[154] Probably Jacob Bryant, 1715-1804, author of An Address to Dr. Priestley upon his Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity, 1780; Treatise on the Authenticity of the Scriptures, 1792; The Sentiments of Philo-Judæus concerning the Logos or Word of God, 1797, etc. Allibone’s Dictionary, i. 270.
[155] “Ode to the Departing-Year,” published in the Cambridge Intelligencer, December 24, 1796. The lines on the “Empress,” to which Thelwall objected, are in the first epode:—
No more on Murder’s lurid face
The insatiate Hag shall gloat with drunken eye.
Poetical Works, p. 79.
[156] Compare the well-known description of Dorothy Wordsworth, in a letter to Cottle of July, 1797: “W. and his exquisite sister are with me. She is a woman, indeed,—in mind I mean, and heart. Her information various. Her eye watchful in minutest observation of nature; and her taste a perfect electrometer. It bends, protrudes, and draws in, at subtlest beauties and most recondite faults.”
Bennett’s, or the gold leaf electroscope, is an instrument for “detecting the presence, and determining the kind of electricity in any body.” Two narrow strips of gold leaf are attached to a metal rod, terminating in a small brass plate above, contained in a glass shade, and these under certain conditions of the application of positive and negative electricity diverge or collapse.
The gold leaf electroscope was invented by Abraham Bennett in 1786. Cottle’s Early Recollections, i. 252; Ganot’s Physics, 1870, p. 631.
[157] His tract On the Strength of the Existing Government (the Directory) of France, and the Necessity of supporting it, was published in 1796.
The translator, James Losh, described by Southey as “a provincial counsel,” was at one time resident in Cumberland, and visited Coleridge at Greta Hall. At a later period he settled at Jesmond, Newcastle. His name occurs among the subscribers to The Friend. Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 453.
[158] Compare stanzas eight and nine of “The Mad Ox:”—