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The Art of Brewing, on Scientific Complaints of the Liver, Nerves, and Stomach. Principles. Adapted to the Use of Brewers LONDON: PRINTED AT THE CAXTON PRESS, BY H. FISHER. MEMOIR OF JEREMIAH HOLMES WIFFEN, ESQ. (With a Portrait.) AMONGST the various proofs of improvement in the taste and manners of the times in which we live, that cannot fail to strike every attentive observer, the encouragement afforded to polite literature, of late years, by the Society of Friends, is by no means the least remarkable. Half a century ago, and poor John Scott, of Amwell, was severely lectured, and half unchristianized, by the strict sect to which he belonged, for devoting the leisure afforded him by an independent fortune, to the heathenish service of the Muses; yet now we have at least two poets of considerable talent, who mingle in the very first of our literary circles, in the plain habiliments of the Quaker, unreproved and uncondemned by the religious community to which they belong. We allude to Bernard Barton, and the subject of the present brief notice, of whom it is no disparagement to his friend and brother poet to say, that he is incomparably the best scholar and most elegant genius which that community has hitherto produced. [1824. school, in Yorkshire, the public academical institution of this strictly moral, if somewhat singular, sect. Here he distinguished himself by the display of considerable aptitude for learning, and by a steady and uniform excellence in all the branches of education taught there, bearing off, on most public examinations, the prizes proposed for successful competition in each of them. In an establishment where the greatest caution is used in the introduction of works of imagination, our embryo poet had little opportunity for gratifying his taste in reading; yet, in spite of the restrictions by which he was surrounded, he managed even there to procure Pope's translation of Homer, and soon became familiar with that noble poem, several books of which he committed to memory, as he also did the whole of Dryden's Palemon and Arcite, and of Campbell's exquisite poem, the Pleasures of Hope. His imagination, naturally vivid, and fond of romantic incident, was thus cultivated and rendered fruitful; and numbers of his schoolfellows still remember with interest, the tales which, for hours on the stretch, he was in the habit of relating to them; inventing, as he went He was born on the 30th of Decem- along, the characters, incidents, plot, ber, 1792, at Woburn, in Bedford- and catastrophe, and embellishing his shire, of parents, both of whom were narrative of the marvellous, the pamembers of this highly respectable thetic, and the humorous, (for of gesect of Christians. Taught to read nuine humour he has no inconsiderby a most excellent mother, still liv-able share, though displayed but to ing, as soon as he could speak,-from his friends,) with all the charms of his earliest years he was seldom with- | language which he could bring to his out a book about him; and his first assistance. attachments were poetical,-for, no sooner could he form letters and words, than he was continually writing out verses, Mallett's, pathetic ballad of Edwin and Emma making the earliest and deepest impression on his mind. At seven years of age he was sent to a school at Hitchin, in Hertfordshire, conducted by Mr. G. Blaxland, a member of the Society of Friends; and, at the expiration of two years, was removed to Ackworth No. 72.-VOL. VI. | Whilst at Ackworth, he also learnt the art of engraving on wood, and executed several series of cuts for the booksellers of Pontefract and Leeds. The love of poetry and reading, gradually settled down into a passion; and when it became necessary for him, at the usual period, to chuse his occupation in life, he fixed upon that of tuition, as affording the best opportunities for a continued application to his favourite literary pursuits. 3 Y Immediately on leaving school, which he did between the age of thirteen and fourteen, he was accordingly apprenticed to Mr. Isaac Payne, a member of the Society of Friends, at the head of a highly respectable academy at Epping, in Essex, who engaged to instruct him in Latin and French, with neither of which languages had his education, according to the strict and anti-classical notions of the religious persuasion to which he belonged, permitted him to form an acquaintance. For the acquisition of these, he soon found, however, that he must depend altogether upon his own exertions, and he accordingly applied himself to them with such unremitted assiduity, that he anxiously devoted to their pursuits every moment of leisure which he could command during the day, with the greater portion of the night; and by such exertions was soon able to read the Latin classics, and found no difficulty in mastering any of the French authors. He then applied with similar assiduity to the Greek, and succeeded so well, that, though self-taught, he translated, at the age of fifteen, with great spirit, the admirable ode of Sappho, known to most of our readers by Philips's translation, beginning with "Blest as the immortal gods is he." In the midst of this extraordinary devotion to the acquisition of languages, without the assistance of any living teacher, he found time to cultivate his poetical taste; and many productions of this period of his life, indicative of the excellency to which he has since attained in his favourite art, are still in the possession of the friends and companions of his youthful days, with one of the earliest and most intimate of whom, long since diverted from the charms of poetry to the turmoils of the bar, he, even at this age, maintained a very voluminous correspondence on the subjects of poetry and criticism; many of their letters written in hours stolen from the slumbers of the night, filling ten or a dozen closely written sheets. These, however, were bright spots in a cheerless and a lonely destiny; for, at Epping, he was any thing but happy; and, far from his friends, shut out from all sympathy, and often from common kindness, he was thrown upon his own resources, upon retirement, and the solaces of religion, for com fort. His Aspley Wood, the principal in his first volume of published poems, imbodies, indeed, much of the feeling which he at this period indulged, flying for refuge from the disappointment of his fondest expectations, to the vast forest there, and nourishing in its deepest recesses, the melancholy tone of mind which so often tends to form the poetical enthusiast. With such feelings, it was with joy that he returned home to his native scenes and beloved family on the expiration of his apprenticeship, in 1822, in the summer of which year he established, in his mother's house, a boarding-school, in the conduct of which, although but between nineteen and twenty years of age, he met with great encouragement, and gave universal satisfaction.-It was about the period of his coming of age, that he first ventured, as an author, beyond the pages of the magazines, in which his occasional pieces had for some years made their appearance; publishing, in 1813, in conjunction with the Rev. Thomas (now Dr.) Raffles, of Liverpool, and James Baldwin Brown, Esq. then a student of the Inner Temple, of which society he has for several years been a barrister, a small volume, under the title of "Poems by Three Friends." To these amusements of the leisure hours of himself and friends, in their earlier years, was prefixed a poetical dedication to the author of the Pleasures of Hope, the production of Mr. Wilfen's pen, and the means of introducing him to a personal acquaintance with a poet, whose master-piece had principally contributed to form and to cherish his own taste. With the kindness which distinguishes him, Mr. Campbell received this volume as the precursor of far better things to come; an expectation which the very different pursuits of some of its authors will perhaps render abortive, in as far as they are concerned, but which, in the instance before us, has been most abundantly realized. The approbation of such a man, added to the very favourable notice of the work by most of the periodical critics, excited in him a strong desire for the attainment of greater excellence in the art; but it was not until the year 1819 that he printed a volume of poems, called "Aonian Hours," of which the principal piece, |