‘Is Doctor Horace Wilkinson at home?’

‘I am he. Pray step in.’

The visitor looked somewhat astonished at having the door opened to him by the master of the house.

‘I wanted to have a few words.’

The doctor, a pale, nervous young man, dressed in an ultra-professional, long black frock-coat, with a high white collar cutting off his dapper sidewhiskers in the centre, rubbed his hands together and smiled. In the thick, burly man in front of him he scented a patient, and it would be his first. His scanty resources had begun to run somewhat low; and, although he had his first quarter's rent safely locked away in the right-hand drawer of his desk, it was becoming a question with him how he should meet the current expenses of his very simple house-keeping. He bowed, therefore, waved his visitor in, closed the hall door in a careless fashion, as though his own presence thereat had been a purely accidental circumstance, and finally led the burly stranger into his scantily-furnished front room, where he motioned him to a seat. Doctor Wilkinson planted himself behind his desk, and, placing his finger-tips together, he gazed with some apprehension at his companion. What was the matter with the man? He seemed very red in the face. Some of his old professors would have diagnosed his case by now, and would have electrified the patient by describing his own symptoms before he had said a word about them. Doctor Horace Wilkinson racked his brains for some clue, but Nature had fashioned him as a plodder—a very reliable plodder, and nothing more. He could think of nothing save that the visitor's watch-chain had a very brassy appearance, with a corollary to the effect that he would be lucky if he got half-a-crown out of him. Still, even half-a-crown was something in those early days of struggle.

Whilst the doctor had been running his eyes over the stranger, the latter had been plunging his hands into pocket after pocket of his heavy coat. The heat of the weather, his dress, and this exercise of pocket rummaging had all combined to still further redden his face, which had changed from brick to beet, with a gloss of moisture on his brow.

The Animal Apocalypse is an allegorical history in which various species of animals stand in for humans and groups of humans of both good and ill repute – something like Animal Farm for the ancient world. At this point, here in my opening paragraph, I would normally provide a summary of the dating, provenance, contents, and literary and theological themes of the Animal Apocalypse. It is the purpose of this chapter, however, to radically re-evaluate all of these descriptors. We should begin, then, with this: what is the Animal Apocalypse?

The Book of Dreams (1 En 83–90) contains two dreams, which seem to represent two subsidiary works, meaning (as we have previously established the function of the term “work”) that they represent two separate hypothesized sites of composition. The first, corresponding to Gəʿəz Enoch chapters 83–4, is sometimes called the Flood Vision. The second, corresponding to Gəʿəz Enoch chapters 85–90, is called the Animal Apocalypse and is the independent subject of a great many articles and monographs. It is the Animal Apocalypse that will be the subject of this chapter.

Here is the crux of the issue with the Animal Apocalypse: Our documents of the work attest similar but different texts, especially when it comes to length. The documentary sets we will discuss here are fragments from Qumran sorted into three Aramaic manuscripts, as well as Ethiopic codices dating from the fifteenth century onwards. There are also two Greek witnesses that contain about five verses apiece that will be addressed along the way, though their fragmentary nature limits their impact on our conclusions.

Our earliest documents from Qumran contain the least amount of text. Our latest documents, the Ethiopic codices, contain the most. Scholars have granted the later Ethiopic tradition conceptual priority in determining what comprises the “work” of the Animal Apocalypse: the Animal Apocalypse is 1 En 85–90. This means that the Animal Apocalypse, the work, is understood to be the series of words-in-order – the text – that we find in the Ethiopic manuscript tradition. The work becomes equivalent to one text or set of words-in-order. This is a conceptual collapse between two philological levels, but imagining the full “work” by way of text that emerges from the best preserved documentary set is an understandable attraction.

The day being fixed for the ceremony of cutting down the first tree in the market-place-to-be of Judiville, Mr. Hoskins took upon himself to make every kind of befitting and proper preparation. He communicated with nobody as to his intentions, but went about from morning to night, sometimes with the carpenters, sometimes with the blacksmith. Robin alone was in his confidence; and for two days we saw but little of him, so busy was he too about the preparations.

I cannot deny that I was in the mean time as curious to know what they were doing as Bailie Waft himself, who had never got such a job in hand from the hour of his birth. He did nothing all day long but wander from Dan to Beersheba, and speak of the doing that was to be done to every body he met, enquiring what it could possibly be that kept Mr. Hoskins so constantly afoot: at last he happened to get a glimpse behind the curtain, and came primed and proud with his discovery to the store, where I was longing for information.

“Do you know, Mr. Todd,” said he, “what they can have propounded by yon great iron hoops that the blacksmith is making; for he, like the rest, is as unanswering as his own bellows; what can they be for? and then the big log that the carpenters are boring, and which I thought, and I dare say every body thought, was for a pump: they never put their wumble farther into it than a foot or so, and then they sawed off the bored piece, and began to bore again, till they have made seven curiosities out of it, which I do not understand.”

“I’ll lay my lugs, Mr. Waft,” was my reply, “they are cannon, and the iron hoops are to keep them from bursting.”

Sure enough it proved so, and Robin was busy making cartridges out of a keg of powder for them.

Play of Shadows

Necropolitics casts shadows on modern biopolitical orders, a darkness in powers of light, death permeating knowledge of life. The necessary antithesis to and stain upon calculations promoting the health, hygiene and vitality of populations, necropolitics arises when life protects itself at any cost (Foucault 1976, 137). Death conditions biopower's emergence, the point at which the sovereign right to take life and let live is displaced in favour of ‘making live and letting die’, an imperative ‘to foster life or disallow it to the point of death’ (Foucault 2003b, 247; 1976, 136–8). Calibrating life in systems of measurement, control, forecasting and demographics, biopower embraces science, politics and society and is ‘an indispensable element in the history of capitalism’ (Foucault 1976, 140–1). Marginalised, death never disappears, becoming ‘something permanent’ that gnaws at life and serves as a justification for the ‘murderous function of the State’ (Foucault 1976, 138; 2003b, 244, 256). Informing decisions on ethics, research, investment and training, biopower inhabits every aspect of modern existence: policing borders and disciplinary norms; activating the sovereign extra-legal powers of a ‘state of exception’ against real and perceived threats of invasion, terror or infection. Shadowy, faceless and even fictionalised enemies sustain the urgency of exceptionality, doubling similarly crepuscular and spectral powers of biopolitical sovereignty (Hardt and Negri 2000, 2; 2006, 7; Mbembe 2019, 70). Distinctions between life and death, biopolitics and necropolitics are neither fixed nor secure: ‘bios’ can readily turn into ‘thanatos’ (Agamben 1999, 82, 131). Some lives have value and can be sacrificed, while others may be killed: ‘bios’ (life rendered meaningful in political and symbolic terms) and ‘zoe’ (‘bare life’ excluded from value and meaning) continually remodulate each other without external or transcendent authority in a ‘zone of indistinction’ that is also a ‘shadow ground’ (Agamben 1998, 2, 105–6).

United States

We start with a paradox – religion in general, and Christianity in particular, has been far more influential on the society and politics of the USA throughout its history than on those of other Western nations like France, the UK or Germany over that same period – and this is especially true in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At the same time, the USA has since its founding emphasised freedom of religion and a legal separation between church and state, which is more formally called disestablishment. Indeed, the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which was adopted as part of the Bill of Rights in 1791, formalises these two intimately related commitments. The first two clauses of the First Amendment read: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof’. By contrast, many other Western nations have an official state church, or did until far more recently. While most of these nations also have laws protecting religious freedom, religion has become less and less influential on the culture and politics (deeply connected of course) of those countries, and survey data consistently show a significantly higher percentage of the population is atheist than in the USA. The separation of church and state does not require the segregation of religious and moral values from public life – indeed, the legal separation can strengthen the integration of faith values into public life, even politics.

The principal theory that resolves this seeming contradiction revolves around both theological and practical rationales for freedom of conscience with respect to religious conviction. Many of the colonies were founded by Protestant Evangelicals and were heavily influenced by their theology. Prominent among them were Reformational Protestants, Congregationalists, Methodists, Baptists and even Anabaptists. One commonality between many of these groups was the idea that to be genuine, faith must be personal, voluntaristic – that is to say, it must be freely chosen by the individual believer. As such, establishing a particular religion or Christian church as the state church with the sanction and support of the government constitutes an unacceptable form of coercion. Or, to think about it another way, the government establishment of religion has the effect of weakening rather than strengthening personal faith and religion.

Four doctrinal loci order this essay: Scripture, Trinity, kingdom and eschatology. Though far from exhaustive when tasked with surveying this region, each locus highlights ruptures marking the theological landscapes of Canada and the USA. These ruptures simultaneously reflect and provoke questions of authority, access, power, identity, place and language amid talk of the divine. As an example: who (the Triune God, theologians, colonisers) or what (Scripture, sociopolitical institutions) defines concepts such as ‘traditional’ and ‘disruptive’? This question is but one in a field of enquiry as vast as the acreage from Montreal to San Jose, California. Amid such vastness, the aforementioned doctrines offer theological landmarks of a sort. More precisely, they form a confessional quadrilateral that is at once bounded, yet porous, akin to the diversity of North American interpretations of Christianity.

In systematic, and typically more Eurocentric, expositions, prolegomena serve as ports of entry. They map terrains to be covered, track elements of methodology and post epistemological boundaries. Across dusty and recent pasts, however, many ‘first words’ failed to dissect structures of colonisation, systems of exploitation and economies of extraction that privileged certain voices at the expense of others. Said failures blocked access to the sacred as demarcated by biases both implicit and explicit.

A prolegomenon disrupted, however, attests to the dynamisms of North American theological endeavours. It speaks neither first nor last words definitively, but rather to the threefold form of the Word and to the pluriform expressions of divine revelation. It seeks to attend to the spectrum of lived Christianities that populate the region, cognisant that no one document can encompass the vitality of these evolving faith systems. Thus a prolegomenon disrupted is less a ‘first words’ than an ‘other words’ method.

These other words accentuate the contested reality of Christianity in North America. Across borders national, state and theological, notions such as conservative, liberal, heretic, literal, metaphoric, social justice, Bible-based, orthodox, mainline, progressive, secular, eco-spirituality, true believer, end-times and ‘spiritual, but not religious’ attempt to coexist. Often, however, they compete for sanctified validation.

Amid such contestation, this essay approaches Scripture, Trinity, kingdom and eschatology as confessions both concentrated and expansive. As concentrated expressions of faith, these doctrines crystallise theological resonances across difference. It is key, however, to remain mindful that resonances co-opted by human drives for empire-making have risked and continue to risk calcification into ideology or idolatry.

After the vexations rehearsed in the preceding chapter, the light for some time was under my eyes, a glare and strange dazzle disturbed the forms and the colours of every object, and I had a sense of bewilderment which caused me to suffer both from fear and distrust. I was as a man who hath a malady upon him, and cannot tell in what way he is affected.

I rose with the dawn of day and walked abroad alone, though the winter was drawing her chains closer, and driving home her bars. I thought of what my wife had said about changing our residence, and sometimes I was inclined to yield to that suggestion, and then speculated as to where we should go. In the evening twilight I also rambled by myself, and often did not return until the moon was up, and the leading star of the night was muffling its lustre in the western mists and amidst the top boughs of the forest.

I was almost dejected, and my mind was saddened with dismay; I could give no sound reason, as things go with mortal man, for this alienation from all the interests in which I took so lively a part. I had but one truly consoling reflection—I was not obliged to abide at Judiville longer than suited my own purposes.

One afternoon I went forth by myself in the mood I have described, the complexion of my thoughts as pale as sickliness, and the condition of my spirits nervous and shaken. I turned my step towards the Falls, to which a tolerable path through the forest was by this time trodden out; and as I walked along, and heard the faroff roar of the cataract swelling through the stillness of the evening air, it seemed to me as if there was a solemn composure in Nature which I had never observed before; the calm and clear iciness of the air, had, as it were, a crystalline crispness in it; a something of winter felt but unseen.

The royal borough of Chucky Stanes, like every other town of the kind, enjoys an undue proportion of ladies in a state of single blessedness. The house I rented there belonged to Miss Beeny Needles, a venerable damsel of that description. Her father, far back in the last century, had held the dignity of Provost. In the plenitude of his magisterial pomp, he erected the edifice, where Miss Beeny, with her niece Mrs. Greenknowe, the widow of a much respected surgeon, held court, or, more properly, sat in expectation of being courted.

The husband of Mrs. Greenknowe had died, as Miss Beeny herself told me, much and justly regretted, about twelve months before; and having left his wife, though without incumbrance, in very narrow circumstances, Miss Beeny received her as an inmate and companion; the widow, luckily, at that time having let her own house furnished to an English family, who came for a few months, to enjoy the romantic scenery of the Tweed. It happened, however, that this family, not meeting with society quite so elegant in Chucky Stanes as they had been led to expect, soon after their arrival gave up the house, and moved to another part of the country. Thus it came to pass, that the two ladies agreed to move for the summer into the house of Mrs. Greenknowe, which was in the borough, and that Miss Beeny's house—the Hillocks on the skirts of the town—invited tenants for the season, and was rented by me.

Of the house, I need say but little; it was a plain, comfortable, manselike dwelling, standing on the top of a bank which sloped steeply to the river. The garden did not altogether equal the description; but, upon the whole, I was content with my bargain, especially as the maiden servant left in charge was an obliging, thorough-going quean, and needed but few directions in her duty. She was neat and economical in her management.

From the time it was understood that both Mr. Hoskins and the Albany Land Company intended to plant villages, a pause in the progression of Babelmandel took place, and several settlers, who had come with the intention of remaining there, went and took lots at Judiville. In the mean time, the roads both from Judiville and Napoleon, the Company's town, were being opened through my block, and many enquiries were made as to my price and intentions; but I gave no direct answer to any of them, reserving myself until the roads should be practicable.

When this was the case, and when the Company and Mr. Hoskins had fixed their prices, I also fixed mine, at a quarter of a dollar higher per acre; much to the consternation of the old gentleman, whose amazement was increased at finding, that, notwithstanding the difference, I received more offers for my land than he did.

It was seemingly not easy to account for this preference, which, indeed, surprised myself, who had no other reason for fixing the price higher, than a vague notion, that in consideration of two roads passing through the land, the settlers would probably not object to give it. I ought, however, to confess, that I was a little swayed by a secret reason, not so rational. The price I fixed would leave me a clear profit of a dollar per acre, which, upon twenty thousand acres, supposing no thereafter increase, and that I could dispose of the whole within the five years of the contract, would yield the substantial part of five thousand pounds,—the utmost I had ever thought of for a competency to retire upon.

But worldly fortune was more liberal than my expectations. The rumour of the three settlements going on and progressing together, our excellent school, and our eloquent preacher, and, above all, the judicious manner in which Mr. Hoskins disposed of his water privileges, attracted settlers from all quarters.

George Hérelle's multi-layered relationship with Gabriele D’Annunzio began in 1891 and continued until the early 1930s. For a period of almost twenty years starting in 1892, Hérelle translated two or three of D’Annunzio's works per year (novels, short stories, poetry, theatre). The novels and short stories usually appeared first in Paris newspapers and periodicals, such as Le temps, La Revue de Paris, Revue des deux mondes, La Revue européenne and then later as volumes with Éditions Calmann-Lévy. While some aspects of Hérelle and D’Annunzio's personal and professional interactions have been documented and discussed at considerable length, there are still many questions that remain unanswered. Hérelle claimed insistently that his discovery of D’Annunzio's novels was purely ‘an accident’ and that his subsequent interest in the Italian writer was based on his admiration for his style. The ‘accident’ in question took place in 1891. While on vacation in Naples, Hérelle decided to learn Italian by reading the local press and took a particular liking to Il Corriere di Napoli. Back to France, he subscribed to the newspaper, and it is here that he came across D’Annunzio's novel, L’Innocente, published in serial form. In Comment je suis devenu traducteur, a memoire he wrote in the 1920s, Hérelle reports that without knowing anything about D’Annunzio, just to amuse himself, he began to translate the novel. This memoire contains what we propose to call Hérelle's idealised version of his first encounter with D’Annunzio's writings. Hérelle seeks to present a certain image of himself, that of the scholar whose interests are primarily intellectual. A close examination of his 1895 and 1898 travel diaries reveals, however, another side of the story, one in which he describes quite candidly his ambivalent reactions toward D’Annunzio's personality. His reactions include both a certain admiration and homoerotic tensions. What are we to make of Hérelle's ambivalence and his seemingly simplistic explanation of how he discovered D’Annunzio's novel?

In the course of a few days after the election, Mr. Hoskins and his wife, with a great cargo of wares and other notions in their wagons, arrived from Vermont. They had been upwards of three weeks on the road, and the old lady had suffered greatly from the joltings of the crossways in the journey; nor had her husband endured less, but, being a man of few words, we heard less of it. I saw, however, that he moved with anguish, and was not for some days even disposed to enter into conversation, but went crippling about the door with his hand on his hip, uttering every now and then a sharp and peevish “Ah!”

At last, he said one morning, “This will not serve; we must set to work;” and then he told me what he had brought for the store, having sold his farm and betterments to good advantage. Accordingly, the first thing to be done was to get the town lot, which we had previously chosen in the area allotted for the market-place of the village, cleared, and to contract for the erection of a building suitable for a store;—all this was soon done. In the course of less than a fortnight we were in possession, and furnishing ourselves with a goodly display of real articles, very different from the brickbats and knobs of wood with which my first store in New York was so creditably adorned; for Mr. Hoskins, as the reader already knows, was a man of true substance, and brought with him more than three thousand dollars’ worth of excellent goods, selected with sagacity.

From the beginning of time, there had not been such a store as ours opened for many a mile around in the country, of which Babelmandel was the centre; nor was it long till we felt the profitable effects of keeping back the merchandise purchased at Olympus, for by so doing it caused the settlers to talk concerning us and our plans, and restrained many amongst them from sending for supplies elsewhere, and to hold off from buying until they should see what our general assortments were likely to be.

Present-day American Christian nationalism represents arguably the most potent and culturally and politically visible Christian expression in the contemporary North American context. While the application of this term to social and political analysis in North America has not been typical, it has gained increased currency in the US context over the course of the twenty-first century precisely because it highlights the potent convergence of White nationalism, Christian identity, an impulse towards organised violence, and nostalgia for a mythic America imagined to exist before the social, political, religious and demographic tumult of the 1960s and the decades that have followed. Showing troubling signs of exportation to Canada, it represents the mainstreaming or banalisation of political and social impulses long present in the USA and aims at the (re)establishment of a ‘Christian nation’. The political impulses, and the potential violence, at the heart of what has become a mainstream expression of North American Christian identity was vividly displayed in the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. As that event attests, Christian nationalism is not merely an expression of a distinctive political ideology, religious belief or personal religiosity, but a populist-nationalist movement that aims to maintain and exercise political authority in the USA by all means necessary.

‘Values Voters’ to Christian Nationalists

A shift from a focus on so-called ‘values voters’ at the turn of the twentyfirst century to recognition of the presence and significance of Christian nationalism is discernible in analyses of religion and politics in the USA. This shift marks a movement away from a narrow focus on the political behaviour of White Evangelical Christians to a recognition of the broader scope of Christian nationalism, increasing recognition of its specifically populist and nationalist dynamics, and calls for a shift in analytical perspective from religious and political belief to a more robust understanding the social dynamics of political and religious identity. Viewed from within this shifted perspective, Christian nationalism emerges not as a novel or nascent phenomenon, but one that has been operative throughout the twenty-first century.

Typical of the time, analyses of the role of religion in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections focused heavily on the significance of White Evangelical Christians as ‘values voters’.

It is an ancient and a true saying, that wealth makes wit waver. From the time of the fire, as the sagacious reader must have discerned in what has been related, I grew overly well pleased with myself. It was, therefore, needful I should receive a chastisement, but I never thought I had deserved it till it was inflicted.

Falling into the folly of thinking every thing was ordained to go prosperously with me, I thought, when I had withdrawn myself from accidental speculating, that every thing in my own business must thrive. To sell seeds, and to raise seeds to be sold, I thought two parts of one thing; and accordingly, about the time the non-intercourse acts took place, I began to consider of this seriously, and that I might make myself independent of importations from England. The design, however, was not carried into effect without all seeming due consideration. No one could be more circumspect than I fancied myself to be. I was long before I could find a lot of land convenient to my purpose; and when I did at last warily make a purchase, I read and considered the title-deeds as if I had the eyes of three lawyers, and certainly, as it was said, no deeds could be made better. This land was to be cultivated under my own directions,—the directions of one who did not know clay from gravel: of course, it soon came to a bearing; I do not mean the ground, for that never bore any thing to the purpose, but the speculation. The soil, naturally poor, was exhausted; it produced not enough to pay the labour, while it greedily swallowed, as with a hungry appetite, all the profits and savings of my business; yea, even the capital likewise—stock, lock, and barrel, all went.

I yet often marvel how I was so hoodwinked about that farm which I bought in Jersey; every thing concerning it was delusion. My wife, having learnt the craft and mystery of the farm-yard at her uncle's in Vermont, was, if possible, more lifted out of the body about it than even I was, and gave such flattering accounts of what she would do with cows, pigs, and poultry, that I was almost persuaded the seed business would become but a secondary affair.

On 27 November 1969 the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) hosted a ‘Writers Reading’ event. Quin was nervous about reading from and exposing what she saw as the weaknesses of Passages. So rather than reading from that book she sat wordless on stage, attempting ESP (extrasensory perception) with the aim of communicating universal love. This caused considerable unrest as well as some hostility among the audience. Bowing to the pressure to speak, Quin answered some questions and gave a reading, but rather than her own words she read from John Cage: Silence replacing silence. This wasn't enough to salvage the performance and the audience were unimpressed. Quin responded differently. She smiled as she came down from the stage and described the experience as a breakthrough not breakdown.

Afterwards, Quin did have a series of breakdowns and periods of psychosis during which her mental health was highly precarious and her behaviour and delusions increasingly dangerous and unpredict-able. These began when she caught the boat to Holland with John Carter, her then lover, to see in the 1970 New Year. On the journey over, Quin remained on the freezing deck refusing to eat, experienc-ing visions of Cleopatra's barge with her father on it. When they arrived in Amsterdam, Carter had to stop her running out onto the river, which was only thinly covered in ice. Quin was given seda-tives and admitted into a psychiatric hospital. Once out and having returned to London, she became anxious that she was at the centre of a conspiracy and escaped with an Arts Council grant to Denmark, Norway and then Sweden. There, she was found in a snowdrift in a delusional state and was again hospitalised. Refusing to eat or sleep, she found herself force fed and given electroconvulsive therapy. This was a distressing and desperate period for Quin, an awful time of blankness that she described as much worse than the breakdowns, which she sometimes found to be energising and inspiring. The institutionalisation and brutal electric shock therapy ‘treatments’ completely – and completely unsurprisingly – suppressed her creativity; she said to Carol Burns that she felt as if both her angels and her demons were gone.

Betimes in the morning, before Mr. Herbert's school-hour, I was with him; for all the livelong night I could think only of my misled boy, as I then began to consider him, the dark fears and despondent prognostications of Mr. Bell having infected me to that extremity. But in Mr. Herbert I found a comforter.

“I beseech you,” said he, almost as soon as he saw me, “to drive from your mind the unchristian reflections of yon disappointed man. The lad is but sowing his wild oats; and, after all, it appears to be to no great extent. It is dangerous to make too much of such things.”

Thus it came to pass, that upon the counselling of Mr. Herbert, I wrote a gentle admonitory letter to Robin, pointing out the inevitable consequences which would ensue if he neglected his business, or associated himself with lads of loose morals and midnight revellings. I also addressed Mr. Ferret in the most earnest manner, entreating him to watch my son with vigilance, and to let me know from time to time how he conducted himself. The anxieties of a parent were now awakened in my bosom; and the grief I felt was unspeakable, when I thought of the bare possibility of the innocent and playful child, the lamb of my first love, becoming tainted with the dishonours of a profligate life.

When this was done, I stopped some time with Mr. Herbert, until his pupils began to collect. I told him when I expected to be able to move to Judiville, and remarked, that I wondered why he had never been there, mentioning, among other things, as an inducement to visit it, the character and tasteful conduct of the Cockspurs.

He had heard of them before, but seemingly without taking any particular interest in them; when, however, I described the sort of man I thought the old gentleman must have been, the judicious education of the young folks, and, above all, the serenity and gentleness of the mother, he seemed for some time to be lost in cogitation.

Sir,—Some years ago, a persistent neuralgia led me to use the tincture of gelseminum to a considerable extent. I several times overstepped the maximum doses of the text-books without suffering any ill effects. Having recently had an opportunity of experimenting with a quantity of fresh tincture, I determined to ascertain how far one might go in taking the drug, and what the primary symptoms of an overdose might be. I took each dose about the same hour on successive days, and avoided tobacco or any other agent which might influence the physiological action of the drug. Here are the results as jotted down at the time of the experiment. On Monday and Tuesday, forty and sixty minims produced no effect whatever. On Wednesday, ninety minims were taken at 10.30. At 10.50, on rising from my chair, I became seized with an extreme giddiness and weakness of the limbs, which, however, quickly passed off. There was no nausea or other effect. The pulse was weak but normal. On Thursday, I took 120 minims. The giddiness of yesterday came on in a much milder form. On going out about one o’clock, however, I noticed for the first time that I had a difficulty in accommodating the eye for distant objects. It needed a distinct voluntary effort, and indeed a facial contortion, to do it.

On Friday, 150 minims were taken. As I increased the dose, I found that the more marked physiological symptoms disappeared. To-day, the giddiness was almost gone, but I suffered from a severe frontal headache, with diarrhoea and general lassitude.

On Saturday and Sunday, I took three drachms and 200 minims. The diarrhoea was so persistent and prostrating, that I must stop at 200 minims. I felt great depression and a severe frontal headache. The pulse was still normal, but weak.

From these experiments I would draw the following conclusions.

1. In spite of a case described some time ago in which 75 minims proved fatal, a healthy adult may take as much as 90 minims with perfect immunity.

John Galt was among the most popular and prolific Scottish writers of the nineteenth century. He wrote in a panoply of forms and genres about a great variety of topics and settings, drawing on his experiences of living, working, and travelling in Scotland and England, in Europe and the Mediterranean, and in North America. Yet only a fraction of his many works have been reprinted since their original publication. In 1841–43 Galt's most important publisher, Blackwood, reprinted seven of his novels in volumes 1, 2, 4, and 6 of the Blackwood's Standard Novels series. In 1895, the Blackwood firm republished these novels, with one change to the selection, as the eight-volume Works of John Galt; this collection was reissued in 1936, again with one additional novel. Modern annotated editions of some individual works have appeared since then. However, the Edinburgh Edition of the Works of John Galt presents for the first time a much fuller range of Galt's fiction in authoritative texts, together with materials that add to an appreciation of his historical surroundings and his cultural heritage. Each volume includes an introduction that places Galt's work in the context of history, genre, and the print culture of the period; annotations that explain specialised vocabulary as well as historical, geographical, literary, cultural, and philosophical allusions; and other features such as a glossary of Scots words and expressions, maps, and excerpts that illuminate Galt's sources and his contemporary reception.

Galt wrote and published his work quickly, sending portions of manuscript to the printer to be set in type as soon as he finished them; he and his publisher would frequently correct proofs of part of a text while he continued writing the remainder. Although he was usually busy with several projects at once, his correspondence documents his involvement in all stages of the publication process and shows that he undertook proof-corrections himself, except in cases where he developed especially close working relationships with a publisher or fellow writer and allowed that person editorial control. However, with few exceptions, no manuscripts or proofs of Galt's published fiction have survived.