Amongst Peter Pindar's good services to the world was the protection he afforded to Opie (or Oppy, as it was at one time less euphoniously spelt and pronounced) the artist, when he was a poor country clown, rising at three o'clock in the summer mornings, to pursue his art with rude pieces of chalk and charcoal. Wolcot presented the boy with his first pencils, colours, and canvas, and put him in the way to paint portraits for the magnificent remuneration of half-a-guinea, and subsequently a guinea a-head. And it was to the same judicious friend that Opie, on leaving the provinces, owed his first success in London.
Wolcot used to tell some droll stories about his artist friend. Opie's indiscreet manner was a source of continual trouble to those who endeavoured to serve him; for, priding himself on being "a rough diamond," he took every pains that no one should fail to see the roughness. A lady sitter was anxious that her portrait should be "very handsome," and frankly told the painter so. "Then, madam," was the reply, "you wish to be painted otherwise than you are. I see you do not want your own face." Not less impudent was he at the close of his first year in London, in taking out writs against several sitters who were rather tardy in their payments.
Opie was not the only artist of celebrity deeply indebted to Peter Pindar. Bone, the painter in enamel, found an efficient friend in the same discerning lover of the arts. In this respect Wolcot was worthy of the profession which he deserted, and affected to despise; and his name will ever be honourably mentioned amongst those physicians who have fostered art, from the days of picture-loving Mead, down to those of the writer's very kind friend, Dr. Diamond, who gathered from remote quarters "The Diamond Collection of Portraits," which may be seen amongst the art treasures of Oxford.
One of the worthies of Dr. Diamond's family was Robertus Fludd, or De Fluctibus, the writer of Rosicrucian celebrity who gave Sterne more than one lesson in the arts of eccentricity. Sir Thomas Fludd of Milgate, Bearsted, co. Kent (grandson of David Fludd, alias Lloyd of Morton, in Shropshire), had five sons and a daughter. Of this offspring, one son, Thomas, purchased Gore Court, and fixed there a family, the vicissitudes of which may be learnt by a reference to Hasted's Kent. From this branch of the Fludds descended Dr. Diamond, who, amongst other curious family relics, possesses the diploma of Robertus de Fluctibus.
When Robertus de Fluctibus died, Sept. 8, 1637, in Coleman St., London, his body, under the protection of a herald of arms, was conveyed to the family seat in Kent, and was then buried in Bearsted Church, under a stone which he had before laid for himself. The monument over his ashes was ordered by him in his last will to be made after that of William Camden in the Abbey at Westminster. The inscription which marks his resting-place declares his, rather than our, estimate of his intellectual greatness;
Magnificus non hæc sub odoribus urna vaporat,
Crypta tegit cineres nec speciosa tuos.
Quod mortale minus, tibi te committimus unum;
Ingenii vivent hic monumenta tui
Nam tibi qui similis scribit, moriturque, sepulchrum
Pro totâ æternum posteritate facit.
More modest, and at the same time more humorous, is the epitaph, in Hendon Church, of poor Thomas Crossfield, whose name, alike as surgeon and politician, has passed from among men:—
"Underneath Tom Crossfield lies,
Who cares not now who laughs or cries.
He always laughed, and when mellow
Was a harum scarum sort of fellow.
To none gave designed offence,
So—Honi soit qui mal y pense."
Amongst the medical poets there is one whom all scholarly physicians jealously claim as of their body—John Keats; he who, dying at Rome, at the age of twenty-six, wished his epitaph to be, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." After serving his apprenticeship under an Edmonton surgeon, the author of "Endymion" became a medical student at St. Thomas's hospital.
Mention here, too, may be made of Dr. Macnish, the author of "The Anatomy of Drunkenness," and "The Modern Pythagorean"; and of Dr. Moir, the poet, whose death, a few years since, robbed the world of a simple and pathetic writer, and his personal acquaintance of a noble-hearted friend.