t
was then also that Sir Walter Scott, meeting him "surrounded by a
little band of northern literati," saw and heard what he felt he was
never to see or hear again--"the alert, kind, benevolent old man,
his talents and fancy overflowing on every subject, with his
attention alive to everyone's question his information at everyone's
command." Campbell, the poet, who saw him later, in the beginning
of 1819 (he was then eighty-three), describes him as so full of
anecdote, that he spent one of the most amusing days he had ever had
with him. Lord Brougham, later still, in the summer of the same
year, found his instructive conversation and his lively and even
playful manner unchanged. But in the autumn of this year, on August
19th, he expired tranquilly at his house at Heathfield. He was
buried at Handsworth. A tribute to his memory was but tardily
rendered by the nation.

Jeffrey and Arago added more elaborate tributes to Watt's genius;
and Wordsworth has declared that he looked upon him, considering his
magnitude and universality, "as perhaps the most extraordinary man
that this country has ever produced." His noblest monument is,
however, his own work.

DR. EDWARD JENNER

By JOHN TIMBS, F.S.A.

(1749-1823)

[Illustration: Dr. Edward Jenner.]

Few of the many thousand ills which human flesh is heir to, have
spread such devastation among the family of man as small-pox. Its
universality has ranged from the untold tribes of savages to the
silken baron of civilization; and its ravages on life and beauty
have been shown in many a sad tale of domestic suffering. To stay
the destroying hand of such a scourge, which by some has been
identified with the Plague of Athens, was reserved for Edward
Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination.

The great fact can, however, be traced half a century before
Jenner's time. In the journal of John Byron, F.R.S., under date June
3, 1725, it is recorded that: "At a meeting of the Royal Society,
Sir Isaac Newton presiding, Dr. Jurin read a case of small-pox,
where a girl who had been inoculated and had been vaccinated, was
tried and had them not again; but another [a] boy, caught the
small-pox from this girl, and had the confluent kind and died."

This case occurred at Hanover. The inoculation of the girl seems to
have failed entirely; it was suspected that she had not taken the true
small-pox; doubts, however, were removed, as a boy, who daily saw the
girl, fell ill and died, "havi