A Book About Doctors

Mrs. Mapp continued to reside in Epsom, but she visited London once a week. Her journeys to and from the metropolis she performed in a chariot drawn by four horses, with servants wearing splendid liveries. She used to put up at the Grecian Coffee-House, where Sir Hans Sloane witnessed her operations, and was so favourably impressed by them, that he put under her charge his niece, who was suffering from a spinal affection, or, to use the exact and scientific language of the newspapers, "whose back had been broke nine years, and stuck out two inches." The eminent lady went to the playhouse in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields to see the Husband's Relief acted. Her presence not only produced a crowded house, but the fact that she sate between Taylor the quack oculist on one side, and Ward the drysalter on the other, gave occasion for the production of the following epigram, the point of which is perhaps almost as remarkable as its polish:—

On the stage, also, a song was sung in honour of Mrs. Mapp, and in derision of Taylor and Ward. It ran thus:—

On one occasion, as this lady was proceeding up the Old Kent Road to the Borough, in her carriage and four, dressed in a loosely-fitting robe-de-chambre, and manifesting by her manner that she had partaken somewhat too freely of Geneva water, she found herself in a very trying position. Her fat frame, indecorous dress, intoxication, and dazzling equipage, were in the eyes of the mob such sure signs of royalty, that she was immediately taken for a Court lady, of German origin and unpopular repute, whose word was omnipotent at St. James's.

Soon a crowd gathered round the carriage, and, with the proper amount of swearing and yelling, were about to break the windows with stones, when the spirited occupant of the vehicle, acting very much as Nell Gwyn did on a similar occasion, rose from her seat, and letting down the glasses, exclaimed, with an imprecation more emphatic than polite, "— —! Don't you know me? I am Mrs. Mapp, the bone-setter!"

This brief address so tickled the humour of the mob, that the lady proceeded on her way amidst deafening acclamations and laughter.

The Taylor mentioned as sitting on one side of Mrs. Mapp in the playhouse was a notable character. A cunning, plausible, shameless blackguard, he was eminently successful in his vocation of quack. Dr. King, in his "Anecdotes of his own Times," speaks of him with respect. "I was at Tunbridge," says the Doctor, "with Chevalier Taylor, the oculist. He seems to understand the anatomy of the eye perfectly well; he has a fine hand and good instruments, and performs all his operations with great dexterity; but he undertakes everything (even impossible cases), and promises everything. No charlatan ever appeared with fitter and more excellent talents, or to greater advantage; he has a good person, is a natural orator, and has a faculty of learning foreign languages. He has travelled over all Europe, and has always with him an equipage suitable to a man of the first quality; and has been introduced to most of the sovereign princes, from whom he has received many marks of their liberality and esteem."

Dr. King, in a Latin inscription to the mountebank, says:—

"Hic est, hic vir est,
Quem docti, indoctique omnes impense mirantur,
Johannes Taylor;
Cœcigenorum, cœcorum, cœcitantium,
Quot quot sunt ubique,
Spes unica—Solamen—Salus."

The Chevalier Taylor (as he always styled himself), in his travels about the country, used to give lectures on "The Eye," in whatever place he tarried. These addresses were never explanatory of the anatomy of the organ, but mere absurd rhapsodies on it as an ingenious and wonderful contrivance.

Chevalier's oration to the university of Oxford, which is still extant, began thus:—

"The eye, most illustrious sons of the muses, most learned Oxonians, whose fame I have heard celebrated in all parts of the globe—the eye, that most amazing, that stupendous, that comprehending, that incomprehensible, that miraculous organ, the eye, is the Proteus of the passions, the herald of the mind, the interpreter of the heart, and the window of the soul. The eye has dominion over all things. The world was made for the eye, and the eye for the world.

"My subject is Light, most illustrious sons of literature—intellectual light. Ah! my philosophical, metaphysical, my classical, mathematical, mechanical, my theological, my critical audience, my subject is the eye. You are the eye of England!

"England has two eyes—Oxford and Cambridge. They are the two eyes of England, and two intellectual eyes. You are the right eye of England, the elder sister in science, and the first fountain of learning in all Europe. What filial joy must exult in my bosom, in my vast circuit, as copious as that of the sun himself, to shine in my course, upon this my native soil, and give light even at Oxford!

"The eye is the husband of the soul!

"The eye is indefatigable. The eye is an angelic faculty. The eye in this respect is a female. The eye is never tired of seeing; that is, of taking in, assimilating, and enjoying all Nature's vigour."

When the Chevalier was ranting on in this fashion at Cambridge (of course there terming Oxford the left eye of England), he undertook to express every passion of the mind by the eye alone.

"Here you have surprise, gentlemen; here you have delight; here you have terror!"

"Ah!" cried an undergraduate, "there's no merit in that, for you tell us beforehand what the emotion is. Now next time say nothing—and let me guess what the feeling is you desire to express."

"Certainly," responded the Doctor, cordially; "nothing can be more reasonable in the way of a proposition. Now then, sir, what is this?"

"Oh, veneration, I suppose."

"Certainly—quite right—and this?"

"Pity."

"Of course, sir: you see it's impossible for an observant gentleman like yourself to misunderstand the language of the eye," answered the oculist, whose plan was only to assent to his young friend's decisions.

In the year 1736, when the Chevalier was at the height of his fame, he received the following humorous letter:—

"Domine,—O tu, qui in oculis hominum versaris, et quamcunque tractas rem, acu tangis, salve! Tu, qui, instar Phœbi, lumen orbi, et orbes luminibus reddis, iterum salve!

"Cum per te Gallia, per te nostræ academiæ, duo regni lumina, clarius intuentur, cur non ad urbem Edinburgi, cum toties ubique erras, cursum tendis? nam quædam cœcitas cives illic invasit. Ipsos magistratus Gutta Serena occupavit, videntur enim videre, sed nihil vident. Idcirco tu istam Scoticam Nebulam ex oculis remove, et quodcunque latet in tenebris, in lucem profer. Illi violenter carcerem, tu oculos leniter reclude; illi lucem Porteio ademerunt, tu illis lucem restitue, et quamvis fingant se dupliciter videre, fac ut simpliciter tantum oculo irretorto conspiciant. Peractoque cursu, ad Angliam redi artis tuæ plenus, Toriosque (ut vulgo vocantur) qui adhuc cœcutiant et hallucinantur, illuminato. Ab ipsis clericis, si qui sint cœci ductores, nubem discute; immo ipso Sole lunaque, cum laborant eclipsi, quæ, instar tui ipsius, transit per varias regiones obumbrans, istam molem caliginis amoveto. Sic eris Sol Mundi, sic eris non solum nomine Sartor, sed re Oculorum omnium resarcitor; sic omuis Charta Publica tuam Claritudinem celebrabit, et ubicunque frontem tuam ostendis, nemo non te, O vir spectatissime, admirabitur. Ipse lippus scriptor hujus epistolæ maxime gauderet te Medicum Illustrissimum, cum omnibus tuis oculatis testibus, Vindsoriæ videre.—Vale."

The Chevalier had a son and a biographer in the person of John Taylor, who, under the title of "John Taylor, Junior," succeeded to his father's trumpet, and blew it with good effect. The title-page of his biography of his father enumerates some half-hundred crowned or royal heads, to whose eyes the "Chevalier John Taylor, Opthalmiater Pontifical, Imperial, and Royal," administered.

But this work was feeble and contemptible compared with the Chevalier's autobiographic sketch of himself, in his proposal for publishing which he speaks of his loves and adventures, in the following modest style:—

"I had the happiness to be also personally known to two of the most amiable ladies this age has produced—namely, Lady Inverness and Lady Mackintosh; both powerful figures, of great abilities, and of the most pleasing address—both the sweetest prattlers, the prettiest reasoners, and the best judges of the charms of high life that I ever saw. When I first beheld these wonders I gazed on their beauties, and my attention was busied in admiring the order and delicacy of their discourse, &c. For were I commanded to seek the world for a lady adorned with every accomplishment that man thinks desirable in the sex, I could only be determined by finding their resemblance....

"I am perfectly acquainted with the history of Persia, as well before as since the death of Thamas Kouli Khan; well informed of the adventures of Prince Heraclius; was personally known to a minister he sent to Moscow in his first attempt to conquer that country; and am instructed in the cruel manner of putting out the eyes of conquered princes, and of cutting away the eyelids of soldiers taken in war, to make them unfit for service.

"I have lived in many convents of friars of different orders, been present at their creation to various degrees, and have assisted at numberless entertainments upon those occasions.

"I have been in almost every female nunnery in all Europe (on account of my profession), and could write many volumes on the adventures of these religious beauties.

"I have been present at the making of nuns of almost every order, and assisted at the religious feasts given on those occasions.

"I have met with a very great variety of singular religious people called Pilgrims.

"I have been present at many extraordinary diversions designed for the amusement of the sovereign, viz. hunting of different sorts of wild beasts, as in Poland; bull-fighting, as in Spain.

"I am well acquainted with all the various punishments for different crimes, as practised in every nation—been present at the putting of criminals to death by various ways, viz. striking off heads, breaking on the wheel, &c.

"I am also well instructed in the different ways of giving the torture to extract confession—and am no stranger to other singular punishments, such as impaling, burying alive with head above ground, &c.

"And lastly, I have assisted, have seen the manner of embalming dead bodies of great personages, and am well instructed in the manner practised in some nations for preserving them entire for ages, with little alteration of figure from what they were when first deprived of life....

"All must agree that no man ever had a greater variety of matter worthy to be conveyed to posterity. I shall, therefore, give my best care to, so to paint my thoughts, and give such a dress of the story of my life, that tho' I shall talk of the Great, the Least shall not find cause of offence."

The occasion of this great man issuing so modest a proposal to the public is involved in some mystery. It would seem that he determined to publish his own version of his adventures, in consequence of being dissatisfied with his son's sketch of them. John Taylor, Junior, was then resident in Hatton Garden, living as an eye-doctor, and entered into an arrangement with a publisher, without his father's consent, to write the Chevalier's biography. Affixed to the indecent pamphlet, which was the result of this agreement, are the following epistolary statements:—

"My Son,—If you should unguardedly have suffered your name at the head of a work which must make us all contemptible, this must be printed in it as the best apology for yourself and father:—

"TO THE PRINTER.

"Oxford, Jan. 10, 1761.

"My dear and only son having respectfully represented to me that he has composed a work, intitled My Life and Adventures, and requires my consent for its publication, notwithstanding I am as yet a stranger to the composition, and consequently can be no judge of its merits, I am so well persuaded that my son is in every way incapable of saying aught of his father but what must redound to his honour and reputation, and so perfectly convinced of the goodness of his heart, that it does not seem possible I should err in my judgment, by giving my consent to a publication of the said work. And as I have long been employed in writing my own Life and Adventures, which will with all expedition be published, 'twill hereafter be left with all due attention to the candid reader, whether the Life of the Father written by the son, or the Life of the Father written by himself, best deserves approbation.

"The Chevalier Taylor,
"Opthalmiater, Pontifical, Imperial, and Royal.

"* * * The above is a true copy of the letter my Father sent me. All the answer I can make to the bills he sends about the town and country is, that I have maintained my mother these eight years, and do this at the present time; and that, two years since, I was concerned for him, for which I have paid near £200.

"As witness my hand,
"John Taylor, Oculist."

"Hatton Garden."

It is impossible to say whether these differences were genuine, or only feigned by the two quacks, in order to keep silly people gossiping about them. Certainly the accusations brought against the Chevalier, that he had sponged on his son, and declined to support his wife, are rather grave ones to introduce into a make-believe quarrel. But, on the other hand, when the Chevalier's autobiography appeared it was prefaced with the following dedicatory letter to his son:—

"My dear Son,—Can I do ill when I address to you the story of your father's life? Whose name can be so proper as your own to be prefixed to a work of this kind? You who was born to represent me living, when I shall cease to be—born to pursue that most excellent and important profession to which I have for so many years labored to be useful—born to defend my cause and support my fame—may I not presume, my son, that you will defend your father's cause? May I not affirm that you, my son, will support your father's fame? After having this said, need I add more than remind you—that, to a father, nothing can be so dear as a deserving son—nor state so desirable as that of the man who holds his successor, and knows him to be worthy. Be prosperous. Be happy.

"I am, your affectionate Father,
"The Chevalier John Taylor."

This unctuous address to "my lion-hearted boy" is equalled in drollery by many passages of the work itself, which (in the language of the title-page) "contains all most worthy the attention of a Traveller—also a dissertation on the Art of Pleasing, with the most interesting observations on the Force of Prejudice; numberless adventures, as well amongst nuns and friars as with persons in high life; with a description of a great variety of the most admirable relations, which, though told in his well-known peculiar manner, each one is strictly true, and within the Chevalier's own observations and knowledge."

Apart from the bombast of his style, the Chevalier's "well-known peculiar manner" was remarkable for little besides tautology and a fantastic arrangement of words. In his orations, when he aimed at sublimity, he indulged in short sentences each of which commenced with a genitive case followed by an accusative; after which came the verb succeeded by the nominative. Thus, at such crises of grandiloquence, instead of saying, "I will lecture on the wonders of the eye," he would invert the order to, "Of the eye on the wonders lecture will I." By doing this, he maintained that he surpassed the finest periods of Tully! There is a letter in Nichols's "Literary Anecdotes," in which a lecture given by this mountebank at Northampton is excellently described. "The doctor," says the writer, "appeared dressed in black, with a long light flowing ty'd wig; ascended a scaffold behind a large table raised about two feet from the ground, and covered with an old piece of tapestry, on which was laid a dark-coloured cafoy chariot-seat with four black bunches (used upon hearses) tyed to the corners for tassels, four large candles on each side of the cushion, and a quart decanter of drinking water, with a half-pint glass, to moisten his mouth."

The fellow boasted that he was the author of forty-five works in different languages. Once he had the audacity to challenge Johnson to talk Latin with him. The doctor responded with a quotation from Horace, which the charlatan took to be the doctor's own composition. "He said a few words well enough," Johnson said magnanimously when he repeated the story to Boswell. "Taylor," said the doctor, "is the most ignorant man I ever knew, but sprightly; Ward, the dullest."

John Taylor, Junr., survived his father more than fifteen years, and to the last had a lucrative business in Hatton Garden. His father had been oculist to George the Second; but this post, on the death of the Chevalier, he failed to obtain, it being given to a foreign protégé of the Duke of Bedford's. He made a great noise about the sufferings of the poor, and proposed to the different parishes of London to attend the paupers labouring under diseases of the eye at two guineas a-year for each parish. He was an illiterate, vulgar, and licentious scoundrel; and yet when he died, on the 17th September, 1787, he was honoured with a long memoir in the Gentleman's Magazine, as one "whose philanthropy was exerted so fully as to class him with a Hanway or a Howard."

If an apology is needed for giving so much space, in a chapter devoted to the ladies, to the John Taylors, it must be grounded on the fact that the Chevalier was the son of an honest widow woman who carried on a respectable business, as an apothecary and doctress, at Norwich. In this she resembled Mrs. Blood, the wife of the Colonel of that name, who for years supported herself and son at Romford, by keeping an apothecary's shop under the name of Weston. Colonel Blood was also himself a member of the Faculty. For some time, whilst meditating his grand coup, he practised as a doctor in an obscure part of the City, under the name of Ayliffe.

Two hundred years since the lady practitioners of medicine in the provinces not seldom had working for them pupils and assistants of the opposite sex, and this usage was maintained in secluded districts till a comparatively recent date. In Houghton's Collection, Nov. 15, 1695, is the following advertisement,—"If any Apothecary's Widow that keeps a shop in the country wants a journeyman that has lived 25 years for himself in London, and has had the conversation of the eminent physicians of the colledge, I can help to such an one."

CHAPTER XVII.

MESSENGER MONSEY.

Amongst the celebrities of the medical profession, who have left no memorial behind them more durable or better known than their wills in Doctors' Commons, was Messenger Monsey, the great-grandfather of our ex-Chancellor, Lord Cranworth.

We do not know whether his Lordship is aware of his descent from the eccentric physician. Possibly he is not, for the Monseys, though not altogether of a plebeian stock, were little calculated to throw éclat over the genealogy of a patrician house.

Messenger Monsey, who used with a good deal of unnecessary noise to declare his contempt of the ancestral honours which he in reality possessed, loved to tell of the humble origin of his family. The first Duke of Leeds delighted in boasting of his lucky progenitor, Jack Osborn, the shop lad, who rescued his master's daughter from a watery grave, in the Thames, and won her hand away from a host of noble suitors, who wanted—literally, the young lady's pin-money. She was the only child of a wealthy pinmaker carrying on his business on London Bridge, and the jolly old fellow, instead of disdaining to bestow his heiress on a 'prentice, exclaimed, "Jack won her, and he shall wear her!" Dr. Monsey, in the hey-day of his social fame, told his friends that the first of his ancestors of any note was a baker, and a retail dealer in hops. At a critical point of this worthy man's career, when hops were "down" and feathers were "up," to raise a small sum of money for immediate use he ripped open his beds, sold the feathers, and stuffed the tick with unsaleable hops. Soon a change in the market occurred, and once more operating on the couches used by himself and children, he sold the hops at a profit, and bought back the feathers. "That's the way, sir, by which my family hopped from obscurity!" the doctor would conclude.

We have reason for thinking that this ancestor was the physician's great-grandfather. As is usually found to be the case, where a man thinks lightly of the advantages of birth, Messenger was by no means of despicable extraction. His grandfather was a man of considerable property, and married Elizabeth Messenger, co-heir of Thomas Messenger, lord of Whitwell Manor, in the county of Norfolk, a gentleman by birth and position; and his father, the Rev. Robert Monsey, a Norfolk rector, married Mary, the daughter of Roger Clopton, rector of Downham. Of the antiquity and importance of the Cloptons amongst the gentle families of England this is no place to speak; but further particulars relative to the Monsey pedigree may be found by the curious in Bloomfield's "History of Norfolk." On such a descent a Celt would persuade himself that he represented kings and rulers. Monsey, like Sydney Smith after him, preferred to cover the whole question with jolly, manly ridicule, and put it out of sight.

Messenger Monsey was born in 1693, and received in early life an excellent education; for though his father at the Revolution threw his lot in with the nonjurors, and forfeited his living, the worthy clergyman had a sufficient paternal estate to enable him to rear his only child without any painful considerations of cost. After spending five years at St. Mary's Hall, Cambridge, Messenger studied physic for some time under Sir Benjamin Wrench, at Norwich. Starting on his own account, he practised for a while at Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, but with little success. He worked hard, and yet never managed in that prosperous and beautiful country town to earn more than three hundred guineas in the same year. If we examined into the successes of medical celebrities, we should find in a great majority of cases fortune was won by the aspirant either annexing himself to, and gliding into the confidence of, a powerful clique, or else by his being through some lucky accident thrown in the way of a patron. Monsey's rise was of the latter sort. He was still at Bury, with nothing before him but the prospect of working all his days as a country doctor, when Lord Godolphin, son of Queen Anne's Lord Treasurer, and grandson of the great Duke of Marlborough, was seized, on the road to Newmarket, with an attack of apoplexy. Bury was the nearest point where medical assistance could be obtained. Monsey was summoned, and so fascinated his patient with his conversational powers that his Lordship invited him to London, and induced him to relinquish his country practice.

From that time Monsey's fortune was made. He became to the Whigs very much what, in the previous generation, Radcliffe had been to the Tories. Sir Robert Walpole genuinely loved him, seizing every opportunity to enjoy his society, and never doing anything for him; and Lord Chesterfield was amongst the most zealous trumpeters of his medical skill. Lively, sagacious, well-read, and brutally sarcastic, he had for a while a society reputation for wit scarcely inferior to Swift's; and he lived amongst men well able to judge of wit. Garrick and he were for many years intimate friends, until, in a contest of jokes, each of the two brilliant men lost his temper, and they parted like Roland and Sir Leoline—never to meet again. Garrick probably would have kept his temper under any other form of ridicule, but he never ceased to resent Monsey's reflection on his avarice to the Bishop of Sodor and Man.

"Garrick is going to quit the stage," observed the Bishop.

"That he'll never do," answered Monsey, making use of a Norfolk proverb, "so long as he knows a guinea is cross on one side and pile on the other."

This speech was never forgiven. Lord Bath endeavoured to effect a reconciliation between the divided friends, but his amiable intention was of no avail.

"I thank you," said Monsey; "but why will your Lordship trouble yourself with the squabbles of a Merry Andrew and quack doctor?"

When the tragedian was on his death-bed, Monsey composed a satire on the sick man, renewing the attack on his parsimony. Garrick's illness, however, terminating fatally, the doctor destroyed his verses, but some scraps of them still remain to show their spirit and power. A consultation of physicians was represented as being held over the actor:—

After much learned squabbling, one of the sages proposed to revive the sinking energies of the poor man by jingling guineas in his ears. The suggestion was acted upon, when—

Though, on the grave closing over his antagonist, Monsey suppressed these lines, he continued to cherish an animosity to the object of them. The spirit in which, out of respect to death, he drew a period to their quarrel, was much like that of the Irish peasant in the song, who tells his ghostly adviser that he forgives Pat Malone with all his heart (supposing death should get the better of him)—but should he recover, he means to pay the rascal off roundly. Sir Walter Scott somewhere tells a story of a Highland chief, in his last moments declaring that he from the bottom of his heart forgave his old enemy, the head of a hostile clan—and concluding this Christian avowal with a final address to his son—"But may all evil light upon ye, Ronald, if ye e'er forgie the heathen."

Through Lord Godolphin's interest, Monsey was appointed physician to Chelsea College, on the death of Dr. Smart. For some time he continued to reside in St. James's: but on the death of his patron he moved to Chelsea, and spent the last years of his life in retirement—and to a certain extent banishment—from the great world. The hospital offices were then filled by a set of low-born scoundrels, or discharged servants, whom the ministers of various Cabinets had had some reason of their own for providing for. The surgeon was that Mr. Ranby who positively died of rage because Henry Fielding's brother (Sir John) would not punish a hackney coachman who had been guilty of the high treason of—being injured and abused by the plaintiff. With this man Monsey had a tremendous quarrel; but though in the right, he had to submit to Ranby's powerful connections.

This affair did not soften his temper to the other functionaries of the hospital with whom he had to associate at the hall table. His encounter with the venal elector who had been nominated to a Chelsea appointment is well known, though an account of it would hurt the delicacy of these somewhat prudish pages. Of the doctor's insolence the following is a good story:—

A clergyman, who used to bore him with pompous and pedantic talk, was arguing on some point with Monsey, when the latter exclaimed:—

"Sir, if you have faith in your opinion, will you venture a wager upon it?"

"I could—but I won't," was the reply.

"Then," rejoined Monsey, "you have very little wit, or very little money." The logic of this retort puts one in mind of the eccentric actor who, under somewhat similar circumstances, asked indignantly, "Then, sir, how dare you advance a statement in a public room which you are not prepared to substantiate with a bet!"

Monsey was a Unitarian, and not at all backward to avow his creed. As he was riding in Hyde Park with a Mr. Robinson, that gentleman, after deploring the corrupt morals of the age, said, with very bad taste, "But, Doctor, I talk with one who believes there is no God." "And I," retorted Monsey, "with one who believes there are three." Good Mr. Robinson was so horrified that he clapped spurs to his horse, galloped off, and never spoke to the doctor again.

Monsey's Whiggism introduced him to high society, but not to lucrative practice. Sir Robert Walpole always extoled the merits of his "Norfolk Doctor," but never advanced his interests. Instead of covering the great minister with adulation, Monsey treated him like an ordinary individual, telling him when his jokes were poor, and not hesitating to worst him in argument. "How happens it," asked Sir Robert, over his wine, "that nobody will beat me at billiards, or contradict me, but Dr. Monsey!" "Other people," put in the doctor, "get places—I get a dinner and praise." The Duke of Grafton treated him even worse. His Grace staved off paying the physician his bill for attending him and his family at Windsor, with promises of a place. When "the little place" fell vacant, Monsey called on the duke, and reminded him of his promise. "Ecod—ecod—ecod," was the answer, "but the Chamberlain has just been here to tell me he has promised it to Jack ——." When the disappointed applicant told the lord-chamberlain what had transpired, his Lordship replied, "Don't, for the world, tell his Grace; but before he knew I had promised it, here is a letter he sent me, soliciting for a third person."

Amongst the vagaries of this eccentric physician was the way in which he extracted his own teeth. Round the tooth sentenced to be drawn he fastened securely a strong piece of catgut, to the opposite end of which he affixed a bullet. With this bullet and a full measure of powder a pistol was charged. On the trigger being pulled, the operation was performed effectually and speedily. The doctor could only rarely prevail on his friends to permit him to remove their teeth by this original process. Once a gentleman who had agreed to try the novelty, and had even allowed the apparatus to be adjusted, at the last moment exclaimed, "Stop, stop, I've changed my mind!" "But I haven't, and you're a fool and a coward for your pains," answered the doctor, pulling the trigger. In another instant the tooth was extracted, much to the timid patient's delight and astonishment.

At Chelsea, to the last, the doctor saw on friendly terms all the distinguished medical men of his day. Cheselden, fonder of having his horses admired than his professional skill extolled, as Pope and Freind knew, was his frequent visitor. He had also his loves. To Mrs. Montague, for many years, he presented a copy of verses on the anniversary of her birth-day. But after his quarrel with Garrick, he saw but little of the lady, and was rarely, if ever, a visitor at her magnificent house in Portman Square. Another of his flames, too, was Miss Berry, of whom the loss still seems to be recent. In his old age, avarice—the very same failing he condemned so much in Garrick—developed itself in Monsey. In comparatively early life his mind was in a flighty state about money matters. For years he was a victim of that incredulity which makes the capitalist imagine a great and prosperous country to be the most insecure of all debtors. He preferred investing his money in any wild speculation to confiding it to the safe custody of the funds. Even his ready cash he for long could not bring himself to trust in the hands of a banker. When he left town for a trip, he had recourse to the most absurd schemes for the protection of his money. Before setting out, on one occasion, for a journey to Norfolk, incredulous with regard to cash-boxes and bureaus, he hid a considerable quantity of gold and notes in the fireplace of his study, covering them up artistically with cinders and shavings. A month afterwards, returning (luckily a few days before he was expected), he found his old house-maid preparing to entertain a few friends at tea in her master's room. The hospitable domestic was on the point of lighting the fire, and had just applied a candle to the doctor's notes, when he entered the room, seized on a pail of water that chanced to be standing near, and, throwing its contents over the fuel and the old woman, extinguished the fire and her presence of mind at the same time. Some of the notes, as it was, were injured, and the Bank of England made objections to cashing them.

To the last Monsey acted by his own rules instead of by those of other people. He lived to extreme old age, dying in his rooms in Chelsea College, on December 26th, 1788, in his ninety-fifth year; and his will was as remarkable as any other feature of his career. To a young lady mentioned in it, with the most lavish encomiums on her wit, taste, and elegance, was left an old battered snuff-box—not worth sixpence; and to another young lady, whom the testator says he intended to have enriched with a handsome legacy, he leaves the gratifying assurance that he changed his mind on finding her "a pert, conceited minx." After inveighing against bishops, deans, and chapters, he left an annuity to two clergymen who had resigned their preferment on account of the Athanasian doctrine. He directed that his body should not be insulted with any funeral ceremony, but should undergo dissection; after which, the "remainder of my carcase" (to use his own words) "may be put into a hole, or crammed into a box with holes, and thrown into the Thames." In obedience to this part of the will, Mr. Forster, surgeon, of Union Court, Broad Street, dissected the body, and delivered a lecture on it to the medical students in the theatre of Guy's Hospital. The bulk of the doctor's fortune, amounting to about £16,000, was left to his only daughter for life, and after her demise, by a complicated entail, to her female descendants. This only child, Charlotte Monsey, married William Alexander, a linen-draper in Cateaton Street, City, and had a numerous family. One of her daughters married the Rev. Edmund Rolfe, rector of Cockley Clay, Norfolk, of which union Robert Monsey Rolfe, Baron Cranworth of Cranworth, county of Norfolk, is the offspring.

Before making the above-named and final disposition of his body, the old man found vent for his ferocious cynicism and vulgar infidelity in the following epitaph, which is scarcely less characteristic of the society in which the writer had lived, than it is of the writer himself:—

"MOUNSEY'S EPITAPH, WRITTEN BY HIMSELF."

Unpleasant old scamp though he in many respects was, Monsey retains even at this day so firm a hold of the affections of all students who like ferreting into the social history of the last century, that no chance letter of his writing is devoid of interest. The following specimen of his epistolary style, addressed to his fair patient, the accomplished and celebrated Mrs. Montague (his acquaintance with which lady has already been alluded to), is transcribed from the original manuscript in the possession of Dr. Diamond:—

"4th of March, a minute past 12.

"Dear Madame,

"Now dead men's ghosts are getting out of their graves, and there comes the ghost of a doctor in a white sheet to wait upon you. Your Tokay is got into my head and your love into my heart, and they both join to club their thanks for the pleasantest day I have spent these seven years; and to my comfort I find a man may be in love, and be happy, provided he does not go to book for it. I could have trusted till the morning to show my gratitude, but the Tokay wou'd have evaporated, and then I might have had nothing to talk of but an ache in my head and pain in my heart. Bacchus and Cupid should always be together, for the young gentleman is very apt to be silly when he's alone by himself; but when old toss-pot is with him, if he pretends to fall a whining, he hits him a cursed knock on the pate, and says: 'Drink about, you....' 'No, Bacchus, don't be in a passion. Upon my soul you have knocked out one of my eyes!' 'Eyes, ye scroundrel? Why, you have never had one since you were born.... Apollo would have couched you, but your mother said no; for then, says she, "he can never be blamed for his shot, any more than the people that are shot at." She knew 'twould bring grist to her mill; for what with those who pretended they were in love and were not so, and those who were really so and wouldn't own it, I shall find rantum scantum work at Cyprus, Paphos, and Cythera. Some will come to acquire what they never had, and others to get rid of what they find very troublesome, and I shall mind none of 'em.' You see how the goddess foresaw and predicted my misfortunes. She knew I was a sincere votary, and that I was a martyr to her serene influence. Then how could you use me so like an Hyrcanian tygress, and be such an infidel to misery; that though I hate you mortally, I wish you may feel but one poor half-quarter-of-an-hour before you slip your breath—how shall I rejoice at your horrid agonies? Nec enim lex justior ulla Quam necis artifices arte perire suâ—Remember Me.

"My ills have disturbed my brain, and the revival of old ideas has set it a-boyling, that, till I have skim'd off the froth, I can't pretend to say a word for myself; and by the time I have cleared off the scum, the little grudge that is left may be burnt to the bottom of the pot.

"My mortal injuries have turned my mind,
And I could hate myself for being blind
But why should I thus rave of eyes and looks?
All I have felt is fancy—all from Books.
I stole my charmers from the cuts of Quarles,
And my dear Clarissa from the grand Sir Charles.
But if his mam or Cupid live above,
Who have revenge in store for injured love,
O Venus, send dire ruin on her head,
Strike the Destroyer, lay the Victress dead;
Kill the Triumphress, and avenge my wrong
In height of pomp, while she is warm and young.
Grant I may stand and dart her with my eyes
While in the fiercest pangs of life she lies,
Pursue her sportive soul and shoot it as it flies,
And cry with joy—There Montague lies flat,
Who wronged my passion with her barbarous Chat,
And was as cruel as a Cat to Rat,
As cat to rat—ay, ay, as cat to rat.
And when you got her up into your house,
Clinch yr, fair fist, and give her such a souse:
There, Hussy, take you that for all your Prate,
Your barbarous heart I do a-bo-mi-nate.
I'll take your part, my dearest faithful Doctor!
I've told my son, and see how he has mockt her!
He'll fire her soul and make her rant and rave;
See how she groans to be old Vulcan's slave.
The fatal bow is bent. Shoot, Cupid, shoot,
And there's your Montague all over soot.
Now say no more my little Boy is blind,
For sure this tyrant he has paid in kind.
She fondly thought to captivate a lord.
A lord, sweet queen? 'Tis true, upon my word.
And what's his name? His name? Why—
And thought her parts and wit the feat had done.
But he had parts and wit as well as she.
Why then, 'tis strange those folks did not agree.
Agree? Why, had she lived one moment longer,
His love was strong, but madam's grew much stronger.
Hiatus valde deflendus.
So for her long neglect of Venus' altar
I changed Cu's Bowstring to a silken Halter;
I made the noose, and Cupid drew the knot.
Dear mam! says he, don't let her lie and rot,
She is too pretty. Hold your tongue, you sot!
The pretty blockhead? None of yr. rogue's tricks.
Ask her, she'll own she's turned of thirty-six.
I was but twenty when I got the apple,
And let me tell you, 'twas a cursed grapple.
Had I but staid till I was twenty-five,
I'ad surely lost it, as you're now alive!
Paris had said to Juno and Minerva,
Ladies, I'm yours, and shall be glad to serve yer;
I must have bowed to wisdom and to power.
And Troy had stood it to this very hour,
Homer had never wrote, nor wits had read
Achilles' anger or Patroclus dead.
We gods and goddesses had lived in riot,
And the blind fool had let us all be quiet.
Mortals had never been stunn'd with!!!!!!!—
Nor Virgil's wooden horse play'd Hocus Pocus.
Hang the two Bards! But Montague is pretty.
Sirrah, you lie; but I'll allow she's witty.
Well! but I'm told she was so at fifteen,
Ay, and the veriest so that e'er was seen.
Why that I own; and I myself——

"But, hold! as in all probability I am going to tell a parcel of cursed lies, I'll travel no further, lay down my presumptuous pen, and go to bed; for it's half-past two, and two hours and an half is full long enough to write nonsense at one time. You see what it is to give a Goth Tokay: you manure your land with filth, and it produces Tokay; you enrich a man with Tokay, and he brings forth the froth and filth of nonsense. You will learn how to bestow it better another time. I hope what you took yourself had a better, or at least no bad, effect. I wish you had wrote me a note after your first sleep. There wou'd have been your sublime double-distilled, treble-refined wit. I shouldn't have known it to be yours if it could have been anybody's else.

"Pray don't show these humble rhimes to R——y. That puppy will write notes upon 'em or perhaps paint 'em upon sign-posts, and make 'em into an invitation to draw people to see the Camel and Dromedary—for I see he can make anything of anything; but, after all, why should I be afraid? Perhaps he might make something of nothing. I have wrote in heroics. Sure the wretch will have a reverence for heroics, especially for such as he never saw before, and never may again. Well, upon my life I will go to bed—'tis a burning shame to sit up so. I lie, for my fire is out, and so will my candle too if I write a word more.

"So I will only make my mark.        X

"God eternally bless and preserve you from such writers."

"March 5th, 12 o'clock.

"Dear Mrs. Montague,

"My fever has been so great that I have not had any time to write to you in such a manner as to try and convince you that I had recovered my senses, and I could write a sober line. Pray, how do you do after your wine and its effects on you, as well as upon me? You are grown a right down rake, and I never expect you for a patient again as long as we live, the last relation I should like to stand to you in, and which nothing could make bearable but serving you, and that is a J'ay pays for all my misery in serving you ill.

"I am called out, so adieu."

"March 6th.

"How do you stand this flabby weather? I tremble to hear, but want to hear of all things. If you have done with my stupid West India Ly., pray send 'em, for they go to-morrow or next day at latest. 'Tis hardly worth while to trouble Ld L with so much chaff and so little wheat—then why you!

"Very true. 'Tis a sad thing to have to do with a fool, who can't keep his nonsense to himself. You know I am a rose, but I have terrible prickles. Dear madam, adieu. Pray God I may hear you are well, or that He will enable me to make you so, for you must not be sick or die. I'll find fools and rogues enough to be that for you, that are good for nothing else, and hardly, very hardly, good enough for that. Adieu, Adieu! I say Adieu, Adieu.

"M. M."

Truly did Dr. Messenger Monsey understand the art of writing a long letter about nothing.

CHAPTER XVIII.

AKENSIDE.

There were two Akensides—Akenside the poet, and Akenside the man; and of the man Akenside there were numerous subdivisions. Remarkable as a poet, he was even yet more noteworthy a private individual in his extreme inconsistency. No character is more commonplace than the one to which is ordinarily applied the word contradictory; but Akenside was a curiosity from the extravagance in which this form of "the commonplace" exhibited itself in his disposition and manners.

By turns he was placid, irritable, simple, affected, gracious, haughty, magnanimous, mean, benevolent, harsh, and sometimes even brutal. At times he was marked by a childlike docility, and at other times his vanity and arrogance displayed him almost as a madman. Of plebeian extraction, he was ashamed of his origin, and yet was throughout life the champion of popular interests. Of his real humanity there can be no doubt, and yet in his demeanour to the unfortunate creatures whom, in his capacity of a hospital-physician, he had to attend, he was always supercilious, and often cruel.

Like Byron, he was lame, one of his legs being shorter than the other; and of this personal disfigurement he was even more sensitive than was the author of "Childe Harold" of his deformity. When his eye fell on it he would blush, for it reminded him of the ignoble condition in which he was born. His father was a butcher at Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and one of his cleavers, falling from the shop-block, had irremediably injured the poet's foot, when he was still a little child.

Akenside was not only the son of a butcher—but, worse still, a Nonconformist butcher; and from an early period of his life he was destined to be a sectarian minister. In his nineteenth year he was sent to Edinburgh to prosecute his theological studies, the expenses of this educational course being in part defrayed by the Dissenters' Society. But he speedily discovered that he had made a wrong start, and persuaded his father to refund the money the Society had advanced, and to be himself at the cost of educating him as a physician. The honest tradesman was a liberal and affectionate parent. Mark remained three years at Edinburgh, a member of the Medical Society, and an industrious student. On leaving Edinburgh he practised for a short time as a surgeon at Newcastle; after which he went to Leyden, and having spent three months in that university took his degree of doctor of physic, May 16, 1744. At Leyden he became warmly attached to a fellow-student named Dyson; and wonderful to be related, the two friends, notwithstanding one was under heavy pecuniary obligations to the other, and they were very unlike each other in some of their principal characteristics, played the part of Pylades and Orestes, even into the Valley of Death. Akenside was poor, ardent, and of a nervous, poetic temperament. Dyson was rich, sober, and matter-of-fact, a prudent place-holder. He rose to be clerk of the House of Commons, and a Lord of the Treasury; but the atmosphere of political circles and the excitement of public life never caused his heart to forget its early attachment. Whilst the poet lived Dyson was his munificent patron, and when death had stepped in between them, his literary executor. Indeed, he allowed him for years no less a sum than £300 per annum.

Akenside was never very successful as a physician, although he thoroughly understood his profession, and in some important particulars advanced its science. Dyson introduced him into good society, and recommended him to all his friends; but the greatest income Akenside ever made was most probably less than what he obtained from his friend's generosity. Still, he must have earned something, for he managed to keep a carriage and pair of horses; and £300 per annum, although a hundred years ago that sum went nearly twice as far as it would now, could not have supported the equipage. His want of patients can easily be accounted for. He was a vain, tempestuous, crotchety little man, little qualified to override the prejudices which vulgar and ignorant people cherish against lawyers and physicians who have capacity and energy enough to distinguish themselves in any way out of the ordinary track of their professional duties.

He was admitted, by mandamus, to a doctor's degree at Cambridge; and became a fellow of the Royal Society, and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. He tried his luck at Northampton, and found he was not needed there; he became an inhabitant of Hampstead, but failed to ingratiate himself with the opulent gentry who in those days resided in that suburb; and lastly fixed himself in Bloomsbury Square (ætat. 27), where he resided till his death. After some delay, he became a physician of St. Thomas's Hospital, and an assistant physician of Christ's Hospital—read the Gulstonian Lectures before the College of Physicians, in 1755—and was also Krohnian Lecturer. In speeches and papers to learned societies, and to various medical treatises, amongst which may be mentioned his "De Dysentariâ Commentarius," he tried to wheedle himself into practice. But his efforts were of no avail. Sir John Hawkins, in his absurd Life of Dr. Johnson, tells a good story of Saxby's rudeness to the author of the "Pleasures of Imagination." Saxby was a custom-house clerk, and made himself liked in society by saying the rude things which other people had the benevolence to feel, but lacked the hardihood to utter. One evening, at a party, Akenside argued, with much warmth and more tediousness, that physicians were better and wiser men than the world ordinarily thought.

"Doctor," said Saxby, "after all you have said, my opinion of the profession is this: the ancients endeavoured to make it a science, and failed; and the moderns to make it a trade, and succeeded."

He was not liked at St. Thomas's Hospital. The gentle Lettsom, whose mild poetic nature had surrounded the author of "The Pleasures of Imagination" with a halo of romantic interest, when he entered himself a student of that school, was shocked at finding the idol of his admiration so irritable and unkindly a man. He was, according to Lettsom's reminiscences, thin and pale, and of a strumous countenance. His injured leg was lengthened by a false heel. In dress he was scrupulously neat and delicate, always having on his head a well-powdered white wig, and by his side a long sword. Any want of respect to him threw him into a fit of anger. One amongst the students who accompanied him on a certain occasion round the wards spat on the floor behind the physician. Akenside turned sharply on his heel, and demanded who it was that dared to spit in his face. To the poor women who applied to him for medical advice he exhibited his dislike in the most offensive and cruel manner. The students who watched him closely, and knew the severe disappointment his affections had suffered in early life, whispered to the novice that the poet-physician's moroseness to his female patients was a consequence of his having felt the goads of despised love. The fastidiousness of the little fellow at having to come so closely in contact with the vulgar rabble, induced him sometimes to make the stronger patients precede him with brooms and clear a way for him through the crowd of diseased wretches. Bravo, my butcher's boy! This story of Akenside and his lictors, pushing back the unsightly mob of lepers, ought to be read side by side with that of the proud Duke of Somerset, who, when on a journey, used to send outriders before him to clear the roads, and prevent vulgar eyes from looking at him.

On one occasion Akenside ordered an unfortunate male patient of St. Thomas's to take boluses of bark. The poor fellow complained that he could not swallow them. Akenside was so incensed at the man's presuming to have an opinion on the subject, that he ordered him to be turned out of the hospital, saying, "He shall not die under my care." A man who would treat his poor patients in this way did not deserve to have any rich ones. These excesses of folly and brutality, however, ere long reached the ears of honest Richard Chester, one of the governors, and that good fellow gave the doctor a good scolding, roundly telling him, "Know, thou art a servant of this charity."

Akenside's self-love received a more humorous stab than the poke administered by Richard Chester's blunt cudgel, from Mr. Baker, one of the surgeons at St. Thomas's. To appreciate the full force of the story, the reader must recollect that the jealousy, which still exists between the two branches of the medical profession, was a century since so violent that even considerations of interest failed in some cases to induce eminent surgeons and physicians to act together. One of Baker's sons was the victim of epilepsy, and frequent fits had impaired his faculties. Baker was naturally acutely sensitive of his child's misfortune, and when Akenside had the bad taste to ask to what study the afflicted lad intended to apply, the father answered, "I find he is not capable of making a surgeon, so I have sent him to Edinburgh to make a physician of him." Akenside felt this sarcasm so much, that he for a long time afterward refused to hold any intercourse with Baker.

But Akenside had many excuses for his irritability. He was very ambitious, and failed to achieve that success which the possession of great powers warranted him in regarding as his due. It was said of Garth that no physician understood his art more, or his trade less! and this, as Mr. Bucke, in his beautiful "Life of Arkenside," remarks, was equally true of the doctor of St. Thomas's. He had a thirst for human praise and worldly success, and a temperament that caused him, notwithstanding all his sarcasms against love, to estimate at their full worth the joys of married life; yet he lived all his days a poor man, and died a bachelor. Other griefs also contributed to sour his temper. His lot was cast in times that could not justly appreciate his literary excellences. His sincere admiration of classic literature and art and manners was regarded by the coarse herd of rich and stupid Londoners as so perfectly ridiculous, that when Smollett had the bad taste to introduce him into Peregrine Pickle, as the physician who gives a dinner after the manner of the ancients, the applause was general, and every city tradesman, with scholarship enough to read the novel, had a laugh at the expense of a man who has some claims to be regarded as the greatest literary genius of his time. The polished and refined circles of English life paid homage to his genius, but even in them he failed to meet with the cordial recognition he deserved. Johnson, though he placed him above Gray and Mason, did not do him justice. Boswell didn't see much in him. Horace Walpole differed from the friend who asked him to admire the "Pleasures of Imagination." The poets and wits of his own time had a high respect for his critical opinion, and admitted the excellence of his poetry—but almost invariably with some qualification. And Akenside was one who thirsted for the complete assent of the applauding world. He died after a brief illness in his forty-ninth year, on the 23rd of June, 1770; and we doubt not, when the Angel of Death touched him, the heart that ceased to beat was one that had known much sorrow.

Akenside's poetical career was one of unfulfilled promise. At the age of twenty-three he had written "The Pleasures of the Imagination." Pope was so struck with the merits of the poem, that when Dodsley consulted him about the price set on it by the author (£120), he told him to make no niggardly offer, for it was the work of no every-day writer. But he never produced another great work. Impressed with the imperfections of his achievement, he occupied himself with incessantly touching and re-touching it up, till he came to the unwise determination of re-writing it. He did not live to accomplish this suicidal task; but the portion of it which came to the public was inferior to the original poem, both in power and art.