_Hydropathy_ (Vol. ix., p. 395.).--"John Smith, C.M." (_i. e._ clock-maker), of the parish of St. Augustin, London, was the author of several pamphlets. He published in the year 1723 a treatise in recommendation of the medicinal use of water as "a universal remedy," as well by drinking as by applying it externally to the body. In the British Museum there is a French translation of it, which appeared in Paris, A.D. 1725. This is a proof of the notoriety which the treatise obtained. The tenth edition, dated "Edinburgh, 1740," contains additions communicated by Mr. Ralph Thoresby, F.R.S., and others. In the year 1695 he published a short treatise entitled _A designed End to the Socinian Controversy; or, a rational and plain Discourse to prove, that no other Person but the Father of Christ is God Most High_. This attracted the notice of the civil power, and by order of parliament it was burnt, and the author prosecuted. (See Wallace's _Anti-Trinitarian Biography_, vol. iii. p. 398., London, 1850.) N. W. S. _Leslie and Dr. Middleton_ (Vol. ix., p. 324.).-- "Middleton was one of the men who sought for twenty years some historical facts that might conform to Leslie's four conditions, and yet evade Leslie's logic."--_Blackwood's Magazine_, July, 1842, p. 5. J. O. B. _Lord Brougham and Horne Tooke_ (Vol. ix., p. 398.).--I have not Lord Brougham's book before me, but I have no doubt but that Q. has missed the meaning of his lordship. The reference would probably be to Horne Tooke's anticipation of the strange immoral reveries of Emerson and others, that _truth_ is entirely subjective; because the word bears etymological relation to "to trow," to think, or believe: and so _truth_ has no objective existence, but is merely what a man troweth. If that be an argument, Lord Brougham would say then the law of libel would be unjust, merely because "libel" means primarily a little book; he might have added that, according to Horne Tooke and Mr. Emerson, if a man had been killed by falling against a post at Charing Cross, a jury might deny the fact of the violent death, because "post" means a place for depositing letters, and he had not been near St. Martin's-le-grand. The remark of Lord Brougham is not as to a fact, but is a _reductio ad absurdum_. W. DENTON. It is suggested to Q. (Bloomsbury), that Lord Brougham meant not to say that Horne Tooke _had ever held_ or _maintained_ this strange doctrine, "that the law of libel was unjust and absurd, because libel means a little book," but that he _would_ have done so, or might have done so consistently with his etymological theory, namely, that the _present_ sense of words is to be sought in their primitive signification: _e.g._, in the _Diversions of Purley_, vol. ii. p. 403., Horne Tooke says,--