Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/548

 the advantages with which, as an Edinburgh student, he had already become acquainted. But, whatever might be his wish to become once more a student, it did not abate his industry, or lead him to waste the passing hours.

Like all young men of studious habits, he commenced many essays, on many subjects; but his essays, unlike those of most young men, contain great proofs of reflection and judgment. To one note book, apparently commenced at Birmingham, in 1818, is prefixed a motto from Harvey's Conclave of Physicians; “ That which is the soul of a physician, and animates those previous dispositions, (for theory is no other,) is sagacity and observation.” No sentence could better have characterised him who copied it, and followed the advice which it conveys. He began essays on vaccination, on contagion, on the functions of arteries, and on neuralgia; the last in Latin. For the press he composed slowly, with little care for words, but great anxiety for the matter; and he was never satisfied until he had referred, on any subject which occupied him at the time, to every author of repute whose works were within his reach, although he surrendered his deliberate judgment to none. It seems to me that it would be an officious and spurious act of friendship to publish what he evidently thought too unfinished for publication; but even these fragments are worthy of him. Among the notes of his general reading, one, suggested by the perusal of the Life of Bishop Watson, forcibly attracted my attention. It related to the early part of the bishop's life, and was curiously illustrative of his own ambition, his difficulties, and his success; so