauty of style. L. C. 66 METRICAL PROSE.-" Metrical," in what your reviewer (ante, p. 300) says of the quality of the best prose," is, I presume, a slip for "rhythmical"; he would scarcely praise metrical prose, or attribute it to De Quincey. Such sentences as Dickens almost invariably writes when he becomes emotional-e.g., And still her former self lay there, unaltered in this change "-are surely vicious in any prose, and they will not be found, I fancy, in any great master. They occur on almost every page of the last i chapters of The Old Curiosity Shop,' from which the one I quote is taken. C. C. B. 66 |