"You surgeons of London, who puzzle your pates,
To ride in your coaches, and purchase estates,
Give over for shame, for pride has a fall,
And the doctress of Epsom has out-done you all.
Derry down, &c.
"What signifies learning, or going to school,
When a woman can do, without reason or rule,
What puts you to nonplus, and baffles your art;
For petticoat practice has now got the start.
Derry down, &c.
"In physic, as well as in fashions, we find
The newest has always its run with mankind;
Forgot is the bustle 'bout Taylor and Ward,
And Mapp's all the cry, and her fame's on record.
Derry down, &c.
"Dame Nature has given a doctor's degree—
She gets all the patients, and pockets the fee;
So if you don't instantly prove her a cheat,
She'll loll in her carriage, whilst you walk the street.
Derry down, &c."
On one occasion, as this lady was proceeding up the Old Kent Road to the Borough, in her carriage and four, dressed in a loosely-fitting robe-de-chambre, and manifesting by her manner that she had partaken somewhat too freely of Geneva water, she found herself in a very trying position. Her fat frame, indecorous dress, intoxication, and dazzling equipage, were in the eyes of the mob such sure signs of royalty, that she was immediately taken for a Court lady, of German origin and unpopular repute, whose word was omnipotent at St. James's.
Soon a crowd gathered round the carriage, and, with the proper amount of swearing and yelling, were about to break the windows with stones, when the spirited occupant of the vehicle, acting very much as Nell Gwyn did on a similar occasion, rose from her seat, and letting down the glasses, exclaimed, with an imprecation more emphatic than polite, "— —! Don't you know me? I am Mrs. Mapp, the bone-setter!"
This brief address so tickled the humour of the mob, that the lady proceeded on her way amidst deafening acclamations and laughter.
The Taylor mentioned as sitting on one side of Mrs. Mapp in the playhouse was a notable character. A cunning, plausible, shameless blackguard, he was eminently successful in his vocation of quack. Dr. King, in his "Anecdotes of his own Times," speaks of him with respect. "I was at Tunbridge," says the Doctor, "with Chevalier Taylor, the oculist. He seems to understand the anatomy of the eye perfectly well; he has a fine hand and good instruments, and performs all his operations with great dexterity; but he undertakes everything (even impossible cases), and promises everything. No charlatan ever appeared with fitter and more excellent talents, or to greater advantage; he has a good person, is a natural orator, and has a faculty of learning foreign languages. He has travelled over all Europe, and has always with him an equipage suitable to a man of the first quality; and has been introduced to most of the sovereign princes, from whom he has received many marks of their liberality and esteem."
Dr. King, in a Latin inscription to the mountebank, says:—
"Hic est, hic vir est,
Quem docti, indoctique omnes impense mirantur,
Johannes Taylor;
Cœcigenorum, cœcorum, cœcitantium,
Quot quot sunt ubique,
Spes unica—Solamen—Salus."