This famous pair, in happy league combin’d,
No risques shall man from wand’ring beauty find;
For, should not chaste example save from ill,
There’s still a refuge in the other’s pill.
With a sketch equally brief and masterly as the above, he describes his hopes on the other branch of his division.
The body politic no more shall grieve
The motley stains that dire corruptions leave;
No dang’rous humours shall infest the state,
Nor rotten Members hasten Britain’s fate.
Our author who, notwithstanding his usual and characteristic gravity, has yet not un-frequently an obvious tendency to the sportive, condescends now to take notice of a rumour, which in these times had been universally circulated, that Sir Samuel bad parted with his specific, and disposed of it to a gentleman often mentioned, and always with infinite and due respect, in the ROLLIAD, namely, Mr. Dundas.—Upon this he addresses Sir Samuel with equal truth and good-humour in the following couplet:
Then shall thy med’cine boast its native bent,
Then spread its genuine blessing—to prevent.
Our readers cannot but know, it was by the means of a nostrum, emphatically called a Specific, that Mr. Dundas so long contrived to prevent the constitutional lues of a Parliamentary Reform. The author, however, does not profess, to give implicit credit to the fact of Sir Samuel’s having ungratefully disposed of his favourite recipe, the happy source of his livelihood and fame; the more so, as it appears that Mr. Dundas had found the very word specific sufficient for protracting a dreadful political evil on the three several instances of its application. Under this impression of the thing, the poet strongly recommends Sir Samuel to go on in the prosecution of his original profession, and thus expresses his wish upon the occasion, with the correct transcript of which we shall close the history of this great man:
In those snug corners be thy skill display’d,
Where Nature’s tribute modestly is paid:
Or near fam’d Temple-bar may some good dame, }
Herself past sport, but yet a friend to game, }
Disperse thy bills, and eternize thy fame. }
MERLIN now calls the attention of our hero to a man whom there is little doubt this country will long remember, and still less, that they will have abundant reason for so doing, namely, Mr. SECRETARY ORDE. It may seem odd by what latent association our author was led to appeal next to the Right Honourable Secretary, immediately after the description of a Quack Doctor; but let it be recollected in the first place, to the honour of Sir Samuel Hannay, that he is, perhaps, the only man of his order that ever had a place in the British House of Commons; and in the second, that there are some leading circumstances in the character of Mr. Orde, which will intitle him to rank under the very same description as the worthy Baronet himself. We all know that the most famous of all physicians, Le Medecin malgré lui, is represented by Moliere, as a mart who changes the seat of the heart, and reverses the intire position of the vital parts of the human body. Now let it be asked, has not Mr. Orde done this most completely and effectually with respect to the general body of the state? Has he not transferred the heart of the empire? Has he not changed its circulation, and altered the situation of the vital part of the whole, from the left to the right, from the one side to the other, from Great Britain to Ireland?—Surely no one will deny this; and therefore none will be now ignorant of the natural gradation of thought, by which our author was led, from the contemplation of Sir Samuel Hannay, to the character of Mr. Orde.
We know not whether it be worth remarking, that the term Le Medecin malgré lui, has been translated into English with the usual incivility of that people to every thing foreign, by the uncourtly phrase of Mock Doctor. We trust, however, that no one will think it applicable in this interpretation to Mr. Orde, as it is pretty evident he has displayed no mockery in his State Practices, but has performed the character of Moliere’s Medecin, even beyond the notion of the original; by having effected in sad and sober truth, to the full as complete a change in the position of the Cœur de l’Empire, as the lively fancy of the dramatist had imputed to his physician, with respect to the human body, in mere speculative joke.
With a great many apologies for so long a note, we proceed now to the much more pleasant part of our duty—that of transcribing from this excellent composition; and proceed to the description of Mr. Orde’s person, which the poet commences thus: