A Book About Doctors

by John Cordy Jeaffreson

"Gualterum Scott,
De Abbotsford,
Virum summi Ingenii
Scriptorem Elegantem
Poetarum sui seculi facile Principem
Patriæ Decus
Ob varia ergo ipsam merita
In civium suorum numerum
Grata adscripsit Civitas Edinburgensis
Et hoc Cantharo donavit
A. D. MDCCCXIII."

Sir Richard Blackmore, the other pedagogue physician, was one of those good, injudicious mortals who always either praise or blame too much—usually the latter. The son of a Wiltshire attorney, he was educated at Westminster School and Oxford, taking his degree of M.A. June, 1676, and residing, in all, thirteen years in the university, during a portion of which protracted period of residence he was (though Dr. Johnson erroneously supposed the reverse) a laborious student. On leaving Oxford he passed through a course of searching poverty, and became a schoolmaster. In this earlier part of his life he travelled in France, Germany, the Low Countries, and Italy, and took his doctor's degree in the University of Padua. On turning his attention to medicine, he consulted Sydenham as to what authors he ought to read. "Don Quixote," replied the veteran. A similar answer has been attributed to Lord Erskine on being asked by a law student the best literary sources for acquiring legal knowledge and success. The scepticism of the reply reminds one of Garth, who, to an anxious patient inquiring what physician he had best call in in case of his (Garth's) death, responded, "One is e'en as good as t'other, and surgeons are not less knowing."

As a poet, Blackmore failed, but as a physician he was for many years one of the most successful men in his profession. Living at Sadler's Hall, Cheapside, he was the oracle of all the wealthiest citizens, and was blessed with an affluence that allowed him to drive about town in a handsome equipage, and make an imposing figure to the world. Industrious, honourable, and cordially liked by his personal friends, he was by no means the paltry fellow that Dryden and Pope represented him. Johnson, in his brilliant memoir, treated him very unfairly, and clearly was annoyed that his conscience would not allow him to treat him worse. On altogether insufficient grounds the doctor argued that his knowledge of ancient authors was superficial, and for the most part derived from secondary sources. Passages indeed are introduced to show that the ridicule and contempt showered on the poet by his adversaries, and re-echoed by the laughing world, were unjust; but the effect of these admissions, complete in themselves, is more than counterbalanced by the sarcasms (and some of them vulgar sarcasms too) which the biographer, in imitation of Colonel Codrington, Sir Charles Sedley, and Colonel Blount, directs against the city knight.

A sincerely religious man, Blackmore was offended with the gross licentiousness of the drama, and all those productions of the poets which constituted the light literature of the eighteenth century. To his eternal honour, Blackmore was the first man who had the courage to raise his voice against the evil, and give utterance to a manly indignation at the insults offered nightly in every theatre to public decency. Unskilled in the use of the pen, of an age when he could not hope to perfect himself in an art to which he had not in youth systematically trained himself, and immersed in the cares of an extensive practice, he set himself to work on the production of a poem, which should elevate and instruct, not vitiate and deprave youthful readers. In this spirit "Prince Arthur" was composed and published in 1695, when the author was between forty and fifty years of age. It was written, as he frankly acknowledged, "by such catches and starts, and in such occasional uncertain hours as his profession afforded, and for the greatest part in coffee-houses, or in passing up and down streets." The wits laughed at him for writing "to the rumbling of his chariot-wheels," but at this date, ridicule thrown on a man for doing good at odd scraps of a busy day, has a close similarity to the laughter of fools. Let any reader compare the healthy gentlemanlike tone of the preface to "Prince Arthur," with the mean animosity of all the virulent criticisms and sarcasms that were directed against the author and his works, and then decide on which side truth and good taste lie.

Blackmore made the fatal error of writing too much. His long poems wearied the patience of those who sympathized with his goodness of intention. What a list there is of them, in Swift's inscription, "to be put under Sir Richard's picture!"

"See, who ne'er was, or will be half read,
Who first sung Arthur, then sung Alfred,[7]
Praised great Eliza[8] in God's anger,
Till all true Englishmen cried, hang her!
. . . . .
Then hiss'd from earth, grown heavenly quite,
Made every reader curse the light.[9]
Mauled human wit in one thick satire;[10]
Next, in three books, spoil'd human nature;[11]
Ended Creation[12] at a jerk,
And of Redemption[13] made damn'd work:
Then took his muse at once, and dipp'd her
Full in the middle of the Scripture.
What wonders there the man grown old did!
Sternhold himself he out-sternholded;
Made David[14] seem so mad and freakish,
All thought him just what thought king Achish.
No mortal read his Solomon,[15]
But judged R'oboam his own son.
Moses[16] he served, as Moses Pharaoh,
And Deborah as she Sisera:
Made Jeremy[17] full sore to cry,
And Job[18] himself curse God and die."

Nor is this by any means a complete list of Sir Richard's works; for he was also a voluminous medical writer, and author of a "History of the Conspiracy against the Person and Government of King William the Third, of glorious memory, in the year 1695."

Dryden, unable to clear himself of the charge of pandering for gain to the licentious tastes of the age, responded to his accuser by calling him an "ass," a "pedant," a "quack," and a "canting preacher."

"Quack Maurus, though he never took degrees
In either of our universities,
Yet to be shown by some kind wit he looks,
Because he play'd the fool, and writ three books.
But if he would be worth a poet's pen,
He must be more a fool, and write again;
For all the former fustian stuff he wrote
Was dead-born doggerel, or is quite forgot:
His man of Uz, stript of his Hebrew robe,
Is just the proverb, and 'as poor as Job.'
One would have thought he could no longer jog;
But Arthur was a level, Job's a bog.
There though he crept, yet still he kept in sight;
But here he founders in, and sinks downright.
. . . . .
At leisure hours in epic song he deals,
Writes to the rumbling of his coach's wheels.
. . . . .
Well, let him go—'tis yet too early day
To get himself a place in farce or play;
We know not by what name we should arraign him,
For no one category can contain him.
A pedant, canting preacher, and a quack,
Are load enough to break an ass's back.
At last, grown wanton, he presumed to write,
Traduced two kings, their kindness to requite;
One made the doctor, and one dubbed the knight."

The former of the kings alluded to is James the Second, Blackmore having obtained his fellowship of the College of Physicians, April 12, 1687, under the new charter granted to the college by that monarch; the latter being William the Third, who, in recognition of the doctor's zeal and influence as a Whig, not less than of his eminence in his profession, made him a physician of the household, and knighted him.