not been for actual quotations given by one correspondent only (1st S. viii. 565), that journal would have handed him down as a man of some real learning. An extraordinary man he certainly was it is not one illiterate shoemaker in a thousand who could work upon such a singular mass of Sanscrit and Greek words, without showing evidence of being able to read a line in any language but his own, or to spell that correctly. He was an uneducated Godfrey Higgins.
A few extracts will put this in a strong light: one for history of science, one for astronomy, and one for philology:—
'Sir Isaac Newton was of opinion that "the atmosphere of the earth was the sensory of God; by which he was enabled to see quite round the earth:" which proves that Sir Isaac had no idea that God could see through the earth.
Sir Richard [Phillips] has given the most rational explanation of the cause of the earth's elliptical orbit that I have ever seen in print. It is because the earth presents its watery hemisphere to the sun at one time and that of solid land the other; but why has he made his Oxonian astonished at the coincidence? It is what I taught in my attic twelve years before.
Again, admitting that the Eloim were powerful and intelligent beings that managed these things, we would accuse them of being the authors of all the sufferings of Chrisna. And as they and the constellation of Leo were below the horizon, and consequently cut off from the end of the zodiac, there were but eleven constellations of the zodiac to be seen the three at the end were wanted, but those three would be accused of bringing Chrisna into the troubles which at last ended in his death. All this would be expressed in the Eastern language by saying that Chrisna was persecuted by those Judoth Ishcarioth!!!!! [the five notes of exclamation are the author's]. But the astronomy of those distant ages, when the sun was at the south pole in winter, would leave five of those Decans cut off from our view, in the latitude of twenty-eight degrees; hence Chrisna died of wounds from five Decans, but the whole five may be included in Judoth Ishcarioth! for the phrase means the men that are wanted at the extreme parts. Ishcarioth is a compound of ish, a man, and carat wanted or taken away, and oth the plural termination, more ancient than im…'
I might show at length how Michael is the sun, and the D'-ev-'l, in French Di-ob-al, also 'L-evi-ath-an—the evi being the radical part both of devil and leviathan—is the Nile, which the sun dried up. for. Moses to pass: a battle celebrated by Jude. Also how Moses, the same name as Muses, is from mesha, drawn out of the water, and hence we called our land which is saved from the water by the name of marsh.' But it will be of more use to collect the character of S. A. M. from such correspondents of
