"Certainly," responded the Doctor, cordially; "nothing can be more reasonable in the way of a proposition. Now then, sir, what is this?"
"Oh, veneration, I suppose."
"Certainly—quite right—and this?"
"Pity."
"Of course, sir: you see it's impossible for an observant gentleman like yourself to misunderstand the language of the eye," answered the oculist, whose plan was only to assent to his young friend's decisions.
In the year 1736, when the Chevalier was at the height of his fame, he received the following humorous letter:—
"Domine,—O tu, qui in oculis hominum versaris, et quamcunque tractas rem, acu tangis, salve! Tu, qui, instar Phœbi, lumen orbi, et orbes luminibus reddis, iterum salve!
"Cum per te Gallia, per te nostræ academiæ, duo regni lumina, clarius intuentur, cur non ad urbem Edinburgi, cum toties ubique erras, cursum tendis? nam quædam cœcitas cives illic invasit. Ipsos magistratus Gutta Serena occupavit, videntur enim videre, sed nihil vident. Idcirco tu istam Scoticam Nebulam ex oculis remove, et quodcunque latet in tenebris, in lucem profer. Illi violenter carcerem, tu oculos leniter reclude; illi lucem Porteio ademerunt, tu illis lucem restitue, et quamvis fingant se dupliciter videre, fac ut simpliciter tantum oculo irretorto conspiciant. Peractoque cursu, ad Angliam redi artis tuæ plenus, Toriosque (ut vulgo vocantur) qui adhuc cœcutiant et hallucinantur, illuminato. Ab ipsis clericis, si qui sint cœci ductores, nubem discute; immo ipso Sole lunaque, cum laborant eclipsi, quæ, instar tui ipsius, transit per varias regiones obumbrans, istam molem caliginis amoveto. Sic eris Sol Mundi, sic eris non solum nomine Sartor, sed re Oculorum omnium resarcitor; sic omuis Charta Publica tuam Claritudinem celebrabit, et ubicunque frontem tuam ostendis, nemo non te, O vir spectatissime, admirabitur. Ipse lippus scriptor hujus epistolæ maxime gauderet te Medicum Illustrissimum, cum omnibus tuis oculatis testibus, Vindsoriæ videre.—Vale."
The Chevalier had a son and a biographer in the person of John Taylor, who, under the title of "John Taylor, Junior," succeeded to his father's trumpet, and blew it with good effect. The title-page of his biography of his father enumerates some half-hundred crowned or royal heads, to whose eyes the "Chevalier John Taylor, Opthalmiater Pontifical, Imperial, and Royal," administered.
But this work was feeble and contemptible compared with the Chevalier's autobiographic sketch of himself, in his proposal for publishing which he speaks of his loves and adventures, in the following modest style:—