He distributed medicine and advice to the poor gratis. There is as bad a print as I have seen representing him thus employed. By such conduct he acquired great popularity, and was, indeed, entitled to great praise.
He died December 21, 1761, at a very advanced age, and left the receipts for compounding his medicines to Mr. Page, member for Chichester, who bestowed them on two charitable institutions, which have derived considerable advantage from the profits attending their sale.
In the London Chronicle for February 27, 1762, is the following intimation:—
"A monument is going to be erected in Westminster Abbey, next to that of Mr. Dryden's, to the memory of Joshua Ward, of Whitehall, Esq., on which will be placed a fine bust of the deceased, that had been long in his possession."
[192] The veil which was then spread over this science has been partly removed by the publication of Doctor Buchan's Domestic Medicine,—a treatise which I have frequently heard reprobated by gentlemen of the Faculty, for laying open to the world, in language so perspicuous, those mysterious secrets which had been before disguised in dog Latin: it has, however, gone through more editions than any book in this language, except Robinson Crusoe and the Pilgrim's Progress.
[193] The poet, in this instance, laboureth under a mistake; for I am informed by a gentleman learned in the law, that if a physician neglecteth to receive his fees, and his patient recovereth, he hath no legal claim, neither will an action lie; but if his patient dieth, an action against the executors is good: the Court will admit the claim, and the jury find a verdict, with full costs of suit.
This is very proper, and proveth that law and equity are the same; and that if a physician doth his business, he can recover his reward; but if he neglecteth, and his patient doth not die, why should he have any remuneration?
[194] What caricature is in painting, burlesque is in writing; and in the same manner the comic writer and painter correlate to each other. But here I shall observe, that as in the former the painter seems to have the advantage, so it is in the latter infinitely on the side of the writer; for the monstrous is much easier to paint than describe, and the ridiculous to describe than paint. And though perhaps this latter species doth not in either science so strongly affect and agitate the muscles as the other, yet it will be owned, I believe, that a more rational and useful pleasure arises to us from it.
"He who should call the ingenious Hogarth a burlesque painter, would, in my opinion, do him very little honour; for sure it is much easier, much less the subject of admiration, to paint a man with a nose or any other feature of a monstrous size, or to expose him in some absurd or monstrous attitude, than to express the affections of men on canvas. It has been thought a vast commendation of a painter to say, his figures seem to breathe; but surely it is a much greater and nobler applause, that they appear to think."
This is Fielding's opinion, and the fiat of such a writer ought to have great weight; for his characters and Hogarth's pictures are drawn from the same source.