Tis well for mee that letters cannot blush, else you would easily reade mee guilty. I am ashamed of so long a silence and know not how to excuse it, for as nothing but businesse can speake for mee, of wchkinde I have many advocates, so can I not tell how to call any businesse greater than holding an affectionate correspondence with so excellent a friend. My only confidence is I pleade at a barr of loue, where absolutions are much more frequent then censures. Sure I ame that conscience of neglect doth not accuse mee; though euidence of fact doth. I would add more but yeentertainment of a straunger friend calls upon mee, and one other unsuitable occasion hold mee excused: therefore, deare friend, and if you vouchsafe mee a letter, lett mee begg of you to teach mee some thrift of time; that I may imploy more in yorservice who will ever bee
Hampd.March 31,1631.Command my service toyesouldier if not goneto his colours.
Hampd.March 31,1631.
Hampd.March 31,1631.
Command my service toyesouldier if not goneto his colours.
Command my service toyesouldier if not goneto his colours.
We may now see the great luminary at half-past five in the morning if “we shake off dull sloth,” and set our facesto be greeted by his, at his rising, in the open air. Lying a bed is a sad destroyer of health, and getting up early a vast improver of time. It is an old and atruesaying, that “an hour in the morning before breakfast, is worth two all the rest of the day.”
In “The Examiner” of the 31st of March, 1822, there is the following pleasant little story.
One morning at daybreak a father came into his son’s bedchamber, and told him that a wonderful stranger was to be seen. “You are sick,” said he, “and fond of great shows. Here are no quack-doctors now, nor keeping of beds. A remarkable being is announced all over the town, who not only heals the sick, but makes the very grass grow; and what is more, he is to rise out of the sea.” The boy, though he was of a lazy habit, and did not like to be waked, jumped up at hearing of such an extraordinary exhibition, and hastened with his father to the door of the house, which stood upon the sea-shore. “There,” said the father, pointing to the sun, which at that moment sprung out of the ocean like a golden world, “there, foolish boy, you who get me so many expenses with your lazy diseases, and yourself into so many troubles, behold at last a remedy, cheap, certain, and delightful. Behold at last a physician, who has only to look in your face every morning at this same hour, and you will be surely well.”
Country people who are unusually plain in notion, and straight forward in conduct, frequently commit the care of their health to very odd sort of practitioners.
A late celebrated empiric, in Yorkshire, called theWhitworth Doctor, was of so great fame as to have the honour of attending the brother of lord Thurlow. The name of thisdoctorwas Taylor: he and his brother werefarriersby profession, and to the last, if both a two-legged and a four-legged patient were presented at the same time, thedoctoralways preferred the four-legged one. Theirpracticewas immense, as may be well imagined from the orders they gave the druggist; they dealt principally with Ewbank and Wallis, of York, and atonof Glauber’s salt, with other articles in proportion, was their usual order. On a Sunday morning thedoctorsused to bleed gratis. The patients, often to the number of an hundred, were seated on benches round a room, where troughs were placed to receive the blood. One of thedoctorsthen went and tied up the arm of each patient, and was immediately followed by the other who opened the vein. Such a scene is easier conceived than described. From their medical practice, the nice formality of scales and weights was banished; all was “rule of thumb.” An example of their practice may elucidate their claim to celebrity: being sent for to a patient who was in the last stage of a consumption, the learned doctor prescribeda leg of muttonto be boiledsecundum artem, into very strong broth, aquartof which was to be taken at proper intervals: what might have been its success is not to be related, as the patient died before the first dose was got down. Asbone-settersthey were remarkably skilful, and, perhaps, to theirreal meritin this, and thecheapnessof their medicines, they were indebted for their great local fame.
The “Public Ledger” of the 31st of March, 1825, contains
A pamphlet published in the year 1703, has the following strange title:—“The deformity of sin cured, a sermon, preached at St. Michael’s, Crooked Lane, before the Prince of Orange; by the Rev. James Crookshanks. Sold by Matthew Dowton, at the Crooked Billet, near Cripplegate, and by all other Booksellers.” The words of the text are, “Every crooked path shall be made straight.” The Prince before whom it was preached was deformed in his person.
A Seasonable Epitaphon the lateJ. C. March,Esq.Death seemed so envious of my clay,He bade me march and marched away;Now underneath the vaulted arch,My corpse must change to dust andMarch.J. R. P.
A Seasonable Epitaphon the lateJ. C. March,Esq.
Death seemed so envious of my clay,He bade me march and marched away;Now underneath the vaulted arch,My corpse must change to dust andMarch.
Death seemed so envious of my clay,He bade me march and marched away;Now underneath the vaulted arch,My corpse must change to dust andMarch.
J. R. P.
Mean Temperature 44·22.
[116]Addit. MSS. 5016.
[116]Addit. MSS. 5016.