That Mr Dixon never consulted the memoir itself, in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, we shall by-and-by have an opportunity of showing. That memoir, worthless as an authority, has become notorious for the calumny it originated. But this collator of documents, this inquirer after traditions, this maker of unimaginable researches, has never turned over the pages of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for that obituary which, owing to its slanderous attack, has excited so much controversy in all the biographies of Howard, his own included. This wife, so singularly selected, died two or three years after her marriage. Howard is again free and solitary, and again betakes himself to travel. We are in the year 1755, and the great earthquake of Lisbon has laid that city in ruins. He goes to see the grand and terrific spectacle. Dr Aikin calls it a sublime curiosity. We presume that no other motive than curiosity impelled him on this occasion; it would be certainly very difficult to suggest any other. No difficulties, however, daunt Mr Dixon. According to him,--"Howard, attracted by reports of the unexampled sufferings of the survivors, no sooner found himself at his own disposal, than he determined to haste with all possible speed to their assistance!" Single-handed, he was to cope with the earthquake. Lisbon, however, he was not fated to reach. The vessel he sailed in was taken by a French privateer, and he, with the rest of the passengers and crew, carried into Brest, and there retained prisoner of war. The calamities of imprisonment he here endured himself, and under no mild form: afterwards, when other circumstances had drawn his attention to the condition of the prisoners, the remembrance of his own sufferings came in aid of his compassion for others. "Perhaps," he says, in the preface to his first report, "what I suffered on this occasion increased my sympathy with the unhappy people, whose case is the subject of this book." Released upon parole, he returned to England, obtained his exchange, and then sat himself down on his estate at Cardington. Here he occupied himself in plans to ameliorate the condition of his tenantry. Scientific studies, and the study of medicine, to which, from time to time, he had applied himself, also engaged his attention. It was at this period he was elected a member of the Royal Society, not assuredly, as Mr Thomas Taylor presumes, from the "value attached" to a few communications upon the state of the weather, but, as Dr Aikin sensibly tells us, "in conformity to the laudable practice of that society, of attaching gentlemen of fortune and leisure to the interests of knowledge, by incorporating them into that body."