Let me speak Bodkins to thy soul An Angel shall my Sister be When Willain thou liest howling. LAERTES. [Let me speak Bodkins] 'I will speak daggers.'---Hamlet. For further reading on this word, see note post. [An Angel shall my Sister be, &c.] 'I tell thee, churlish priest, 'A minist'ring angel shall my sister be 'When thou liest howling.'---Shakspeare's Hamlet. POST NOTES. Fo. 12. [This the Ulysses of the trust, &c.] I am warranted in this appellation by a beautiful passage in the 2d Eneid, where the Poet describes a brawl, burglary, or trespass committed by Diomede, (for Diomede in this instance read the Doctor) and his friend Ulysses in the Temple of Diana, when an insult and outrage was offered to the image of the goddess, and which seems to be as the lawyers term it a case in point:-- This Cane, which by the bye the Doctor purchased many years ago for half-a-crown at the stick shop in Exeter Change, under Mr. Pidcock's Menagerie, to which he had paid a visit the same morning, and where, to oblige his friend Mr. Pidcock, he wrote a prescription for the lioness, who had a violent cutaneous eruption, and was otherwise much indisposed, but not so ill as that the Doctor would venture to lay his hands upon her arm and feel her pulse, (which anecdote I introduce merely to shew the difference of the Doctor's practice, or handling, in the two distinct cases of Leo and Virgo)--I say this cane was of the sort which the Stick-dealers call the bifrons, or double headed cane, not exactly conformable to the Esculapian cane, and was ornamented with the face of a man on one side, and of a cat on the other, and might have formerly belonged to Alderman Whittington. This double head, the Doctor, soon after his marriage, procured an ingenious carver in wood to alter into a striking likeness of himself and Mrs. Willain, perhaps taking the hint from the gentleman in Esop's fable, who desired that Venus would change his cat into a beautiful woman. And I have been informed, though I cannot give credence to the information, that in the late conflict in the Chapel, when the Doctor's pew was troubled with a rat, the lady part of the head of the cane assumed its original cat-like appearance, and curled its whiskers like a good mouser, verifying the old adage, Lieet "Naturam expellas furca tamen, usque recurret. I have endeavoured to procure a fac simile of this cane in order to illustrate the elegant gant sketch which I have prefixed to this ballad, and which sketch is intended merely to shew the extreme danger of the Damsel's situation, and the height from which she must have descended in case the Doctor in the struggle had thrown her out of the pew into the body of the Chapel, where she would have fallen a sacrifice upon the altar below.---See the Frontispiece. Fo. 22. [And all her under garments smell'd Of Cassia---Myrrh---and Aloes.] I have read this ballad, and object to these lines, my pills, called Pilulæ Scotia, which continue to be sold at No. in the Strand, are so prepared, with respect to the Aloes, which are of the best Socotrine sort, that they can by no means impart any smell to the under garments. I do not know the nature of the drug called Cassia, (I presume the Pipe Cassia, or Cassia Fistula, is meant here) but am informed that it is of a very penetrating quality, especially that which is brought from Arsne on the borders of the Nile in Upper Egypt. There is also another Cassia of a very strong kind * which is found in considerable quantity on the side of the great lake Titicaca in South America. Successor to Dr. Anderson. I have considered the nature of these drugs, and although I prefer my Salts (I do not mean my smelling Salts) to them, yet I can, from my science and great practice, take upon me to assert, that they do not possess the quality attributed to them in this stanza. Successor to Mr. Dalmahoy, Chemist to Her Majesty and the Princesses. I have considered this matter, and notwithstanding the doubt which has arisen with my two Brethren of the Faculty on the subject, I can take upon me to assert in the words of a great Roman Author, that the party who is in the habit of taking these drugs, 'Plus Aloës quam mellis habet.'---Juvenal, Sat. 6. With regard to the Cassia, or Casia, I can only say I am of opinion, that the Romans (who were well acquainted with this drug) considered it to be of an offensive quality, which it communicated to those chemical and galenical preparations, or oleaginous compounds, with which it was mixed in prescriptions. 'Et Casiâ liquidi corrumpitur usus olivi.'---Virg. Georgics, Caleb Quotem, M.D. F. R.S. A.S.S. I have I have considered this stanza, and the preceding and subsequent stanzas, and am of opinion, that a great deal of the effect of these drugs depends upon the constitution and habit of the party; they are of a hot nature, and when taken by persons of a warm temperament of body, produce, by means of irritation, agitation, friction, or other motion peristaltic, a great portion of what Dr. Priestley (who by the bye died a few months ago in America) called Phlogiston, but which other Chemists, particularly Lavoisier, call carbonic acid gas; this, in its passage through the duodenum and epigastric region, meeting with what we call Oxygen, inherent in most human bodies, will assume another quality, called Hydrogen Gas, which gas being naturally impatient of restraint, in its struggle to the rectum, parts with its portion of Oxygen, and frequently escapes in the form of what we call Gas assote or azote, and this gas assote or azote has the property of imparting both odour and colour to any vegetable substance that may come into contact with it. Fo. 27. [Say, Doctor Willain, learned Leech!] Accam, Experimental Chemist to the Royal Institution. It has been suggested to me by a medical and critical friend, that as the Doctor has written two Treatises upon the Scurvy and other cutaneous disorders, this should have been "Scurvy Leech," but to this I object, for that Mrs. Mapp, the famous doctor or doctress of dislocated and broken bones, never assumed the title of Doctor or Doctress of the Sor-bone: perhaps in this instance Doctor Willain, who, by his exertions at the Chapel caused a violent luxation and consequent soreness in the humerus, scapula, and acromion of the Damsel, may have a triple right to the appellation of Doctor of the Sor-bone. [Let me speak Bodkins to thy Soul] I will and This expression is evidently taken from a passage in Shakspeare's Hamlet, speak Daggers,' &c. but as the Doctor to my knowledge has not a great soul, might his quietus make with a bare bodkin,' I stick to my own text. A very ingenious and critical friend would have had this line run thus-- 'Let me ride Bodkin on thy soul.' But this brings so strongly to my mind the horrid and disgusting incubus in Mr. Fuseli's celebrated picture, that I decline interfering at all with the Doctor's dreams or his night mare. FINIS. In the Press, and speedily will be published, ILLUSTRATED WITH An elegant Head and Tail Piece, THE SEQUEL, OR, SECOND PART OF THIS BALLAD. Shewing how the Doctor received an angry letter signed LAERTES, and how he was alarmed at it, and communicated it to his friend Lawyer Dowling, who advised him to deny the assault, &c. and how he did not like to tell a lie, but was over-ruled; and how he fell sick upon it, and had frightful dreams, and prescribed for himself syrop of poppies and mandragora; and how he was advised by himself to walk in the fields; and how in his walk he met Mr. Laertes, who said to him, Boh! and how the Doctor in his haste to get over a ditch fell in, and became unclean; and how he was whitewashed by his friend the Treasurer's maid Mopsa, and Mrs. Lavater, the washerwoman to the house, and was seated in the Governor's pew; and how some of the gentlemen turned up their noses; and how at the next committee he stated his case, and it was decreed that honourable mention should be made of him in their journals, and how thereupon the great whole length portrait of Captain Coram, by Hogarth, which is put up in the Committee-Room, started from the canvas, laid its hand upon the back of the Treasurer's chair, and said in an angry tone 'What, hoa! Bernardine! dico vobis, 'For this we'll have you Coram nobis:" and so the Committee broke up. And how the Doctor afterwards took an airing with his wife to the Dog and Duck, and saw a duck hunt, and how the duck being closely pressed by the dogs, flapped towards the Doctor, and in the common duck langue, or slang, cried Qu-a-a-a-a-a-k, Qu-a-a-a-a-a-k, at which he was very angry, and instead of saying with Jaques in As you like it, Duc ad me, Duc ad me,' he fractured her pinion bone with his cane, and afterwards knocked her on the head, bought the body, and took it home in his pocket, and dissected it for his supper, and how he broke the merry-thought with Mrs. W------, notwithstanding which he had more frightful dreams; and how his lady walked in her sleep, and rubbed her hands like Mrs. Siddons, and cried To bed, to bed, my love!' and how the Doctor---Cætera non desunt. C. Roworth, Printer, Bell Yard, Fleet Street. |