embassy, setting forth, at large, the great affection which he bore, in particular, to the people of that place; amplifying on his own merits and qualifications, specifying great numbers of cures which he had wrought on incurable distempers, expatiating on the extreme danger of being without his physic, and offering health and immortality to sale, for the price of a tester.

You'd have burst your sides, Mr. Mist, had you but heard the foolish allusions, quaint expressions, and inconsistent metaphors, which fell from the mouth of this eloquent declaimer. For my part, I should have wondered where he could have raked up nonsense enough to furnish out such a wordy harangue, but that I am told he has studied the Flying Post with a great deal of application; and, that most of the silly things in his speech are borrowed from that excellent author. Sometimes he'd creep, in the most vulgar phrases imaginable; by and by he'd soar out of sight and traverse the spacious realms of fustian and bombast. He was, indeed, very sparing of his Latin and Greek, as (God knows) having a very slender stock of those commodities; but then, for hard words and terms, which neither he, nor you, nor I, nor any one else understand, he poured them out in such abundance, that you'd have sworn he had been rehearsing some of the occult philosophy of Agrippa or Rosicrusius, or reading a lecture out of Cabala.

After the doctor had given such ample indications of the greatest humanity, skill, and erudition, who d' ye think would be so incredulous as not to believe him, or so uncourteous as to refuse to purchase one of his packets? Lest any of us, however, should be too tenacious of our money to part with it on these considerations, he had one other motive which did not fail to do the business; this was, by persuading us that there were the seeds of some malignant distemper lurking in every one of our bodies; and,

that there was nothing in Nature could save us, but some one or other of his medicines. He threaten'd us with death in case of refusal, and assured us, with a prophetic air, that without his physic every mother's son of us would be in our graves by that day twelve-month. The poor people were infinitely terrified, with the imminent danger they found themselves under, but were as much pleased to find how easy it was to be evaded; so that, without more ado, every man bought his packet, and turned the doctor adrift to pursue further adventures.

The scene being now removed, I was at leisure to reflect on what had passed, and could really have either cry'd or laugh'd very heartily, at what I had seen. The arrogance of the doctor and the silliness of his patients were each of them ridiculous enough to have set a person of more gravity than myself laughing; but then to consider the tragical issue to which these things tended, and the fatal effect so many murthering medicines might have on several of his Majesty's good subjects, wou'd have made the merriest buffoon alive serious. I have not often observed a more hale, robust crowd of people than that which incircled this doughty doctor; methinks one might have read health in their very faces, and there was not a countenance among them which did not give the lie to the doctor's suggestions. Cou'd but one see a little into futurity, and observe the condition they will be in, a few months hence, what an alteration wou'd one find! How many of those brawny youths are already puking in chimney corners? And how many rosy complexioned girls are by this time reduced to the paleness of a cockney?

I propose in a little time to make a second journey to this place, in order to see how the doctor's physic has operated. By searching the parish register, and comparing the number of funerals made weekly before the

ΤΟ

doctor's visit, with those which have followed, it will be easy to form an estimate of the havoc which this itinerant man-slayer made in the space of two hours. I shall then proceed to compute the number of quacks in the three kingdoms, from which it will be no hard matter to determine the number of people carried off per annum by the whole fraternity. Lastly, I shall calculate the loss which the government sustains by the death of every subject; from all of which, the immense damages accruing to his Majesty will evidently appear, and the public will be fully convinced of the truth of what I had heretofore asserted, viz. that the quacks contribute more toward keeping us poor, than all our national debts; and that to suppress the former, would be an infallible means of redeeming the latter. The whole scheme shall be drawn up in due form and presented to the Parliament in the ensuing session, and that august assembly, I don't doubt, will pay all regard thereto, which the importance of the subject and the weight of my argument shall require.

Methinks the course of justice, which has hitherto obtained among us, is chargeable with great absurdities. Petty villains are hanged or transported, while great ones are suffered to pass impune. A man cannot take a purse upon the highway, or cut a single throat, but he must presently be called to answer for it at the Old Bailey, and perhaps to suffer for it at Tyburn; and yet, here are wretches suffered to commit murthers by wholesale, and to plunder, not only private persons and pockets, but even the King and the Exchequer, without having any questions asked! Pray, Mr. Mist, what were gibbets, gallows, and whippingposts made for?

But to return to Doctor Thornhill. I have had the curiosity to examine several of his medicines in a reverberatory, reducing compounds into their simples by a chymical

analysis, and have constantly found a considerable proportion of some poisonous plant or mineral in every one of them. Arsenic, mercury, and hemlock are sine quibus non; and he could no more take up a medicament without some of these than remove a mountain. Accordingly as they are variously mix'd and disposed among other drugs, he gives them various names, calling them pills, electuaries, etc. His pills I would prescribe as a succedaneum to a halter; so that such persons as are weary of this troublesome world, and wou'd willingly quit it for a better, but are too squeamish to take up with that queer old-fashioned recipe called hanging, may have their business done as securely, and more decently by some of these excellent pills. His bolus, too, is very good in its kind; I have made experiments with it on several animals, and find that it poisons to a miracle. A moderate dose of it has perfectly silenced a bawling dog that used to disturb my morning slumbers; and a like quantity of it has quieted several other snarling curs in my neighbourhood. And then, if you be troubled with rats, Mr. Mist, there's the doctor's electuary is an infallible remedy, as I myself have experienced. I have effectually cleared my house of those troublesome animals, by disposing little parcels of it in the places they frequent; and do recommend it to you and your readers, as the most powerful ratsbane in the world. It would be needless to enumerate all the virtues of the doctor's several medicines; but I dare affirm that what the ancients fabulously reported of Pandora's box is strictly true of the doctor's packet, and, that it contains in it the seeds and principles of all diseases.

I must ask your pardon, Mr. Mist, for being so grave on so ludicrous a subject, and, spending so many words on an empty quack.

There is no Talent so useful toward rising in the World, or which puts men more out of the Reach of Fortune, than that Quality generally possessed by the dullest sort of People, and is in common Speech called Discretion, a Species of lower Prudence, by the Assistance of which People of the meanest Intellectuals, without any other Qualification, pass through the World in great Tranquillity, and with universal good Treatment, neither giving nor taking Offence. Courts are seldom unprovided of Persons under this Character, on whom, if they happen to be of great Quality, most Employments, even the greatest, naturally fall, when Competitors will not agree; and in such Promotions nobody rejoices or grieves. The Truth of this I could prove by several Instances within my own Memory (for I say nothing of the present Times). . .

This Talent of Discretion is no where so serviceable as to the Clergy, to whose Preferment nothing is so fatal as the Character of Wit, Politeness in Reading, or Manners, or that kind of Behaviour, which we contract by having too much conversed with Persons of high Stations and Eminency; these Qualifications being reckoned by the Vulgar of all Ranks to be Marks of Levity, which is the last Crime the World will pardon in a Clergyman: to this I may add a free Manner of speaking in mixt Company, and too frequent an Appearance in Places of much Resort, which are equally noxious to spiritual Promotions. . . .

I will here give the Reader a short History of two Clergymen in England, the Characters of each, and the Progress of their Fortunes in the World; by which the Force of