APRIL 21.
The weather gets no better, the apothecary gets no worse, and both are as foul and as disagreeable as they can well be. As to the man, it is wonderful that he is still alive, for he has swallowed nothing for the last three weeks except drams and laudanum. He drinks, and he stinks, and he does nothing else earthly or celestial. The quantity of spirits which he pours down his throat incessantly should, of itself, be sufficient to finish him; but he seems to have accustomed himself to drams, as Mithridates used himself to poisons, till his stomach is completely proof against them; or like the Scythian princess, who was fed upon ratsbane pap from her infancy, for the express purpose of one day or other poisoning Alexander in her embraces; and who arrived at such perfection, that although the venom did no harm to her own constitution, she killed a condemned criminal with a single kiss. The consequence was, that hemp fell fifty per cent, and Jack Ketch’s nose was put out of joint completely; for the devil a culprit of any pretensions to taste could be found in all Scythia, who could be prevailed upon to be executed except by her royal highness’s own lips. I am afraid this story is not strictly historical, and that we should look for it in vain in Quintus Curtius.