o 



6 SIR ASTLEY COOPER 



Indeed, the Doctor's character, as exhibited that day, 

 interlarded as his conversation was with scenes from the 

 cockpit, reminded me forcibly of the faithful resem- 

 blances inimitably depicted by the pen of Smollett ; and 

 in him I thouoht I could recoirnize Rory's messmate, 

 Morgan, who, with the same goodness of heart and pro- 

 ficiency in the art of healing, the same disregard of 

 worldly and personal accomplishments, had sat himself 

 down, as this man had, in a country town as an apothe- 

 cary. 



I left them too-ether early in the eyeninir to attend to 



O ^ <-■ 



my duty : and so impressed was I with the good qualities 

 of him who had played the host and of the eyil of his 

 besetting sin — for the Doctor had just proposed a North- 

 wester — that I went away muttering, " Oh, that man 

 should put an enemy in his mouth to steal away his 

 brains ! " 



Howeyer, our intimacy did not end here ; and one 

 day the Doctor asked me to ride with him to Gades- 

 bridge, the seat of that great benefactor of his species. 

 Sir Astley Cooper. Upon the road I found by his con- 

 yersation that this exalted member of the profession had 

 been a great friend to him, and, perhaps, was the cause 

 and the means of his practising in that locality. On our 

 return he asked me to do him a favour, to which I 

 readily assented. I learned that it was to get him a 

 buck, or carcase of venison, from Whittlebury Forest, as 

 he said he wished to make his kind friend and patron a 

 present of a haunch, though I afterwards had reason to 

 believe the "U'hole of it was intended for that o'reat 

 chirurgical professor. 



