which made merry Sir Joshua Reynolds and his friends, is indicative of the good doctor’s struggles to employ an uncongenial medium. He wanted to tell his readers how to farm successfully in the West Indies; how to keep well in a treacherous climate; what food to eat, what drugs to take, how to look after the physical condition of negro servants, and guard them from prevalent maladies. These were matters on which the author was qualified to speak, and on which he does speak with all a physician’s frankness; but they do not lend themselves to lofty strains. Whole pages of the “Sugar Cane” read like prescriptions and dietaries done into verse. It is as difficult to sing with dignity about a disordered stomach as about rats and cockroaches; and Dr. Grainger’s determination to leave nothing untold leads him to dwell with much feeling, but little grace, on all the disadvantages of the tropics.
Musquitoes, sand-flies, seek the sheltered roof,
And with fell rage the stranger guest assail,
Nor spare the sportive child; from their retreats
Cockroaches crawl displeasingly abroad.
The truthfulness and sobriety of this last line deserve commendation. Cockroaches in the open are displeasing to sensitive souls; and a footnote, half a page long, tells us everything we could possibly desire—or fear—to know about these insects. As an example of Dr. Grainger’s thoroughness in the treatment of such themes, I quote with delight his approved method of poisoning alligators.
With Misnian arsenic, deleterious bane,
Pound up the ripe cassada’s well-rasped root,
And form in pellets; these profusely spread
Round the Cane-groves where skulk the vermin-breed.