Æmilium circà ludum faber imus et ungues
Exprimet, et molles imitabitur ære capillos.
The art of pushing fluids through the vessels was at that period a secret most scrupulously kept by the few who were in possession of it, so that a great show might be made at the expence of little real knowledge. I am also informed, that St. André, like the workman described by Horace, had no general comprehension of any subject, but was unable to have put two propositions together:—that he neither extended the bounds of the chirurgical art by discoveries, nor performed any extraordinary cures; and, boasting somewhere that he had detected vessels in the cuticle or scarf-skin, a foreigner of eminence in the same profession offered (through the medium of a printed book) to lay him a wager of it, a challenge which he prudently declined. I am also told, that when solicited to exhibit his preparations, he always declared the majority of them to have been destroyed in a fire. What remain, I am instructed to add, deserve little or no commendation. Thus, on enquiry, sinks our "enthusiast in anatomy" down to a frigid dabbler in the science; while his "noble preparations, which he was continually improving," dwindle into minutiæ of scarce any value.
Though the dreadful crime, which is indistinctly mentioned in the text of the foregoing pamphlet, has been alluded to with less reserve by the apologist of St. André, it shall be explained no further on the present occasion. Many are the common avenues to death; and why should we point out with minuteness such as we hope will never be explored again? Till I perused the defence so often referred to, I had not even suspected that the "poisoning wife"[2] bore the least allusion to any particular circumstance on the records of criminal gallantry; nor, without stronger proofs than are furnished by this expression (perhaps a random one), shall I be willing to allot the smallest share of blame to the Lady, such alone excepted as must unavoidably arise from her over-hasty marriage, which was solemnized at Hesson near Hounslow in Middlesex, on the 27th of May, 1730. This act, however, as well as her derogation from rank, being mere offences against human customs, are cognizable only upon earth.—By "the wiser and more candid part of mankind," who suspected no harm throughout St. André's conduct in this affair, I suppose our apologist means any set of people who had imbibed prejudices similar to his own, and thought and spoke about his hero with equal partiality and tenderness. But the Memoir on which these remarks are founded, proves at least that what J. N. had hinted concerning the death of Mr. Molyneux,[3] was of no recent invention. So far from it indeed, that St. André was openly taxed with having been the sole cause of it, in a public news-paper (I think one of the Gazetteers), by the Rev. Dr. Madden, the celebrated Irish patriot, who subscribed his name to his advertisement. It is related (I know not how truly) that on this account our hero prosecuted and "got the better of his adversary," whose accusation was unsupported by such proofs as the strictness of law requires. How many culprits, about whose guilt neither judge nor jury entertains the smallest scruple, escape with equal triumph through a similar defect of evidence! I may add, that so serious a charge would never have been lightly made by a divine of Dr. Madden's rank and character.
All that is said on the subject of family honours to which St. André was entitled, his gratitude to his father, what he gave to the celebrated Geminiani "in one sum of generosity," must be admitted with caution, for truth was by no means the characteristic of our hero's narrations.[4] These circumstances therefore may be regarded as gasconades of his own. The author of the defence pretends not to have received any part of his information from St. André's countrymen or contemporaries; but, on the contrary, confesses that both his early friends and enemies had long been dead.
The affair of the Rabbit-breeder has no need of further illustration. Several ballads, pamphlets, prints, &c. on the subject, bear abundant testimony to St. André's merits throughout that business, as well as to the final opinion entertained of him by his contemporaries, after Cheselden, by order of Queen Caroline, had assisted in discovering the deceit. Her Majesty was urged to this step by finding the plausibility of our hero had imposed on the King, and that some of the pregnant ladies about her own person began to express their fears of bringing into the world an unnatural progeny.—If Mr. Boyle was occasionally misled, his errors were soon absorbed in the blaze of his moral and literary excellence. St. André's blunder, alas! had no such happy means of redemption. His credulity indeed was not confined to this single transaction. The following is a well-attested story—Two gentlemen at Southampton, who felt an inclination to banter him, broke a nutshell asunder, filled the cavity with a large swan-shot, and closed up the whole with glue so nicely that no marks of separation could be detected. This curiosity, as they were walking with St. André, one of them pretended to pick up, admiring it as a nut uncommonly heavy as well as beautiful. Our hero swallowed the bait, dissected the subject, discovered the lead, but not the imposition, and then proceeded to account philosophically for so strange a phænomenon. The merry wags could scarce restrain their laughter, and soon quitted his company to enjoy the success of a stratagem they had so adroitly practised on his ignorance and gullibility.
Were there any colour for supposing he had patronized the fraud relative to Mary Tofts, with design to ruin others of his profession (an insinuation to his discredit, which the foregoing pamphlet had not furnished), it was but just that he should fall by his own malevolence and treachery. From the imputation of a scheme resembling that contrived by the Duke of Montagu, his want of equal wit will sufficiently absolve him.
That rabbits never were permitted to appear at any table where he dined, is a strong mark of the adulation paid to him by his entertainers. I hope, for similar reasons, had he been seized with his last illness in London (that his organs of hearing might escape an equal shock), his attendants would not have called any physician named Warren to his bed-side, summoned an attorney from Coney Court Grays Inn to have made his will, or sent for the Rev. Mr. Bunny to pray by him. The banishment of rabbits, however, from a neighbourhood that affords them in the highest perfection, was a circumstance that might as justly have been complained of, as Pythagoras's prohibition of beans, had it been published in Leicestershire. I heartily wish that the circumstantial author of the preceding epistle, to relieve any doubts by which futurity may be perplexed, had informed us whether St. André was an eater of toasted cheese, or not; and if it was never asked for by its common title of a Welch Rabbit within his hearing.
That he wrote any thing, unless by proxy, or with much assistance, may reasonably be doubted; for the pamphlets that pass under his name are divested of those foreign idioms that marked his conversation. Indeed, if I may believe some specimens of his private correspondence, he was unacquainted with the very orthography of our language. The insolence of this shallow Switzer's attempt to banter Mead, we may imagine, was treated with contempt, as the work described has not been handed down to us; and few tracts are permitted to be scarce for any other reason than because they are worthless.
It is next remarked by our apologist, that St. André's "confidence, &c. made him superior to all clamour; and so that people did but talk about him, he did not seem to care what they talked against him." This is no more, in other language, than to declare that his impudence and vanity were well proportioned to each other, and that a bad character was to him as welcome as a good one. He did not, it seems, join in the Poet's prayer,