DR. ERASMUS DARWIN'S LIFE. l8l 



horse could thus move from one side of the road to the 

 other, quartering, as it is called, at the will of the driver, 

 whose constant attention was necessarily employed to 

 regulate a piece of machinery contrived, but not well 

 contrived, for that purpose." 



I cannot help the reader to understand the foregoing 

 description. " From this whimsical carriage, however, 

 the doctor was several times thrown, and the last time 

 he used it had the misfortune, from a similar accident, 

 to break the patella of his right knee, which caused, as 

 it must always cause, an incurable weakness in the 

 fractured part, and a lameness not very discernible, 

 indeed, when walking on even ground." * 



Miss Seward presently tells a story which reads as 

 though it might have been told by Plutarch of some 

 Greek or Eoman sage. Much as we must approve of 

 Dr. Darwin's habitual sobriety, we shall most of us be 

 agreed that a few more such stories would have been 

 cheaply purchased by a corresponding number of lapses 

 on the doctor's part. 



Miss Seward writes : 



" Since these memoirs commenced, an odd anecdote 

 of Dr. Darwin's early residence at Lichfield, was nar- 

 rated to a friend of the author by a gentleman, who was 

 of the party in which it happened. Mr. Sneyd, then of 

 Bishton, and a few more gentlemen of Staffordshire, 

 prevailed upon the doctor to join them in an expedition 

 by water from Burton to Nottingham, and on to 

 Newark. They had cold provisions on board, and 

 plenty of wine. It was midsummer ; the day ardent 

 * ' Memoirs,' &c., p. 62. 



