MESSENGER MONSEY'S DYING JESTS.
Dr. Messenger Monsey, the great grandfather of Lord Cranworth (so at least Mr. Jeafferson affirms), was appointed physician to Chelsea Hospital through the influence of Godolphin, and, after holding that office for about half a century, died in his rooms at Chelsea in 1788, in his ninety-fifth year. The eccentricities that had characterized his prime continued to distinguish him to the last. In consequence of his great age, many intending candidates for the office went down to Chelsea, in order to contemplate the various advantages and agrémens of the situation, and observe the progress of the tenacious incumbent towards final recumbency. Monsey, who was at once a humorist, and possessed of a sharp eye for a visitor of this order, one day espied in the College walks a reconnoitring doctor, whom he thus accosted: "So, Sir, I find you are one of the candidates to succeed me." The physician bowed. Monsey proceeded: "But you will be confoundedly disappointed." "Disappointed!" exclaimed the physician, with quivering lips. "Yes," returned Monsey; "you expect to outlive me; but I can discern from your countenance, and other concomitant circumstances, that you are deceiving yourself—you will certainly die first; though, as I have nothing to expect from that event, I shall not rejoice at your death, as I am persuaded you would at mine." It actually fell out as Monsey (possibly only by way of a ghastly jest) had foretold; the candidate lived but a short time. The Doctor was so diverted with checking the aspiring hopes of his brethren of the faculty, that whenever he saw a physician on the look-out, he was not content till he had gone down to comfort him in the same manner. He did so to several; and it is very remarkable—if it be true, as it is alleged—that his predictions were in every case verified. At last the medical speculators shrank in superstitious alarm from Chelsea, and left Monsey to die in peace; indeed, when his death happened, the Minister of the day was not engaged by a single promise, nor had he had for some time a single application for the place of physician to the College. Monsey got out of his own death as much grim fun as he had out of the poor prying place-hunters. A few days before he died, he wrote to Mr. Cruickshanks, the anatomist, begging to know whether it would suit his convenience to undertake the dissection of his body, as he felt that he could not live many hours, and Mr. Forster, his surgeon, was then out of town. The dissection was one of the instructions of his eccentric and rather brutal will; his body was not to be subjected to the insult of any funeral ceremony, but, after the surgeon had finished with it, "the remainder of my carcase may be put into a hole, or crammed into a box with holes, and thrown into the Thames." His will was, so far as regards the dissection, faithfully carried out; Mr. Forster dissected the body, and delivered a lecture upon it to the medical students in the theatre of Guy's Hospital. Before he had disposed of his body by will in the manner described, and when he meant to be buried in his garden, he had written an epitaph eminently characteristic of his violent cynicism and contempt of things sacred:—
MONSEY'S EPITAPH, WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.
"Here lie my old bones; my vexation now ends;
I have lived much too long for myself and my friends.
As to churches and churchyards, which men may call holy,
'Tis a rank piece of priestcraft, and founded on folly.
What the next world may be, never troubled my pate;
And be what it may, I beseech you, O fate!
When the bodies of millions rise up in a riot,
To let the old carcase of Monsey be quiet."