646 



Monthly Review of Literature^ 



[ J U N E, 



at so extraordinary a fee, modestly declined the 

 acceptance of it ; upon which the great man, dip- 

 ping his hand into the bag himself, grasped up as 

 much of the coin as his fist could hold, and gene- 

 rously put it into the doctor's coat pocket, and so 

 took his leave. It may be said, continued Mead, 

 that this was an extraordinary case, and the fee a 

 most extraordinary one, which the patient paid as 

 the price of secrecy ; but the precaution was un- 

 necessary (as it ought always to be in a profession 

 whose very essence is honour and confidence), for 

 (a curious for, by the way) the name of the gene- 

 rous soldier is never once mentioned in the life of 

 Hamey (written by himself), though I have good 

 reason to believe he was no other than Ireton, the 

 son-in-law of Cromwell. 



Radcliffe left 40,000 to found a library 

 at Oxford, and 5,000 to enlarge or re- 

 pair University College. He was not dis- 

 tinguished for professional learning, or 

 any other learning, but was a man of 

 sound judgment, accompanied with good 

 tact, and blunt manners. His great im- 

 provement in practice, and on which he 

 piqued himself, was the cooling treatment 

 of small-pox a treatment which he en- 

 joined upon Mead, and ultimately adopted 

 by him. 



The Gold-headed Cane comes next into 

 Mead's hands. Radcliffe had once said, 

 " When 1 am dead, Mead, you will occupy 

 the throne of physic in this town." " No, 

 Sir," says Mead, "when you are gone, your 

 empire, like Alexander's, will be divided 

 among many successors." This was very 

 happily said, but the fact accorded with 

 Radcliffe's prediction. Mead was a man of 

 far higher attainments. He was the framer 

 of the present quarantine laws, which 

 some adventurous persons of our days are 

 eager to repeal the introducer of inocu- 

 lation, not meaning to depreciate Lady 

 Mary Wortley's merits and the inventor 

 of bandaging patients after tapping many 

 it seems had died for want of this obvious 

 precaution. Garth, Frend, Arbuthnot, are 

 introduced as Mead's cotemporaries and 

 acquaintance. Frend was in parliament 

 a tory implicated in Atterbury's plot 

 and during a suspension of the Habeas 

 Corpus was sent to the tower, and con- 

 fined for some months. Mead exerted all 

 bis influence to procure his release, in 

 vain. At last, Walpole, being unwell, 

 sent for Mead. Mead seized the oppor- 

 tunity to plead for Frend, urged with 

 great warmth his general excellencies, his 

 real loyalty, his services as an army phy- 

 sician, his excellent qualities, his learn- 

 ing, his skill, &c., and finally declined 

 prescribing for the minister unless Frend 

 was set at liberty. Walpole it was in 

 one of "his happier hours" we suppose 

 yielded to Mead's importunities, got his 

 prescription, and we hope a speedy cure. 



A lively sketch of Linacre follows, the 

 founder of the college. He visited Flo- 

 rence, and was distinguished for his 



Greek ; read lectures in that language ; 

 and was physician and tutor tp Prince 

 Arthur, and successively physician to Hen- 

 ry Vll., VIII., Edward, aud Mary. He 

 was marked for his prognosis in the case 

 of Lily, the grammarian, as well as for the 

 method by which he relieved Erasmus in 

 a painful fit of the gravel. A few years 

 before his death he took orders. It was 

 said of him, that upon some occasion 

 reading the sermon on the mount, he 

 threw the book away, and swore that it 

 was either not the gospel, of we were not 

 Christians. 



Of Harvey, it is said, that after the pub- 

 lication of his discovery of the circulation, 

 such was the general prejudice against 

 him as an innovator, his practice as a phy- 

 sician considerably declined. To be sure, 

 says the Gold-headed Cane, he might look 

 upon himself as recompensed for the in- 

 gratitude of the public by the regard of 

 his royal master. This is loyalty with a 

 witness worthy of our own best tory 

 days. It is said of Mead, " That, of all 

 physicians who had ever flourished, he 

 gained the most, spent the most, and en- 

 joyed the highest fame during his life, 

 not only in his own but in foreign coun- 

 tries." 



We have no more space but the ac- 

 counts of Askew, Pitcairne, and Baillie, 

 are very scanty. Physicians began to 

 leave their gold-headed canes at home. 

 We find Baillie's reply to his fantastic 

 and importunate patient " Pray, Doctor, 

 ifiay I eat a few oysters?" "Yes, Ma- 

 dam, shells and all, if you please." 



English Fashionables Abroad. 3 vols. 

 12mo.; 1827. This is not an ill-writ- 

 ten book, but it will be no hit, it will 

 win no popularity. It does not tell spe- 

 cifically enough of the class the title an- 

 nounces ; fashionable or unfashionable, 

 the accounts would be much the same ; 

 and, what is worse for the object the wri- 

 ter has in view, the characters will not be 

 recognized, either as portraits or carica- 

 tures. It is simply a tour, under the 

 mask of a tale. Every thing now-a-days 

 seems accomplishable by talcs sermons 

 and polemics morals and politics and 

 now we have a tour. This will not last, 

 or at least another course must be taken. 

 We cannot serve two masters. If a writer 

 deal with a story, that story must engage 

 his main attention. To make it the ve- 

 hicle of another purpose, defeats that pur- 

 pose, and with it breaks down the con- 

 veyance. If the writer must have another 

 object than what the interest of his inci- 

 dents involves, he should sedulously keep 

 it in the back ground. It must work indi- 

 rect ly, and take its chance of indirect effect. 



As a tour, the " English Fashionables 

 Abroad" is miserably incomplete as de- 

 scriptive of the state of certain societies 



