“Your affectionate son,
“ERASMUS PERCY.”
LETTER FROM ERASMUS PERCY TO HIS FATHER.
“MY DEAR FATHER,
“I told you in my last how I lost all hopes of favour from Sir Amyas Courtney, and how determined I was not to bend to him.—On some occasion soon afterwards this determination appeared, and recommended me immediately to the notice of a certain Dr. Frumpton, who is the antagonist and sworn foe to Sir Amyas.—Do you know who Dr. Frumpton is—and who he was—and how he has risen to his present height?
“He was a farrier in a remote county: he began by persuading the country people in his neighbourhood that he had a specific for the bite of a mad dog.
“It happened that he cured an old dowager’s favourite waiting-maid who had been bitten by a cross lap-dog, which her servants pronounced to be mad, that they might have an excuse for hanging it.
“The fame of this cure was spread by the dowager among her numerous acquaintance in town and country.
“Then he took agues—and afterwards scrofula—under his protection; patronized by his old dowager, and lucky in some of his desperate quackery, Dr. Frumpton’s reputation rapidly increased, and from different counties fools came to consult him. His manners were bearish even to persons of quality who resorted to his den; but these brutal manners imposed upon many, heightened the idea of his confidence in himself, and commanded the submission of the timid.—His tone grew higher and higher, and he more and more easily bullied the credulity of man and woman-kind.—It seems that either extreme of soft and polished, or of rough and brutal manner, can succeed with certain physicians.—Dr. Frumpton’s name, and Dr. Frumpton’s wonderful cures, were in every newspaper, and in every shop-window. No man ever puffed himself better even in this puffing age.—His success was viewed with scornful yet with jealous eyes by the regularly bred physicians, and they did all they could to keep him down—Sir Amyas Courtney, in particular, who would never call him any thing but that farrier, making what noise he could about Frumpton’s practising without a diploma. In pure spite, Frumpton took to learning—late as it was, he put himself to school—with virulent zeal he read and crammed till, Heaven knows how! he accomplished getting a diploma—stood all prescribed examinations, and has grinned defiance ever since at Sir Amyas.
“Frumpton, delighted with the story of the made shell, and conceiving me to be the enemy of his enemy, resolved, as he declared, to take me by the hand; and, such is the magical deception of self-love, that his apparent friendliness towards me made him appear quite agreeable, and notwithstanding all that I had heard and known of him, I fancied his brutality was frankness, and his presumption strength of character.—I gave him credit especially for a happy instinct for true merit, and an honourable antipathy to flattery and meanness.—The manner in which he pronounced the words, fawning puppy! applied to Sir Amyas Courtney, pleased me peculiarly—and I had just exalted Frumpton into a great man, and an original genius, when he fell flat to the level, and below the level of common mortals.