Mead’s house, at the corner of Powis Place, now No. 49. There is a good garden behind the house, at the bottom of which was a museum. After Mead’s death it was occupied by Sir Harry Grey, Lord Grey’s uncle.
The evening after this event, there was a numerous assembly at our house in Great Ormond Street, attracted by the hope of meeting Freind, and congratulating him on his liberation from the Tower. He came, and every one was delighted to see him once more at large. Besides the number of acquaintances and friends who were there, when it is observed that no foreigner of any learning, taste, or even curiosity, ever arrived in England without being introduced to my master (as it would have been a reproach to have returned without seeing a scholar and physician who was in correspondence with all the literati of Europe), it may easily be imagined that on so remarkable an occasion our conversazione was a crowded one. When the party broke up, and Freind and Arbuthnot were about to take their leave together, as they lived in the same part of the town—the former in Albemarle Street, and the latter in Cork Street, Burlington Gardens—Dr. Mead begged Freind to step with him for a moment into his own private study, which was a small room adjoining the library. There he presented him with the sum of five thousand guineas, which he had received from Freind’s patients, whom he had visited during his imprisonment. On returning to the great room he wished them both good night, and jocosely said to Arbuthnot (who happened to hold the office of Censor of the College that year), “Now I commit our common friend here to your magisterial care and guidance; see that he does not again get into trouble; and on the least appearance of irregularity, report him to the President, Sir Hans Sloane. I look to you, Arbuthnot, to preserve harmony[19] amongst us.”
These meetings, of which Dr. Mead was very fond, took place at stated periods, and the visitors assembled in the library, a spacious room about sixty feet long, of the richness of which an idea may be formed by referring to the catalogue of the sale of its contents, which took place after his death. The books, amounting to about ten thousand volumes, were sold in twenty-eight days. The sale of the prints and drawings occupied fourteen evenings, and the coins and medals were disposed of in eight days. But at the time of which I speak, all these literary treasures were collected under one roof; and the assemblage of marble statues of Greek philosophers, Roman emperors, bronzes, gems, intaglios, Etruscan vases, and other rare specimens of antiquity, was most choice and valuable. Ranged along one side of the room stood the busts of the great English poets—Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope: they were of the size of life, of white marble, and by the hand of Scheemakers. The corner in which I was usually placed was between a statue of Hygeia[20] and a cabinet of iron which once belonged to Queen Elizabeth. This cabinet was full of valuable coins, among which was a medal of the Protector which Mead frequently exhibited as a curiosity to his visitors: it had Oliver’s head in profile, with this legend, “The Lord of Hosts, the word at Dunbar, Sept. 1650;” on the reverse, the parliament sitting.
Placed in this favourite spot, I often overheard very interesting discourse. On one occasion particularly, I recollect that the conversation turned on the condition and rank of physicians in society. The persons who took a leading part in the conversation were, if I remember rightly, my master, Dr. Freind, Dr. Arbuthnot, and Mr. Ward, the professor of rhetoric in Gresham College. The topic was suggested by some accidental allusion to the attack which had been lately made by Dr. Conyers Middleton on the dignity of medicine, in a dissertation[21] written by him concerning the state of physic in old Rome. The indignation of the physicians of that day was naturally roused, and they were all up in arms against the author.
Dr. Mead began by asking, “What class of men have deserved better of the public than physicians? How much, for instance, does not this country owe to Linacre, the founder of our College? He was perhaps the most learned man of his time, and on his travels was received by Lorenzo de Medicis with the most marked distinction. That munificent patron of literature granted him the privilege of attending the same preceptors with his own sons, and Linacre improved the opportunities he enjoyed with great diligence and success. At Florence, under Demetrius Chalcondylas, who had fled from Constantinople when it was taken by the Turks, he acquired a perfect knowledge of the Greek language.
“He studied eloquence at Bologna under Politian, one of the most elegant Latinists in Europe; and while he was at Rome he devoted himself to medicine and the study of natural philosophy, under Hermolaus Barbarus. Linacre was the first Englishman who read Aristotle and Galen in the original Greek. On his return to England, having taken the degree of M.D. at Oxford, he gave lectures in physic, and taught the Greek language in that university. His reputation soon became so high, that King Henry VII. called him to court, and intrusted him with the care of the health and education of his son Prince Arthur. To show the extent of his acquirements, I may mention, that he instructed Princess Catherine in the Italian language, and that he published a work on mathematics, which he dedicated to his pupil Prince Arthur. A treatise on grammar, which has universally been acknowledged to be a work of great erudition, is from the pen of Linacre: Melancthon, indeed, pronounces it to be inferior to none of its kind then extant. In his own style he reminds one of the elegance of Terence, and in his medical treatises very nearly approaches the clear and perspicuous language of Celsus.
From a Portrait of Linacre by Holbein, in Kensington Palace, a copy of which hangs over the fireplace in the Censor’s Room of the College of Physicians.
“Linacre was successively Physician to Henry the Seventh, Henry the Eighth, Edward the Sixth, and to the Princess Mary. He established lectures on physic in both Universities; and he was the founder of our Royal College of Physicians, of which he was the first President, holding that office during the last seven years of his life. He was indeed,” said Mead, “a most accomplished scholar: the Latin style of Linacre is so pure and elegant as to rank him amongst the finest writers of his age; his friend Erasmus saying of him that he was ‘vir non exacti tantum, sed severi judicii.’—Though the medical writings of Linacre are only translations, yet we cannot but form a favourable opinion of his professional skill, not only from the general estimation of his contemporaries, but from the sagacity of his prognosis in the case of his friend Lily the celebrated grammarian, as well as from the rational simplicity of the method by which he relieved Erasmus in a painful fit of the gravel.”