A Book about Doctors Part 8

Radcliffe, and tell him, I'll take anything from him--but physic."

Radcliffe was never married, and professed a degree of misogyny that was scarcely in keeping with his conduct on certain occasions. His person was handsome and imposing, but his manners were little calculated to please women. Overbearing, truculent, and abusive, he could not rest without wounding the feelings of his companions with harsh jokes. Men could bear with him, but ladies were like Queen Anne in vehemently disliking him. King William was not pleased with his brutal candour in exclaiming, at the sight of the dropsical ancles uncovered for inspection, "I would not have your Majesty's legs for your three kingdoms"; but William's sister-in-law repaid a much slighter offence with life-long animosity. In 1693, however, the doctor made an offer to a citizen's daughter, who had beauty and a fortune of ?15,000. As she was only twenty-four years of age, the doctor was warmly congratulated by his friends when he informed them that he, though well advanced in middle age, had succeeded in his suit. Before the wedding-day, however, it was discovered that the health of the lady rendered it inc.u.mbent on her honour that she should marry her father's book-keeper. This mishap soured the doctor's temper to the fair s.e.x, and his sarcasms at feminine folly and frailty were innumerable.

He was fond of declaring that he wished for an Act of Parliament ent.i.tling nurses to the sole and entire medical care of women. A lady who consulted him about a nervous singing in the head was advised to "curl her hair with a ballad." His scorn of women was not lessened by the advances of certain disorderly ladies of condition, who displayed for him that morbid pa.s.sion which medical pract.i.tioners have often to resist in the treatment of hysterical patients. Yet he tried his luck once again at the table of love. "There's no fool so great as an old fool." In the summer of 1709, Radcliffe, then in his sixtieth year, started a new equipage; and having arrayed himself in the newest mode of foppery, threw all the town into fits of laughter by paying his addresses, with the greatest possible publicity, to a lady who possessed every requisite charm--(youth, beauty, wealth)--except a tenderness for her aged suitor. Again was there an unlucky termination to the doctor's love, which Steele, in No. 44 of _The Tatler_, ridiculed in the following manner:--

"This day, pa.s.sing through Covent Garden, I was stopped in the Piazza by Pacolet, to observe what he called _The Triumph of Love and Youth_.

I turned to the object he pointed at, and there I saw a gay gilt chariot, drawn by fresh prancing horses, the coachman with a new c.o.c.kade, and the lacqueys with insolence and plenty in their countenances. I asked immediately, 'What young heir, or lover, owned that glittering equipage!' But my companion interrupted, 'Do not you see there the mourning ?sculapius?' 'The mourning!' said I. 'Yes, Isaac,' said Pacolet, 'he is in deep mourning, and is the languis.h.i.+ng, hopeless lover of the divine Hebe, the emblem of Youth and Beauty.

That excellent and learned sage you behold in that furniture is the strongest instance imaginable that love is the most powerful of all things.

"'You are not so ignorant as to be a stranger to the character of ?sculapius, as the patron and most successful of all who profess the Art of Medicine. But as most of his operations are owing to a natural sagacity or impulse, he has very little troubled himself with the Doctrine of Drugs, but has always given Nature more room to help herself than any of her learned a.s.sistants; and consequently has done greater wonders than in the power of Art to perform; for which reason he is half deified by the people, and has ever been courted by all the world, just as if he were a seventh son.

"'It happened that the charming Hebe was reduc'd, by a long and violent fever, to the most extreme danger of Death; and when all skill failed, they sent for ?sculapius. The renowned artist was touched with the deepest compa.s.sion, to see the faded charms and faint bloom of Hebe; and had a generous concern, too, in beholding a struggle, not between Life, but rather between Youth, and Death. All his skill and his pa.s.sion tended to the recovery of Hebe, beautiful even in sickness; but, alas! the unhappy physician knew not that in all his care he was only sharpening darts for his own destruction. In a word, his fortune was the same with that of the statuary who fell in love with an image of his own making; and the unfortunate ?sculapius is become the patient of her whom he lately recovered. Long before this, ?sculapius was far gone in the unnecessary and superfluous amus.e.m.e.nts of old age, in the increase of unwieldy stores, and the provision in the midst of an incapacity of enjoyment, of what he had for a supply of more wants than he had calls for in Youth itself. But these low considerations are now no more; and Love has taken place of Avarice, or rather is become an Avarice of another kind, which still urges him to pursue what he does not want. But behold the metamorphosis: the anxious mean cares of an usurer are turned into the languishments and complaints of a lover. "Behold," says the aged ?sculapius, "I submit; I own, great Love, thy empire. Pity, Hebe, the fop you have made. What have I to do with gilding but on Pills? Yet, O Fate! for thee I sit amidst a crowd of painted deities on my chariot, b.u.t.toned in gold, clasp'd in gold, without having any value for that beloved metal, but as it adorns the person and laces the hat of the dying lover. I ask not to live, O Hebe! Give me but gentle death. Euthanasia, Euthanasia!

that is all I implore."' When ?sculapius had finished his complaint, Pacolet went on in deep morals on the uncertainty of riches, with this remarkable explanation--'O wealth! how impatient art thou! And how little dost thou supply us with real happiness, when the usurer himself cannot forget thee, for the love of what is foreign to his felicity, as thou art!'"

Seven days after the _Tatler_ resumed the attack, but with less happy effect. In this picture, the justice of which was not questioned, even by the Doctor's admirers, the avarice of the veteran is not less insisted on as the basis of his character, than his amorousness is displayed as a ludicrous freak of vanity. Indeed, love of money was the master-defect of Radcliffe's disposition. Without a child, or a prospect of offspring, he screwed and sc.r.a.ped in every direction. Even his debaucheries had an alloy of discomfort that does not customarily mingle in the dissipations of the rich. The flavour of the money each bottle cost gave ungrateful smack to his wine. He had numerous poor relations, of whom he took, during his life, little or no notice. Even his sisters he kept at arm's distance, lest they should show their affection for him by dipping their hands in his pockets. It is true, he provided liberally for them at his death--leaving to the one (a married lady--Mrs. Hannah Redshaw) a thousand a year for life, and to the other (a spinster lady) an income of half that amount as long as she lived. But that he treated them with unbrotherly neglect there is no doubt.

After his decease, a letter was found in his closet, directed to his unmarried sister, Millicent Radcliffe, in which, with contrition, and much pathos, he bids her farewell. "You will find," says he, in that epistle, "by my will that I have taken better care of you than perhaps you might expect from my former treatment of you; for which, with my dying breath, I most heartily ask pardon. I had indeed acted the brother's part much better, in making a handsome settlement on you while living, than after my decease; and can plead nothing in excuse, but that the love of money, which I have emphatically known to be the root of all evil, was too predominant over me. Though, I hope, I have made some amends for that odious sin of covetousness, in my last dispositions of those worldly goods which it pleased the great Dispenser of Providence to bless me with."

What made this meanness of disposition in money matters the more remarkable was, that he was capable of occasional munificence, on a scale almost beyond his wealth, and also of a stoical fort.i.tude under any reverse of fortune that chanced to deprive him of some of his beloved guineas.

In the year 1704, at a general collection for propagating the Gospel in foreign parts, he settled on the Society established for that purpose ?50 per annum for ever. And this n.o.ble gift he unostentatiously made under an a.s.sumed name. In the same year he presented ?520 to the Bishop of Norwich, to be distributed among the poor non-juring clergy; and this donation he also desired should be kept a secret from the world.

His liberality to Oxford was far from being all of the _post-mortem_ sort. In 1687 he presented the chapel of University College with an east window, representing, in stained gla.s.s, the Nativity, and having the following inscription:--"D.D. Johan Radcliffe, M.D., hujus Collegii quondam Socius, Anno Domini MDCLx.x.xVII." In 1707 he gave Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, bills for ?300, drawn under the a.s.sumed name of Francis Andrews, on Waldegrave the goldsmith, of Russell Street, Covent Garden, for the relief of distressed Scotch Episcopal clergy.

As another instance of how his n.i.g.g.ard nature could allow him to do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame, his liberality to James Drake, the Tory writer, may be mentioned. Drake was a physician, as well as a political author. As the latter, he was well liked, as the former he was honestly hated by Radcliffe. Two of a trade--where one of the two is a John Radcliffe--can never agree. Each of the two doctors had done his utmost to injure the reputation of the other. But when Drake, broken in circ.u.mstances by a political persecution, was in sore distress from want of money, Radcliffe put fifty guineas into a lady's hands, and begged her to convey it to Drake. "Let him," said Radcliffe, with the delicacy of a fine heart, "by no means be told whence it comes. He is a gentleman, and has often done his best to hurt me. He could, therefore, by no means brook the receipt of a benefit from a person whom he had used all possible means to make an enemy."

After such instances of Ratcliffe's generosity, it may seem unnecessary to give more proofs of the existence of that quality, disguised though it was by miserly habits. His friend Nutley, a loose rollicking gentleman about town, a barrister without practice, a man of good family, and no fortune, a jovial dog, with a jest always on his lips, wine in his head, and a death's-head grinning over each shoulder [such bachelors may still be found in London], was in this case the object of the doctor's benevolence. Driven by duns and tippling to the borders of distraction, Nutley crept out of his chambers under the cover of night to the "Mitre Tavern," and called for "a bottle." "A bottle" with Nutley meant "many bottles." The end of it was that the high-spirited gentleman fell down in a condition of ---- well! in a condition that Templars, in this age of earnest purpose and decent morals, would blush to be caught in. Mr. Nutley was taken hold of by the waiters, and carried up-stairs to bed.

The next morning the merry fellow is in the saddest of all possible humours. The memory of a few little bills, the holders of which are holding a parliament on his stair-case in Pump-court; the recollection that he has not a guinea left--either to pacify those creditors with, or to use in paying for the wine consumed over night; a depressing sense that the prominent features of civilized existence are tax-gatherers and sheriff's officers; a head that seems to be falling over one side of the pillow, whilst the eyes roll out on the other;--all these afflict poor Mr. Nutley! A knock at the door, and the landlady enters. The landlady is the Widow Watts, daughter of the widow Bowles, also in the same line. As now, so a hundred and fifty years ago, ladies in licensed victualling circles played tricks with their husbands' night-caps--killed them with kindness, and reigned in their stead. The widow Watts has a sneaking fondness for poor Mr.

Nutley, and is much affected when, in answer to her inquiry how "his honour feels his-self," he begins to sob like a child, narrate the troubles of his infancy, the errors of his youth, and the sorrows of his riper age. Mistress Watts is alarmed. Only to think of Mr. Nutley going on like that, talking of his blessed mother who had been dead these twenty years, and vowing he'd kill himself, because he is an outcast, and no better than a disgrace to his family. "To think of it!

and only yesterday he were the top of company, and would have me drink his own honourable health in a gla.s.s of his own wine." Mistress Watts sends straightway for Squire Nutley's friend, the Doctor. When Radcliffe makes his appearance, he sees the whole case at a glance, rallies Billy Nutley about his rascally morals, estimates his a.s.sertion that "it's only his liver a little out of order" exactly at its worth, and takes his leave shortly, saying to himself, "If poor Billy could only be freed from the depression caused by his present pecuniary difficulties, he would escape for this once a return of the deliri...." At the end of another half hour, a goldsmith's man enters the bed-room, and puts into Nutley's hand a letter and a bag of gold containing 200 guineas. The epistle is from Radcliffe, begging his friend to accept the money, and to allow the donor to send him in a few days 300 more of the same coins. Such was the physician's prescription, in dispensing which he condescended to act as his own apothecary. Bravo, doctor!--who of us shall say which of the good deeds--thy gift to Billy Nutley or thy princely bequest to Oxford--has the better right to be regarded as the offspring of sincere benevolence? Some--and let no "fie!" be cried upon them--will find in this story more to make them love thy memory than they have ever found in that n.o.ble library whose dome stands up amidst the towers, and steeples, and sacred walls of beloved Oxford.

It would not be hard to say which of the two gifts has done the greater good. Poor Will Nutley took his 500 guineas, and had "more bottles," went a few more times to the theatres in lace and velvet and brocade, roared out at a few more drinking bouts, and was carried off by [his biographer calls it "a violent fever"] in the twenty-ninth year of his age. And possibly since w.i.l.l.y Nutley was w.i.l.l.y Nutley, and no one else, this was the best possible termination for him. That Radcliffe, the head of a grave profession, and a man of fifty-seven years of age, should have conceived an enthusiastic friends.h.i.+p for a youngster of half his age, is a fact that shows us one of the consequences of the tavern life of our great-grandfathers. It puts us in mind of how Fielding, ere he had a beard, burst into popularity with the haunters of coffee-houses. When roistering was in fas.h.i.+on, a young man had many chances which he no longer possesses. After the theatres were closed, he reeled into the hostels of the town, singing s.n.a.t.c.hes with the blithe, clear voice of youth, laughing and jesting with all around, and frequently amongst that "all" he came in contact with the highest and most powerful men of the time. A boy-adventurer could display his wit and quality to statesmen and leaders of all sorts; whereas now he must wait years before he is even introduced to them, and years more ere he gets an invitation to their formal dinners, at which Barnes Newcome cuts as brilliant a figure as the best and the strongest.

Throughout his life Radcliffe was a staunch and manly Jacobite. He was for "the king"; but neither loyalty nor interest could bind him to higher considerations than those of attachment to the individual he regarded as the rightful head of the realm. In 1688, when Obadiah Walker tried to wheedle him into the folly of becoming a Romanist, the attempt at perversion proved a signal failure. Nothing can be more truly manly than his manner of rejecting the wily advances of the proselytizing pervert. "The advantages you propose to me," he writes, "may be very great, for all that I know; G.o.d Almighty can do very much and so can the king; but you'll pardon me if I cease to speak like a physician for once, and, with an air of gravity, am very apprehensive that I may anger the one in being too complaisant to the other. You cannot call this pinning my faith to any man's sleeve; those that know me are too well apprized of my quite contrary tendency. As I never flattered a man myself, so 'tis my firm resolution never to be wheedled out of my real sentiments--which are, that since it has been my good fortune to be educated according to the usage of the Church of England, established by law, I shall never make myself so unhappy as to shame my teachers and instructors by departing from what I have imbibed from them."

Thus was Walker treated when he abused his position as head of University College. But when the foolish man was deprived of his office, he found a good friend in him whom he had tried to seduce from the Church in which he had been reared. From the time of his first coming to London from Oxford, on the abdication of James the Second, up to the time of his death, Walker subsisted on a handsome allowance made to him out of Radcliffe's purse. When, also, the discarded princ.i.p.al died, it was the doctor who gave him an honourable interment in Pancras churchyard, and years afterwards erected a monument to his memory.

As years pa.s.sed on, without the rest.i.tution of the proscribed males of the Stuart House, Radcliffe's political feelings became more bitter.

He was too cautious a man to commit himself in any plot having for its object a change of dynasty; but his ill-humour at the existing state of things vented itself in continual sarcasms against the chiefs of the Whig party with whom he came in contact. He professed that he did not wish for practice amongst the faction to which he was opposed. He had rather only preserve the lives of those citizens who were loyal to their king. One of the immediate results of this affectation was increased popularity with his political antagonists. Whenever a Whig leader was dangerously ill, his friends were sure to feel that his only chance of safety rested on the ministrations of the Jacobite doctor. Radcliffe would be sent for, and after swearing a score of times that nothing should induce him to comply with the summons, would make his appearance at the sick-bed, where he would sometimes tell the sufferer that the devil would have no mercy on those who put const.i.tutional governments above the divine right of kings. If the patient recovered, of course his cure was attributed to the Tory physician; and if death was the result, the same cause was pointed to.

It might be fancied that, rather than incur a charge of positively killing his political antagonists, Radcliffe would have left them to their fates. But this plan would have served him the reverse of well.

If he failed to attend a Whig's death-bed to which he had been summoned, the death was all the same attributed to him. "He might,"

exclaimed the indignant survivors, "have saved poor Tom if he had liked; only poor Tom was a Whig, and so he left him to die." He was charged alike with killing Queen Mary, whom he did attend in her dying illness--and Queen Anne, whom he didn't.

The reader of the Harleian MS. of Burnet's "History" is amused with the following pa.s.sage, which does not appear in the printed editions:--"I will not enter into another province, nor go out of my own profession, and so will say no more of the physician's part, but that it was universally condemned; so that the Queen's death was imputed to the unskilfulness and wilfulness of Dr. Radcliffe, an impious and vicious man, who hated the Queen much, but virtue and religion more. He was a professed Jacobite, and was, by many, thought a very bad physician; but others cried him up to the highest degree imaginable. He was called for, and it appeared but too evident that his opinion was depended on. Other physicians were called when it was too late; all symptoms were bad, yet still the Queen felt herself well."

Radcliffe's negative murder of Queen Anne was yet more amusing than his positive destruction of Mary. When Queen Anne was almost _in extremis_, Radcliffe was sent for. The Queen, though she never forgave him for his drunken ridicule of her vapours, had an exalted opinion of his professional talents, and had, more than once, winked at her ladies, consulting him about the health of their royal mistress. Now that death was at hand, Lady Masham sent a summons for the doctor; but he was at Carshalton, sick of his dying illness, and returned answer that it would be impossible for him to leave his country-seat and wait on her Majesty. Such was the absurd and superst.i.tious belief in his mere presence, that the Queen was popularly pictured as having died because he was not present to see her draw her last breath. Whom he liked he could kill, and whom he liked could keep alive and well. Even Arbuthnot, a brother physician, was so tinctured with the popular prejudice, that he could gravely tell Swift of the pleasure Radcliffe had "in preserving my Lord Chief Justice Holt's wife, whom he attended out of spite to her husband, who wished her dead."

It makes one smile to read Charles Ford's letter to the sarcastic Dean on the subject of the Queen's last illness. "She continued ill the whole day. In the evening I spoke to Dr Arbuthnot, and he told me that he did not think her distemper was desperate. Radcliffe was sent for to Carshalton about noon, by order of council; but said he had taken physic and could not come. _In all probability he had saved her life; for I am told the late Lord Gower had been often in the condition with the gout in the head, and Radcliffe kept him alive many years after._"

The author of Gulliver must have grinned as he read this sentence. It was strange stuff to write about "that puppy Radcliffe" (as the Dean calls the physician in his journal to Stella) to the man who coolly sent out word to a Dublin mob that he had put off an eclipse to a more suitable time. The absurdity of Ford's letter is heightened by the fact that it was written before the Queen's death. It is dated July 31, 1714, and concludes with the following postscript:--"The Queen is something better, and the council again adjourned till eight in the morning." Surely the accusation, then, of negative womanslaughter was preferred somewhat prematurely. The next day, however, the Queen died; and then arose a magnificent hubbub of indignation against the impious doctor. The poor man himself sinking into the grave, was at that country-seat where he had entertained his medical friends with so many noisy orgies. But the cries for vengeance reached him in his retreat. "Give us back our ten days!" screamed the rabble of London round Lord Chesterfield's carriage. "Give us back our Queen!" was the howl directed against Radcliffe. The accused was a member of the House of Commons, having been elected M.P. for the town of Buckingham in the previous year; and positively a member (one of Radcliffe's intimate personal acquaintances) moved that the physician should be summoned to attend in his place and be censured for not attending her late Majesty. To a friend the doctor wrote from Carshalton on August 7, 1714:--"Dear Sir,--I could not have thought so old an acquaintance, and so good a friend as Sir John always professed himself, would have made such a motion against me. G.o.d knows my will to do her Majesty any service has ever got the start of my ability, and I have nothing that gives me greater anxiety and trouble than the death of that great and glorious Princess. I must do that justice to the physicians that attended her in her illness, from a sight of the method that was taken for her preservation, transmitted to me by Dr Mead, as to declare nothing was omitted for her preservation; but the people about her (the plagues of Egypt fall upon them!) put it out of the power of physick to be of any benefit to her. I know the nature of attending crowned heads to their last moments too well to be fond of waiting upon them, without being sent for by a proper authority. You have heard of pardons signed for physicians before a sovereign's demise. However, as ill as I was, I would have went to the Queen in a horse-litter, had either her Majesty, or those in commission next to her, commanded me so to do. You may tell Sir John as much, and a.s.sure him, from me, that his zeal for her Majesty will not excuse his ill usage of _a friend who has drunk many a hundred bottles with him_, and cannot, even after this breach of good understanding, that was ever preserved between us, but have a very good esteem for him."

So strong was the feeling against the doctor, that a set of maniacs at large formed a plan for his a.s.sa.s.sination. Fortunately, however, the plot was made known to him in the following letter:--

"Doctor,--Tho' I am no friend of yours, but, on the contrary, one that could wish your destruction in a legal way, for not preventing the death of our most excellent Queen, whom you had it in your power to save, yet I have such an aversion to the taking away men's lives unfairly, as to acquaint you that if you go to meet the gentlemen you have appointed to dine with at the 'Greyhound,' in Croydon, on Thursday next, you will be most certainly murthered. I am one of the persons engaged in the conspiracy, with twelve more, who are resolved to sacrifice you to the _Ghost of her late Majesty, that cries aloud for blood_; therefore, neither stir out of doors that day, nor any other, nor think of exchanging your present abode for your house at Hammersmith, since there and everywhere else we shall be in quest of you. I am touched with remorse, and give you this notice; but take care of yourself, lest I repent of it, and give proofs of so doing, by having it in my power to destroy you, who am your sworn enemy.--N. G."

That thirteen men could have been found to meditate such a ridiculous atrocity is so incredible, that one is inclined to suspect a hoax in this epistle. Radcliffe, however, did not see the letter in that light. Panic-struck, he kept himself a close prisoner to his house and its precincts, though he was very desirous of paying another visit to London--the monotony of his rural seclusion being broken only by the customary visits of his professional a.s.sociates who came down to comfort and drink with him. The end, however, was fast approaching.

The maladies under which he suffered were exacerbated by mental disquiet; and his powers suddenly failing him, he expired on the 1st of November, 1714, just three months after the death of the murdered Queen, of whose vapours he had spoken so disrespectfully.

His original biographer (from whose work all his many memoirs have been taken) tells the world that the great physician "_fell a victim to the ingrat.i.tude of a thankless world, and the fury of the gout_."

Radcliffe was an ignorant man, but shrewd enough to see that in the then existing state of medical science the book-learning of the Faculty could be but of little service to him. He was so notoriously deficient in the literature of his profession, that his warmest admirers made merry about it. Garth happily observed that for Radcliffe to leave a library was as if a eunuch should found a seraglio. Nor was Radcliffe ashamed to admit his lack of lore. Indeed, he was proud of it; and on the inquiry being made by Bathurst, the head of Trinity College, Oxford, where his study was, he pointed to a few vials, a skeleton, and an herbal, and answered, "This is Radcliffe's library." Mead, who rose into the first favour of the town as the doctor retired from it, was an excellent scholar; but far from a.s.suming on that ground a superiority to his senior, made it the means of paying him a graceful compliment. The first time that Radcliffe called on Mead when in town he found his young friend reading Hippocrates.

"Do you read Hippocrates in Greek?" demanded the visitor.

"Yes," replied Mead, timidly fearing his scholars.h.i.+p would offend the great man.

"I never read him in my life," responded Radcliffe, sullenly.

"You, sir," was the rejoinder, "have no occasion--you are Hippocrates himself."

A man who could manufacture flattery so promptly and courageously deserved to get on. Radcliffe swallowed the fly, and was glad to be the prey of the expert angler. Only the day before, Mead had thrown in his ground-bait. As a promising young man, Radcliffe had asked him to a dinner-party at Carshalton, with the hospitable resolve of reducing such a promising young man to a state of intoxication, in the presence of the a.s.sembled elders of his profession. Mead, however, was not to be so managed. He had strong nerves, and was careful to drink as little as he could without attracting attention by his abstinence.

The consequence was that Mead saw magnate after magnate disappear under the table, just as he had before seen magnum after magnum disappear above it; and still he retained his self-possession. At last he and his host were the only occupants of the banqueting-room left in a non-rec.u.mbent position. Radcliffe was delighted with his youthful acquaintance--loved him almost as well as he had loved Billy Nutley.

"Mead," cried the enthusiastic veteran to the young man, who anyhow had not _fallen_ from his chair, "you are a _rising_ man. You will succeed me."

"That, sir, is impossible," Mead adroitly answered; "You are Alexander the Great, and no one can succeed Radcliffe; to succeed to one of his kingdoms is the utmost of my ambition."

Charmed with the reply, Radcliffe exclaimed,

"By ----, I'll recommend you to my patients."

The promise was kept; and Mead endeavoured to repay the worldly advancement with spiritual council. "I remember," says Kennett (_vide_ Lansdowne MSS., Brit. Mus.), "what Dr Mede has told to several of his friends, that he fell much into the favour of Dr Radcliffe a few years before his death, and visited him often at Carshalton, where he observed upon occasion that there was no Bible to be found in the house. Dr Mede had a mind to supply that defect, without taking any notice of it; and therefore one day carried down with him a very beautiful Bible that he had lately bought, which had lain in a closet of King William for his Majesty's own use, and left it as a curiosity that he had picked up by the way. When Dr Mede made the last visit to him he found that Dr R. had read in it as far as the middle of the Book of Exodus, from whence it might be inferred that he had never before read the Scriptures; as I doubt must be inferred of Dr Linacre, from the account given by Sir John Cheke."

The allusion to "the kingdom of Alexander the Great" reminds one of Arbuthnot's letter to Swift, in which the writer concludes his sketch of the proposed map of diseases for Martinus Scriblerus with--"Then the great diseases are like capital cities, with their symptoms all like streets and suburbs, with the roads that lead to other diseases.

It is thicker set with towns than any Flanders map you ever saw.

Radcliffe is painted at the corner of the map, contending for the universal empire of this world, and the rest of the physicians opposing his ambitious designs, with a project of a treaty of part.i.tion to settle peace."

As a pract.i.tioner, Radcliffe served the public as well as he did his own interests. The violent measures of bleeding, and the exhibition of reducing medicines, which const.i.tuted the popular practice even to the present generation, he regarded with distrust in some cases and horror in others. There is a good story told of him, that well ill.u.s.trates his disapproval of a kill-or-cure system, and his hatred of Nurse Gibbons. John Bancroft, the eminent surgeon, who resided in Russell Street, Covent Garden, had a son attacked with inflammation of the lungs. Gibbons was called in, and prescribed the most violent remedies, or rather the most virulent irritants. The child became rapidly worse, and Radcliffe was sent for. "I can do nothing, sir,"

observed the doctor, after visiting his patient, "for the poor little boy's preservation. He is killed to all intents and purposes. But if you have any thoughts of putting a stone over him, I'll help you to an inscription." The offer was accepted, and over the child's grave, in Covent Garden churchyard, was placed a stone sculptured with a figure of a child laying one hand on his side, and saying, "Hic dolor," and pointing with the other to a death's head on which was engraved, "Ibi medicus." This is about the prettiest professional libel which we can point to in all the quarrels of the Faculty.

The uses to which the doctor applied his wealth every one knows.

Notwithstanding his occasional acts of munificence, and a loss of ?5000 in an East Indian venture, into which Betterton, the tragedian, seduced him, his acc.u.mulations were very great. In his will, after liberally providing for the members of his family and his dependents, he devoted his acquisitions to the benefit of the University of Oxford. From them have proceeded the Radcliffe Library, the Radcliffe Infirmary, the Radcliffe Observatory, and the Radcliffe Travelling Fellows.h.i.+ps. It is true that nothing has transpired in the history of these last-mentioned endowments to justify us in reversing the sentiment of Johnson, who remarked to Boswell: "It is wonderful how little good Radcliffe's Travelling Fellows.h.i.+ps have done. I know nothing that has been imported by them."

After lying in state at his own residence, and again in the University, Radcliffe's body was interred, with great pomp, in St.

Mary's Church, Oxford. The royal gift of so large an estate (which during life he had been unable thoroughly to enjoy) to purchase a library, the contents of which he at no time could have read, of course provoked much comment. It need not be said that the testator's memory was, for the most part, extolled to the skies. He had died rich--a great virtue in itself. He was dead; and as men like to deal out censure as long as it can cause pain, and scatter praise when it can no longer create happiness, Radcliffe, the physician, the friend of suffering humanity, the benefactor of ancient and Tory Oxford, was spoken of in "most handsome terms." One could hardly believe that this great good man, this fervent Christian and sublime patriot, was the same man as he whom Steele had ridiculed for servile vanity, and to bring whom into contempt a play was written, and publicly acted, only ten years before, to the intense delight of the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, and the applauding maids of honour.

The philosophic Mandeville, far from approving the behaviour of the fickle mult.i.tude, retained his old opinion of the doctor, and gave it to the world in his "Essay on Charity and Charity Schools." "That a man," writes Mandeville, "with small skill in physic, and hardly any learning, should by vile arts get into practice, and lay up great wealth, is no mighty wonder; but that he should so deeply work himself into the good opinion of the world as to gain the general esteem of a nation, and establish a reputation beyond all his contemporaries, with no other qualities but a perfect knowledge of mankind, and a capacity of making the most of it, is something extraordinary.