MR. NEWTON.
This author wrote a work entitled "Defence of Vegetable Regimen." It is often quoted by Shelley, the poet, and others. I know nothing of the author or of his works, except through Shelley, who gives us some of his views, and informs us that seventeen persons, of all ages, consisting of Mr. Newton's family and the family of Dr. Lambe, who is elsewhere mentioned in this work, had, at the time he wrote, lived seven years on a pure vegetable diet, and without the slightest illness. Of the seventeen, some of them were infants, and one of them was almost dead with asthma when the experiment was commenced, but was already nearly cured by it; and of the family of Mr. N., Shelley testifies that they were "the most beautiful and healthy creatures it is possible to conceive"—the girls "perfect models for a sculptor"—and their dispositions "the most gentle and conciliating."
The following paragraph is extracted from Mr. Newton's "Defence," and will give us an idea of his sentiments. He was speaking of the fable of Prometheus:
"Making allowance for such transposition of the events of the allegory as time might produce after the important truths were forgotten, the drift of the fable seems to be this: Man, at his creation, was endowed with the gift of perpetual youth, that is, he was not formed to be a sickly, suffering creature, as we now see him, but to enjoy health, and to sink by slow degrees into the bosom of his parent earth, without disease or pain. Prometheus first taught the use of animal food, and of fire, with which to render it more digestible and pleasing to the taste. Jupiter and the rest of the gods, foreseeing the consequences of these inventions, were amused or irritated at the short-sighted devices of the newly-formed creature, and left him to experience the sad effects of them. Thirst, the necessary concomitant of a flesh diet, ensued; other drink than water was resorted to, and man forfeited the inestimable gift of health, which he had received from heaven; he became diseased, the partaker of a precarious existence, and no longer descended into his grave slowly."