It should have been observed, that the third of these plates was engraved by Baron, the figure of the girl excepted, which, being an after-thought, was added by our artist's own hand.
[APPENDIX.]
N° 1. [See p. [23].]
The following letter, printed in The Public Advertiser soon after the first edition of the present work made its appearance, may possibly contain some authentic particulars of the early life of the famous Monsieur St. André. Mr. Woodfall's ingenious correspondent does not, however, dispose me to retract a syllable of what is advanced in the text; for he fails throughout in his attempts to exculpate our hero from any one of the charges alledged against him. On the contrary, he confirms, with additions, a considerable part of them, and strives only to evade or overwhelm the rest by studied amplifications of the little good which industrious partiality could pick out of its favourite character. I shall now subjoin his epistle, with a few unconnected remarks appended to it. A rambling performance must apologize for a desultory refutation.
"Sir,
"The entertaining author of the last biography of the admirable Hogarth, in the excess of commendation of a particular risible subject for his pencil, has written too disadvantageously of the late Mr. St. André. One who knew him intimately (but was never under the smallest obligation to him) for the last twenty years of his life, and has learned the tradition of his earlier conduct seemingly better than the editor of the article in question, takes the liberty to give a more favourable idea of him, and without intending to enter into a controversy with this agreeable Collector of Anecdotes, to vindicate this notorious man, who must be allowed to have been such; but it is to be hoped in the milder sense Lord Clarendon often or always uses the epithet. The making a subject of Mr. St. André is therefore merely accidental. The writer expects to derive no praise from exhibiting that person as the Hero of a page. He thinks it is only doing justice (for the Dead deserve justice as well as the Living) when he draws his pen against some very injurious insinuations, thrown out with more inadvertence and at a venture than in malice, against the memory of an acquaintance and of a foreigner (to whom perhaps more mercy is due than to a native), who is more roughly handled than he appears to deserve.
"Mr. Nathaniel St. André came over, or rather was brought over, very early from Switzerland, his native country, in the train of a Mendez, or Salvadore, or some Jewish family. Next to his countryman Heidegger, he became the most considerable person that has been imported from thence. He probably arrived in England in no better than a menial station. Possibly his family was not originally obscure, for he has been heard to declare, that he had a rightful claim to a title, but it was not worth while to take it up so late in life. He had undoubtedly all the qualifications of a Swiss. He talked French in all its provincial dialects, and superintended the press, if the information is to be depended upon, and perhaps taught it, as his sister did at Chelsea boarding-school. He was early initiated in music, for he played upon some musical instrument as soon as he was old enough to handle one, to entertain his benefactors. He had the good fortune to be placed by them with a surgeon of eminence, and became very skilful in his profession. His duty and gratitude to his father, whom he maintained when he was no longer able to maintain himself, was exemplary and deserving of high commendation. Let this charity cover a multitude of his sins! His great thirst for anatomical knowledge (for which he became afterwards so famous as to have books dedicated to him on that subject), and his unwearied application, soon made him so compleat an anatomist, that he undertook to read public lectures (and he was the first in London who read any), which gave general satisfaction. The most ingenious and considerable men in the kingdom became his pupils. Dr. Hunter, now at the head of his profession, speaks highly of his predecessor, and considers him (if the information is genuine) as the wonder of his time. He continued his love of anatomy to the last, and left noble preparations behind him, which he was continually improving. The time of his introduction into Mr. Molyneux's family is not known to the writer of this account. Whether anatomy, surgery, knowledge, or music, or his performance on the Viol de Gambo, on which he was the greatest master, got him the intimacy with Mr. Molyneux, is not easy to determine. Certain it is, that he attended his friend in his last illness, who died of a dangerous disorder (but not under his hands), which Mr. Molyneux is said to have pronounced, from the first, would be fatal. Scandal, and Mr. Pope's satirical half-line, talked afterwards of 'The Poisoning Wife.' She, perhaps, was in too great a hurry, as the report ran, in marrying when she did, according to the practised delicacy of her sex, and her very high quality. The unlucky business in which one Howard, a surgeon at Guildford, involved him, who was the projector, or accessary of the impudent imposture of Mary Tofts, alias the Rabbit-woman of Godalmin, occasioned him to become the talk and ridicule of the whole kingdom. The report made by St. André, and others, induced many inconsiderately to take it for a reality. The public horror was so great, that the rent of rabbit-warrens sunk to nothing; and nobody, till the delusion was over, presumed to eat a rabbit. The credulous Whiston believed the story (for to some people every thing is credible that comes from a credible witness), and wrote a pamphlet, to prove this monstrous conception to be the exact completion of an old prophecy in Esdras. The part St. André acted in this affair ruined his interest at Court, where he had before been so great a favourite with King George I. that he presented him with a sword which he wore himself. Now, on his return out of the country, he met with a personal affront, and never went to Court again. But he continued anatomist to the Royal Houshold to his dying day, though he never took the salary. He probably was imposed upon in this matter. And has it not been the lot of men, in intellectual accomplishments vastly above his, such as Boyle, for instance, a man infinitely his superior, to be over-reached and misled? He took up the pen on the occasion (and it was not the first time, for he wrote some years before a bantering pamphlet on Dr. Mead), which could at best but demonstrate his sincerity, but exposed the weakness of his judgement, on that case. It had been insinuated he adopted this scheme, to ruin some persons of his own profession. If he had a mind to make an experiment upon the national belief, and to tamper with their willingness to swallow any absurdity (which a certain nobleman [Duke of Montagu] ventured to do, in the affair of a man who undertook to jump into a quart bottle), he was deservedly punished with contempt. Swift (according to Whiston), and perhaps Arbuthnot, exercised their pens upon him. The cheat was soon discovered, and rabbits began to make their appearance again at table as usual. But they were not at his own table, nor made a dish, in any form of cookery, at that of his friends. Perhaps they imagined that the name or sight of that animal might be as offensive to him, as the mention of Formosa is said to have been to Psalmanazar. It is told, that, on his asking for some parsly of a market-woman of Southampton, and demanding why she had not more to sell, she, in a banter, assured him, 'That his rabbits had eat it up.' The fortune he acquired by marrying into a noble family (though it set all the lady's relations against him, and occasioned her being dismissed from her attendance on Queen Caroline) was a sufficient compensation for the laughter or censure of the publick. His high spirit and confidence in himself made him superior to all clamor. So that people did but talk about him, he seldom seemed to care what they talked against him. And yet he had the fortitude to bring an action for defamation in Westminster-Hall against a certain doctor in divinity, and got the better of his adversary. He was not supposed, in the judgement of the wiser and more candid part of mankind, to have contributed, by any chirurgical administration, to the death of his friend Mr. Molyneux, nor to have set up the imposture at Godalmin. Though he was disgraced at Court, he was not abandoned by all his noble friends. The great Lord Peterborough, who was his patron and patient long before he went to Lisbon, entertained a very high opinion of him to the last. His capacity in all kinds, the reception he gave to his table and his garden, with his liberality to the infirm and distressed, made him visited by persons of the highest quality, and by all strangers and foreigners. He did not continue to enjoy the great fortune his marriage is supposed to have brought him, to the end of his life, for a great part went from him on the death of Lady Betty. He by no means left so much property behind him as to have it said, he died rich. His profession as a surgeon, in a reasonable terms of years, would probably have put more money into his pocket than fell in the golden shower so inauspiciously into his lap, and have given him plenty, without envy or blame. He was turned of ninety-six when he died; and though subject to the gout, of which he used to get the better by blisters upon his knees, and by rigid abstinence, yet, when he took to his bed (where he said he should not lie long), and permitted a physician to be called in to him, he cannot be said to have died of any disease. In one sum of generosity, he gave the celebrated Geminiani three hundred pounds, to help him to discharge his incumbrances, and to end his days in comfort. The strength and agility of his body were great, and are well known. He was famous for his skill in fencing, in riding the great horse, and for running and jumping, in his younger days. He, at one time, was able to play the game at chess with the best masters. After a slight instruction at Slaughter's coffee-house, he did not rest till, in the course of two nights sitting up, he was able to vanquish his instructor. He was so earnest in acquiring knowledge, that he whimsically, as he told the story, cut off his eye-lashes, that he might not sleep till he arrived at what he wanted. His face was muscular and fierce. One of his eyes, to external appearance, seemed to be a mass of obscurity (as he expressed it of Handel's, when he became stark-blind), at least it had not the uncommon vivacity of the other. His language was full of energy, but loaded with foreign idioms. His conversation was seasoned sufficiently with satire and irony, which he was not afraid to display, though he ought never to have forgot that he was once a proper subject for it. He built; he planted; he had almost 'from the Cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that groweth upon the wall,' in his hot-house, green-house, and garden. If he was not deep in every art and science (for even his long life was not sufficient for universal attainment), he cannot be reckoned to have been ignorant of any thing. He was admired for his knowledge in architecture, in gardening, and in botany, by those who should have been above flattery. But praise, from whatever quarter it comes, is of an intoxicating nature. Those who found out that he loved praise, took care he should have enough of it. He kept a list of the wretched and the indigent, whom he constantly maintained; and their names might be written alphabetically. The poor of Southampton know they have lost their best friend. Call it, reader, ostentation or vanity, if you will; but till you know it did not proceed from his goodness of heart, this tributary pen considers his giving away his money to relieve the necessitous, as a spark of the spirit of the Man of Ross or the Man of Bath. He was all his life too much addicted to amours, and sometimes with the lower part of the sex. His conversation, which he was always able to make entertaining and instructive, was too often tinctured with double entendre (a vice that increases with age), but hardly ever with prophaneness. He may be thought to have copied Hermippus, and to have considered women as the prolongers of life. How far he was made a dupe by any of them at last, is not necessary for relation. He died, as he lived, without fear; for to his standers-by he gave no sign of a ruffled mind, or a disturbed conscience, in his last moments.