The old proverb says, "Every man is a physician or a fool by forty." Sir Henry Halford happening to quote the old saw to a circle of friends, Canning, with a pleasant humour smiling in his eyes, inquired, "Sir Henry, mayn't he be both?"

John Locke, according to academic registration, was not a physician till he was past forty. Born in 1632, he took his M.B. degree Feb. 6th, 1674. To what extent he exercised his profession is still a matter of dispute; but there is no doubt that he was for some period an active practitioner of it. Of his letters to Hans Sloane, that are still extant, the following is one:—

"Dear Sir,—

"I have a patient here sick of the fever at this season. It seems not violent; but I am told 'tis a sort that is not easily thrown off. I desire to know of you what your fevers in town are, and what methods you find most successful in them? I shall be obliged by your favour if you will give me a word or two by to-morrow's post, and direct it to me, to be left at Mr Harrison's, in the 'Crown,' at Harlow.

"I am, Sir,
"Your most humble servant,
"J Locke."

Popularly the name of Locke is as little associated with the profession of medicine as that of Sir James Mackintosh, who was a practising physician, till ambition and poverty made him select a more lucrative vocation, and turn his energies to the bar.

Distinguished amongst literary physicians was Andrew Borde, who studied Medicine at Oxford and Montpelier, and it is said acted as a physician in the service of Henry the Eighth. Borde's career has hitherto been a puzzle to antiquaries who, though interested in it, have been able to discover only little about it. It was his whim to sign himself Andrew Perforatus (his name really signifying "a cottage,"—"bordarius=a cottager"). In the same way after him Robert Fludd, the Rosicrucian doctor, adopted for his signature Robertus de Fluctibus. In his works he occasionally gives the reader a glimpse of his personal adventures; and from contemporary literature, as well as tradition, we learn enough to feel justified in believing that he created the cant term "Merry Andrew."

Of his freaks, about the most absurd was his conduct when acting as foreman of a jury in a small borough town. A prisoner was charged with stealing a pair of leather breeches, but though appearances were strongly against the accused (who was a notorious rogue), the evidence was so defective that to return a verdict of guilty on the charge was beyond the logic and conscience of the twelve good men and true. No course seemed open to them but to acquit the knave; when Andrew Borde prevailed on them, as the evidence of stealing the leather breeches was so defective, to bring him in guilty of manslaughter.

It is needless to say that the jurymen took Andrew's advice, and finding a verdict to the best of those abilities with which it had pleased God to bless them, astonished the judge and the public, not less than the prisoner, with the strange conclusion at which they had arrived.

Anthony À Wood and Hearne tell us the little that has hitherto been known of this eccentric physician. To that little an important addition may be made from the following letter, never before published, the original of which is in the State-Paper Office. The epistle is penned to Henry the Eighth's minister, Thomas Cromwell.

"Jesus.

"Offering humbly salutacyon with dew reverance. I certyffy yor mastershepp that I am now in Skotlonde in a lyttle universite or study namyd Glasko, where I study and practyce physyk as I have done in dyverse regyons and servyces for the sustentacyon off my lyvyng, assewring you that in ye parts that I am yn ye king's grace hath many hundred and in manner all men of presence (except some skolastycall men) that be hys adversarys. I resortt to ye Skotysh king's howse and to ye erle of Aryn, namyd Hamylton, and to ye Lord Evyndale, namyd Stuerd, and to many lords and lards as well spyrytuall as temporal, and truly I know their mynds, for they takyth me for a Skotysh man's sone, for I name my selff Karre, and so ye Karres kallyth me cosyn, thorow ye which I am in the more favor. Shortly to conclude; trust you no Skott for they wyll yowse flatterying wordes and all ys falshold. I suppose veryly that you have in Ynglond by hundred and thowsand Skotts and innumerable other alyons, which doth (specyally ye Skotts) much harme to the king's leege men throw their evyll wordes, for as I went thorow Ynglond I mett and was in company off many rurall felows, Englishmen that love nott our gracyose kyng. Wold to Jesu that some were ponyshed to geve others example. Wolde to Jesu also that you had never an alyen in yor realme, specyally Skotts, for I never knew alyen good for Ynglond except they knew proffytt and lucre should come to them so. In all parts of Chrystyndome that I have travylled in I know nott V Englishmen inhabytants except only scholers for learning. I pray to Jesu that alyens do in Ynglond no more harme to Ynglonde, and yff I myght do Ynglonde any servyce, specyally to my soveryn lord the kyng and to you, I would do ytt to spend and putt my lyfe in danger and jeberdy as far as any man. God be my judge. You have my hartt and shall be sure of me to the uttermost of my pore power. for I am never able to make you amends, for when I was in greatt thraldom, both bodyly and goastly, you of yor gentylnes sett me att liberte. Also I thank yor mastershepp for yor grett kyndnes that you have shewed me att Bysshopps Waltham, and that you gave me lycense to come to you ons in a qwarrtter. as sone as I come home I intende to come to you to submytt my selff to you to do with me what you wyll. for for lak of wytt paradventter I may in this wrettyng say that shall nott content you. but god be my judge I mene trewly both to my sovereyngne lord the kyng and to you. when I was kept in thrawldom in ye charterhouse and know neither ye kyngs noble acts nor you, then stultycyusly throw synstrall wordes I dyd as man of the others doth, butt after I was att lyberte manyfestly I aparsevyd ye ignorance and blyndnes that they and I wer yn. for I could never know no thynge of no maner of matter butt only by them, and they wolde cawse me wrett full incypyently to ye prior of London when he was in ye tower before he was putt to exicuyon. for ye which I trustt yor mastershepp hath pardonyd me, for god knoweth I was keppt in prison straytly, and glad I was to wrett att theyr request, but I wrott nothyng that I thought shold be agenst my prince nor you nor no other man. I pray god that you may provyde a good prior for that place of London, for truly there be many wylfull and obstynatt yowng men that stondeth to much in their owne consaytt and wyll nott be reformyd butt playth ye chyldryn, and a good prior wolde so serve them lyke chyldryn. News I have to wrett to you butt I yntende to be with ou shortly. for I am half wery off this baryn contry, as Jesu Chryst knowth, who ever keppe you in helthe and honor. a myle from Edynborough, the fyrst day off Apryll, by the hand of yor poer skoler and servantt,—Andrew Boorde Preest."

Literary physicians have, as a rule, not prospered as medical practitioners. The public harbour towards them the same suspicious and unfavourable prejudices as they do to literary barristers. A man, it is presumed, cannot be a master of two trades at the same time, and where he professes to carry on two it is usually concluded that he understands neither. To display the injustice of such views is no part of this writer's work, for the task is in better hands—time and experience, who are yearly adding to the cases that support the converse proposition that if a man is really a proficient in one subject, the fact is of itself a reason for believing him a master of a second.

Still, the number of brilliant writers who have enrolled themselves in the medical fraternity is remarkable. If they derived no benefit from their order, they have at least generously conferred lustre upon it. Goldsmith—though no one can say on what his claim to the title of doctor rested, and though in his luckless attempts to get medical employment he underwent even more humiliation and disgrace than fell to his lot as the drudge of Mrs. Griffiths—is one of the most pleasant associations that our countrymen have in connection with the history of "the Faculty." Smollett, like Goldsmith, tried ineffectually to escape from literary drudgery to the less irksome and more profitable duties that surround the pestle and mortar. Of Garth, Blackmore, Arbuthnot, and Akenside, notice has already been taken.

Anything like a complete enumeration of medical men who have made valuable contributions to belles lettres would fill a volume, by the writing of which very little good would be attained. By no means the least of them was Armstrong, whose portrait Thomson introduced into the "Castle of Indolence."

His medical writings, and his best known poem, "The Art of Health," had he written nothing else, would in all probability have brought him patients, but the licentiousness of "The Economy of Love" effectually precluded him from ever succeeding as a family physician. Amongst Armstrong's poet friends was Grainger, the amiable and scholarly physician who enjoyed the esteem of Percy and Samuel Johnson, Shenstone and Sir Joshua. Soon after the publication of his translation of the "Elegies of Tibullus," (1758), Grainger went to the island of St. Christopher's, and established himself there as a physician. The scenery and industrial occupations of the island inspired him to write his most important poem, "The Sugar-Cane," which, in escaping such derision as was poured on Blackmore's effusions, owed its good fortune to the personal popularity of the author rather than its intrinsic merits. The following sample is a fair one:—

When the poem was read in MS. at Sir Joshua's house, the lines printed in italics were not part of the production, but in their place stood—

"Now, Muse, let's sing of rats."

The immediate effect of such bathos was a burst of inextinguishable laughter from the auditors, whose sense of the ridiculous was by no means quieted by the fact that one of the company, slyly overlooking the reader, discovered that "the word had originally been mice, and had been altered to rats, as more dignified."

Above the crowd of minor medical litterateurs are conspicuous, Moore, the author of "Zeluco"; Dr. Aikin, one of whose many works has been already referred to; Erasmus Darwin, author of "The Botanic Garden"; Mason Good, the translator of "Lucretius," and author of the "Study of Medicine"; Dr. Ferriar, whose "Illustrations of Sterne" just doubled the value in the market of "Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy"; Cogan, the author of "Life and Opinions of John Buncle, jun."; Dr. Harrington, of Bath, editor of the "NugÆ AntiquÆ"; Millingen, who wrote "The Curiosities of Medical Practice," and "The History of Duelling"; Dr. Paris, whose "Life of Sir Humphrey Davy," unsatisfactory as it is in many places, is still a useful book, and many of whose other writings will long remain of great value; Wadd, the humourous collector of "Medical Ana"; Dr. Merriman, the late contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine and Notes and Queries; and Pettigrew, the biographer of Lettsom. If the physicians and surgeons still living, who have openly or anonymously written with good effect on subjects not immediately connected with their profession, were placed before the reader, there would be found amongst them many of the most distinguished of their fraternity.

Apropos of the Dr. Harrington mentioned above, a writer says—"The Doctor for many years attended the Dowager Lady Trevor, relict of Lord Trevor, and last surviving daughter of Sir Richard Steele. He spoke of this lady as possessing all the wit, humour, and gaiety of her father, together with most of his faults. She was extravagant, and always in debt; but she was generous, charitable, and humane. She was particularly partial to young people, whom she frequently entertained most liberally, and delighted them with the pleasantry and volubility of her discourse. Her person was like that which her pleasant father described himself in the Spectator, with his short face, &c. A little before her death (which was in the month of December) she sent for her doctor, and, on his entering her chamber, he said, 'How fares your Ladyship!' She replied, 'Oh, my dear Doctor, ill fare! I am going to break up before the holidays!' This agreeable lady lived many years in Queen's Square, Bath, and, in the summer months, at St. Ann's Hill, Surrey, the late residence of Rt. Hon. Chas. James Fox."

Wolcot, better known as Peter Pindar, was a medical practitioner, his father and many of his ancestors having followed the same calling in Devonshire and Cornwall, under the names of Woolcot, Wolcott, Woolacot, Walcot, or Wolcot. After acquiring a knowledge of his profession in a somewhat irregular manner Wolcot found a patron in Sir William Trelawny, Bart., of Trelawny, co. Cornwall, who, on going out to assume the governorship of Jamaica, took the young surgeon with him to act as medical officer to his household. In Jamaica Wolcot figured in more characters than one. He was the governor's grand-master of the ceremonies, private secretary, and chaplain. When the King of the Mosquitoes waited on the new governor to express his loyal devotion to the King of England's representative, Wolcot had to entertain the royal guest—no difficult task as long as strong drink was in the way.

His Majesty—an enormously stout black brute—regarded intoxication as the condition of life most fit for kings.

The autocrat of the Mosquitoes, as the greatest only are, in his simplicity sublime, was contented with rum or its equivalent.

"Mo' drink for king! Mo' drink for king!" he would bellow, dancing round the grand-master of the governor's household.

"King," the grand-master would reply, "you are drunk already."

"No, no; king no drunk. Mo' drink for king! Broder George" (i. e. George III.) "love drink!"

Grand-Master.—"Broder George does not love drink: he is a sober man."

Autocrat.—"But King of Musquito love drink. Me will have mo' drink. Me love drink like devil. Me drink whole ocean!"

The different meagre memoirs of Peter Pindar are conflicting as to whether he ever received ordination from the hands of the Bishop of London. It seems most probable that he never did. But, consecrated or not, there is no doubt that he officiated as a colonial rector for some time. Droll stories of him as a parish priest used to circulate amongst his friends, as well as amongst his enemies. He read prayers and preached whenever a congregation appeared in his church, but three Sundays out of every four not a soul came to receive the benefit of his ministrations.

The rector was an admirable shot, and on his way from his house to church used to amuse himself with shooting pigeons, his clerk—also an excellent shot—walking behind with a fowling-piece in his hand, and taking part in the sport. Having reached the sacred edifice, his reverence and attendant opened the church door and waited in the porch ten minutes for the advent of worshippers. If none had presented themselves at the end of ten minutes, the pastor beat a retreat. If only a few black Christians straggled up, the rector bought them off with a few coins and then went home. One cunning old negro, who saw that the parson's heart was more with the wild-fowl of the neighboring bay than bent on the discharge of his priestly functions, after a while presented himself every Sunday, when the following interview and arrangement were regularly repeated:—

"What do you come here for, blackee?" the parson would exclaim.

"Why, massa, to hear your good sermon and all de prayer ob de church."

"Would not a bit or two do you more good?"

"Yes, massa doctor—me lub prayer much, but me lub money too."

The "bit or two" would then be paid, and the devotee would retire speedily from the scene. For an entire twelve-month was this black-mail exacted.

On his return to England, Wolcot, after a few unsuccessful attempts to establish himself in practice, relinquished the profession of physic as well as that of divinity, and, settling himself in London, made both fame and a good income by his writings. As a political satirist he was in his day almost without a rival, and the popularity of his numerous works would have placed a prudent man in lasting affluence. Improvidence, however, necessitated him to sell the copyright of his works to Messrs. Robinson, Golding, and Walker for an annuity of £250, payable half-yearly, during the remainder of his life. Loose agreements have always been the fashion between authors and publishers, and in the present case it was not clearly stated what "copyright of his works" meant. The publishers interpreted it as the copyright of both what the author had written at the time of making the agreement, and also of what he should subsequently write. Wolcot, however, declared that he had in the transaction only had regard to his prior productions. After some litigation and more squabbling, the publishers consented to take Wolcot's view of the case; but he never forgave them the discomfort they had caused him. His rancour against "the trade" increased with time, and inspired some of his most violent and unjust verses:—

For medicine Peter Pindar had even less respect than Garth had. He used to say "that he did not like the practice of it as an art. He was entirely ignorant, indeed, whether the patient was cured by the vis medicatrix naturÆ, or the administration of a little pill, which was either directly or indirectly to reach the part affected." And for the practitioners of the art held in such low esteem, he cherished a contempt that he would at times display with true Pindaric warmth. In his two-act farce, "Physic and Delusion; or Jezebel and the Doctors," the dialogue is carried on in the following strain:—

Amongst Peter Pindar's good services to the world was the protection he afforded to Opie (or Oppy, as it was at one time less euphoniously spelt and pronounced) the artist, when he was a poor country clown, rising at three o'clock in the summer mornings, to pursue his art with rude pieces of chalk and charcoal. Wolcot presented the boy with his first pencils, colours, and canvas, and put him in the way to paint portraits for the magnificent remuneration of half-a-guinea, and subsequently a guinea a-head. And it was to the same judicious friend that Opie, on leaving the provinces, owed his first success in London.

Wolcot used to tell some droll stories about his artist friend. Opie's indiscreet manner was a source of continual trouble to those who endeavoured to serve him; for, priding himself on being "a rough diamond," he took every pains that no one should fail to see the roughness. A lady sitter was anxious that her portrait should be "very handsome," and frankly told the painter so. "Then, madam," was the reply, "you wish to be painted otherwise than you are. I see you do not want your own face." Not less impudent was he at the close of his first year in London, in taking out writs against several sitters who were rather tardy in their payments.

Opie was not the only artist of celebrity deeply indebted to Peter Pindar. Bone, the painter in enamel, found an efficient friend in the same discerning lover of the arts. In this respect Wolcot was worthy of the profession which he deserted, and affected to despise; and his name will ever be honourably mentioned amongst those physicians who have fostered art, from the days of picture-loving Mead, down to those of the writer's very kind friend, Dr. Diamond, who gathered from remote quarters "The Diamond Collection of Portraits," which may be seen amongst the art treasures of Oxford.

One of the worthies of Dr. Diamond's family was Robertus Fludd, or De Fluctibus, the writer of Rosicrucian celebrity who gave Sterne more than one lesson in the arts of eccentricity. Sir Thomas Fludd of Milgate, Bearsted, co. Kent (grandson of David Fludd, alias Lloyd of Morton, in Shropshire), had five sons and a daughter. Of this offspring, one son, Thomas, purchased Gore Court, and fixed there a family, the vicissitudes of which may be learnt by a reference to Hasted's Kent. From this branch of the Fludds descended Dr. Diamond, who, amongst other curious family relics, possesses the diploma of Robertus de Fluctibus.

When Robertus de Fluctibus died, Sept. 8, 1637, in Coleman St., London, his body, under the protection of a herald of arms, was conveyed to the family seat in Kent, and was then buried in Bearsted Church, under a stone which he had before laid for himself. The monument over his ashes was ordered by him in his last will to be made after that of William Camden in the Abbey at Westminster. The inscription which marks his resting-place declares his, rather than our, estimate of his intellectual greatness;

More modest, and at the same time more humorous, is the epitaph, in Hendon Church, of poor Thomas Crossfield, whose name, alike as surgeon and politician, has passed from among men:—

Amongst the medical poets there is one whom all scholarly physicians jealously claim as of their body—John Keats; he who, dying at Rome, at the age of twenty-six, wished his epitaph to be, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." After serving his apprenticeship under an Edmonton surgeon, the author of "Endymion" became a medical student at St. Thomas's hospital.

Mention here, too, may be made of Dr. Macnish, the author of "The Anatomy of Drunkenness," and "The Modern Pythagorean"; and of Dr. Moir, the poet, whose death, a few years since, robbed the world of a simple and pathetic writer, and his personal acquaintance of a noble-hearted friend.

But of all modern English poets who have had an intimate personal connection with the medical profession, the greatest by far is Crabbe—

"Nature's sternest painter, yet the best."

In 1754 George Crabbe was born in the old sea-faring town of Aldborough, in the county of Suffolk. His father, the collector of salt-duties, or salt-master of the town, was a churlish sullen fellow at the best of times; but, falling upon adversity in his old days, he became the beau-ideal of a domestic tyrant. He was not, however, without his respectable points. Though a poor man, he did his best to educate his children above the ranks of the very poor. One of them became a thriving glazier in his native town; another went to sea, and became captain of a Liverpool slave-ship; and a third, also a sailor, met with strange vicissitudes—at one time enjoying a very considerable amount of prosperity, and then suffering penury and persecution. A studious and a delicate lad, George, the eldest of the party, was designed for some pursuit more adapted to his disposition and physical powers than the avocations of working mechanics, or the hard duties of the marine service. When quite a child, he had, amongst the inhabitants of Aldborough, a reputation for mental superiority that often did him good service. On one occasion he chanced to offend a playmate—his senior and "master," as boys and savages term it—and was on the point of receiving a good thrashing nigh the roaring waves of old ocean, when a third boy, a common acquaintance, exclaimed in a voice of affright:—

"Yar marn't middle a' him; lit him aloone—he ha' got l'arning."

The plea was admitted as a good one, and the future bard, taking his benefit of clergy, escaped the profanation of a drubbing.

George was sent to two respectable schools, the one at Bungay, in Suffolk, and the other (the better of the two) at Stowmarket, in the same county. The expense of such an education, even if it amounted to no more than £20 per annum, was no small undertaking for the salt-master of a fishing-village; for Aldborough—now a handsome and much frequented provincial watering-place—was in 1750 nothing better than a collection of huts, whose humble inhabitants possessed little stake in the commonweal beyond the right of sending to parliament two members to represent their interests and opinions. On leaving school, in his fourteenth year, George was apprenticed to a country doctor of a very rough sort, who plied his trade at Wickham Brook, a small village near Bury St. Edmunds. It is a fact worthy of note, as throwing some light on the state of the profession in the provinces, that the apprentice shared the bed of his master's stable-boy. At Wickham Brook, however, the lad did not remain long to endure such indignity. He was removed from that scene of trial, and placed under the tutelage of Mr. Page, a surgeon of Woodbridge, a gentleman of good connections and polite tastes, and through the marriage of his daughter with the late famous Alderman Wood, an ancestor of a learned judge, who is not more eminent as a lawyer than beloved as a man.

It was during his apprenticeship to Mr. Page of Woodbridge that Crabbe made his first important efforts in poetry, publishing, in the year 1772, some fugitive pieces in Wheble's Magazine, and in 1775 "Inebriety, a poem, in three parts. Ipswich: printed and sold by C. Punchard, bookseller, in the Butter-market." While at Woodbridge, too, his friend Levett, a young surgeon of the neighborhood, took him over to Framlingham, introducing him to the families of that picturesque old town. William Springall Levett was at that time engaged to Alethea Brereton, a lady who, under the nom de plume of "Eugenia Acton," wrote certain novels that created a sensation in their brief day. Amongst them were "Vicissitudes of Genteel Life," "The Microcosm," and "A Tale without a Title." The love-making of Mr. Levett and Miss Eugenia de Acton was put a stop to by the death of the former, in 1774. The following epitaph, transcribed from the History of Framlingham, the work of the able antiquarian, Mr. Richard Green, is interesting as one of Crabbe's earlier compositions.

Subsequently Miss Brereton married a gentleman named Lewis, engaged in extensive agricultural operations. However brief her literary reputation may have been, her pen did her good service; for, at a critical period of her husband's career, it brought her sums of much-needed money.

Mr. Levett's romance closed prematurely together with his life, but through him Crabbe first became acquainted with the lovely girl whom he loved through years of trial, and eventually made his wife. Sarah Elmy was the niece of John Tovell, yeoman, not gentleman—he would have scorned the title. Not that the worthy man was without pride of divers kinds, or that he did not hold himself to be a gentleman. He believed in the Tovells as being one of the most distinguished families of the country. A Tovell, by mere right of being a Tovell, could thrash more Frenchmen than any Englishman, not a Tovell, could. When the good man said, "I am nothing more than a plain yeoman," he never intended or expected any one to believe him, or to regard his words in any other light than as a playful protest against being deemed "a plain yeoman," or that modern hybrid, "a gentleman farmer."

He was a well-made, handsome, pleasant fellow—riding a good horse with the hounds—loving good cheer—enjoying laughter, without being very particular as to the cause of it—a little too much addicted to carousing, but withal an agreeable and useful citizen; and he lived at Parham Lodge, a house that a peer inhabited after him, without making any important alterations in the place.

On Crabbe's first introduction to Parham Lodge he was received with cordiality; but when it was seen that he had fallen in love with the squire's niece, it was only natural that "his presumption" should not at first meet the approval either of Mrs. Tovell or her husband. But the young people plighted troth to each other, and the engagement was recognized by the lady's family. It was years, however, before the wedding bells were set ringing. Crabbe's apprenticeship to Mr. Page finished, he tried ineffectually to raise the funds for a regular course of hospital instruction in London. Returning to Aldborough, he furnished a shop with a few bottles and a pound's worth of drugs, and set up as "an apothecary." Of course it was only amongst the poor of his native town that he obtained patients, the wealthier inhabitants of the borough distrusting the knowledge of a doctor who had not walked the hospitals. In the summer of 1778, however, he was appointed surgeon to the Warwickshire militia, then stationed at Aldborough, and in the following winter, on the Warwickshire militia being moved and replaced by the Norfolk militia, he was appointed surgeon to the latter regiment also. But these posts were only temporary, and conferred but little emolument on their holder. At length poverty drove the poet from his native town. The rest of his career is matter of notoriety. Every reader knows how the young man went to London and only escaped the death of Otway or Chatterton by the generous patronage of Burke, how through Burke's assistance he was ordained, became the Duke of Rutland's chaplain, obtained comfortable church preferment, and for a long span enjoyed an amount of domestic happiness that was as great and richly deserved as his literary reputation.

Crabbe's marriage with Sarah Elmy eventually conferred on him and his children the possession of Parham Lodge, which estate, a few years since, passed from them into the hands of wealthy purchasers. The poet also succeeded to other wealth through the same connection, an old-maid sister of John Tovell leaving him a considerable sum of money. "I can screw Crabbe up and down like an old fiddle," this amiable lady was fond of saying; and during her life she proved that her boast was no empty one. But her will was a handsome apology for all her little tiffs.