October 16. "MR. BICKERSTAFF, "Several that frequent divine-service at Saint Paul's, as well as myself, having with great satisfaction, observed the good effect which your animadversion had on an excess in performance there; it is requested, that you will take notice of a contrary fault, which is, the unconcerned silence, and the motionless postures, of others who come thither. If this custom prevails, the congregation will resemble an audience at a play-house, or, rather, a silent meeting of quakers. Your censuring such church-mutes, in the manner you think fit, may make these dissenters join with us, out of fear lest you should further animadvert upon their non-conformity. According as this succeeds, you shall hear from, Sir, Your most humble servant, B. B." "MR. BICKERSTAFF, "I was the other day in company with a gentleman, who, in reciting his own qualifications, concluded every period with these words, the best of any man in England. Thus, for example: he kept the best house of any man in England; he understood this, and that, and the other, the best of any man in England. How harsh and ungrateful soever this expression might sound to one of my nation, yet the gentleman was one whom it no ways became me to interrupt; but perhaps a new term put into his bywords (as they call a sentence a man particularly affects) may cure him. I therefore took a resolution to apply to you, who, I dare say, can easily persuade this gentleman, whom I cannot believe an enemy to the Union, to amend his phrase, and be hereafter the wisest of any man in Great-Britain. I am, Sir, Your most humble servant, SCOTO-BRITANNUS. N° 239. When this coxcomb had done reading them, Hey-day!" says he, "what instrument is this that Flavia employs in such a manner as is not to be told, nor safely seen? In ten lines it is a toy, a Cupid's bow, a fan, and an engine in love. It has wanton motions, it wounds, it cools, and inflames." Such criticisms make a man of sense sick, and a fool merry. The next paragraph of the paper we are talking of, falls upon somebody whom I am at a loss to guess at: but I find the whole invective turns upon a man, who, it seems, has been imprisoned for debt. Whoever he was, I most heartily pity him; but at the same time must put the Examiner in mind, that notwithstanding he is a Critic, he still ought to remember he is a Christian. Poverty was never thought a proper subject for ridicule; and I do not remember that I ever met with a satire upon a beggar. As for those little retortings of my own èxpressions, of "being dull by design, witty in October, shining, excelling," and so forth; they are the common cavils of every witling, who has no other method of showing his parts, but by little variations and repetitions of the man's words whom he attacks. But the truth of it is, the paper before me, not only in this particular, but in its very essence, is like Ovid's Echo. -Quæ nec reticere loquenti, OVID. Met. iii. 357. She who in other's words her silence breaks, ADDISON. I should not have deserved the character of a Censor, had I not animadverted upon the above mentioned author, by a gentle chastisement: but I know my reader will not pardon me, unless I declare, that nothing of this kind for the future, unless it be written with some wit, shall divert me from my care of the public. No 240. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1710. Ad populum phaleras. PERS. Sat. iii. 30. Such pageantry be to the people shown: There boast thy horse's trappings, and thy own. From my own Apartment, October 20. DRYDEN. I Do not remember that in any of my Lucubrations I have touched upon that useful science of physic, notwithstanding I have declared myself more than once a professor of it. I have indeed joined the study of astrology with it, because I never knew a physician recommended himself to the public, who had not a sister art to embellish his knowledge in medicine. It has been commonly observed, in compliment to the ingenious of our profession, that Apollo was god of verse as well as physic; and, in all ages, the most celebrated practitioners of our country were the particular favourites of the Mus s. Poetry to physic is indeed like the gilding to a pill; it makes the art shine, and covers the severity of the doctor with the agreeableness of the companion. The very foundation of poetry is good sense, if we may allow Horace to be a judge of the art. Scribendi rectè sapere est et principium et fons. HOR. Ars Poet. 509. Such judgment is the ground of writing well. ROSCOMMON. And if so, we have reason to believe, that the same man who writes well can prescribe well, if he has applied himself to the study of both. Besides, when we see a man making professions of two different sciences, it is natural for us to believe he is no pretender in that which we are not judges of, when we find him skilful in that which we understand. Ordinary quacks and charlatans are thoroughly sensible how necessary it is to support themselves by these collateral assistances, and therefore always lay their claims to some supernumerary accomplishments, which are wholly foreign to their profession. About twenty years ago it was impossible to walk the streets, without having an advertisement thrust into your hand, of a doctor "who had arrived at the knowledge of the Green and Red Dragon, and had discovered the female fern-seed." Nobody ever knew what this meant; but the Green and Red Dragon so amused the people, that the doctor lived very comfortably upon them. About the same time there was pasted a very hard word upon every corner of the streets. This, to the best of my remembrance, was TETRACHYMAGOGON, which drew great shoals of spectators about it, who read the bill that it introduced with unspeakable 1 curiosity; and when they were sick, would have no body but this learned man for their physician. I once received an advertisement of one "who had studied thirty years by candle-light for the good of his countrymen." He might have studied twice as long by day-light, and never have been taken notice of. But Lucubrations cannot be overvalued. There are some who have gained themselves great reputation for physic by their birth, as the "seventh son of a seventh son;" and others by not being born at all, as the unborn doctor, who, I hear, is lately gone the way of his patients; having died worth five hundred pounds per annum, though he was not born to a halfpenny. My ingenious friend doctor Saffold succeeded my old contemporary doctor Lilly in the studies both of physic and astrology, to which he added that of poetry, as was to be seen both upon the sign where he lived, and in the pills which he distributed. He was succeeded by Doctor Case who erased the verses of his predecessor out of the sign-post, and substituted in their place two of his own, which were as follow: Within this place Lives Doctor Case. He is said to have got more by this distich, than Mr. Dryden did by all his works. There would be no end of enumerating the several imaginary perfections, and unaccountable artifices, by which this tribe of men insnare the minds of the vulgar, and gain crowds of admirers. I have seen the whole front of a mountebank's stage, from one end to the other, faced with patents, certificates, medals, and great seals, by which the several princes of Europe have testified their particular respect and esteem for the Doctor. Every great man with a sounding title |