336 Biographical Sketch of the late Dr. GartJishore. 



ance to them, that even if the disappointment of dishonest 

 expectations should absorb the noble emotions of gratitude, 

 the painful feelings of their loss must draw forth involun- 

 tary tributes to his memory during the remainder of their 

 lives. Viewed as a philanthropist, as a man of talents, 

 whose genuine simplicity and graceful ease made him 

 equally the friend of the poor and of the great, his charac- 

 ter rises the more it is investigated ; and if we examine his 

 domestic piety, his clear and rational conviction of the 

 great truths of Christianity, we shall perhaps long look 

 for a greater and a better man in any age or country. To 

 youth he was a most able and propitious friend: his meek- 

 ness rendered hira lenient to their foibles, his sagacity an- 

 ticipated their wants, while his purity checked the recur- 

 rence of evil propensities. Had he possessed less virtue, he 

 would have appeared a greater man ; had he been more 

 ambitious, vain, or reserved, his reputation might have been 

 higher, but his merits and talents less. Like all conscien- 

 tious men, he was extremely diffident ; in many cases, even 

 with all his knowledge and experience, he hesitated where 

 a forward and thoughtless youth, or an impudent and ig- 

 norant quack, decided with all the dogmatism of unprin- 

 cipled impostors. The horrid sentiment of * Kill or cure' 

 never once found a place in his mind, as he could find in 

 those cases no such satisfactory evidence of cures as of 

 deaths. He was, indeed, fully sensible of the degraded 

 state of medical {)ractice in the metropolis, as well as the 

 imperfect knowledge of medicine, and he zealously assisted 

 Dr. Harrison in all his attempts in the sacred cause of me- 

 dical reform. Even the case of a man dying in an English 

 hospital by the bite of a snake, he justly considered as a 

 stigma which every honourable practitioner should labour 

 to remove, by qualifying himself to prevent the recurrence 

 of a similar catastrophe. In this he was consistent, as well 

 as in the whole tenor of his life. His last moments also 

 were worthy of himself; and in the judicious distribution 

 of the very moderate fortune which he left, he did not rob 

 his relations and friends to gratify any posthumous vanity 

 by popular bequests. 



A respectable Magazine, in a memoir of Dr. G. other- 

 wise authentic and correct, states, either in consequence of 

 a typographical error or wilful misrepresentation, that the 

 Doctor died wo^th 55,OOoL Every person who wishes to 

 know the truth may learn, by applying at the proper office, 

 that the whole amount of his property was only about 

 33,000/. 



XLVIII. .An 



