"So skilled in drugs and verse, 'twas hard to show it,
Whether was best, the doctor or the poet."
The ode continues:—
"Lament, ye damsels of our London city,
(Poor unprovided girls) tho' fair and witty,
Who, maskt, would to his house in couples come,
To understand your matrimonial doom;
To know what kind of men you were to marry,
And how long time, poor things, you were to tarry;
Your oracle is silent, none can tell
On whom his astrologick mantle fell:
For he when sick refused all doctors' aid,
And only to his pills devotion paid!
Yet it was surely a most sad disaster,
The saucy pills at last should kill their master."
EPITAPH.
"Here lies the corpse of Thomas Saffold,
By death, in spite of physick, baffled;
Who, leaving off his working loom,
Did learned doctor soon become.
To poetry he made pretence,
Too plain to any man's own sense;
But he when living thought it sin
To hide his talent in napkin;
Now death does doctor (poet) crowd
Within the limits of a shroud."
The vocation of fortune-teller was exercised not only by the quacks, but also by the apothecaries, of that period. Garth had ample foundation, in fact, for his satirical sketch of Horoscope's shop in the second canto of "The Dispensary."
"Long has he been of that amphibious fry,
Bold to prescribe and busie to apply;
His shop the gazing vulgars' eyes employs,
With foreign trinkets and domestick toys.
Here mummies lay most reverendly stale,
And there the tortoise hung her coat of mail.
Not far from some huge shark's devouring head
The flying fish their finny pinions spread;
Aloft in rows large poppy-heads were strung,
And near a scaly alligator hung;
In this place, drugs in musty heaps decay'd,
In that, dry'd bladders and drawn teeth were laid.
"An inner room receives the num'rous shoals
Of such as pay to be reputed fools;
Globes stand by globes, volumes by volumes lye,
And planetary schemes amuse the eye.
The sage, in velvet chair, here lolls at ease,
To promise future health for present fees.
Then, as from Tripod, solemn shams reveals,
And what the stars know nothing of reveals.
"One asks how soon Panthea may be won,
And longs to feel the marriage fetters on;
Others, convinced by melancholy proof,
Enquire when courteous fates will strike them off;
Some by what means they may redress the wrong,
When fathers the possession keep too long;
And some would know the issue of their cause,
And whether gold can solder up its flaws.
. . . . .
"Whilst Iris his cosmetick wash would try,
To make her bloom revive, and lovers die;
Some ask for charms, and others philters choose,
To gain Corinna, and their quartans lose."
Queen Anne's weak eyes caused her to pass from one empiric to another, for the relief they all promised to give, and in some cases even persuaded that they gave her. She had a passion for quack oculists; and happy was the advertising scoundrel who gained her Majesty's favour with a new collyrium. For, of course, if the greatest personage in the land said that Professor Bungalo was a wonderful man, a master of his art, and inspired by God to heal the sick, there was no appeal from so eminent an authority. How should an elderly lady with a crown on her head be mistaken? Do we not hear the same arguments every day in our own enlightened generation, when the new Chiropodist, or Rubber, or inventor of a specific for consumption, points to the social distinctions of his dupes as conclusive evidence that he is neither supported by vulgar ignorance, nor afraid to meet the most searching scrutiny of the educated? Good Queen Anne was so charmed with two of the many knaves who by turns enjoyed her countenance, that she had them sworn in as her own oculists in ordinary; and one of them she was even so silly as to knight. This lucky gentleman was William Reade, originally a botching tailor, and to the last a very ignorant man, as his "Short and Exact Account of all Diseases Incident to the Eyes" attests; yet he rose to the honour of knighthood, and the most lucrative and fashionable physician's practice of his period. Surely every dog has his day. Lazarus never should despair; a turn of fortune may one fine day pick him from the rags which cover his nakedness in the kennel, and put him to feast amongst princes, arrayed in purple and fine linen, and regarded as an oracle of wisdom. It was true that Sir William Reade was unable to read the book which he had written (by the hand of an amanuensis), but I have no doubt that many worthy people who listened to his sonorous voice, beheld his lace ruffles and gold-headed cane, and saw his coach drawn along to St. James's by superb horses, thought him in every respect equal, or even superior, to Pope and Swift.