GARRICK'S PRECEPTS FOR PREACHERS.
The celebrated actor Garrick having been requested by Dr. Stonehouse to favour him with his opinion as to the manner in which a sermon ought to be delivered, sent him the following judicious answer:—
"My dear Pupil,—You know how you would feel and speak in a parlour concerning a friend who was in imminent danger of his life, and with what energetic pathos of diction and countenance you would enforce the observance of that which you really thought would be for his preservation. You could not think of playing the orator, of studying your emphases, cadences, and gestures; you would be yourself; and the interesting nature of your subject impressing your heart would furnish you with the most natural tone of voice, the most proper language, the most engaging features, and the most suitable and graceful gestures. What you would thus be in the parlour, be in the pulpit, and you will not fail to please, to affect, and to profit. Adieu, my dear friend."
GEORGE II. AS AN AMATEUR SURGEON.
It is related in the Percy Anecdotes, that a gentleman, after taking tea with a friend who lived in St. James's Palace, took his leave, and stepping back, immediately fell down a whole flight of stairs, and with his head broke open a closet door. The unlucky visitor was completely stunned by the fall; and on his recovery, found himself sitting on the floor of a small room, and most kindly attended by a neat little old gentleman, who was carefully washing his head with a towel, and fitting with great exactness pieces of sticking plaster to the variegated cuts which the accident had occasioned. For some time his surprise kept him silent; but finding that the kind physician had completed his task, and had even picked up his wig, and replaced it on his head, he rose from the floor, and limping towards his benefactor, was going to utter a profusion of thanks for the attention he had received. These were, however, instantly checked by an intelligent frown, and significant motion of the hand towards the door. The patient understood the hint, but did not then know that for the kind assistance he had received he was indebted to George II., King of England.
BLUNDERS OF BLOOD-LETTERS.
A noble fee, in the interests of humanity, was given by a French lady to a surgeon, who used his lancet so clumsily that he cut an artery instead of a vein, in consequence of which the lady died. On her deathbed she made a will, bequeathing the operator a life annuity of eight hundred livres, on condition "that he never again bled anybody so long as he lived."
In the Journal Encyclopédique of May 1773, a somewhat similar story is told of a Polish princess, who lost her life in the same way. In her will, made in extremis, there was the following clause:—"Convinced of the injury that my unfortunate accident will occasion to the unhappy surgeon who is the cause of my death, I bequeath to him a life annuity of two hundred ducats, secured by my estate, and forgive his mistake from my heart. I wish this may indemnify him for the discredit which my sorrowful catastrophe will bring upon him."
A famous French Maréchal reproved the awkwardness of a phlebotomist less agreeably. Drawing himself away from the operator, just as the incision was about to be made, he displayed an unwillingness to put himself further in the power of a practitioner who, in affixing the fillet, had given him a blow with the elbow in the face. "My Lord," said the surgeon, "it seems that you are afraid of the bleeding." "No," returned the Maréchal, "not of the bleeding—but the bleeder."