“A tinker first, his scene of life began;
That failing, he set up for a cunning man;
But, wanting luck, puts on a new disguise,
And now pretends that he can cure your eyes.
But this expect, that, like a tinker true,
Where he repairs one eye, he puts out two.”
THE EYE DOCTOR.
He worked himself into notoriety by the publication, in pamphlet form, of his cures,—a mixture of truth strongly spiced with falsehood,—and scattering it over the community. “His plan was to get hold of some poor, ignorant person, of imperfect vision, and, after treating him with medicine and half-crowns for a few weeks, induce him to sign a testimonial, which he probably had never read, that he was born blind, and by the providential intervention of Dr. Grant, he had been entirely restored. To this certificate the clergyman and church-wardens of the parish, in which the patient had been known to wander in mendicancy, were asked to attest; and if they proved impregnable to the cunning representations of the importunate solicitors, and declined to sign the certificate, the doctor did not scruple to save them that trouble by signing their names himself.”
More than once was the charge of being a tinker preferred against him. The following satire was written and published for his benefit—with Dr. Reade’s—after Queen Anne had Dr. Grant sworn in as her “oculist in ordinary”:—
“Her majesty sure was in a surprise,
Or else was very short-sighted,
When a tinker was sworn to look to her eyes,
And the mountebank Reade was knighted.”
“The Little Carver Davy.”
The distinguished chemical philosopher and physician of Penzance, Sir Humphry Davy, Bart., was the son of a poor wood-carver, at which trade Humphry worked in his earlier days, and was named by his familiar associates, the “Little Carver Davy.” On the death of his father, the widow established herself as a milliner at Penzance, where she apprenticed her son to an apothecary. His mother was a woman of talent and great moral sense. When, as Sir Humphry, he had reached the summit of his fame, he looked back upon the facts of his humble origin, his father’s plebeian occupation and associates, and his mother’s mean pursuit, followed for his benefit, with mortification instead of regarding them as sources of pride.
A Butcher Boy escapes the Cleaver and becomes a Great Physician and Poet.