Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

With claws and head and hair on, munching
The savage creature at a luncheon!

That one old woman, pain distracted,
This part of Satan over acted;
In gulping tractors down, for medicines, 27
With such effect, that faith she's dead since.

Then make it plain, by quoting Greek,
That this old hag, of whom we speak,
More brass and iron took in one day,
Than satan all the week, with Sunday.

But should the publick turn deaf ear to't,

Tell them that I know who will swear to't;

and terrified all the good people of Glastenbury and its neighbourhood.

27 In gulping tractors down, for med'cines.

An old lady of my acquaintance was actually advised by an ingenious son of Galen, an apothecary, resident a few miles north of London, to swallow tractors for an internal complaint. If our profession were to follow this laudable example, and force their patients to swallow them for pills, and then give the publick a judicious detail of the terrible consequences, ending with the death of the patients, Perkinism would sink into that contempt in the estimation of the publick which it justly deserves.

And testify the whole affair
Before his honour, the lord mayor!

Say Perkinism was begotten
In wilds where science ne'er was thought on,

28 In wilds where science ne'er was thought on.

28

That is, in the United States of America, among Indians and Yankees. You will find, gentlemen, much to the purpose, relative to the state of science, where Perkinism originated, in the Monthly Magazine of January, 1803, under the title of " animadversions on the present state of literature and taste in the United States, communicated by an English gentleman lately returned from America." This gentleman gives information that the Americans are wretchedly "behind-hand in science with the Britons." Indeed, those transatlantick younkers ought, in half a century, to have established universities and other seminaries of learning, at least as old and respectable as those of Oxford and Cambridge, and which should have graduated as many students and produced as many great

men.

As to the parsimonious spirit of Americans in encouraging science (which this gentleman animadverts upon with laudable indignation) it ought truly to be exclaimed against by us Englishmen for the weighty reason following: Great Britain, " from time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary" (as judge Blackstone says) hath starved some of her first poets; such for instance as Butler, Otway, Chatterton, Dryden, Savage, &c. &c. &c. &c. consequently (according to the same author) she ought to enjoy the exclusive " customary privilege" of inflicting the horrours of starvation on the sons of the muses: but it must be granted, for the honour of British munifi

Dd

And had its birth and education

Quite at the fag end of creation!

For rareeshow, to England smuggled,
That honest christians, all bejuggled,
Might tamely suffer B. D. Perkins
To pick the pockets of their jerkins.

Say it was twinn'd with monstrous mammoth," And to go near it you'd be d-d loth, 30

:

cence, that the scientifick Herschel, in the decline of life, as a reward for immortalizing his present majesty, by inscribing GEORGIUM Sidus in the great folio of the heavens, is allowed the enormous pension of 80l. per annum!!

This instance of liberality, in rewarding merit, has caused me to suspend my animadversions relative to patronage afforded men of real science in Great Britain, till I can discover whether it be the absolute determination of my countrymen to starve doctor Caustick.

29 Say it was twinn'd with monstrous mammoth.

And must, of course, be a most terrible wild beast.Ladies and gentlemen may form a tolerable idea of the enormity of Perkinism, by viewing the skeleton of a mammoth now exhibiting in Pall Mall, in the very place where lately were to be seen those terrible caricatures of the devil, &c. under the appellation of FUSELI'S MILTON GAL

LERY.

Because it always eats poor sinners,
As I eat bread and cheese for dinners!

Say that it is " monstrum horrendum!"
As great a plague as God could send 'em.
Moreover, tis " informe ingens!"
Brought up among the western Indians.

Go on then; "lumen cui ademptum,"
A worse thing Satan never dreamt on;
And sure your worships cannot urge ill,
Such classick matter-all from Virgil.

Now when you've duly blaz'd about
These knock-down arguments, so stout,

30 And to go near it you'd be d-d loth.

This manifesto, you will please to recollect, is the language of gentlemen physicians. Now it is well known that you possess a privilege, sanctioned by long and invariable practice, if not founded on act of parliament, to enforce your sentiments by certain energetick expressions, which, in the mouths of people of less consequence, would be considered as very vulgar, and nearly allied to profane swearing. And since your worships ever most manfully exercise this privilege to the full extent of its limits, the present manifesto would have been extremely inapposite and unnatural, had not an ornament of this kind been introduced.

Perhaps the foe will topple under,
Like rotten gate-posts struck with thunder!

But if the daring rebel rout

Should rashly strive to stand it out,

In following canto I'll disclose

How we'll proceed from words to blows.

« AnteriorContinua »