This severe portrait is just about as true as the likeness of a man, painted by a conscientious enemy, usually is. Radcliffe was not endowed with a kindly nature. "Mead, I love you," said he to his fascinating adulator; "and I'll tell you a sure secret to make your fortune—use all mankind ill." Radcliffe carried out his rule by wringing as much as possible from, and returning as little as possible to, his fellowmen. He could not pay a tradesman's bill without a sense of keen suffering. Even a poor pavior, who had been employed to do a job to the stones before the doctor's house in Bloomsbury Square (whither the physician removed from Bow Street), could not get his money without a contest. "Why, you rascal!" cried the debtor, as he alighted from his chariot, "do you pretend to be paid for such a piece of work! Why, you have spoiled my pavement, and then covered it over with earth to hide the bad work."
"Doctor," responded the man, dryly, "mine is not the only bad work the earth hides."
Of course, the only course to pursue with a creditor who could dun in this sarcastic style was to pay, and be rid of him. But the doctor made up for his own avarice by being ever ready to condemn it in others.
Tyson, the miser, being near his last hour, magnanimously resolved to pay two of his 3,000,000 guineas to Radcliffe, to learn if anything could be done for his malady. The miserable old man came up with his wife from Hackney, and tottered into the consulting-room in Bloomsbury Square, with two guineas in his hand—
"You may go, sir," exclaimed Radcliffe, to the astonished wretch, who trusted he was unknown—"you may go home, and die, and be ——, without a speedy repentance; for both the grave and the devil are ready for Tyson of Hackney, who has grown rich out of the spoils of the public and the tears of orphans and widows. You'll be a dead man, sir, in ten days."
There are numerous stories extant relative to Radcliffe's practice; but nearly all those which bear the stamp of genuineness are unfit for publication in the present polite age. Such stories as the hasty-pudding one, re-edited by the pleasant author of "The Gold-headed Cane," can be found by the dozen, but the cumbrous workmanship of Mr. Joseph Miller is manifest in them all.