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POETICAL PETITION.



         sc. 
Printtd by Southwick and riardcastle,
          No. 2, Wall-Street. 
TERRIBLE TRACTORATIONl!
                 A
        POETICAL PETITION
              AGAINST
   GALVANISING TRUMPERY,
              AND THE
     PERKINISTIC INSTITUTION.
           IN FOUR CANTOS.
       MOST RESPECTFULLY ADDRESSED TO
 THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS,
                 BY   7l*v.-a iv
       CHRISTOPHER  CAUSTIC,
             M.D.LL.D. ASS.
FELLOW OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS,
   ABERDEEN, AND HONORARY MEMBER OF
      NO LESS THAN NINETEEN VERY
          LEARNED SOCIETIES.

          FIRST AMERICAN,
    FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION,
REVISED AND CORRECTED Br THE AUTHOR} WITH
          ADDITIONAL NOTES.
NEW-YORK:
PRINTED FOR SAMUEL STANSBURY,
      114 WATER-STREET.
            .......    I
            1804. 
I
 
PREFACE
           OF THE PUBLISHER,

     TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.


In laying the present volume before Americans
the Publisher deems it necessary to offer but cne
motive, its superlative merit.  As a work
of science, literature, wit, humour and satire, he
has the authority of  the first critics that it stands
unrivalled among the productions of the present
age.
  However sufficient such a motive may  be re-
garded for the exertions he has made in expe-
diting  the labours of the Printer, and the expence
he  has incurred in the  embellishments  of the
Engraver, it will be  readily imagined with how
much more zeal  the task was undertaken, when
he found that he was likely to have the gratifica-
tion of being the first to announce the very cele-
brated, but hitherto  unknown,  " Christopher
Caustic"  to be an American, a  citizen of Ver-
mont.
   A few  circumstances connected with his his-
tory,  which have come to the publisher's  know-
ledge,  he should deem an act of injustice to  genius
to withhold from the public.
   The gentleman to- whom the world is indebted
for this performance is Thomas Green Fessen-
DtN, the son of a respectable clergyman, of Wal-
                     a 2 
vi
pole, New-Hampshire.   In the year  1796,  our
author graduated at Dartmouth College, and soon
after moved  to  Rutland in  Vermont,  where  he
commenced the study of the  law with a gentle-
man* of eminence in that  profession, and with
whom, if we are not  misinformed, he  was after-
wards connected in business.
  During this period, as well  as during his resi-
dence at College, the Eagle,  a newspaper of Dart-
mouth, and the Farmer's  Weekly Museum,  a well
known classic paper of Walpole, were  often enli-
vened by his sprightly muse.  His extreme diffi-
dence produced almost a religious scruple against
allowing his  name to be  attached to any  of his
pieces.   To this cause must be attributed the cir-
cumstance of its not being generally  known to
what Bard the public has been indebted for seve-
ral patriotic  songs, and  other very humourous
pieces of his composition, which  have had a ge-
neral circulation and admiration through our coun-
try.
   In the year 1801, Mr. Fessenden was induced
to embark for London,  chiefly with a view of in-
troducing an hydraulic machine, which, by  sev-
eral of his best friends, who  became  sharers in
the enterpiize, was regarded as  a very import-
ant invention.   He found, however, to his great
mortiheauon, on his  arrival in London, that his

  * Nathaniel Chipman, Esq.  who, besides great accom-
plishments as a lawyer"^ is  eminently distinguished for superior
attainments in the higher walks of both science and literature. 
vii
machine was  already common there,  and of
consequence, every prospect of emolument from
that source vanished.  Ambitious not to return to
his native country with the disgrace of a defeat,
he gave ear to a project set on foot by one of
our countrymen,  then in London,  of construct-
ing^, a  mill  to be carried by  the  water of the
Thames.   Several  men of  rank and influence,
among whom was the then Lord Mayor of Lon-
don, Sir  William Staines,  being patrons of
the undertaking and other circumstances holding
out a reasonable  prospect of great success, Mr.
Fessenden ventured on a purchase of one fifth
of the concern.   The protection of the great, as
is not unusual on such occasions, not being con-
tinued long enough to give the mill a fair  expe-
riment, and our author being the only man in the
concern possessed of talent as  well as character
sufficient to take the management of the establish-
ment, the burden of the whole necessarily devolv-
ed on him; and we understand  there is reason to
apprehend that his great exertions have hitherto
been but  ill requited.   It is here that the trans-
cendant energies  of his mind become most appa-
rent.  Amid the vexatious embarrassments and
distracting  cares with which  this  engagement
constantly  harrassed him,  he  undertook,  and,
within the term of four weeks, a part of which
was under the influence of severe sickness, which
confined him to his bed, executed the first edi-
tion of the admirable  work before us !! 
viii
  Another circumstance, which we are competent
also  to  state, still further  enhances his talents*
and will increase the astonishment of the reader.
Previous to his  entering on the composition of
this Poem, which was in February 1803, he had
been, during his residence in England,  through
his laborious and unwearied application to the in-
terests of the mill, almost a stranger  to books,
and unknown to men of letters.   His society, ne-
cessarily consisting of persons interested in the
concern, happened unfortunately to be a class of
illiterate men, who disgraced  the  name of me-
chanics  and tradesmen, and who, to use his own
expression,  were  guilty of  every thing but  com-
mon sense and common honesty.  This circum-
stance, it may well be conceived, was little con-
genial to  a mind of such integrity as we are
assured  distinguishes his own,  and to the feel-
ings  of so fixed a foe to vice of every species, as
is apparent in every page of this poem.  Indeed
this volume, as was said of a much larger one
on another  occasion, " was written, not in the
soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shades
of academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and
distraction,  in sickness  and in sorrow."   Like
poor Bloomfield, who oUen laid  down the awl
to record the deeds of his Farmer's Boy,  Fes-
senden often laid aside the broad-axe and the
chissel to indite the feats of his Caustic. 
IX
  Before taking leave of Mr. Fessenden's in-
teresting history, we should just state that the
flattering reception of this performance* among
men of letters in England,  emboldened him to
comply with the advice of a friend, (the only per-
son indeed, in England, who knew him to be the
Author of the book) to commit to press a volume
of original  Poems.   The merits of" Terrible
Tractoration" having called forth the high en-
comiums of Mr. Gifford, the very celebrated Au-
thor of the " Baviad and Maviad," the " Trans-
lator oi Juvenal," See. the friend above adverted to
introduced  them to  each other, which has pro-
duced  for Mr. Fessenden a very  intimate and
useful acquaintance.  The volume of" Original
Poems" are by this  period  probably out of the
Press,  and we shall venture to. express our con,-
viction that we shall find them, on the arrival of a
copy in this country,  of sufficient merit to induce
us to. lay them also  soon before the  American
public.  To that work his name will be attached
as the  author of " Terrible Tractoration,"
and necessarily  make him  known to the inhabi-
tants of Great Britain.  It was this  circumstance
which the publisher conceived would warrant him
in the liberty  he has taken to announce Mr. Fes-
senden in America, as the author of the work be-
fore us, which he has hitherto appeared solicitous
to conceal.
  The  Metallic  Tractors, which, from the
Title Page, one might be led to suppose, consti- 
X
tuted the entire subject of the-present work, will
be found, in reality, not to be the prime object of
the Poet.  Mr. Fessenden seems to have con-
ceived that, while dwelling on the treatment Per-
kinism  had received from a  few characters of
rather illiberal propensities, there was presented
a good  opportunity to extend his wings and oc-
casionally perch on

     ——————— Every idle thing
     " Which Fancy finds in her excursive flights."

  In these flights  he finds instances, where the
man who discovers an extra joint in the tail of a
tadpole,  is immortalized  by many popular wri-,
ters for the discovery, whilst, by the same class
of writers, other men who give relief to thousands
on the bed of sickness are represented  as empi-
rics, and unworthy of countenance and protection.
  But  without expatiating on the merits of the
Poem, which, in the  Publisher, would be indeco-
rous and  unnecessary, he may  perhaps be per-
mitted just to state,  that it has been ascribed, by
various critics in  England, to the  pens  of  Mr.
Gifford, Dr. Walcot,  (alias Peter Pindar),
Mr. Huddersford, 8cc ; but, to the great honor of
American genius, and to that Bard in particular,
who never before Avas beyond the atmosphere of
the Green Mountains, it  was generally remarked,
that the writings of neither of those three  gentle-
men had evinced so  much science as this author
displays. 
xi
  The comments of the English Reviewers, which

it  has been thought proper to subjoin, will best

enable the reader to judge of its reception among

professional critics.

  How  far the  present American Edition  may

claim a  preference to that of London, will be  ima-

gined from the statement, that it is printed  from

a copy,  which the Publisher was so fortunate as

to procure, of the last London Edition,  corrected

and very considerably improved by the Author; and

that  it possesses the advantage  of several  addi-

tional notes,  introduced at the end of the book,

to explain many allusions, which, from their lo-

cality, would have otherwise been unintelligible in

this country.   The three first engravings, it will

be  seen, are also added to embellish this Ameri.

can Edition.



   EXTRACTS FROM THE REVIEWS.

  " In the first Canto, the author, in an inimitable strain  of
irony, ridicules those pretended discoveries and inventions of
certain pseudo-philosophers, both of the natural and moral class,
which have no tendency to meliorate the condition of man"—
after many  extracts from the work and similar encomiums on
each of the four Cantos, the Reviewers conclude—" Whatever
may be the  merits of the Metallic Tractors or the demerits of
their  opponents,  we have no hesitation to pronounce this per-
formance; to be far superior to the ephemeral productions of or-
dinary dealers in rhyme.  The notes, which constitute more
than half of the book, are not behind the  verse in spirit.  Who
the author can be, we have not the least conception ; but from
the intimate acquaintance he discovers with the different branch-
es of medical science, we should imagine him to be some jolly
son of Galen, who, not choosing to bestow ail his art upon his
patients, has humanely applied a few escarotics for the be-
nefit of his  Brethren,
       Gentleman's Magazine for  January,  1804. 
xii
  xt The author deals his blows around with such causticity,
sparing neither friend nor foe, from the " indelible ink" of Dr.
l.ettsome, and the kindred "jangle of Matilda's lyre," to Dr.
Darwin, tracing organized molecules from slaughtered armies
to tribes of insects, and thence again to nobler animals, through
the profoundest parts of the bathos,  and the sublimest of the
hypsos, that his real object cannot be  always ascertained.  We
think him, however, the friend to the Tractors.  His knowledge
Kerns to be extensive; and he is by no  means sparing of his
communications.  His descriptions are animated and poetical "
  After these remarks, which appeared on the first edition, in
their number for November, 1803,  the Reviewers proceed  upon
the present one-
  " In the second edition of this work, the object of the author
is more conspicuous : indeed it blazes  with a lustre that leaves
not the smallest foundation for doubt; and, not confining him-
self to the Tractors, he aims his blows at many absurdities in
the philosophy of medicine.  Such in  fact there are; and ridi-
cule is perhaps the only weapon  with which  they can be at-
tacked. Our author applies his flagellation with no sparing hand."
               Critical Review fir January,   180-i.


  u These four Cantos of Hudibrastic Verse and  the copious
Notes contain much pointed satire and sarcastic animadversion,
in  the form and guise of ironical  compliment,  on the medical
opposers of the Metallic Tractors."   After a  quotation from
the work, they continue—" The  attack on some of the cruel
and indecent experiments of certain modern naturalists, which
seem limited to the gratification of licentious curiosity, having
for their object the attainment of no one possible practical good,
is  just  and commendable :  and  indeed, the author  has not
merely rhyme, but very frequently reason also  on  his side, in
his satirical reflections "
             Ami-Jacobin Review for April,  1803.


  " These Hudibrastic lines  have  afforded us amusement.  It
is not too much to say, that the author is a legitimate branch of
the Hudibras family, and possesses a vein of humour which will
not be easily exhausted."
            Literary Review for September,  3 803.


In  the last  mi ruber of the Port Folio, the following
             notice is taken of this Work.
  " Tlrtuble tractoration," &c a highly humourous Poem,
by T.  G. Fessenden, Esq. will be noticed as soon as possi-
ble ; we  shall also add some-particulars relating to the witty
author, whom the editor long since cherished as a companion,
and at'.mircd as a Man of -Letters." 
INTRODUCTION
          TO  THE

LONDON  EDITION.
The demand  for a second edition  of Caustic's
Petition, within the short period of two months
from the publication  of the first, has excited so
much vanity in the author as to induce him to be-
lieve that his efforts have not been altogether un-
acceptable, and to hope that his objects may ulti-
mately prove  not to have been altogether unac-
complished.   With such a reward for former ex-
ertions, and such an incitement for  future, it will
be thought natural in him to have used his en-
deavour for a  continuance of public favour.
  The present edition, which contains more than
double the  quantity of matter that composed the
last, will plead the virtue of-industry, even should
the merit of the new matter not justly lay claim
to that indulgence  with which the former was ho-
noured.
  Besides enlargement, this edition  will be found,
especially  in  the  first Canto,  to  be materially
altered.
  The aim of the alterations has been  to avoid)
as much as the subjects necessarily enlarged upon
would  admit,  every  sentiment  and expression,
                       B 
xiv
which would offend the heart of innocence, or the
eye of delicacy.   Addressed, as the poem origi-
nally was, to professional men, there was, perhaps,
little cause  to complain of too great a licence in
this particular.  The circulation of the work prov-
ing, however, to be by no means confined to the
medical  profession, and promising to be still less
so in future, it has been the author's study to sa-
vour this to the more general palate as well as to
enlarge the  scope of its objects.
   Of one, among other advantages, which  may
generally be derived for the improvement of se-
cond editions, viz. the criticisms of monthly jour-
nals, the author  is in a great measure deprived.
Two only (the Antijacobin and Monthly Register)
have yet committed the deeds of Dr. Caustic to
the test of their tremendous ordeal.
   The sweet  drops  of their approbation, which,
in their  great clemency,  they have allowed him
to taste,  instead of the bitter pill, which the trem-
bling poet feared might have been his dose, in-
culcates  a hope of a survival of the affray, without
a broken  heart through his own chagrin,  however
great his danger of a broken head through the cha-
grin of others.
  Thus  far  I had proceeded in remarks, which
are applicable to  this second edition only, and he-
sitated some time, before I  resolved on the expe.
dience of pursuing my observations, and  offering
something like an explanation of  the  motives,
which led to the present publication.   This delay 
XV
 has enabled me to mention  a third review of the
 first edition (by the British Critic). Like the former
 two it has indulged Dr. Caustic with encomiums on
 his i ingenious burlesque,' his ' humorous notes,'
 his ' happy  ludicrous compounded rhymes,  and
 ' many other qualities to insure no trifling success
 ' in doggrel verse,' Sec. but, like itself, it  has ho-
 noured Mr. Perkins with a  torrent of abuse  and
 malicious falsehood.
   To  have hoped, by any thing that might be said
 in this Introduction, to alter the conduct of those,
 against whom the animadversions contained in the
 Poem are directed, would be vain.   Others, how-
 ever,  who seek after truth with more disinterest-
 edness, and with whom truth, when known, may
 be  subservient to  some  good effect,  may have
 their inquiries facilitated by a simple detail of a
 few plain facts.
  The. discovery of Perkinism, and the ascertain-
 ment of its utility  in  the cure of diseases, have
 been objects of the authors most  critical and cau-
 tious investigation.  This investigation, terminat-
 ing in a conviction of its great importance to man-
 kind,  and  its high claims to a  rank among the
 choicest blessings  to humanity,  has placed  him
 on the alert to watch its progress, and to feel an
 anxiety for its success.  He has of consequence
 been roused at the  disgraceful attempts made by
 the combined energies of prejudice and self-inte-
 rest to prevent the use, nay, even the trial} of the
efficacy of the Metallic Tractors. 
XVI
  Opposition, honourable in its views, and fair in
its means, to discoveries of great pretensions, is
not only commendable, but almost indispensably
necessary to  the  developement  of truth.  Such
opposition, like friction to the diamond, proves its
hardness and increases its lustre.  But when, as
in the present instance, every avenue to truth is
defended by scorpions, who endeavour to frighten
you back by their hisses, or assail you with their
stings, it cannot be unjustifiable to attempt to clear
the passage by whipping away the reptiles.  The
author, however, would not presume  to represent
that he has accomplished this task. But, if he has
failed in his attempt, he is not  yet discouraged.
They have thrown the gauntlet  in an untenable
cause, and, as his quiver is yet full of arrows, he
will be justified in shooting folly, malice, and ig-
norance, whenever they appear  in any guise to
combine against this important discovery.
  The writer would, however, caution against any
supposition  that  the  whole medical profession,
many of whom are stars of prime magnitude in
the hemisphere of science, are enemies to Perkin-
ism, or would make use of any unjustifiable means
to oppose an improvement in the art of healing.
Indeed no person can  hold the more honourable
part of the  profession in  higher estimation than
the author of the  following Poem.
  A concise sketch of the history of Perkinism,
since its first introduction  into  this  island,  will
render evident what has been the nature of the 
xvii
opposition to the Metallic Practice, inasmuch as it
will show that it resolves itself into two heads, viz-
Ridicule and Malicious Falsehood.  These, when
called into action even by men of moderate talent?
who are compelled by interest to extraordinary ex*
ertion, are no impotent engines, employed against
the weak, however inefficient they may prove with
men of penetration and independence.
   I shall proceed to the proof of my assertion re-
lative to the character of the opposition to Perkin-
ism.   I shall draw  my facts from the several wri-
ters own acknowledgments and Mr. Perkins's an-
swers, both of which have long been the  subject
of my attentive observation.
   At the head of that part of the opposition, to
be classed under ridicule, may be mentioned cer-
tain proceedings in the Bath  and  Bristol Infirma-
ries ; the former under the direction of Dr. Hay-
garth, a physician of Bath; and the latter conduct-
ed by Mr. Smith, a surgeon of  Bristol.  These
have been the grand rallying points  about which
every minor assailant has taken his stand.  But it is
unnecessary to  recapitulate  them here, as they
are sufficiently  enlarged  upon in  the  second  and
third cantos of the following Poem.  Before quit-
ting the subject,  however, I would briefly mention,
in addition to what  is there stated, that Dr. Hay-
garth, who condemns Perkinism on his own expe-
riments, does not appear to have ever used the
Tractors a second  time  on  a  patient, and  Mr.
Smith, whose virulent observations and necroman-
                      B 2 
xviii
tic manoeuvres constitute three fourths of Dr. Hay-
garth's evidence against the Tractors, admits, be-
fore he closes his communication, that he never
tried them.  This last Gentleman candidly acknow-
ledges that he ' played the part of a necromancer'
in his ridiculous pranks in  ridicule of Perkinism.
  Next in  order comes the writer of the article
' Perkinism' in the Encyclopedia Britannica. How
far  I am justified in ranking this attack under the
head of ridicule, will be learnt from the remark of
the writer himself, who says, '  to treat this disco-
'  very with seriousness would disgrace  the profes-
'  sion of a scientific critic'  The whole attack is
accordingly a strain of ridicule, invective, misre-
presentation, and misquotation, which, in the opi-
nion of some, has not much honoured the profes-
sion of  a ' scientific  critic.'  This writer copies,
among others, the attack of the Monthly Review,
which shall next  claim our attention.
  None has enjoyed, in a higher degree than  the
author of this Poem,  the effusions of  wit, which
sometimes  decorate the pages of the Monthly Re-
view ; but still  he regrets  that a journal, which
might so eminently promote the cause of litera-
ture, should  so often  sacrifice every  thing to a
good joke.   They have certainly been  very witty
at the expence  of the Tractors, and I  have, my-
self, joined  in the laugh, whenever it has appeared
to be the object of the critics to utter a smart, but
not  a malicious thinrj.   But I  apprehend that no
honestly disposed person has derived that lasting 
XIX
 satisfaction from their c quips and cranks,' which
 he would have experienced from a learned and
 candid investigation of the merits of Perkinism.
   In their last attack on Mr. Perkins, alluding to
 the consequences of an unlucky kick, they advise
 him to avoid the use of the Tractors on  horses,
 and wittily suggest the propriety of his confining
 their application to bipeds,  and  among  others
 would beg to recommend geese to his polite atten-
 tion.  But whether the gentlemen intend  to offer
 themselves, or some other bipeds of the same spe-
 cies, but of less  hissing notoriety, as the  subject
 of experiment, they have  not informed us.
   But ridicule, as before observed, has not been
 the only weapon with which  Perkinism has been
 assailed.  Falsehoods, base,  wilful, and mali-
 cious, have been propagated with the like benevo-
 lent intention of extirpating this intrusive practice.
 I say base, wilful, and malicious, because they carry
 with them the marks of barbarous design.   At
 the head of this  list should be named  a masked
writer, who has  found access to the pages of the
British  Critic.  Surely  there  will  not be found
many, among the more civilized inhabitants of this
kingdom, who will approve of an attempt to brand
with infamy those acts in a Perkins, which im-
mortalized a Howard.   But  such has been the
attempt of the writer in question.
  Dr. Elisha Perkins, the inventor  of the Metal-
lic Tractors, and the father  of the present pro-
prietor,  it is known, like Howard, sacrificed his 
XX
life in the cause of humanity.   The latter ended

bis days with a malignant fever at Cherson, while

visiting the sick and in prison.   The former lost

his life with a malignant fever at New-York, caught

whilst engaged in the benevolent office of hunting

out, and offering medical assistance to the poor,

in their dreary and distressed habitations, during

the rage of that dreadful scourge, the yellow fe-

ver.   Both alike left  the calm  enjoyment of  do-

mestic ease in this godlike employment, and both

equally pursued the object  with no other expec-

tation, or wish for reward, than the consolation of

relieving the distressed.   But it was reserved for

the conductors of the British Critic to offer their

pages to a wretch, who could conjure up  an infa-

mous falsehood, with a view of casting a sneer at

the philanthropist, and covering with disgrace his

benevolent acts.*   After such a specimen of  the


 1 * Dr. Perkins entertained the opinion that powerful antiscep-
tic remedies had not been sufficiently tried in that putrid disor-
der, and  these it was, that he  was solicitous to put to the ex-
periment-  The particulars of his death were (as appears from
Mr. Perkins's  correspondence with Messrs. Rivingtons, since
published) in possession of the Editors of the British Critic.
That journal, however gravely asserts in its preface to Vol. xx.
' it is a curious fact, we have lately learned, that the American
' inventor fairly duped himself  on the subject of his Tractors.
• He died, we are told, of the  yellow fever, with this useless
c operation performed on him  at the moment.'  The atrocity
manifested in the invention of this falsehood is equalled only by-
the subsequent conduct of the Editors, in refusing, when con-
vinced of its injustice, to correct their statement.
  After numerous applications on the part of Mr  Perkins,
they, dismiss the affair by the following shuffle.  Among the
addresses to correspondents in  the number  for August 1800, is
 the following. ' Mr Perkins's letter we have handed over to
 •our correspondent, whom it more immediately concerns.'  The 
XXI
liberality of the conductors of this journal, with

respect to the Metallic  Tractors, it did not sur-

prize me  to find that, although they were so con-

descending as to grant that this Poem had merit?

as an  ' ingenious burlesque,'  Sec. still  they pro-

nounced it an empirical puff,  and the production

of Mr. Perkins; and had the knavery also to mis-

quote the title, by printing it Practical, instead

of Poetical Petition, he.

   The next assailant  of  Perkinism,  of whom  I

shall take notice,  is Dr. James Anderson.   This

ingenious gentleman condescended to amuse the

readers of his * Recreations in Agriculture' with

the following falsehood, in proof of the falling re-

putation of Perkinism.   *  The price of the  Trac-

' tors  is now  reduced to four  guineas the set! !'

But perhaps a gentleman  of Dr. Anderson's fer-

tile  imagination and inventive genius ought  by no

means to be confined  within  the  boundaries of

truth.   Had the Doctor been obliged to state use-

ful facts, and probable theories, merely,  his ' Re-

Editors  were cautious to avoid mentioning what Mr. Perkins
this was, or the subject of his letter!  But to close this specimen
of the honesty and impartiality exercised towards the Metallic
Tractors, the explanation or vindication of this ' correspondent]
although frequently demanded, has not only never been given,
but from that time the Tractors  were forbidden to be advertis-
ed for sale in that Review, with this pretence, on the part of the
publishers, that they had just come to a determination of ad-
mitting no more advertisements of medicines (the Tractors then
are Med cines!'/)  It is necessary only to add, that soon after-
wards, March 180;, this Review  wasstuifed,  as usual, with the
advertisemeDts  of quack medicines. See the  numbers  of the
British Ciitic, already mentioned, and Perkins's Cases of Success*
ful Practice, page ar, second edition, for the particulars of this
nefarious attempt. 
xxii
 creations' might possibly have been published in a
 sixpenny pamphlet, instead of the tedious and vo-
 luminous work he has contrived to botch together.
   Another assailant of Perkinism is  a Mr. Covry.
 One would, however, feel little disposition to cen-
 sure this character, as  his low  situation  in life
 exposes  him  to  temptations, which, it  is to be
 hoped, he would otherwise resist.   This, however,
 is no excuse for his employers.  In a book against
 Quackery, he attacks the Tractors most furiously,
 and in support of his opinion of their inutility,
 adduces a statement of a number of experiments,
purporting to  have  been made by one Mr. Wil-
 kinson, at Avondale,  near Stratford upon Avon.
 Mr. Perkins has been  at the trouble to ascertain
 the correctness of this statement, and has found
that  neither the said  Wilkinson nqr Avondale
 ever had existence! !   In short, the whole is a fa-
 brication.
   I have to  mention only one more of these gen-
 tlemen assailants.  The late  Lord Henniker was
 a friend and promoter of the Metallic Tractors-
 He purchased at different periods,  during three
 years,  three sets for the use of  his own family.
 Being a Fellow of the Royal Society,  and consi-
 dered a gentleman of  superior judgment and ta-
 lents, the zeal with which he supported them, it
 may well be imagined, gave fiain to  many.  Ac-
 cordingly, at the death of that nobleman, some
 person conceived the idea of obliterating from the
 mind of  the public any impression,  which might 
xxlii
have existed in favour of the metallic practice, in
consequence of his patronage; and for that pur-
pose the following paragraph was inserted in a bio-
graphical sketch of Lord Henniker, in the Monthly
Register, for April  1803.
  ' No one sooner adopted a prejudice, but no one
' more readily  submitted it to that  test,  which
1 suited it,  and upon no one had an original pre-
* judice less effect in dazzling a subsequent judg-
4 ment.  The numerous testimonies in favour of
' a celebrated nostrum induced his  Lordship to
' become a purchaser ; having obtained it, he im-
c mediately put it to the proof, and discovered its
' absolute inefficacy.   Kis Lordship  immediately
' returned the nostrum, with a pecuniary present
' to its inventor.  " You will consider as your own
" what I have  already paid  for your  Tractors.
" Employ  the inclosed notes to embark in some
" more honest business, and no longer impose on
" the credulity of the public."
  From  another letter in the Monthly Register of
the succeeding  month (May), it appears there
never occurred between Lord Henniker and  Mr.
Perkins  any  circumstance  which could give the
least colour for such  a representation.   To the
time of his death he remained  a firm advocate of
Perkinism.
  Two more assailants might be  mentioned, but
their deeds arc  already alluded to in the fourth
Canto of the Poem. 
xxiv
  I have  now  mentioned every public  writer of
whom I have a knowledge, against Perkinism, and
given a specimen of their arguments.  The more
private opposers, who employ that unruly mem-
ber the tongue, are a hundred fold more nume-
rous, and  not less deficient in malice.
  After this exhibition of the spirit, which has in-
fluenced the opposition to the Metallic Tractors
in Great Britain, can there be found one honest
man who  will sayr that they have met with such
treatment, as ought to have been  expected from
a liberal and enlightened profession; or that the
author of the present poem has commenced an un-
provoked  attack on honourable and deserving cha-
racters?   Perkinism is supported by no mean and
common pretensions.  Five years has it buffeted
the storm of interest and prejudice, and all true
friends to  humanity,  acquainted  with its merits,
will congratulate each other on the result.
  The two following  facts will place the evidence
in favour of this Discovery in a fair point of view.
  Not an  individual of those persons, who have
communicated  their experiments and remarks in
favour of  Perkinism (among whom are eight pro-
fessors in  four different  universities, twenty-one
regular physicians,  nineteen surgeons, and thirty
clergymen) has publicly or privately, so  far as my
knowledge extends,  retracted his good opinion of
the Metallic Tractors.
  2. The contest respecting  the merits of the
Tractors  has lain entirely between disinterested 
XXV
persons who have approved of them, after a cau-
tious and faithful experiment, (Mr. Perkins never
published any facts on his own authority) and in-
terested or prejudiced persons, who have condemn-
ed them  without any trial  whatever,  generally
indeed who have never seen them.   This  fact is
demonstrated by the  Report of the committee of
the Perkinean Society to their General Meeting,
conveying the result of their application, indiscri-
minately made to the possessors of the Tractors
in the metropolis,  for their concurrence in the
establishment of a Public Institution, for the use
of them on the  poor.  It was found that only five
out of above an hundred objected to subscribe,
on account of their want of confidence in the effi-
cacy of the Practice, and these,  the committee
observes,  there is reason to  believe, never gave
them a fair  trial,  probably  never used them in
more than one case,  and that perhaps a case in
which the Tractors have never been recommend-
ed as serviceable.   Purchasers of the Tractors
would be  among the last to  approve of them,  if
they had reason to suppose themselves defrauded
of five guineas.
  I am  now willing to express a  confidence that
the candid and unbiassed reader will be persuaded
that the author has been  engaged in a cause not
unworthy  of his best  exertions ; and that every
real  friend to humanity  and useful science will
wish him success.
                      c 
XXVI
   It remains to speak of  the plan and design of
the Poem.  The author's ambition  has  been to
produce an original performance, and  avoid all
' servile trick' and  ' imitative knack' of ordinary
dealers in rhyme.   He had rather introduce in-
defensible eccentricities, and run the hazard of
the lash of the critic, than to ' threat his reader,
' not in vain,  with  sleep.'
   Although the attacks upon the Metallic Trac-
tors are  the principal  subject  of the following
Poem,  still the Author has painted

        1           ' every idle thing
     That Fancy finds in her excursive flight;'

and he is sorry to say that our modern  philoso-
phers furnish such  a multitude of ' idle things,'
which  they call discoveries and inventions, that he
need never lay his brush aside for want of proper
subjects upon which to exercise skill in his voca-
tion.  Were the mere inutility of their researches
the only objection which could  be urged against
them, they might be permitted to follow their fri-
volous pursuits without molestation.  But when,
in addition to inutility,  their experiments are ac-
companied with  the grossest inhumanity, the in-
dignation of the  reflecting mind  is roused at so
wanton a misapplication of time, and prostitution
of talent.  It has given the writer no small satis-
faction to find the opinion entertained by profes-
sional critics, who have examined the former edi-
tion, that  ' the attack on some  of the cruel  and 
xxvii
c indecent experiments of certain modern  natu-
' ralists, which  seem limited  to the gratification
* of a licentious curiosity, having for their object
' the attainment of no one practical good, is just
' and commendable.   The author has not merely
' rhyme, but very frequently reason on his side in
* his satyrical remarks.'   {Antijacobin Review of
April,  1803, on  the first Edition of this Poem).
  In the present edition, another variety of this
species of philosophers has received  some  atten-
tion, although  not fully  equal to what their de-
merits require.   These are they whose atheistical
theories and speculations appear to have no other
object than to annihilate a belief in an overruling
Providence, and cancel every religious and moral
obligation.
  In this department I have dwelt upon the theo-
ries of an author (Dr. Darwin) whose

     « Sweet tetrandrian monogynian strain*
     ' Pant for a pistil in botanic pains ;
     ' On the luxurious lap of Flora thrown,
     • On beds of yielding vegetable down ;
     ' Raise lust in pinks; and with unhallowed fire
     1 Bid the soft virgin-violet expire;

and whose writings have a direct tendency to un-
hinge society,  and reduce mankind to a state of
nature, by giving a loose to those passions, which
of all others require restraint.
  It is to me a most  surprising, as well as lamen-
table  circumstance,  that pure intellect  has  so
little to do with the  affairs of  mankind.   Whim, 
xxviii
 folly, and fashion,  predominate most deplorably
' even in this (which we pretend to stile an enlight-
 ened) age. The man who discovers an extra joint
 in the  tail of a tadpole is immortalized for the
 discovery ; whilst he who gives relief to thou-
 sands,  languishing  on  the bed of sickness, is to
 be sure an empiric, and unworthy of countenance
 and protection.
   A bad head  generally  indicates a bad  heart.
 A fool  nine times in ten, to the extent of his abi-
 lities, is a knave.   Arid it is happy for mankind
 that knaves commonly are fools, and generally too
 cunning for their own interest.  Thus it has hap-
 pened with many of the opponents to the Tractors.
 Gro6S palpable lies, which were easily  detected*
 have been circulated to disparage Perkinism. The
 detection of those lies has served as an advertise-
 ment in its favour,  and evinced the motives of its
 adversaries.  It is wisely ordained by Providence,
 for the good of society,  that knaves  should be
 permitted to overreach  themselves.
    Although many things,  which I have enlarged
 upon in this performance, are intended to be stig-
 matised, others  are introduced  merely for the
 purpose  of  laughing with, but not laughing at,
 the inventors.
   The experiments of Aldini, as well as those of
 certain learned and respectable chemists, the dis-
 cerning reader  will perceive,  from the manner in
 which  they  are treated, that  I  have introduced
 merely for the  purpose of giving them publicity,
 and thus promoting the interest of science. 
xxix
  Indeed it would be very ill judged in the author
to discourage Galvanic experiments, when not at-
tended with inhumanity.  Every advance  in that
science is a step nearer the top of the eminence
on which  Perkinism rests.   I am not, however,
very sanguine that Perkinism is likely to derive
that immediate support from the step-by-step pro-
gress which Galvanism is making, that one would,
on  the first reflection, be led to imagine.  I fear
the Medical Profession will fail to support Galva-
nism the moment it is attempted to be applied to
any useful purpose, that is,  to  an  easy and cheap
mode of curing  diseases,  for then  it will become
identified with the other offending practice.  Per-
kins and Aldini I conceive go hand in hand; but
the former cures diseases,  (ay  there's the  rub)
and thereby encroaches on the province of the fa-
culty ; and, I apprehend, it will continue to be the
province of too many of the medical profession to
condemn the American, while they bend the knee
to the Italian.
  In the third Canto, entitled ' Manifesto,' the
author has discussed the merits of every argument,
which, to his knowledge, has been adduced against
the Tractors.  Their ridiculousness, like that of
some of our  Bond Street fops, is almost beyond
the reach  of caricature.  For instance, when we
perceive Dr. Haygarth attempting to persuade the
public that the Tractors cure diseases by operat-
ing on the  imagination of the patient, although
every possessor of them may have daily proof that
                      c 2 
xxx
infants and brute animals are as much subject to
their power as the most credulous; and when in-
contestible proof is adduced  by  Mr. Perkins of
their efficacy on those subjects, we see the Doctor
attempt to show that, in those cases, < it is not th&
1 patient, but the observer, who is deceived by his
' own imagination'—when we next find  that Dr.
H. and his adherents whose duty it is to cure dis-
eases in the most safe, cheap, and expeditious man-
ner, anathematize the Tractors, because they cure
diseases, (as they pretend to suppose) by an ope-
ration on the  imagination (a pleasant remedy !)—
when they exclaim against the Tractors, and as-
sert  that no  confidence is to be placed in  their
effects, because the modus operandi is not explain-
ed and demonstrated, like a mathematical pro-
blem, although the  modus operandi of the best and
most approved medicines in  the Materia Medica
is even more  inexplicable—when  we find it ob-
jected to the Tractors, that the testimony of those
who support the discovery is not admissible, nor
satisfactory, although such testimony is, in every
sense, preferable to that on  the other side of the
question, inasmuch as it is from learned and dis-
interested men, many of them medical charac-
ters, RETIRED  ON THEIR  FORTUNES FROM BU-
SINESS—it is  difficult to show the ridiculous con-
duct of the party opposed to Perkinism, in a  more
conspicuous manner, than by presenting a simple
relation  of facts.   The author has merely endea-
voured to  give a ludicrous turn to such nonsensi- 
xxxi
cal arguments, and, by thus placing them in their
just light, show  them to be ridiculous as we'll as
foolish.
  In the fourth Canto, after exhibiting some spe-
cimens of pure and unadulterated quackery, toge.
ther with some other curious traits of character,
the Poet has plunged headlong and headstrong
into  a battle, which is intended for the entertain-
ment merely of  your stout-hearted, roast-beef
readers, who feast upon terrible images and hor-
ror-fraught descriptions.  Ladies and ladies-men,
and all  other delicate, timid, and gentle readers,
are respectfully informed, that they will  do well
not to venture too incautiously  upon the terrific
scenes there introduced.
   Should it be objected against this Poem that the
author is unnecessarily severe on some occasions,
I shall reply, in addition to what has been before
observed, respecting the provocations given, that
he has  founded  his  severity upon  facts, and if
he has nothing extenuated, he has set down nought
in malice.  Were men of real science to unite in
stripping the mask from  ignorant and impudent
pretenders to knowledge and acquirements, which
they do not possess, society would no longer be
imposed on by empirics, pseudo-philosophers, po-
etasters, and other witlings, who puff themselves
into consequence with the less enlightened, but
more numerous part of mankind.  If, by attack-
ing some of that kind of scribblers, exposing to
ridicule and contempt their whimsical and imprac* 
XXXII
ticable theories and speculations, and supporting
a discovery, which (although it has been treated
with unmerited obloquy) experience has proved
to be useful, the author has been of service to so-
ciety, and contributed his mite to the treasury of
correct literatare, his most ardent wishes and ex-
pectations will be amply gratified. 
xxxiii
   The following Lines, relating to the excellent
Institution, so frequently mentioned in this Poem,
the Author conceives may be copied here, not im-
properly, as a conclusion to this Introduction.
An Address delivered before the Perkinean So-
  ciety, at their public Dinner, at the Crown and
  Anchor, July  15, 1803, in celebration  of the
  opening of  the Charity  in Frith  Street,  Soho,
  for the  use  of the  Metallic Tractors,  in
  Disorders of the Poor:  By a Friend to the In-
  stitution.

   Say,' sons of soul,' when erst th' Omniscient plan
   Design'd this  globe the tenement of man,
   What' firm,  immutable, immortal laws,
   • Impress'd on nature by the Great First Causer'
   Bade jarring atoms form one beauteous whole,
   Fitted to order's durable control ?
   Sagcs of science, eagle-ey'd, disclose,
   What aptitudes and appetencies those,
   Which world with world connect in one vast chain,
   Cause and effect, a never ending train ?
   Can ye unfold what energies control
   The magnet, faithful to its kindred pole;
   Or render plain the philosophic why
   Th' electric fluid fires the cloud-roof'd sky ?
     Meek they reply;« These causes mock the ken
   ' Of human intellect. Short-sighted men,
   ' Withfinite views, as well might hope to trace
   • Infinity, and  fathom boundless  space;
   'With.finite views, explain the links which bind
   • The world of matter to the world of mind. 
XXXIV
' Not Newton's self could look all nature through,
1 His, though a wide, was still a partial view.
1 Experience teaches, from effects alone,
' The works of Deity in part are known.
  ' As time rolls on, with raptur'd eye, behold,
' The laws of nature constantly unfold!
' Behold Galvani's vivid,  viewless flame,
* Bids mimic life resuscitate the frame
1 Of man dcceas'd;—the  vital lamp to burn,
' With transitory glow, in death's cold urn.
« See roiNTF.D metals, blest with power t'appease,
• The ruthless rage of merciless disease,
« O'er the frail part a subtil fluid pour,
• Drench'd with invisible Galvanic shower,
' Till the arthritic, staff and ' crutch forego,
' And leap exulting like the bounding roe !'
   'What, though the causes may not he explain'd,
 ' Since these effects are duly ascertain'd,
 • Let not self-interest,  prejudice, or pride,
 ' Induce mankind to set the means aside:
 « Means, which, though simple, are  by  Heaven design'd,
 •T'alleviate the woes of human kind;
 ' Life's darkest 9cenes with radiant light to cheer,
 « Wipe from the cheek of agony the  tear.'
   Blest be His Memory, who, in happy hour,
' Gave to humanity this wond'rous power;
 Friend to the wretched,  time shall write thy name,
 A second Howard, on the rolls of Fame.
 When late the Fiend of Pestilence could boast
 His power resistless o'er the western  coast,
 Poison'd the air with fell mephitic breath,
 Gave countless thousands to  the realms of death :
 Unmov'd by fear, though relatives implore,
 Mov'd by no claim, save pity for the poor,
 Thou didst, humane, with god-like  aim essay,
 By med'cine's power, his fury to allay;
 But soon Columbia mourn'd a Perkins' doom,
 Which swell'd the triumph of the sateless tomb^
   Ye worthy, honour'd, philanthropic few,
 The Muse shall weave her brightest wreaths for you, 
XXXV
Who, in humanity's bland cause, unite,
Nor heed the shafts by interest aim'd, or spite;
Like the great Pattern of Benevolence,
Hygeia's blessings to the poor dispense ;
And, though oppos'd by folly's servile brood,
Enjoy the  luxury of doing good 
ERRATA.
 The  Reader will please to correct with his pen  the
            following errors of the press.
 Page  35> hnc 4 from top, for " funeral" read funereal.
 —— 129, line 7  -  - -  for " quoth" read quote.
     168, line 1  -  - -  for" preceed" read proceed.
 --------line 8  -  - -  for " chang" read chang'd.
     170, line 13  -  - -  for " wray" read wry.
 ----185, line 5  -  - -  for " hanging" read banging.

 In addition to  the Critiques cited in pages  xi  is" xii,
           the fallowing may be introduced.
  After stating how far inferior to Hudibras are the generality
 of modern imitators, the Reviewers proceed, " To a charge of
 this nature,  the author of the present Poem pleads Not Guilty,
 With the mantle of Butler, he  has likewise something of his
 inspiration, and has imitated him no less in hi* versification than
 in the spirit which supports it."
          Monthly Register  Review for May,  1803.

  " We must acknowledge that this Poem  has a considerable
 share  of Hudibrastic drollery.  The author is particularly hap-
py in his  ludicrous compounded rhymes, and has many other
 qualities to ensure no trifling success in doggrel verse."  After
 a quotation from the Work, the Reviewers again enlarge on its
 «ingenious burlesqne, and " humourous notes," &c.
                     British  Critic for May,  1803. 
 

■
          ,'? Tti*-pOfi*Mt wiigj.tf th*; ever iii.-i^.     |-""."":-|^.
* _ a"'T"             .                  *:,     ,* ■   8.    . 
            CANTO   I.


               OURSELF!




               ARGUMENT.


    Great Doctor Caustic is a sage
    Whose merit gilds this iron age,
    And who deserves, as you'll discover,
    When you have conn'dthis Canto over,
    For grand discoveries and inventions,
    A dozen peerages and pensions ;
    But having met with  rubs and breaker?
    From Perkins' metal mischief makers ;
    Wich but three halfpence in his pocket-,
    In verses blazing like sky rocket,
    He first sets forth in  this Petition
    His Jtigh deserts but low condition.


From garret high, with cobwebs hung,
The poorest wight that ever sung,
Most  gentle Sirs, I come before ye,
To teil a lamentable story. 
4
What makes my sorry case the sadder,

I once stood high on Fortune's ladder1;

From whence contrive the fickle Jilt did,

That your Petitioner shoald be tilted.


And soon th' unconscionable Flirt,

Will tread me fairly in the dirt,

Unless,  perchance, these pithy lays

Procure mepence as well as praise.


Already doorri'd to hard quill-driving,

'Gainst specter'd poverty still striving,

When e'er I doze,  from vigils pale,

Dame Fancy locks me fast in jail.


Necessity, though  I am no wit,

Compells ni«s now to turn a poet;


   n I once stood high on Fortune's ladder.
  Although Dame  Fortuna was,  by ancient my-
thologists, represented as a whimsical being,  cut-
ting her  capers on the periphery of a large wheel,
I am justified  in accomodating her Goddesship
with a  ladder, by virtue of a figure in  Rhetoric
called Poetica Licentia, (anglice) Poets'  Li-
centiousness. 
3
Not born, but math, by transmutation,
And chemic process, call'd—stanation f

Though Poet's trade, of all that I know,
Requires the least of ready rhino ;
I find a deficit of cash is
An obstacle to cutting dashes.

For Gods and Goddesses,  who traffic
In cantos, odes, and lays seraphic ;
Who erst Arcadian whistle blew sharp,
Or now attune Appollo's Jews-Harp,

Have sworn they will not loan me, gratis^
Their jingling sing-song apparatus,
Nor teach me how, nor where to chime in
My tintinabulum of rhyming.2

What then occurs ?  A lucky hit—-
I've found a substitute for wit;

    2 My tintinabulum of rhyming.
 The clock-work tintinabulum of rhyme. Cowper, 
4
On Homer's pinions mounting high,
I'il drink Pierian puddle dry. 3


Beddocs (bless the good Doctor) has
Sent me a bag full of his gas, 4
Which,snufT'd the nose up,makes wit brighter,

And eke a dunce an airy writer.
   3 I'll drink Pierian puddle dry.

Pursuant to Mr. Pope's advice ;
   Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.


   * Sent me a bag full of his gas,
  This wondrous soul-transporting  modification
of matter is christened by chemists Gaseous oxyd
of nitrogen, and, as will be apparent, from the
following sublime stanzas, and my judicious com-
ments thereon (in  which I hold the microscope of
criticism to those my peculiar beauties, which are
not visible to the naked eyeo{ common sense), is a
subject worthy the  serious attention  of  the poet
and physiologist.
  Any ' hull-formed witling,' as Pope says, ("Essay
on Criticism,) ' may hammer  crude  conceptions
into  a sortol measured nonsense,  vulgarly called
'prose bewitched.'   But the daring mortal, who
aspires to ' build with lofty rhyme' an JEvi jMonu-
mtntum,  before  he sets about the mighty enter-
prise, must be filled with  a  sort  of incompre- 
5
With which a brother bard, inflated,
Was so stupendously elated,
hensible guiddam of divine inflation.  Then, if he
can keep clear of Bedlam, and be allowed the  use
of  pen, ink, and paper, every line he scribles,  and
every phrase he utters, will be a miracle of sublimi-
ty.  Thus one Miss Sibyl remained stupid as a bar-
ber's block, till overpowered by the overbearing in-
fluence of Phoebus.   But when

    ------------------ea frsena furenti
    Concutit, et stimulos sub pectore vertit Apollo;

the frantic gipsey muttered responses at once  su-
blime, prophetic, and unintelligible.

  Indeed this furor mentis, so necessary an ingre-
dient in the composition of the genuine poet, some-
times terminates in real  madness, as was unfor-
tunately the case with Collins and Smart:  Swift,
Johnson, and Cowper, were  not  without dismal
apprehensions ofa similar fate.   The wight, there-
fore, who wishes to secure to  himself a sublunary
immortality by dint of poetizing, and happens  not
to be Poeta A'ascitur, must, like Doctor Caustic, in
the present instance,  seek a sort of cow-pock-
like substitute for that  legitimate rabies, which
characterises the true sons ofc Apollo.

  Although my own  experiments with Dr.  Bed-
does's sublimating gas would not wana'.c i.w in
                      D 2 
6
He towcr'd, like Garnerin's balloon,
Nor stopp'd, like halfwits, at the moon :
pronouncing it  superior  to the  genuine,  fresh-
imported waters of Helicon, still I have no doubt
but a person possessed,  as Dr. Darwin expresses
it, of a ' Temperament of increased  irritability,'
or, as Dr. Brown would have it, whose animal
machine was accommodated with a smaller quan-
tity of ' Excitability,' might  receive  astonishing
benefits from the stimulus of this gaseous oxyd of
oitrogene.

  Mature deliberation and sedulous investigation
of this important subject have led me  to conclude,
that the  benefits which result from inhaling this
gas, have been more widely diffused than has been
generally  imagined,  and not at  all   confined to
those  persons in  whom  it produced the singu-
lar effects detailed by Dr= Beddoes,  in his inge-
nious pamphlet on a certain windy institution, en-
titled, ' JVotice,' Sec.   Most of the sublime specu-
lations of out modern System-Mongers,   from
Doctor Burnet, who  encompassed the  earth with
a crust, like the shell of a tortoise, and which, be-
ing unfortunately  fractured, produced a Noah's
flood, to Dr. Darwin, with his ' omnia e conchis,'
have arisen  from  immoderate  potations of  this
bewildering gas.  m 
7
But scarce had breath1 d three times before he
Was hous'd in heaven's high upper story,5
Where mortals none but poets enter,
Above where Mah'met's ass dar'd venture.
Strange things he saw, and those who know him
Have said that, in his Epic Poem,6
To be complete within a year hence,
They'll make a terrible appearance.
   J Was hous'd in  heaven's high upper story.
  Brother Southey then made the important dis-
covery that' the atmosphere of the highest of all
' possible heavens was composed  of  this  gas.'
Beddoes1s .\otice.


   6 Flave said that, in his Epic Poem,
  The same poem to which the gentleman alludes
in his huge quarto edition of Joan of Arc,  in the
words following—'Liberal criticism I shall attend
i to,  and I hope to  profit by, in  the execution of
c my Madoc,  an epic poem  on  the discovery of
< America, by that Prince, on which I am now en-
, gaged.'
  As liberal criticism appears a great desideratum
with this sublime poet, I trust he will gratefully
acknowledge the specimen of my liberality towards
a worthy brother in my 4th canto. 
8
And now, to set my verses going,

Like ' Joan of Arc f sublimely flowing,
I'll follow Southey's bold example,

And snuff a sconce full, for a sample.
Good Sir, enough ! enough already !

Nomore,for Heav'n's sake. !—steady!—steady
Confound your stuff!—why how you sweat me!

I'd rather- swallow all mount ^tna !
How swiftly turns this giddy world round,
Like tortur'd top, by truant twirl'd round ;
While Nature's capers wild amaze me,
The beldam's crack'd or Caustic crazy \1
   7 The beldam's crack'd or Caustic crazy.

  Or, it is possible, may it please yoor Worships,
that I—I for the matter of that am a little  te—te
—tipsey, or so.—But as there may perhaps be,
as it were, now and then, one of your Right Wor-
shipful Fraternity, who has been in a similar pre-
dicament se—se ipse, I hope I shall receive your
worships permission to stagger on with a jug full
of gas in my noddle, at least, through a stanza or
two. 
                      9

Fm larger grown from head to tail

Than Mammoth, elephant, or whale !—

Now feel  a l tangible extension'8

Of semi-infinite dimension !


Inflated with supreme intensity,

I fill three quarters of immensity !

Should Phoebus come this way, no doubt,

But I could blow his candle out!


This earth's a little dirty planet,

And I'll no longer help to man it,




    8 Now feel a c tangible extension'
      Of semi-infinite dimension.

  Much in the same way was  Mr.  Davy affected
in consequence  of  respiring this  soul-elevating
gas.   He  informs us, that after having been shut
up in  a breathing-box for an hour and a quarter,
'  A thrilling, e>:'ending from the chest to the ex-
1 tremities, was almost  immediately produced.
'1 felt a tangible extension, highly  pleasurable  in
' every limb ;  my visible  impressions were daz-
'zlim;, and  apparently  magnified.'  Davy's Re-
si-aycii..* Chtviizid and FhiLm.phicul. 
10
But off will flutter, in a tangent,,
And make a harum scarum range on't!
    9 But off will flutter, in a tangent,
      And make a harum scarum range on't \

  Mr. Davy's dose had  a similar operation.  He
says, < I lost  all  connexion with external things.
' Trains  of vivid  visible images rapidly  passed
' through my mind, and were connected with words,
' in such a manner as to produce perceptions per-
* fectly novel.  I existed in a world of newly con-
' nected, and newly modified ideas.  I theorised, I
' imagined that I made  discoveries.' (Perhaps, if
the learned lecturer were to repeat the dose, he
might in reality hit on something of little less im-
portance than the grand discoveries of Dr. Caus-
tic.)  ' When I  was awakened from this semi-de-
' lirious trance,  by Dr.  Kinglake,  who took the
' bag  from my mouth, indignation and pride were
' the  first feelings produced by the sight of the
' persons about me.   My motions were enthusias-
1 tic and sublime, and for a minute I  walked round
1 the  room  perfectly regardless of what was said
1 to me.   As I recovered my former state of mind
' I felt an inclination  to  communicate the disco-
' veries I  had made during  the experiment.  I
' endeavoured to recall the ideas ; they were feeble
4 and  indistinct.  One  collection of terms, how-
1 ever, presented itself;  and with the most inteBse
' belief, and prophetic manner 1 exclaimed to Dr.
' Kinglake,  " Nothing  exists but  thought; the
" universe is composed of impressions,ideas, plea-
" sures, and pains  I 1!"   Davy's Researches. 
11
Stand ye appall'd !  quake !  quiver ! quail !

For lo I stride a comet's tail!

If my deserts you fail to acknowledge,
I'll drive it plump against your college ! !
But if your Esculapian band
Approach my highness, cap in hand,
And show vast tokens of humility,

I'll tr?at your world with due civility.
As Doctor Young foretold, right soon
rij make your earth another moon, ™
  My sensations in consequence of respiring this
gas were not precisely the same,  though some-
what similar to  those of Mr.  Davy.  That gen-
tleman  could not * recall the  vivid visible ima-
ges' which made such  'rapid progress  through
* his  mind, and produced perceptions perfectly
* novel !'  But I haA ; recorded, in the following
stanzas, some of the most important  ideas, which
passed through my mind,  and am  willing to own
that pride and indignation were predominant.
  10 I'll make your earth another moon.
The idea of the practicability of this stupendous 
12
And Phoebus then, an arrant ass,

Ma y turn his ponies out to  grass.


performance I  derived March  28th  at the Royal
Institution, into the gallery  of which I  had the
happiness to obtain admission, by virtue of a bor-
rowed blue ticket.   That learned lecturer was then
discoursing on  Secondary Planets, Moon,  Satel-
lites, Force of Gravitation;  Keplean Laws, &c.
In the course  of  his observations he alluded  to
th- well known apprehensions of the hen-hearted
Sir Isaac Newton,  respecting the mischief comets
might produce to  our earth, should any of these
journeying gentry take it" into their heads to  come
within the sphere  of its attraction.

  Whether the humane, polite, and learned Doc-
tor was impelled to this speculation from perceiv-
ing an emotion like  that of terror  and anxiety
among the fair part of his audience,  which he was
solicitous to dispel, or  whether he  has actually
discovered some new secret  in the laws of gravi-
tation, evincing that the largest  bodies are attract-
ed most  powerfully by the smallest, and that of
consequence one of these huge flaming masses of
matter, whose velocity  and  projectile force are
almost incalculable, should, in  conformity  to the
said new laws, take up its residence among us, and,
with all the politeness and agility of a  French danc-
ing-master,  skip about our  puny globe in  com-
pany with  Miss Luna, are points which, with me
■rmiain undetermined ;  but such  certainly  were
the cheering hopes his profound speculations led
us to entertain. 
13
But now, alas ! a wicked wag
Has pull'd away the gaseous bag :
  If we are really to be blessed with another jnoort
from this  source (I should have termed it a sun,
had not Dr. Young pronounced it a mobn) it will
evidently not be  6uch a changeable jade as our'sis
at present ; for, being an entire flame, it will shine
with unborrowed lustre,  so that it will be a mat-
ter of no consequence whether its face or backside
is turned towards us.  In that case our new moon,
as was judiciously observed by an Hibernian of my
acquaintance, would be of more consequence than
even the sun himself, for he shines only in the day
time, when we can see very well without him.

  On the whole, after weighing the subject ma-
turely, deliberately, and considerately, as its impor-
tance requires, I am disposed to think that we are
indebted to the ladies for this lunary (not luna-
tic) speculation  of Dr. Young.   This  opinion  I
ground on the excessive sensibility which that po-
lite lecturer on many occasions  shows and most
undoubtedly feels for thefair sex.

  Leaving these moot points, however, to  be de-
cided by more  competent  judges, I cannot pass
over one important affair which I have just right
to exclaim  against, as an  infringement on my
rights  as a free-born British subject.  Every pro-
prietor of the Royal Institution has two red tickets.
transferable) which admit the possessor into the
                      E 
14
From heav'n, where thron'd, like Jove, I sat,
I'm 'fal'n! fal'n! fal'n' down! flat! flat! flat!I3t
lower part, or body of the house, and also one blue
ticket, transferable, to take his  servants into the
gallery.  I have said above that I obtained, a seat
in the gallery by the aid of one of the.se blue tickets,
This ticket I borrowed of Sir Joseph's coachman.
Could it be imagined that my presence should have
caused so much alarm, that orders  should be im-*
mediately given that no person should thereafter
be admitted by the blue ticket, which orders are in
force  to this day,  Knowing that I could not con-
trive to possess myself of ared ticket, to admit me
among ladies and gentlemen,  this  arrangement
was intended for my particular vexation.

  Being on good terms with the coachman afore-;
said, I have been allowed to hold this blue ticket
in possession,  and have frequently essayed, by
virtue thereof, to  enter the gallery.   But that old
Cerberus of a door-keeper has  ever growled me
back again, with a Gorgondike aspect which would
have petrified any heart, unless, like mine,  it were
previously rendered callous by adversity.

  Indeed it is apparent, from the conduct of the
Managers,  that the whole host  of Literati, at the
Royal Institution, would be more terrified  at be-
holding the meagre phiz of Doctor Caustic stretch-
ed over the front seat of the gallery, to  scrutinize
their proceedings, than if the cloven-fooled  fiend
should in reality  make his personal appearance in
the midst of theui. 
15
Thus, as the antient story goes.
When o'er Avernus flew the crows,
They were so stenclvd, in half a minute,
They giddy grew and tumbled in it.

And so a blade, who is too handy
To help himself to wine or brandy,
At first gets higher, then gets lower,
Then tumbles dead drunk on the floor !

Such would  have been my sad case, if
I'd taken half another tiff;
And even now, I cannot swear,
I'm not as mad as a March hare !

How these confounded gasses serve us !
But Beddoes says that I am nervous,

    « < I'm fal'n ! fal'n ! fal'n' down 1 flat! jiat! flat i
  See  Dryden's  Feast of Alexander, where  one
&ing Darius has a terrible tumble down, beauti-
fully described by half a dozen ' fallens.'  But I
think the Persian Monarch did not, after all; fell
quite so fiat as Doctor Caustic. 
16
And that this oxyd gas of nitre
Is bad for such a nervous writer !

Indeed, Sir, Doctor, very odd it is
That you should deal in  such commodities,
Which drive a man beside his wits,
And women to hysteric  fits '.12

Now, since this wildering.,gas inftutiofi
Is not the thing for inspiration,
I'll take a glass of cordial gin,
Ere my sad story I begin \

And then proceed with courage stout,
From * hard-bound brains' to hammer omV
My case forlorn, in doleful ditty,
To melt your worships hearts to pity.

    ** And women to hysteric fits.
  See the lamentable case  of the Lady, page 16th
of Dr. Beddoes's pamphlet, who,  taking a drop
too  much of  this panacea, fell  into  hysteric^
ftts, &c. 
17
 Sirs, I have been in high condition,

 A right respectable physician ;

 And pass'd, with men of shrewd discerning,

 For wight of most prodigious learning ;


 For I could quote,  with flippant ease>

 Grave Galen and Hippocrates,

 Brown, Cullen, Sydenham and such men,

 Besides a shoal of learned Dutchmen.r3


 In all disorders was so clever,

 From toothacb, up to yellow fever,

 That I by learned men wras reckon'd

 Don iEsculapius the second !


 No case to me was problematic ;

 Pains topical, or symptomatic,


     ^Besides a shoal of learned Dutchmen,

  Boerhaave,  Steno, De  Graff,  Swammerdam,
 Zimmerman, cum multis aliis. By the bye, Gentle-
 men, this epithet shoal is not always to be taken in
 a shallow sense ; but, when applied to such deep
 fellows, must  be considered as a  noun of multi-
tude, as we say a shoal of herrings.
                    E2 
18
From aching head, to gouty toes,

The hidden cause I could disclose.
Minute examiner of Nature,

And most sagacious operator,

I could discern, prescribe, apply
And cure ^disease in louse's eye. *5
    14 ——— discern, prescribe, apply,
       And cure------_____
  My  learned friend,  Dr. Timothy  Trrangli
perusing the manuscript of this  my  pithy Peti-
tion, discovered that my description of the modws
operandi on the i»sect as above, compared with the
celebrated " veni, vidi,  vicl,"  as a specimen of
fine  writing,  is superior in the direct proportion
of four to three, consequently Dr.  Caustic has ad-
vanced one step higher in the climax of sublimity
than Jujius Caesar.


    r5     disease In louse's eye.
  I do not pretend that in this, and other acquisi-
tions herein stated, I have been so fortunate as to
exceed many other profound  geniuses, who have
delighted the learned world with sublime  disco-
veries  in the  abstruse  sciences of insect-ology,
mite-ology, andnotliing-ology.  Such gentlemen,
for instance, a? Leuwenhoek, Reaumur,Swammev-
dam, and Monsieur Lyenet.  Indeed I have disca-
vered prestigious curiosities, which escaped the no.- 
19
To insect small as e'er one sees
Floating in torrid summer breeze,
Although to less than nothing verging,
Could give  a vomit or a purging.
I had a cmrious little lancet,
Your worships could not help but fancy it%
tice of the latter philosopher, in the organization of
La Chenille de Saule, or caterpillar of the willow.
The extent of his discoveries on this insect will be
perceived from the following statement by Adams,
in his work on  the Microscope.  * The number of
* muscles that our observer (M. Lyonet) has been
• able to  distinguish is truly  astonishing.   He
' found 228  in  the head,  1647 in the body, and
' 2066 in the intestinal tube, making in all 394.1.'
   And I might boast that I have felt the feverish
pulse of that invisible family, the Animalcula In>
fusoria ; and  effected jugular phlebotomy on a
sick louse, without subjecting the unhappy insect
to the ad unguem  operation,  attempted by every
bungling old woman, in our scholastic nurseries.
In short, gentlemen, in my opinion, 1  ought to be
placed in the ranks ofliterature, somewhere-within
gun-shot of Linnaeus.
   But I have still further claims to youf polite at-
tention.  I am an animal, of the Class of Uluminati,
the Order of Authors, the Genus of Poets, and  the
Species of Garreteers, which last distinction shows
me to be an elevated character, and of consequence
one who ought to stand high in your estimation. 
20
 By which I show'd, with skill surprising,
 The whole art of/fca-botomising !

 And with it oft inoculated
 (At which friend Jenner Ml be elated)
 Flies, fleas, and gnats, with cow-pox matter,
 And not one soul took sniall-pox a'ter !

 Could take a microscopic mite,
 Invisible to naked sight;
 Ad infinitum, could divide it,
 For times unnwnber'd have I try'd it.

 With optic glass, of great utility,
 Could make the essence of nihility
 To cut a most enormous figure,
 As big as St.  Paul's Church, or bigger ! l6

     16 As big as St. Paul's Church, or bigger!
  I propose, immediately, to open a shop for the
manufacture of these glasses, provided I can ob-
tain  sufficient credit for that  purpose.  Then of
course Adams, Jones, and Dollond, must shut up
theirs.   I shall admit into partnership with me a
friend of mine, who some time  since applied to the
Honourable Bo.ird cf Longitude, (/0h_._ibJv hoping 
n
A soldier in my glass's focus,x?

Without the aid of hocus pocus,
to obtain a premium for having invented an optical
instrument, which would display the wing of a
fly, placed on the top of St.  Paul's, and pored at
from the street adjacent,  as  large as the  mainsarl
of a man of war.

  It is well known that this distinguished, right
honourable body are little less noted, than the
gentlemen of the Trinity House, for their discern-
ment in appreciating true merit,  and their liber-
ality in rewarding those  artists whose inventions
or discoveries  have any  connexion with the im-
provement of navigation, especially  if such artist
happen to be  as poor as he is ingenious.   The
said Board  of L-ongitude  were so astonishingly
liberal in the present instance,  that they offered
to reward  him  with no  less than  thirty pounds
sterling ;  and I have no doubt but they would have
paid the whole sum, either in  cash,  or  accepted
bills of a short date.  This, indeed, was a huge
sum, when it is considered that the inventor had
laboured, with unremitting assiduity, in perfecting
this instrument no more than  seven years.  But
his indignant ingenuity spurned at the sum as trif-
ling and inadequate, and he accordingly broke his
^lass before the faces  of his noble  patrons.

   But notwithstanding the  unfortunate  issue of
this application, great men  like Dr. Caustic, and
my friend aforesaid,  have  always resources in
their own tyinds, sufficient to enable them to force
their way forward in society.  Improvements e£ 
23
Briareus-like, terrific stands,

With fifty heads and hundred hands !
such magnitude are now introduced in the mecha-
nism inf this instrument, principally by  my instru-
mentality, that we should be justified in refusing
any reward, as too trivial for our merits, which the
united funds of all Europe could bestow.
  I shall only state to your Worships a few of the
important objects  to which our astonishing  mag-
nifier may  be advantageously applied.—
  It has been supposed, by some people of little or
no research, that  certain persons (very  unlike the
gentlemen  of the  Trinity House and the honoura-
ble Board above mentioned) have no souls. But by
taking a squint at them through our instrument,
which makes nihility visible, you may perceive that
each has a soul about the size of a large lobster,
  A certain statesman had been thought to pos-
sess no  talents,  and to be sure they were not quite
visible to the naked  eye ; but, when  peered at
through our peerless microscope, this same states-
man not only appeared superiour  to  Machiavel,
as a politician,  but his splendid abilities shed in-
effable lustre on all his relations I .'
  This microscope  is equally useful in magnify-
ing services, which  have been  rendered commu-
nity.   Thus the  uncles,  aunts, cousins,  sisters,
brothers, and little children of the aforesaid states-
man,  by virtue thereof, seemed to have rendered
such services to community, that nothing  short
of the most princely revenues, clerkships of Pells,
Sec. 8cc. &c could reward  them in proportion to
their  deserts, or  enable  them  to  support,  in  a
buitable manner,  their newly acquired  dignity. 
23
A fish-boat seems a grand flotilla,

To frighten Addington or Billy ;
Appears a dreadful French invasion

T' annihilate the British nation.
Could tell, and never be mistaken,

WThat future oaks were in an acorn ;

And even calculate, at pleasure,

The cubic inches they would measure,
Discover'd worlds within the pale

Of tip end of a tadpole's tail,


     x? A soldier ifi my glass's focus.

  Somewhat similar to the microscope described
by Mr. Adams.

  ' Leuwenhoek .discovered  in the eyes of the
' Libellula 12544 triangular lenses, each forming
f a distinct image of the object placed  before it,
' On turning  your eye  towards a soldier, by the
' aid of the mirror of the microscope, you will have
' an army of pigmies, performing  every motion
' in the same instant of time.'
              Adams on the Microscope, p.  339.

  My improvement of the glasses  renders each
t of these pigmies'as big as a Polyphemus. 
24
And took possession of the same
In my good friend, Sir Joseph's name ; ^
And soon shall publish, by subscription,
A topographical description
Of worlds aforesaid, which shall go forth
InfooVs cap folio, gilt, and so forth.
Could tell how far a careless fly

Might chance to turn this globe awry,
If flitting round^in giddy circuit,

With leg or wing, he kick or jerk it! J9
     18 In my good friend, Sir Joseph's name.
  This was  immensely  proper, as I propose co-
lonising these hitherto Terra Incogmtx, and know
of no person in existence,  except myself, (who am
now decrepid with age,  and, ala*, sadly poverty-
striken) whose scientific qualifications, knowledge
of the  coast, and well-known ardent zeal in the
science of Tadpolism, so well entitle himtocem-
mand such an important expedition.


     x9 With leg or wing, he kick or jerk it.

  Could I command  the years of a Nestor, < the
iudelible ink" of a Ltttsom, and the diligence of a
Dutch commentator, I should still readily ackno-' 
25
Could amputate with ease, I trow,

A puppy's leg—in utcro; 2o


ledge that my powers were totally inadequate to the-
task of eulogising, in proportion to their merits, the
philosophical and literary performances of that pro-
found  sage  Dr. James  Anderson,  LLD. FRS.
Scotland,  (b) &c. &c.  &c. &c whose mysterious
hints afforded a clue by which I have been enabled to
add lustre to the present age, by many of my  own
sublime discoveries and inventions.
   In his deep work called '•Recreations in Agriculture
and Natural History,' the Doctor says,  amongother
tilings not less marvellous, 'The mathematician can
' demonstrate, with the most  decisive certainty,
' that no fiy can alight on this globe which we in-
' habit, without  communicating  motion to it ; and
' he can ascertain, with the most accurate precision,
' ?f so he choose to do,' (by the bye this sine qua non
part of the sentence is very beautiful,  andnotatall
redundant) ' what must be the exact amount of the
4 motion thus produced.'  Vol. ii., p.  350.
      20 A puppy's leg—in utero.

  More wonderful matter, perfected from hints of
Dr. A.!  After telling the public how to propagate
rabbits with one ear, which would be no less useful
than the  renowned  Gulliver's  breed of ' naked
sheep,' the Doctor says, ' I know another instance
' of a dog, which was brought forth with three legs
( only the fourth being wanting:' (which last curious
circumstance  might possibly  happen,  If  it had
three legs  only.)  i It  chanced to be a female ; *A<? 
26
And matters comical have moulded,

For docking colts that were not foaled. V


1 has had several litters of puppies, and among these
' several individuals were produced  that had  the
' same defect with herself; but no pains were taken
' to  perpetuate this breed by pairing  them with
< others of the same kind.'  To be sure a most la-
mentable circumstance !  Vol. i. p. 68.
     21 For docking colts that were not foaled.

  Another Andersonianism. (It has been several
times,' says the Doctor,'taken notice of by natura-
* lists that in England, where the practice  ofdock-
* ing horses very short, for a long time prevailed,
' the horses  naturally produced have fewer joints
' in their tails  than those of other countries; and
' though I have never heard it noticed, that any
' were  produced, without having a tail,  that re-
' quired to be docked, yet it may have often happen-
4 ed without being remarked ; for  as it would not
' be known, when old, from one that had been dock-
' ed it might passunobserved.?  The Doctorafter-
wards appears surprised, (as well he might be, at
such an extraordinary phenomenon) that many
men, who have lost a leg, or an  arm, have had
children after  the accident, and these, for the most
part, free  from any blemish ! 1
  But the above quotations are but puny crackers,
compared with some great guns  this writer can
occasionally let off.  Pray how then can  the pub-
lic withstand the  artillery of the  indignant Doc-
tor when plied against the Metallic Tractors, those 
&7
And could prepare a puny fry

Of yet unborn homunculi


petty  instruments of pretended mighty  power
which, as will hereafter more fully  appear, have
been the fruitful source  of woes unnumbered to
Doctor Caustic?

   At a time  when  I was all dismay for some nesv
argument against Perkinism, my ingenious friend,
to shew its falling reputation, among other concep-
tions equally happy and  equally well  founded, pub-
lished in one of his ' Recreations,' ' that the price
' of the Tractors was now  reduced to four guineas
' the set,' when, in fact, no such thing  was ever
in contemplation.  On the  contrary, an  advance
has since taken place in  their price to six guineas.
Indeed I  may challenge  any son of Galen to ex-
ceed my  worthy friend in  intrepidity of this sort.
   As  to any ill-natured  report Mr. Knight * may
raise  against the integrity of this philosopher, or
any notion the public may  entertain respecting
his collusive operations with honest Forsyth, I shall
merely assert that I would not  believe a syllable
to  that effect,  were it  ever so  true.  I confess,
however, if  Forsyth were my particular friend, I
might whisper  in the good man's ear, that so use-
ful is  it to preserve  the good graces  of that old
  * See a Letter, published by White, frem Thomas Andrews
Knight,  Esq. to Dr. Anderson, in which he most uncourteously
imputes unworthy motives to the said Doctor; and without any
remorse, or the fear of shamebefore his eyes, talks about a pri-
vate interest to answer, of a greater deficit of veracity, &c. 
28
To chant the dulcified squeak issimo,2*

.And eke to trill the grand squallissimo.
 By bare inspecting, though months a'ter,

 A place where patient had made water,

 I could divine, with skill unfailino-

 Of what disorder he was ailing !


 And you'll allow, sans hesitation,

 On score of vast accommodation,


 vixen y'clept Public Opinion,  I should rather pre-
 fer to have  my discoveries  rest on their own
 merits, than on the creditof even so great a man as
JDoctor Anderson!

      2i And eke to trill the grand squallissimo  I

 k  I anticipate the being idolized by  amateurs of
 Italian operas for this  my  beautiful invention.
 Surely itmustbe allowed I have herein far exceed-
 ed even what my friend Doctor Anderson would
 have supposed possible.   As soon as this my in-
■vention is made  public (which  shall take place
 whenever I have by patent, or parliamentary  do-
 nation, secured to myself the emoluments there-
 unto belonging) John Bull may gratify his delicate
 taste for refined  music, without the  trouble and
 expence of importing from Italy those pretty things,
 whose delicious  warUlings compose the soul of
 true melody* 
29
That few discoveries this can equal,

When you have heard me through the sequel.  .


For bottled urine has, no doubt,

In publicmails, been frank'd about ;(c)

(A thing there must be mighty trouble in,)

To London as it were, from Dublin,23


That such a man as Doctor Mayersbach,

(Such  things took place not many years back) a4

     a3  To London, as it were, from Dublin.
   Contemplate for a moment, gentlemen, the ex-
treme  inconvenience attending the present  mode
of conveying, for the purpose of medical scrutiny,
the singular contents  of these bottles, to  and fro,
from Dan to Beersheba.  Besides  our  patients
cannot all be Lord Lieutenants of Ireland.  They
cannot ail enjoy the privilege of franking, per mail,
all sorts  of commoditieo, such as millstones and
necklaces, bales of Irish linen and ladies slippers ;
and  unless by particular act of parliament, allow-
ing  bottles of urine,  like stamped almanacks, a
free passage per mail, to any part of his majesty's
dominions, 1 confess I do not see how Dr.  May-
ersbach can exercise, so often as could be wished,
his soothsaying sagacity on the precious contents
of such bottles.

   *■* Such things took place not many yearsback.
I was at the house of Dr. M. when the postman, be-
                      F 2 
30
Might view this uric oxyd's basi?, *5
And rightly understand the cases.
tides the usual budget of letters, brought a huge
bottle f-anked from Dublin Castle.  I have parti-
cular satisfaction, however, in  stating, for the in-
formation of those ladies and  gentlemen who by
the same mail may have received either love let-
ters, or state letters, that I have no  reason to ap-
prehend (as there was no apparent leakage  or fis-
sure in the bottle) that those letters were actually
p—d upon.
     25       uric oxyd's basis.
  I wish it may not be inferred  from my adopting
the term Uric Oxyd, that  I propose to  take  any
part in the controversy between Doctor  Pearson
and that blustering  Fourcroy; though I  have no
hesitation in asserting (in privato) that  my coun-
tryman is right.   But I would  submit to any bro-
ther poet, who knows that
     « Rhyme the rudder is of verses,
   «By which, like ships, they tteer their courses.*
and whosometimes like myself, is non-plussed fofc
want of a proper expression to convey an impor-
tant idea, whether there need be any other  proof
of the existence of the Uric Oxyd than the gen-
teel gingle thereby introduced in this my incom-
parable poem, and the happy opportunity  thereby
afforded for mentioning an indelicate matter in so
delicate a manner, that the most delicate person in
existence, (myself for instance) may express the
thing, and preserve his,  or her cheek, as  free from
a blush as a snow-ball.   Supposing  I  had said,
'Lithic Acid,'as Scheele and Fourcroy would havj»
had me?notaso»l woujd feaye understood iu 
31
 But Fve  a plan by which oisr better*

 May make a few drops on their letters; **

 And though it be but ' monstrous little/

 I'll tell what ails them to a tittle.


 And  since I ought, as well as Jenner*

 To have some pence to buy a dinner,

 I shall solicit cash and thanks

 From Parl'ment, for preventing franks>.


 Oft have I quenched man's vital spark :

 1 The Soul's old cottage,' cold and dark,

 Again, in spite of Death, our  grand ill,

 Illum'd as one would light a candle. 2?


    80 May make a few drops on their letters.

  You will please, gentlemen,  to take particular*
 notice, that my mode of consecrating e-fiist-o\arf
 favours intended the  Esculapian fraternity, will
 effectually preclude the risk  of any accident hap-
 pening to a whole mail of letters, many of which
 are frequently neatly folded*  and addressed to as
 modest and delicate persons  as  any in the  king-
 dom.

    27 Illum'd as one would light a candle.

  In my younger days I lived  on terms of intimacy-
jdth Doctor Franklin, highly honourable to bot> 
32
I've shewn a mode, in Latin thesis,
To pick man's (rail machine to pieces*
parties, as it showed we were both men of discern-
ment in choosing each a great man for his friend.

   In a letter from that venerable sage, afterwards
printed, {See Franklin's JForkx, p. 115, vol. ii. 3d
edition) he told me that toads buried in sand, shut
up in hollow trees, &c. would live  forever, as  it
were ; and, among other things,  informed me of
certain curious facts about flies, which I v. ill relate
in his own words.  ' I have  seen an instance of
' common  flies preserved in a maimer somewhat
' similar.   They had been drowned in Madeira
' wine, ^apparently about the time when it was bot-
' tied in Virginia, to be  sent to London.  At the
' opening of one of the bottles, at the  house of a
'friend where I was, three drowned flies fell into
* the first glass which was filled.  Having heard it
' remarked  that drowned flies  were capable of be-
'ing revived by the rays  of the sun,  I proposed
' making the experiment upon these.   They were
♦therefore exposed to the sun upon a sieve, which
•had been  employed to  strain  them  out  of the
'  wine.  In less than three hours two of them be-
'gan by degrees to recover life.   They commen-
' ced by some convulsive motions of  the  thighs,
•and at  length, they raised themselves  upon their
♦  legs, wiped their eyes with their fore feet, beat
'  and brushed their wings  with their  hind feet,
'and soon after began to fly,  finding  themselves
'in Old  England, without knowing how they came
♦thither.  The third continued lifeless until sun- 
S3
And how the same again to botch,
Just as an artist does a watch 11%
•set, when, losing all hopes of him, hs was thrown
' away.
  * I wish it were possible, from this instance, to
' invent a method of embalming drowned persons,
' in such a manner that they might be recalled to
' life at any period, however distant; for, having a
1 very ardent desire to see and observe the state of
' America a hundred years hence, 1  should prefer
' to an ordinary  death the being immersed in a
' cask of Madeira wine, with a  few friends, until
' that time, then to be  recalled  to life by the solar
' warmth  of my dear  country.   But since, in all
' probability, we live in an age too early,  and too  •
♦ near the infancy of science, to see  such an art
' brought in our time  to perfection, I must,  for
' the prebent, content myself with the treat, which
' you are so kind as to  promise  me, of the resur-
' rection of a fowl or turkey  cock.r

   Now  if your worships will be so obliging as to
make me a present of a cask of Madeira to try the
experiment, I  will certainly bury myself therein
for a century or two,  and 1 have no  doubt but I
shall be awakened with  as  much facility as was
Endymion, the famous sleeper of antiquity, wha
slept seventy years at one nap.

     *8 Just as an artist does a  watch  !
   I do not arrogate to myselt the whole merit of
this noble invention.  Dr. Price and Mr.  Godwin, 
Si
Thus brother  Ovid said or sung once,
Thj Gods of old folks could, make young ones,*?
in divers elaborate works, especially the latter, in
his ' Political Justice,' suggested some ideas which
set my ingenuity in such a ferment, that  I  could
not rest quietly till I had brewed a sublime trea-
tise on the best mode of pulling down, repairing,
and rebuilding, decayed and worn out animal ma<-
chines.

   I shall not attempt, in this place, to oblige your
worships with any thing like a table of the contents
of this judicious and profound  performance.  I
will, however, gratify  your curiosity so far as to
glance cursorily at a few of  the  leading topics
therein  discussed and  illustrated,  and  slightly
mention some of the immense advantages which
will be the result of this  discovery.

   In the first place, I make it apparent by a long
series of Experiments  and scientific deductions,
drawn therefrom, that it is very practicable to  en-
lighten the mind of a stupid fellow, by battering,
boring, or pulling his body to pieces.  Mr. poet
Waller's  authority is here to my  purpose, who
tells us, that

   ' The soul's dark cottage baiter'd and decay'd,
   ' Lets  in new  light through  chinks which time
    has made.'

   Mr. Grey, likewise, in  his ' Hymn to Adversity,'
requests that' Daughter of Jove' to impose gently
her ' iron hand,' and trouble him a little with her
'  torturing hour,' although he appears disposed
to avoid,  if possible, her more dismal accompani- 
35
By process, not one whit acuter,

Than making new pots from  old pewter


ments, such as her * Gorgonic frown,' and the
' funeral cry of horror.'
  The Spaniards, under Cortes and Pizarro, ma-?
naged much in the same way,  and  enlightened
the natives of the  mighty  empires  of Peru and
Mexico in the  Great Truths of Christianity,  by
killing a part,  reducing the  remainder to a  state
of servitude, and battering their souls' cottages at
their leisure.  This process is in part expressed
in a Poetical Epistle, which I received not  long
since from my  correspondent settled at Terra del
Fuego, in  bouth America, who thus expresses the
conduct of some of his acquaintance, in converting
the Aborigines to Christianity.

      Good folks to America came
     To curtail old Satan's dominions ;
      The natives, the more to their shame,
     Stuck fast to their ancient opinions.

     Till a method the pious men find,
      Which ne'er had occur'd to your dull wit*,
      Of making sky-lights to the mind,
      By boring the body with bullets.

     Like  Waller, with process so droll,
     To illume an old clod-pated noddy;
      They thought they might burnish the soul,
      By beating  a hole in the body. 
36
So fam'd Aldini, erst in France,
Led dead folks down a contra-dance,
   I have read of a great mathematician, who was
uncommonly stupid  till about the age  of twenty,
when he accidentally pitched head first into a deep
well, fractured his scull,  and it became  necessary
to trepan him.   Alter the operation it was imme-
diately evident that his wit was much improved,
and he soon became a prodigy of intellect.  Whe-
ther this alteration was caused by ' new light let
' in through chinks,'  the trepanning chissel  had
made, or whether the texture  and  position of
tie brain were materially changed for the better,
in consequence  of the  jar  and  contusion of the
fall,  1 shall leave to some future  Lavater,  or any
other gentleman, who can guage the capacity of
a statesman, or a barrel of porter, with equal faci-
lity,  to determine.
   2d. I proceed to demonstrate that man being,
as our most enlightened modern philosophers al-
low,  jumbled  together by  mere Chance  (a blind
capricious Goddess,  who, half her time, does not
know what she is about) it is extremely  easy to
understand the principles of his texture ; because
the mechanism of his frame is less intricate than
that  of a common spit jack.  Consequently a So-
lomon or a Brodum can mend this machine when
.deranged as  well as a Harvey,  a  Sydenham, or a
Mead.
   2d.  I proceed to prove, from analogy, with what
facility this machine may be disjointed, pulled to
pieces,  and  again botched  together.  My friend
Mahomet had  his heart taken out, a drop of black 
37
And made them figadoon and chassee
As well as when alive, I dare say '.3*
blood expressed therefrom, and  went about his
common concerns next day, as well as ever.   So
when a sighing swain is taken desperately in love,
he may lose all his insides without any very serious
inconvenience.   This I can attest from sad expe-
rience, as,  about forty years since,  I  was terri-
bly in for% with a sweet little  sprig of  divinity,
whose elbow was ever her most prominent feature,
whenever I had  the  audacity  to attempt  to ap-
proximate the shrine of  her Goddesship.
   4th. The important advantages, which will un-
doubtedly  arise from this  invention,  are almost
too obvious to  require explanation.  I shall how-
ever advert to a few.
   By taking the animal machine to pieces, you
may divest it of such particles as clog  its wheels,
and render its  motions less perfect.   A decayed
worn-out gallant  may have  its parts  separated,
thoroughly burnished, botched  together, and ren-
dered as bright as a  new-coined  silver sixpence.
Thus my venerable Piccadilly  friend, {d) who, as
Darwin expresses it, sometimes ' clasps a beauty
ip Platonic arms,' if  he should, fifty years  hence,
perceive that the mechanism of his frame is rather
the worse for wear, may  come to Dr. Caustic, and
be rebuilt into as fine a young  Buck as  any in
Christendom.
   5 th. Hereditary diseases may be thus  culled
from the constitution, and  gouty  and  other dele-
terious particles separated  from those which are
sound and healthful.
                      G 
38
And I once offer'd, very prettily,
To patch up Frenchmen kill'd in Italy,
  Pride may be picked from the composition of
an upstart mushroom of a nobleman,  impudence
from a  quack, knavery  from  a lawyer,  morose-
ness from a monk, testiness from an  old bache-
lor, peevishness from an old maid, in short, man-
kind altered from  what  they are to  what  they
ought to be, by a method at once cheap, practica-
ble, easy and expeditious.
  The only difficulty which  has ever  opposed it-
self to my carrying this sublime invention to  the
highest possible pitch of perfection, has been the
almost utter impossibility of procuring any man,
woman,  or child,  who is willing to become the
subject  of operation.  Now if either of yourwor-*
ships would loan me his  carcase to be picked to
pieces, and again botched together in the manner
above stated, provided the experiment should not
fully succeed, I will engage to pay all the damages
thereby accruing to community out of one tenth
part of the profits of this publication.
  *9 The Gods of old folks could make young ones,
     <—-—stricto Medea recludit
     Ense senis jugulum : veteremque exire cruorem
     Passa, replet succis.  Quos postquam combibit iEson
     Aut ore acceptos, aut vulnere barba, comjeque
     (Janitie posita nigrum rapuere colorem.
     Pulsa fugit macies,

_  This passage, with a condensation of thought and 
39
Tho' shot, or stabb'd, or hack'd with fell blows,
As wives patch coats when out at elbows !
Profoundly vers'd in chemic science,

I could bid matter's laws defiance;
felicity of expression peculiar to myself, I have
thus happily hit into English.

     Media cut the wither'd weasand
     Of superannuated  Eson,
     Then fill'd him with the acrid juices
     Of nettle-tops and flower-de-luces j
     Till  from the defunct carcase, lo !
     Started a dashing Bond-Street beau ! !
    3° As well as when alive, I dare say !
  The feats which our daily and monthly publica-
tions have informed us were achieved in Paris by
this magician, before his arrival in England, must
be fresh in the recollection of every person.  The
only reason why he did not exhibit dead people in
hornpipes andcontradances, while in London,  was
the want of proper  subjects for Galvanic experi-
ments. The tedious operation of English gallowses
in extinguishing life  renders the bodies cold  and
unsusceptible  of any  excitement ;  whereas  the
clipping Frenoh Guillotine will instantly turn them
over to the operator in a state susceptible of the
slightest stimulus.   This fact affords a scientific
and conclusive argument in favour of the French
Revolution. 
                     40

Was up to Nature, or beyond her,

In mimic earthquakes, rain, and thunder? 31


    31 In mimic earthquakes, rain, and thunder!

  Chemistry furnishes us with a method of manu-
facturing artificial  earthquakes, which  will  have
all the great effects of  those that are natural.
The old fashioned receipt for an earthquake, how-
ever, of iron filings and sulphur mixed in certain
proportions and immersed in the earth, I shall not
take the trouble to state to your worships; as. most
of you have, perhaps, read Mr. Martin's Philoso-
phy nearly half through.  But my plan is to make
such an earthquake as no mortal, except Dr. Dar-
win and  myself,  ever  supposed possible.  The
former gentleman made shift to explode the moon
from the Southern Hemisphere of our earth, and
I propose to forward another moon, by an artificial
earthquake of my own invention, from the Northern
Hemisphere, unless Dr. Young's comet, as men-
tioned in Note 10, should render such  moon un-
necessary.  I will give your worships a specimen
of Dr. Darwin's moon-producing earthquake, from
' Botanic Garden,' Canto ii.

   * Gnomes ! How you shriek'd !  When through
     the troubled air,
   ♦ Roar'd the fierce din  of elemental war;
   ' When rose the continents, and sunk die main,
   • And earth's huge sphere exploding burst in
     twain.—
   'Gnomes!  How you  gaz'd! When from  her
     wounded side,
   * Where now the south sea heaves its waste of
     tide, 
il
And by a shock of electricity,

(I tell the truth without duplicity)


  ' Rose on swift wheels the Moon's refulgent car,
  ' Circling the solar orb, a sister star,
  1 Dimpled with vale:, with shining hillsemboss'd,
  ' And roll'd round earth her airless realms  of
     frost.'

No man will say  in this case,—

   Parturiunt montes nascitur ridiculus mus.

The reaction, at the moment of explosion, of that
mass of matter which now composes our moon, is
the cause  of the obliquity of the polar axis to the
poles of the ecliptic, according to Dr.  Darwin;
though Milton says,

   ♦ ,  .,       ----Angels turn'd askance
   ' The poles of earth twice ten degrees and more:
   ' From  the sun's axle, they with labour push'cl
   ' Oblique the centric globe.'------

Whether  an explosion similar to  that, so beauti-
fully described by Dr. Darwin, from the north side
of the equator, would not set all right, and a new
era be announced, which will be, like that of old,
when

   ----------------------' Spring
   ' Perpetual smil'd on earth, with vernal flowers,
   ' Equal in days and nights"--------

is a problem worth the attention of our modern
philosophers.   But at any rate, I Dr. Caustic will,
positively, try the experiment.
                       G 2 
                     42

I did (what won't again be soon done)
E'en fairly knock the man in the moon down! 3*
Could tell how Nature works her matters

In making brutes and human creatures:

Gave long, detail'd, authentic histories,

Of all that lady's nameless mysteries.


   Now as to my ' rain and thunder' I have only to
inform your worships that I have a wife, and she is
the very essence of a Xantippe, the yoke-fellow of
Socrates.   You well  remember the observation
of that sage, when she supplied him with a vast
quantity of those articles, purporting, that after
such  violent  peals of thunder a shower  of  rain
must necessarily follow.
 3* E'en fairly knock the man in the moon down!
   This notable  exploit I think to be a very great
improvement on electrical experiments made by
a number of renowned French and English philo-
sophers.   [See  Priestley's History of Electricity,
page 94.]  But for this, with many other matters
equally interesting and magnipotent, I must refer
the inquisitive to the Appendix of  my Fool's Cap
Folio Volume,  on the Tadpolian Discovery.  It
may, however, be necessary, in order to shew the
extent to which  I  have  surpassed  those philoso-
phers, just to state, that the Frenchmen commu-
nicated the shock only about two miles and an half,
and  our own  countrymen, with the  present bishop
of Landaff (Watson) at their head, only about four
miles and an half. 
43
I learnt these from as nice a rabbit
As naturalist could wish to nab at. 33
With toads and tadpoles made as many

Experiments as Spallanzani. 34
    33 As naturalist could wish to nab at.

  Such a gentleman as he who honoured the Royal
Society with that most interesting communication
in the Philosophical Transactions, vol. Ixxxvii.p. 197.
  I cannot express the degree of my contempt for
an obscure ignoramus, who, in a scurvy pamphlet
called  ' Pursuits of Literature,'  has endeavoured
to bespatter the above gentleman, and cast an ob-
loquy on certain useful and diverting experiments
by  him instituted.   I trust  I  need say nothing
more to shew the  great  impudence and folly of
this scribler, than to simply adduce his own most
absurd and unreasonable comments.  ' Surely to
' sit calmly, and watch with an  impure, inhuman,
' and unhallowed curiosity,  the progress of the
1 desires,  and the extinction of the natural passi-
' ons of devoted animals, after  such mutilations
* and  experiments,  is a  practice useless, wicked,
4 degrading, and barbarous.'

    34 Experiments as Spallanzani.
  I have been the  more solicitous to eulogize this
great Philosopher, that I might thereby establish
my own reputation as a. polite and fashionable wri-
ter. For thus 1  implicitly follow the laudable ex-
ample  of most of the  truly gentlemen literati in
Europe,  who have vied with each  other in doling
out the incense of their admiration at  the altar of 
44
But what surpasses, you'll admit,
All former bounds of human wit,
this demi-god of an Abbe.  Such, however,  was
the tendency to public utility, and to the mitiga-
tion of the sufferings  of humanity, evident in the
multifarious pursuits of this philosopher, that cer-
tainly the most rigid theologian would acknowledge
that a  moderate adoration of Spallanzani is not the
most atrocious kind of idolatry. It is notorious that
this said Abbe was a very pious as well as deli-
cate, polite, humane, gentle, genteel gentleman,&c.

  Now if my friend, Mr. Pope Pius VII. does not
immediately  canonize Saint Spallanzani, We, Dr.
Caustic, will cannonade him, and blaze forth our Bull
from our garret, well peppered  with anathemas,
and then his Pontifical Dignity-ship will be forced
to doff his Tiara, and acknowledge that We have
fairly out-thundered all the thunders of his own
Vatican.
  But to return from this faming digression.  All
literary men  (as before intimated) agree, (but the
writer  of the article ' Spallanzani' in the Encyclo-
pedia Britannica  has  more particularly enforced
the idea), that the most  prominent traits  in the'
character of the Abbe, were humanity, modesty,and
modesty of sentiment. Indeed these features are ap-
parent from the Gentleman's own accounc of the
numerous  progeny, to  which he was instrumen-
tal  in giving existence, among  motley tribes of
frogs, tadpoles, toads, silkworms, and salamanders.
1 Sec spallanzani''s Dissertations on Animals and Vege-
tables,' yoI. ii. 
45
I forni'd,  by chemical contrivance,
A little homo all alive once !  35
  But what most ravishes me is that famous ex-
periment on one of the canine race,  whose superb
result was, as he himself tells us, a beautiful litter
of ' three whelps, two males, and one female 1'
  For reasons which appear to me satisfactory, I
must deny myself the  privilege of giving your
worships a detail of the Abbe's curious manoeuvres
in the course of this last experiment;  but your
curiosity will be  amply gratified,  by turning to
page 150, vol. ii. of the aforesaid Work of Spal-
lanzani.  I would, however, most earnestly recom-
mend to any  resolute inquirer, who is determined
to know the bottom of this business, to  anticipate
the operation which he may be assured  the peru-
sal of the said volume of Spallanzani  will otherwise
have on the animal system, by previously swallow-
ing an emetic;  as to be engaged in such an ope-
ration, at the time of  reading, must certainly be
inconvenient.
  Indeed I have had it in contemplation to  recom-
mend the perusal of almost any page in any of the
works of this great naturalist, as a  succedaneum
for Tartar-emetic, Ipecac,  and other drugs of si-
mii** qualities; but a subsequent  weighty con-
sideration induced me to suspend, for the present,
any  determination of that kind, to wit,  that it
might militate against the interest of our trade.
  That Dr. Darwin supposed that the researches
of Spallanzani would terminate in some wonderful 
46
And, gentlemen,  myself I flatter,

You'll think this last a mighty matter;


Lusus Natura, is apparent from  what he  has in-
formed us, Phytologia, p. 119.  ' It is not impoS-
' sible, as some philosopher has already supposed,
' if Spallanzani should continue his experiments,
' that some beautiful productions might be gene-
' rated between the vegetable and  the animal king-
' doms,  like the  Eastern fable  of the  rose  and
' nightingale!!!!!! !!'

     35 A little homo  all alive once!
  As soon as I shall have accomplished the all-
important task of procuring your worships assist-
ance in unclenching  the ' hard hand of pinching
' poverty,' which, I  assure you,  most cordially
gripes me at present,  I intend  to  surprise the
learned world with an elegant volume, decorated
with highly  finished  engravings, giving in detail
a profoundly scientific history  of  the origin,  pro-
gress, and consummation of this my ne plus ultra,
this  my  most sublime  of all sublime discoveries.
And, gentlemen, if you do not, as Dr. Lettsom says,
' Dip your pens  insetherial and indelible ink,' and
puff away, I shall think you are a set of------,
but not to call names.
  In a civil, humble, and complaisant way, I in-
treat  you to suspend for the  present any  idle cu-
riosity relative to this my great achievement.  Not
a syllable relative to my new species of manufac-
ture must escape before  the whole is  fairly laid
Open  to  public inspection.  Without this useful
precaution, some bungling operator may  hazard
the production of  a.new-fangled order of  beings, 
47
That, trac'd through all its consequences,
The good resulting most immense is.
'Tis of pre-eminent utility

To all our gently and nobility,
Who have estates and things appendant,
Without a lineal descendant.
For they may come, and ope their cases,

And I'll make heirs to noble races;

By process sure as scale of Gunter,

On plan improv'd from surgeon Hunter.


bearing no more affinity to the human  species,
than a lap-dog to a wolf, a cat to a tiger, or a mon-
key to a man.   And  as I propose to  solicit his
Majesty's  Letters Patent for the exclusive right
to all emoluments, Sec. belonging, or anywise ap-
pertaining, to this my most curious  invention, I
could wish that no spurious wares might be palmed
on the public to the prejudice of the patent.
  I think it right, in this place, to give notice, that
unless I should be patronised in proportion to the
merits of the great achievements herein announc-
ed, I will absolutely  offer my services to Bona-
parte, and  manufacture an  heir to the would-be
Emperor of the Gauls. 
48
No scheme like mine was ever known,
Not e'en to Doctors of Sorbonne \
Or which one twentieth part so nice is,
For rooting out your crim. con. vices

And though I might, with great propriety,
Propose my plan to your society $
For certain reasons, I'll not urge ye,
But lay the thing before the clergy.

These, among many, are but few,
Of mighty things which I could do ;
All which I'll state, if 'tis your pleasure,
Much more at large when more at leisure.

Now  it appears from what I state here,
My plans for mending human nature
Entitle me to take the chair
From Rosseau, Godwin, or Voltaire,

They are of most immense utility,
 All tend to man's perfectibility ;
 And  if pursu'd, I dare to venture ye,
 He'll be an angel in a century. 
49
Although St. Pierre, a knowing chap,
Deserves a feather in his cap,
For having boldly set his foot on
The foolish trash of Isaac Newton; 3<5
    36 The foolish trash of Isaac Newton.
  See ' Studies of Nature,' by St. Pierre, in which
that scheming  philosopher has, with wonderful
adroitness, swept away the cobweb calculations of
one Isaac Newton.  Indeed I never much admired
the writings of the last mentioned gentleman, for
the substantial reasons following.
  In the first  place, the  inside of a man's noddle
must be better furnished than that of St. Pierre,
or he will never be able  to comprehend them.
  Secondly, it would be impossible to manufacture
-a system,  like that of St.  Pierre, accounting foK
the various phenomena of  nature, in a new and
simple method,  if one were obliged to proceed,
like Newton, in his'' Principia,' in a dull, plodding,
mathematical  manner, and prove, or even render
probable, the things he asserts.  But  by taking
some facts for granted,  without Jiroof, omitting
to mention such  as militate against a favourite
theory, we may, with great facility, erect a splen-
did edifice of' airy nothings,' founded  on hypo-
theses without foundation.
  The said Isaac had taken it into his head that
the earth's equatorial was  longer  than its  polar
diameter.   This he surmised  from the circum-
stance of a pendulum vibrating slower near the
                      H 
50
Contriv'd a scheme, which very nice is,

For making tides of polar ices.


equator than near the pole,  and finding that the
centrifugal force of the earth would not fully ac-
count for the difference between the time of the
vibrations at Cayenne  and at Paris.
  This,  with other reasons equally plausible, led
him to suppose that the earth was flatted near the
poles, in the form of an oblate spheroid, and that
a degree of latitude would,  of consequence,  be
greater near the pole than at the  equator.  Ac-
tual admeasurement coincided with that conclu-
sion.
  The  Abbe St, Pierre, however, possessing a
most laudable ambition to manufacture tides from
polar ices, and thus to  overturn Sir Isaac's theory
relative to the moon's influence in producing those
phenomena,  and finding it somewhat convenient
for that purpose to place  his poles at  a gieater
distance from the center of gravity than the equa-
tor,  accordingly took  that liberty.  He likewise
had another substantial reason therefor.  Unless
his polar diameter was longer than his equatorial,
the tides, being  caused by  the fusion of  polar
ices, must flow'up hill.
   He therefore drew  a beautiful diagram with
which a triangle  would, (according to the scheme
of the author of'  The  Loves  of the Triangles,' im-
' proved from Dr. Darwin's ' Loves of the Plants'),
certainly fall in love  at first sight.  (See page
xxxiv. Pref. Studies of Nature.)  In displaying his
geometrical  skill  in this  diagram,  however, he
took care to forget that there was some little dif 
51
And fed old Ocean's tub with fountains,
From Arctic and Antarctic mountains.
Though Godwin-(bless him) told us how
To make a clever sort of plough, 37

Which would e'en set itself to work,

And plough an acre in a jerk.
ference between an oblong and an oblate spheroid.—
That flatting the earth's surface, either in a direc-
tion perpendicular or parallel to the poles,  would
increase the length of a degree of latitude  by  de-
creasing  the  earth's  convexity.—That neither an
oblate, nor an oblong spheroid was quite so spheri-
cal as a perfect sphere.   This was very proper,
because  such facts would  have  been  conclusive
against his new Theory of the Tides.

     21 To make a clever sort of plough.
  If you wish, gentlemen, to know any thing far-
ther relative  to this  instinctive plough, you  will
take the trouble to consult Mr. Godwin's ' Political
Justice,'  in  which you  will find almost as many
sublime and practicable schemes for ameliorating
the condition of man, as in  this very erudite work
of my own.   Let it not be inferred, from my not
enlarging upon the present and other schemes of
this  philosopher, that I would regard him as one
whit inferior to any other modern  philosopher ex-
isting,  not even  excepting his friend Holcroft;
but the necessity of expatiating on the redundancy 
51
 Though Price's projects are so clever.

 They shew us how to live for ever; 38

 Unless we blunder, to our cost,

 And break our heads against a post!


 Though Darwin, thinking to dismay us,

Made dreadful clattering in chaos,

And form'd, with horrid quakes t' assist him,

His new exploded solar system. 39


ef Mr. Godwin's  merits, is totally precluded by
the unbounded fame which his chaste productions
have  at length acquired among the virtuous and
respectable classes in community.

    38 They shew us how to live for ever.
  The learned Dr. Price, in his '  Tracts on Civil
' Liberty,' assures us that such sublime discoveries
will be hereafter made by men of  science (mean-
ing such as Dr. Caustic), that it will be possible
to cure the disease of old  age,  give man a per-
petual sublunary existence, and introduce the mil-
lenium, by natural causes.

    39 His new exploded solar system.

  ' Through all the realms the kindling ether runs,
  1 And the mass starts into a million suns;
  1 Earths round each sun with quick explosions burst,
  • And second planets issue from the first; 
53
These wights, when taken altogether,

Are but the shadow of a feather ;


  * Bend, as they journey with projectile force,
  ' In bright ellipses their reluctant course;
  * Orbs Wheel in orbs, round centers centers roll,
  * And form, self-balanc'd, one revolving whole.*
                       Botanic  Garden, Canto i.

   This sublime philosopher has been  most atro-
ciously  squibbed  in th© following performance,
which I can assure you, gentlemen, is not  mine;
and,  if I  could meet with the  author, I  would
teach him better than to bespatter my  favourite
with the filth of his obloquy.

   ' Lines on a certain Philosopher, who maintains
' that all continents and islands were thrown from
' the sea by  volcanoes;  and that  all  animal life
■* originally sprang from the exuvia of fishes.  His
*■ family arms are three  scallop  shells, and his
* motto "  Omnia e Conchis."

      •From atoms in confusion hurl'd,
      1 Old Epicurus built a world;—
      ' Maintain'd that all was accidental,
      * Whether corporeal powers, or mental;
      « That feet were not devis'd for walking,
     * For  eating teeth; nor tongues for talking.;
      « But  chance, the casual texture made,
     ■« And thus each member found its trade.
      * And in this hodge-podge of stark nonsense,
     ■* He buried virtue, truth, and conscience—
                       H 2 
54
Compar'd with Caustic, even as
A puff of hydrogenous gas—

But I, in spite of my renown,
Alas! am harrass'd, hunted down;
Completely damn'd,  the simple fact is,
By Perkins's Metallic Practice ! 4°
Darwin at last resolves to list
Under this grand cosmogonist.
He too renounces his  Creator,
And solves all sense from senseless matter;
Makes men start up from dead fish bones,
As old Deucalion did  from stones;
Forms mortals quick as eyes could twinkle,
From lobster, crab,  and periwinkle—
Oh Doctor! Change thy foolish motto,
Or keep it for some lady's grotto;
Else thy poor patients well may quake,
If thou can no more mend than make —
    4o By Perkins's Metallic  Practice.
  Here comes the Hydra, which you Herculean
gentlemen are requested to destroy; but the means,
by which this great end  is to be accomplished,
will be fully pointed out in the succeeding Cantos. 
                    55
Our should-be wise and learn'd societies
Arc o-uilty of great improprieties,
In treating mc in manner scandalous,
As if I were a very Vandal; thus

Determin'd, as I have no doubt,
My sun of genius to put out,
Which, once extinct, they think that so 'tis
Their glow-worm lights may claim some notice.

Such hum-drum heads and hollow hearts
Pretend, forsooth, t' encourage arts!
But that pretence, in every sense is,
The flimsiest of all pretences.

Those noble-spirited Mxcenasses
To me have shewn the greatest meannesses;
Have granted me for these things said all
Not one half-penny, nor a medal!! ! 
627�735065 
          CANTO   II.


           CONJURATIONS!


                ARGUMENT.
     The  Bard proceeds like one that's striving
     To practise Arnall's (<?) art of diving ;
     Presents sublime and strange narrations
     Of wizards, ghosts, and conjurations;
     Next tours in Delia Cruscan stile
     Above old Homer,  half a mile ;
     And flutters round  in airy region,
     Just like a wild-goose or a pigeon;
     Fir'd with the theme of Haygarth's praises
     Until his rapture fairly  blazes :
     Then in a duel shews more prowess,
     Than Vandal that e'er was, or now is.

Now I'm a man so meek and humble,
I don't allow myself to  grumble,
Am loth your patience thus to batter,
But starving is a serious matter ! 4i
    41  But starving is a serious matter!
  Many a worthy  London  Alderman  will most
feelingly sigh a dolorous response to this pathetic
complaint. 
5$
 Another reason too, may't please ye,

 Why thus I dare presume to tease ye ;

 If you my wrongs should not redress,

 We all must be in one sad mess ! 42


 The credit of our craft is waning,

 Then rouse at this my sad complaining ;


    42 We all must be in one sad mess !
  The sound is here a most correct echo  to the
 sense; like the


 of Homer ; the

   Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit  ungula
 campum,

 of Virgil; the

       Many a lusty thwack and bang,

 of Butler;

   And ten low words oft creep in one dull line,

of Pope,  &c.  Indeed, gentlemen, I shall  almost
be tempted to pronounce that person a sorry sort
of a simpleton, who  does not see, or seem  to see,
the lengthened visage and  hanging lip of our
learned Esculapian Fraternity, depicted with the
phiz-hitting pencil of a Hogarth, in  these eight
beautiful  and appropriate monosyllables. 
59
For, though my fate now seem the rougher,
Still you as well as /must suffer.

Behold !  A rising Institution, 43  (/)
To spread Perkinean delusion ;
Supported by a set of sturdymen,
Dukes, quakers, doctors, lords, and clergymen !

Unblushing at the knavish trick,
I fear these fellows  soon wrill kick
(A thing of all things most uncivil)
One half our physic to the d-v-1!

And then, alas ! your worships may
Be forc'd to moil the live long day,
With hammer, pickaxe, spade, or shovel,
 And nightly tenant some old hovel.

     43 Behold a rising Institution
   The builders of this second edition of the Tow-
er of Babel must be confounded  ; and that they
 will be,  most certainly,  provided the measures
 herein after recommended, be fully and manfully
 carried into effect. 
60
Or, destitute of food and lodging,
Through dark and dirt}- lanes be dodging,
Unless t' avoid such dismal lurkings,
You put a powerful paw on Perkins.
Behold what ought to raise your spleen high,
Perkins supported by Aldini ! 44
It must have been most sad, foul weather,
From Italy to blow him hither.
My wrath, indeed, is now so keen, I
Ev'n wish, for sake of that Aldini,
This ink were poison for the wizard,
This pen a dagger in his gizzard !
     44 Perkins supported by Aldini !

^  These two wonder-working wizards are said to
effect their necromantic manoeuvres by the ■appli-
cation of the same  principle  to  the  animal  ma-
chine.  But the latter does not, in so great a de-
gree, infringe on our privileges,  for he begins
where we  leave off, that  is,  after the patient is
dead;  whereas Perkins, by his  pretended easy
and expeditious mode of curing those who ought
to depend solely on  'Death and the Doctor,'  is a
more formidable foe to our profession. 
61
For he ('tis told in public papers)
Can make  dead people cut droll capers;
And shuffling off death's iron trammels,
To kick and hop like dancing camels,
To raise a dead dog he was able, 4j
Though laid in quarters on a table,
    43 To raise a!*fcead dog he was able.

  1 Dr.  Aldini, now-in London,  lately exhibited,
' at the house of Mr. Hunter, some curious expe-
4 riments on the body of a dog newly killed, by
' which the company, then present, were exceed-
' ingly astonished  at  the powers of Galvanism.
' The head of the animal was cut ofll'.  The head
' and  the  body were put beside each other on a
' table, previously  rubbed with a solution of am-
' monia.   Two wires,  communicating  with the
' Galvanic trough,  were then applied, the one in
* the ear, the other at the anus of the dead animal.*
' No sooner had those applications been made than
' both head and body were thrown into  the  most
' animated muscular motions.   The body started
' up with  a movement, by  which it passed over
' the side of the table.  The head equally moved,
1 its lips and teeth grinning most violently I'  Vide
the Morning Post of January 6th, 1803.
                      I 
62
And led ium, yelping, round the town,
With two legs up, and two legs dowrn; 4*
And, in the presence of a posse
Of our Great Men, and Andreossi,
He show'd black art of worse description,
Than e'er did conjuring Egyptian
He cut a bullock's head, I ween,
Sheer off, as if by guillotine;
    46 With two legs up, and two legs down.
  Your worships will perceive that I have detailed
some  particulars relative to this famous experi-
ment, which were omitted in the above statement
from the Morning Post.   But should any gentle-
man among you presume to intimate that I have
stated one syllable which is not strictly  and lite-
rally true, I shall embrace the fashionable mode
of resenting the affroi.t.   I  have  two pistols in
my garret.  Let him who dares dispute Dr. Caustic
take his choice.  Then, unless

    ' Pallas should  come, in shape of rust,
    ' And 'twixt the lock and hammer thrust
    ' Her Gorgon shield, and make the cock
    1 Stand stiff as 'twere transform'd to stock,'

I will make it apparent that I am a man of honour'
as well as veracity. 
63
Then (Satan aiding the adventure)
He made it bellow like a Stentor ! 47.
And this most comical magician
Will soon, in public exhibition,
Perform a feat he's often boasted,
And animate a dead pig-------roasted.
With powers of these Metallic Tractors,
He can revive dead malefactors;
    47 He made it bellow like a Stentor!
  ' Some curious Galvanic experiments were made
' on Friday last, by Professor Aldini, in  Doctor
1 Pearson's Lecture Room.  They were instituted
' in the presence of his Excellency the Ambassa-
' dor of France, General Andreossi, Lord Pelham,
' the Duke of Roxburgh, Lord Castlereagh, Lord
' Hervey, the Hon. Mr. Upton,  &c.   The head
' of an ox, recently  decapitated,  exhibited asto-
{ nishing effects; for the tongue being drawn out
' by a hook fixed into it, on applying the exciters,
' in spite of the strength of the assistant,  was re-
' tracted, so as to  detach itself, by tearing itself
' from  the hook;  at the same time,  a loud noise
' issued from the mouth, attended by violent con-
' tortious of the whole head and eyes.'   See Morn-
ing Post of February 16th, 1803. 
64
And is reanimating daily,

Rogues that were hung once, at Old Bailey! 4*


   48 Rogues that were hung once, at Old Bailey.
  ' The body of  Forster,  who was executed on
' Monday last,  for murder,  was conveyed  to a
' house not far distant, where it was subjected to
' the Galvanic Process, by Professor Aldini, under
' the inspection of Mr.  Keate, Mr. Carpue,  and
' several other Professional Gentlemen.  M. Al-
' dini, who is the nephew of the discoverer of this
' most  interesting science, shewed the eminent
' and superior powers of Galvanism to be far be-
' yond  any ether stimulant in nature.  On the first
' application of the process to the face, the jaw of
' the deceased criminal began to quiver; and the
1 adjoining muscles were horribly contorted,  and
1 one eye was actually opened* In the subsequent
' part of the process, the right hand was raised and
' clenched, and  the legs and thighs were set in
* motion.
  ' It appeared to the uninformed part of the by-
' standers, as if the wretched man was on the eve
' of being restored to life.  This however was im-
' possible, as several of his friends, who were near
' the scaffold, had violently pulled his legs, in or-
1 der to put a more speedy termination to his suf-
' ferings.'  Vide  the Morning Post of January 2 2,
1803.
  It is to be hoped, in case this Mr. Professor un-
dertakes any future operations of this nature, that
some more choletic dead man will not only clench
his fist like Forster, but convince him, by dint of 
65
And sure I am he'll break the peace,
Unless secur'd by our police;
For such a chap, as you're alive,
Full many a felon will revive.

And as he can (no doubt of that)
Give rogues the nine lives of a cat;
Why then, to expiate their crimes,
These rogues mu*t all be hung nine times.

What more enhances this offence is,
'Twill ninefold Government's expences;
And such a load, in name of wonder,
Pray liow can Johnny Bull stand under !

Then why not ri ;e, and make a clatter,
And put a stop to all this matter—
Why don't you rouse, I say, in season,
And cut the wicked wizard's weasand  !

pugilistic demonstration,  that he is not  to disturb
with impunity those who ought to be at  ' rest from
their labourt.'
                   I 2 
66
For Gentlemen, the devil's to pay,
That you forsake the good old nay,
And tread a path, so very odd,

So unlike that vour fathers trod.
With what delight the poet fancies
He sees their Worships plague old Francis ; <9
   49 He sees their Worships plague old Francis.
  Dr. Francis  Anthony.   The  author of the
Bivgraphia Britannica relates apitil'ul tale respect-
ing the persecutions suffered by this obstinate old
schismatic.  '  He was,'  says that writer, ' a very
' learned physician  and chemist, the son  of an
' eminent goldsmith in London.  Was born  April
'  16th, 1550.  In 1569  he was sent to the univer-
' sity of Cambridge; in 1574 took the  degree of
' A. M.  &c.  he.   He began soon after his arrival
' (in London) to  publish to the world the effects cf
' his chemical  studies.   But not  having taken the
1 necessary  precaution  of addressing himself to
' the College of Physicians for their license, he fell
' under  their displeasure; and being some time
' in the year 1600 summoned before the President
' and Censors, he confessed that he had practised
♦ physic in London for six months:, and had  cured
' twenty persons  or more of several diseases.'  [A
most atrocious crime!  1 trust very few, if any of
your Wet-ships would be justified in confessing or
pleading guil'y to a similar indictment.]  ' About
' one month after he was committed to the Counter 
67
While he, sad wight, woe-worn and pale,
Is dragg'd about from jail to jail!
1 prison, and fined in the sum of five pounds pro ft-
1 teriliicitamfiraxin—that is, for prescribing against
1 the statutes of the College; but upon his appli-
1 cation to the Chief Justice, he was set at liberty,
' which gave so great an umbrage, that the Presi-
' dent and one of the Censors waited on the Chief
' Justice, to request his favour in preserving the
' College privileges: upon which Anthony submit-
' ted, and promised to pay his fine, and was forbid-
' den practice,  lie was soon after accused again
' for practising physic, and upon his own confes-
1 sion was fined another five pounds, which fine,
' on his refusing to pay, was increased to twenty
' pounds,  and  he was sentenced to be committed
' to prison till he had paid it.  Nor  was  the Col-
' lege satisfied with this, but commenced  a suit at
' law against him, in the name  of the Queen and
' College,  in which  they prevailed, and had judg-
' ment against him.   It appears that the learned
' Society thought him ignorant;  but there  were
' others of a different opinion, since, after  all these
' censures, and being tossed about from prison to
' prison,  he became Doctor of  Physic in  our own
'  Universities'.'
   This is  the substance of the proceedings of our
ancestors against ihe Arch-Heretic; from  which
we learn the absolute necessity of a  still  more ri-
gorous piosecution  of those disturbers of society,
who have  the  impudence  to cure their  patients
without your License.  Had this old fellow been 
6S
For he was such a stubborn dragon,
He would not down and worship Dagon;
That is to say, would not acknowledge
Supremacy of your Great College!

And wrhat was worse, if worse could be,
And rais'd their ire to such degree,
That they to Tyburn swore they'd cart him;
He-cur* d folks ' non secundum artem.''

His patients sarSd, from mere compassion,
Though killing was the most in fashion !
Then well your fathers ire might burn as
Hot as the fam'd Chaldean furnace!

Thus, when the heretic Waldenses,
With their co-working Albigcnses,
Found what they thought they might rely on,
A nearer way to go to Zion,

hung, or ' burnt off,' as he deserved, the business
would have  been finished at once, and none would
afenviuds have dared ever to call in question your
supremacy!                         «■ 
69
Those saints, who trod the beaten path,
Were fill'd so full of godly wrath,
They burnt them off, nor thought it cruel,
As one would burn a load of fuel!

These things I note, to bring to view
Some noble precedents for you :
The chapter needs not any comment;
Then pray don't hesitate a moment.

But, hark! what means that moaning sound!
That thunder rumbling under ground!
What mean those blue sulphureous flashes,
That make us all turn pale as ashes!

Why in the air this dreadful drumming,
As though the devil himself were coming,
Provok'd by magical impostors,
To carry off a Doctor Faustus!

Wliy scream the bats! why hoot the owls!
While Darwin's mid-night bull-dog howls !so
Say, what portends this mighty rumpus,
To fright our senses out of compass [ 
70
'Tis Radcliffe's  sullen sprite now rising,5*

To warn you by a sight surprising,

More solemn than a curtain lecture,

Or Monk-y Lewis' Spanish Spectre '.32
  50 Why scream the bats! why hoot the owls!
     While Darwin's midnight bull-dog howls !

  A delectable imitation of Dr. Darwin's delight-
ful pair of lines—
  '  Shrill scream the famished bats and shivering
       owls,
  (  And long and loud the dog of midnight howls.

To  prevent  any post obit disputes among those,
who may hereafter peruse this  sublime  passage,
I have thought it advisable  to designate the
species, of the dog which howls so horribly on this
©ccasion.

    51 'Tis Radcliffe's sullen sprite now rising.
  This shows Pluto to be a God of correct calcu-
lation .
  Had he sent one of your water-gruel ghosts, it
is a thousand to one if your Worships would have
paid the least deference to  the mandates of his
sooty highness.   If the ghost of old Dr. Radcliffe,
so famed in the  annals of bullyism, and who is
said to  have killed only  one British Queen  (her
successor Queen  Ann, choosing rather to evade
a similar fate, dispensed with his  attendance), be
not  sufficient  to  rouse  you  at  this  momentous
crisis, your cause is lost for ever. 
71
Now, in a sort of moody mutter,
These awful sounds I hear him utter,
Which make my heart to beat and thwack it,
And burst the buttons off my jacket!
1 'Tis not from motives of endearment
* That I have burst my marble cearment j
     5*  Or Monk-y Lewis' Spanish Spectre!

   I would have  no impudent slanderer insinuate
 that I mean to bestow on the Right Honourable
 M. G. Lewis, M. P. any opprobrious epithet.  No,
 gentlemen,  I  did  not say Monkey.  The  term
 which I use is an  adjective, legally  coined from
 the substantive Monk; and I affix it to this Gen-
 tleman's name as an honorary appellation, to which
 he is  entitled  for having written that celebrated
 romance called ' The Monk.'   As to the  Spanish
 tpectre,  you will please to consult the Romance
 aforesaid, and you  will find a most horrible ballad,
 by which it appears that a certain Miss Imogene
 was carried off on her bridal night,  if I mistake
 not, by  the Ghost of one Don Alonzo, to whom
 she had been betrothed, but proved false-hearted.
 I would,  however,  caution against reading  this
 doleful ditty by candle-light, lest the story of
  ' The worms they  crept in, and the worms they crept out,
  ' And they sported his eyes and his temples about,'

 might sport  with the senses of the more timid
reader. 
•72
No; I'm from Hades, in a hurry,
To make above ground one d—d flurry ?33
Arm'd, as the dread occasion urges^
With Ate\ borrow'd snakes and scourges,
I come to rouse ye into action,
To crush the Perkinisinsr Faction.
Why stand ye now, with stupid stare,
Hen-hearted cowards, as you are?

Arise! and quickly gird  your might on,
And into battle then rush right on!
    52 To make above ground one d—d fiurry!

  I earnestly  request  that the learned College
will not do me the injustice to suppose that a man
of my delicacy and refined feelings would myself
utter any phrase, which has so much the semblance
of profanity.  But as  this personage, before he
passed that fatal ' bourne* (from which one ' tra-
veller' has ' returned') had ever been accustomed,
like most of our profession, to rhetorical flourishes
of this kind, it must be expected that, on such an
important occasion,  he  would express himself
with all his wonted energy; and my  veracity  as
an  historian  obliges  me to  give verbatim the
speech which the sprite did in  fact deliver. 
73
* Go! teach Perkinians their errors,
' In tampering with the King of Terrors!
« Go! teach the varlets to defy
* Our great and terrible Ally!

' Don't say to me, you stupid dunces,
'  That you're not fond of broken sconces;
'  Don't say to me, you've no delight in
' The dreadful, awful, trade of fighting.

' For you might chace them many a mile, and
' E'en bid them, scampering, quit our island,
' And still your carcases be strangers
i To troublous toils, and desperate dangers.

* Appear in field,  the battle's won ;
' Your phizzes show—L—d how  they'll run!
' But you're like sheep, a sort of cattle,
1 That one can't well drive into battle.

1 O could I but affairs contrive
1 To be for one half hour alive,
' What thunder-bolts of indignation
' I'd hurl at imps of Tractoration!
                     K 
74
' I'll batter ye with Pluto's bludgeon,

< Unless to battle you now budge on,

' And make more bluster with your train,

1 Than devils in a hurricane !


* I'll drive ye down'-^but dawning day

Bids bullying phantom hie away;

While horror makes each hair stand stedfast,

Like quill of hedgehog in our head fast!


So stood the Premier of our Nation,

When Robson bawl'd out' Defalcation !

' Government's robb'd by wicked men,

< Andcannotpay "nineteenpoundsten!!!"54

   54 And cannot pay 'nineteen pounds ten! ! !*

  The terrible shock given not only to Mr. Ad-
dington,  but to the credit of the British nation,
by this famous sally of that teasing, testy, que-
rulous, alarming, honorable, cidevant member of
the House of Commons, is undoubtedly fresh in
the recollection of every person, who has the least
smattering in  parliamentary debates: and every
true patriot and friend to the Peace of------our
Prime Minister, will congratulate the country  on
the failure of  Mr.  Robson's election, as well as
that of his co-operator, Mr. Jones, into the new
parliament. 
75
So petrified stood bull and bear,

Of Stock Exchange, when the Lord Mayor,

With vile chagrin and terror quaking,
Found Hawkesbury's Letter all a take-in. 55
Now should you slight the dire monition
Of this ill-boding apparition,
You truly will be well deserving
The dreadful destiny of starving !
O then, dread Sirs, brimful of rage,
War ! horrid war !  is yours to wage,

To extirpate the deadly schism,

The heresy  of Perkinism!
   55 Found Hawkesbury's Letter all a take-in.
  Now I know the man who cobbled up the fa-
mous humbug Peace with France, which, in my
opinion,  was  a manoeuvre that did honour to its
inventor.  He tenants a garret adjacent to mine.
But Dr. Caustic is an honourable man, and twice
the 50001. offered by the Stock Exchange, with the
5^01.  by  the  Lord Mayor, for his apprehension,
would  not tempt  him to expose the neck of his
friend  to the  noose  of  justice.  This I premise
that  the  Bow-street officers may not misapply
their time and talents  in any futile attempts to
wheedle or extort the secret. 
76
Pursue the steps that learned sage hath,

The most redoubted Doctor Haygarth,

Who erst o'er Perkins' sconce at Bath,

Broke a whole gaily pot of wrath! 5*
    56 Broke a whole gallypot of wratht
  I beseech you, gentlemen, to suspend your im-
patience relative to this  wonderful achievement,
till  you have soared through a few stanzas.   In
the  mean time, however, I wish that this my  fa-
vourite hero, and burthen of my song, should stand
high with your worships, and be the object of the
humble admiration, not  only of your honourable
body, but of mankind in general; and  I myself
shall take the liberty to trample on all those, who
dare call  in question  his infallibility.   I have a
knowledge of but few,  who more deserve to be
trodden upon on this occasion than the conductors
of certain foreign Literary Journals, who, not aware
of the inconceivable services which  Dr. H. has
rendered  the  medical  host by  his ardent zeal
against their common enemy, Perkinism, have ex-
pressed their sentiments of him, and his wOrks,
with that indifference,  which must have arisen
from their want of knowledge of his achievements.
  Among the most prominent of this junto should
be mentioned the Medical Repository, at New-York*
conducted by professors  Mitchell and Miller, of
that place, the former of whom I understand is a
representative in the Congress of the United States,
an  eminent physician, and the  celebrated author
of what is usually termed the l Mitchellian Theory
* of Contagion,' alterations in the French Chemical 
77
Oh ! could I sing Haygarth's chef d'ceuvre,

That mighty magical manoeuvre,


Nomenclature, &c  The latter, I am told, is like-
wise a physician of great respectability.
  Now that two such characters should presume
to represent Dr. H. as a man, whose ' vanity is
'  more conspicuous than his ability,' is a circum-
stance which, while it excites my surprise, rouses
my  resentment.  However,  to accomplish  their
disgrace and his renown,  I  shall  concisely  state
his magnanimous conduct to them,  and their un-
gracious return.
  Dr. PI. in great condescension to the poor wretches
of the United States, who, through the ignorance
and inexperience  of  their medical  practitioners,
were likely to be extirpated by the Yellow Fever,
addressed them in an affectionate  letter, and pro-
claimed the barbarity and unskilfulness  of  their
physicians,  in a very appropriate and becoming
manner.  He even kindly apprised the Academy
of Medicine, at Philadelphia, that their proceed-
ings and reasonings on the disease among them
were ' frivolous, inadequate, and groundless,' and
communicated many other facts equally useful and
important.
   Now, whether his statements were true or  false,
those foreigners ought to have been  grateful to
Dr. H. for honouring them with the information.
But, on  the contrary, they  say  that ' a poison,
' which,  in  the city of New-York, has destroyed,
' within  three  months, the  lives of more  than
' twenty practitioners of medicine,  well deserves
' to be  traced  and  understood by the survivors.'
They even have the audacity  to assert, that' Anie-
                     nt 2 
                     78

That feat, than which, you'll own, if candid,
None greater ever mortal man did!
t rican Physicians and Philosophers who have view-
' ed the rise and progress of pestilence ;—walked
' amidst it by day and by night, year after year,
' and  endured its violence on their own persons,
' almost to the extinction of their lives,' ought to
be as  competent judges of the cause and cure of
the disease as Dr. Haygarth,  who has never seen
a case of it.
  After entering into a copious, (about 20 pages)
and what they seem to thi,:k a learned, investiga-
tion of my great friend's theory and sentiments,
they have dared to refute his reasoning, and turn
it to ridicule.
  These presumptuous writers  finally close their
unreasonable account of Dr. Haygarth in  quota-
tions from Dr. Caldwell, who, it appears, is a Fel-
low of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia,
and a very ungentleman-like./t>//oiy too, for he has
also had the rashness to descant on some  of the
works of Dr. Haygarth in terms following.
  ' Perhaps he  (Dr.  Haygarth) may found the
' boldness of his pretensions as an author on the
' matuiity of his years.  Many writers less youth-
' ful are more modest; and it is to be lamented that
{ grey hairs give no  infallible earnest of either wis-
{ dom or liberality.   We will not positively assert
' that  he is not a man of profound erudition, but
' we have no reason whatever to convince us that
' he is.  Perhaps he may pride himself on being a
' native of the same country which produced a Har-
< vey, a Sydenham, a CuU.n, and a Hunter.  We 
79
But ere I * sweep the.sounding lyre,'
Or tune Apollo's fiddle higher,
I'll steal (although it cost a halter)
A  brand from Delia Crusca's altar.

f O thou !' who soard'st to heights sublimcr
Than e'er before attain'd by rhymer;
Till even my good  friend Apollo
At distance gaz-'d, but dar'd not follow.

' Genius, or Muse,' who hadst propensity
To seem to strive to stretch immensity ;
Whose * airy lays,' quoth  Bell's fraternity,
Would last through more than one eternityj

(Although  it seems, the deuce is in't,
Those very lays are out of print,
A  proof this age does not inherit
One ounce of true  poetic spirit!)
1 intreat him to remember, that weeds may infest
' the same ground which has been over-shadowed
* by the lordly Adansonia, and that the same clime
* gives birth to the lion and  the jackal.'   Medical
Repository,  vol. V. p. 333.  Oh, fie! fie! 
80
O come, and bring (delightful things)

A pair of Delia Cruscan wings,

That we, by sublimated flight,

May ' STEM THE CATARACT OF LIGHT.'
Then condescend to be my crony,

And guide my wild Parnassian pony,

Till our aerial cutter runs 57

Athwart * a wilderness of suns !'58


     57 Till our aerial cutter runs.
   My mode of commencing an airy tour, mounted,
Muse and Co. on a poetical pony, which by the
way is metamorphosed into a cutter, may, perhaps,
be objected to by your fastidious critics,  as a
liberty even beyond a poet's licentiousness.  But
there is  nothing  which we Men of Genius more
thoroughly detest, than any attempt to fetter our
faculties with  the frigid rules of  criticism.  Be-
sides, sense or nonsense, poetry or gingling, it is
perfectly Delia Cruscan.

     5%  Wilderness of suns!
   This ' proud' passage, together with { O thou !'
 —< Genius   or  Muse !'—and ' Cataract of
 Light 1'—are the legitimate offspring of that
 Prince  of Poets, who rose to such a towering flitch
 of poetry,
        That oft Hibernian opticks bright
       Beheld him fairly out of sight." 
81
But GifTord comes, with  why and wherefore ,59
And what the devil are you there for ?
I should have been happy to have fascinated your
Worships with further specimens of the same sort
of sublimity,  could  I  have  retained  them  in
memory.   1 have  been  so  solicitous  for  your
gratification in this particular, that I have made a
painful, though bootless  search, throughout the
Metropolis and its suburbs, for these more than
sybiline oracles.  Indeed I have reason to fear
that  all Delia Crusca's effusions are irretrievably
lost,  except the few fragments I have here pickled
for the behoof of posterity.
    59 But Gifford comes, with why and wherefore.

  The admirers of your polite poetry can  never
iufficiently anathematize the author of the ' Baviad
and Maviad' for extirpating,  root and  branch,  a
species of sentimental ditty, which might be scrib-
bled, without the trouble of ' sense to pose;' an
object  certainly of no  small consequence  with
your bon ton readers and writers of rhyme.   How
could a sentimental ensign,  or love-lorn  lieutenant,
be better employed, than in  sobbing over ' Laura's
tinkling  trash,'  or weeping  in concert with the
' mad jangle of  Matilda's lyrer'  Besides, there
ought to be whipped syllabub adapted to the  palates
of those who cannot relish ' Burns' pure healthful
nurture.'  Mr. Gifford  should be sensible, that
reducing poetry  to the standard  of common sense
is clipping the  wings of genius.  For example,,
there is no describing what sublime  and Delia 
82
 Then tells a tale about the Town,

 Coutriv'd to lessen our renown.


 Says, if we rise but one inch higher,

 We set our hat and wig on fire ;

 And that he'll bet us ten to one

 We shall be scorch'd like Phaeton.


 Then I and Clio, as the case is,

 Must now resume our former places,

 But still, to keep up our renown,

 We ride a ' gairish sun-beam'  down !


 And nowr once more, in humble station,

 We'll jog along in plain narration;

 And tollutate o'er turnpike path,60

 To view the conjuring crew at Bath.


 Cruscan-like capers I  should myself have been
 cutting in this  * Wilderness  of  suns;' for I was
 about to prepare a nosegay of comets, and string
 the spheres like beads for a lady's necklace ; but
was not a little apprehensive lest Mr.  G. or some
other malignant critic, should persuade the public,
that my effusions of fancy were  little better than
the rant of a bedlamite. 
83
Behold!  great Haygarth and his corps 6l
Of necromancers, just a score,
    60 And tollutate o'er turnpike path.
      They rode, but authors having not
      Determin'd whether pace or trot,
      That is to say, whether toliutation,
      As they do term't, or succussation.
                         Hudibras, Canto 2.

    61 Behold ! great Haygarth and his corps.
  I here wish  to give  a concise sketch of the
Doctor's necromantial process, so well calculated
to give  the Tractors the kick out  of Bath and
Bristol, where they were rapidly making the most
sacrilegious  encroachments  on  the unpolluted
shrine of our profession.  I would recommend
similar  proceedings to  every Member  of the
College, and every worthy brother  who is  truly
anxious to  preserve the dignity and honour of the
professional character.  But would premise, that,
when the like experiments are  made, which, I
trust, will  be very generally  by  the whole pro-
fession,  I would particularly recommend that the
Doctor's prudence, in not admitting any of the
friends  of  the  Tractors at the scene  of action,
should be strictly imitated ; and also his discretion
in choosing, as subjects  for the  experiment, the
ignorant and miserable paupers of an  infirmary,
whose credulity will assist very much in operations
of this sort.  I also enjoin them  to  bear in mind
his hint, '  That if any  person would repeat the
* experiment with wooden tractors,  it  should be 
84
Enter the drear abodes of pain,
Like death of old and horrid train!
1 done with due solemnity ; during the process the
* wonderful cures,  said to be performed by  the
4 tractors, should be particularly related.  Without
' these  indispensable  aids,  other  trials  will  not
f prove so successful as those which are here
' reported.'  (Playgarth's book, page 4.)
  It can scarcely be  necessary for me to hint to
my discreet brethren,  in addition, that should they
try the real Tractors afterwards (which, however,
I rather advise them not to do at all) the  whole of
these aids of the mind are to be as strictly avoided.
I had like to have forgotten to say, that the means
used  in the instance which follows, to  increase
the.solemnity of the scene, were a capital display
of wigs,  canes, stop-watches;  and a still  more
solemn and terrific  spectacle, about a score of the
brethren.   The  very  commencement serves to
show  how ' necessary' was all this display,  to in-
sure the success of  these wooden Tractors.
  ' It was  often necessary to play the part of a
1 necromancer, to describe circles,  squares,  trian-
' gles, and half  the figures in geometry, on the
' parts affected, with the small end of the (wooden)
' Tractors.  During  all  this time  we conversed
' upon  the discoveries of rranklin and  Galvani,
' laying great stress on  the power of  metallic
' points attracting lightning, and conveying it to
' the earth harmless.   To a more  cunous farce I
' was never witness.  We Mere almost afraid to
' look each other in the face, lest  an involuntary
' smile  should remove the mask from our  coun- 
85
He comes! he comes! good heaven defend us!
With magic rites, and things tremendous!
^ tenances, and  dispel the charm.'  (Haygarth's
 book, page 16.)
   A very ingenious friend of Dr. H. and the glo-
 rious cause in which he is engaged, has conceiv-
 ed an improvement on this process.  While the
 above operation is going on, surely, the adroit
 necromancer would handle his virgula divinitoria
 with far greater effect, and himself appear much
 more in character, by using a  suitable incanta-
 tion.   The following has therefore been proposed
 for the general use of the profession.

       Hocus!  pocus ! up and down !
       Draw the white right from the crown!
       Hocus ! pocus ! at  a loss !
       Draw the brazen rod across!
       Hocus! pocus! down and up!
       Draw them both from foot to top!

   Lest you should not have sufficient ingenuity t©
 comprehend the object of Dr. Haygarth in produc-
 ing these operations on the minds of those pau-
 pers, by the aid of such  means as he employed,
 I must try to explain it.   It was to induce an in-
 ference on the part of the public,  that if,  by  any
 means whatsoever,  effects can be produced  on the
 mind of a poor bedridden patient, whether such
 effect be favourable or unfavourable (as the latter
 was  often the case in Haygarth's experiments)
 ergo,  Perkins's Tractors cure diseases by  acting
 on the mind  also,  whether on a human or brute
                      I, 
86
With such as serv'd the witch of End or

To make the powers of hell surrender!


Now draws full many a magic circle,

Now stamps, and foams, and swears nieherc'le!

As old Canidia us'd to mutter once,

Just as her Datmon gave  her utterance!


Now tells each trembling bed-rid zany

Terrific talcs of one Galvani;

How Franklin kept,  to make folks wonder,

A warehouse full of bottled thunder !


Thus Shakspeare's Macbeth's wicked witches

Even carry'd matters to  such pitches,

In hoity-toity midnight revel,

The old hags almost rais'd the devil!


subject.  Should any person be so  uncivil and
unreasonable as to start the objection to this lo-
gic,  that with the same  propriety all medicines
might also be supposed to produce their effects,
by an action on the mind,  I  particularly advise
(provided such person  be a noted coward)  that
you  challenge him or her to a duel: but if, on
the contrary, he or she be  a terrible Mac Namara- 
87
And now our tragic-comic actors
Torment a pair of wooden Tractors;
All which, with many things they more did,

In Haygarth's book you'll find recorded.
But if Haygarthian rites infernal

Should fail our foes to overturn all;

Seek ways and means to lay them  level,
Without one conjuror,  witch, or devil.
If you can find some one among

You, who don't value being hung; 6a

Perhaps the readiest mode would be

To  kill the conjuring Patentee.
like fellow, modestly reply that it was all a joke,
and you hope there was no offence.

    6» You, who don't value being hung.
  I trust,  gentlemen, you will not startle at my
supposing a willingness among some of  your ho-
nourable body to submit to this operation.  You
must  believe enough of puedestination  to know
that a man who is born to be hung can  never be
drown'd ; and a little serious  consideration will
therefore shew that,  as the event must happen, it
might as well be submitted to first as last. 
88
 But still I have some hesitation

 To recommend assassination ;

 Although I'm sure 'twould not be cruel,

 To pop off Perkins in a duel.


 For this you've precedents quite ample,

 Full many a glorious example,

 From Goths and Vandals, out of temper, cr

 A certain crazy Russian Emperor. 63


 For if the Conjuror were shot dead,

 By a rude harum-scarum hot-head;

 Then might we quickly crush the flummery

 Of Tract'ring mischief-making mummery.


    63 A certain crazy Russian Emperor.

   Czar Paul, Emperor of all the Russias,  &c.
 who had  a very benevolent desire to settle  the
 disputes, which agitated Europe, by virtue of tilt
 and tournament, among those potentates, whose
 quarrelsome dispositions so often set their sub-
jects by the ears.   Had such combats taken place,
 I am positive that our George would have given
 the Russian bully  a most tremendous threshing. 
89
Perkins destroy'd, the Institution

Will be o'erwhelm'd in dire confusion;
And we shall easily be able

To overturn this modern Babel.
So, if a wolf should silent creep

T' attack by night a flock of sheep,
He'd not attempt the whole together,
But  first invade the old bell-wether. 64
Let not the thought of Jack Ketch scare ye,
But at him like brave Mac Naniara,
    64 But first invade the old bell-wether.

  This sublime simile, gentlemen, will meet the
unequivocal approbation of those, who are ac-
quainted with the rustic manners and natural his-
tory of Kamtschatka.  This leading weather of a
flock of sheep is ever invested with a bell, pendent
from his neck by a collar, not only as an honorary
badge  of distinction, but for the purpose of alarm-
ing the shepherd, in  case of invasion  by any of
the merciless tenants of the forest. The wolf al-
ways make;, it his first object to silence this  jing-
ler, that he may with the greater impunity destroy
his  fleecy companions.
                    L 2 
90
Avenge our wrongs in mode as summary
As he adopted with Montgomery.

For if said Mac be crown'd with laurel,
Who kill'd a Colonel in a quarrel,
About two dogs, (g) between two puppies,
Most mighty Sirs,  my trust and hope is,

That nobody will think it is hard
For us to shoot a conjuring wizard,
Since all allow, sans hesitation,
That we've receiv'd vast  provocation.

And if our champion's full of fury,
When he kills Perkins, then the Jury,
(Provided they are made to fit him)
Will most assuredly acquit him. 65

     ^5 Will most assuredly acquit him.
   Why not,  as  well as acquit Capt. Mac, who
evaded all harm, in consequence  of his not per-
mitting the ' sun to go down on his wrath.' Mr.
Justice  Grose,  however,  appears  to me to have
proved himself to have been a very gross justice, 
91
And when the foe is sent to Hades,

Our champion, among the ladies,

Will be a favourite, for they want

A bully always as gallant.  66
in telling the jury that the law does not recognize
certain nice distinctions which are adopted by men
of honour.   If, however,  his assertion be true,  it
is proper that there should be an Act of Parliament
passed immediately,  giving  us  gentlemen the
privilege of killing each other, which would save
government the expence  of hemp, hangmen, he.

    66 A bully always as gallant.

  The ladies will not suppose that I mean any
reflection on the beautiful part of the creation, for
they very well know that ' none but the brave
deserve the fair.' 
si'   if-   l■ '~r  •';),'! 01 a  j vowiti taker, tbfrht.  j' i'l,l^r l':i:';'
'•  10jjUe ! iM;'-A^vanLsK4feii-Iy jttt^s^ht&||.j;WlQgljj;!;J! 
        CANTO   III.


             MANIFESTO.



               ARGUMENT.

    The Poet now, with Discord's clarion,
    Preludes the war we mean to carry on;
    And sends abroad a proclamation
    Against Perkinean conjuration;
    Proves that we ought to hang the Tractors
    On gibbet high, like malefactors,
    And with them that pestiferous corps,
    Who keep alive the paltry Poor;
    By reasons sound, as e'er were taken,
    From Aristotle, Locke, or Bacon.


But if you cannot find some one,
As bold as  Attila the Hunn,
T' attack the conjuring tractoring  noddy,
And fairly  bore him through the body ;


Collect a host of our profession,
With all their weapons in possession;
And vi et armis, then wre'U push  on,
And crush  Perkinean Institution. 
94
But fir^t, in flaming Manifesto,
(To let John bull and all the rest know,

Why  we should on these fellows trample,

And make the rogues a sad example)


Say to the public all you can say,

Of magic spelL, and necromancy;

That  Perkins and his crew are wizards,

Conceal'd in sanctimonious vizards.
Say to the public all you can say,

Of wonder-working power of fancy :

Tell what imagination's force is

In crows and infants, dogs and horses: 67


    f>7 In crows and infants, dogs and horses.
  These are among the patients whose cures are
attested in Perkins's publication, in which  he has
introduced them to show that his Tractors do not
cure by an  influence on the imagination.  The
fallacy of any deductions, drawn from such cases,
in favour of the  Tractors,  Mill be apparent from
the  following most learned  and elaborate  investi-
gation of the subject.
  There are no animals in existence, I shall in-
contestibly  prove, that are more  susceptible of
impressions from imagination, than those  above-
mentioned. 
95
Tell how their minds—but here you old men
May trust the younkers under Coleman; 6*
  To begin with the crow.  Strong mental facul-
ties ever indicate a vivid imagination ; and what
being, except  Minerva's beauty the owl, is more
renowned  for  such faculties, than the  crow.—
Who does not  know that he will smell gun-powder
three miles, if it be in a gun, and he imagine it be
intended for his destruction?   These emblemsof
sagacity, besides ' fetching  and carrying like a
'  spaniel,'  and talking, as well or better than
Colonel Kelly's parrot, (which by the  bye I sus-
pect to  have been a crow) are, as Edwards assures
us in his ' Natural History' ' the planters of all
'  sorts of wood and trees.'  ' 1 observed,'says he,
'  a great quantity of crows very busy  at their
'  work.  I went out  of my way on purpose to
'  view  their labour, and I found they were plant-
'  ing a grove of oaks.'  Vol. V. Pref. xxxv.
   These genuises always can tell, and always have
told, since the  days  of Virgil, the approach of
rain.  That poet says,

   ' Turn Comix plena pluviamvocatimproba voce.'

   They can likewise  tell when bad news is com-
ing, as we learn from the same writer,

   ' Sxpe sinistra cava prxdixit ab ilice Comix.'

   Now I beg  leave to know what mortal can do
more I  and to suppose  a crow not blessed with
those more brilliant parts, under which imagina- 
96
For graduates at horses' college,

Most certainly are men of knowledge !


tion is classed, is to do them a singular injustice,
which I shall certainly resent on every occasion.
  Now as to infants.  Whoever has been in the
way of an acquaintance with some of the more
musical sort of these little gentry, (like my seven
last darlings for instance) and has been serenaded
with the dulcet sonatas of their warbling strains,
will  not be disposed to deny their powers on the
imagination of others.  I have known the delusion
practised so effectually by these young conjurors,
that I have myself imagined  my head was actual-
ly aching most violently, even on  the point of
cracking open; but on going beyond the reach of
their magic spell, that is, out of hearing, my head
has been as free from pain as it necessarily must
be at this  moment while I am penning this lucid
performance.   Now  I  maintain it  to be most
unphilosophical, and totally  opposite to certain
new principles in ethics,  which I shall  establish
in a future publication,  to  suppose that infanta
should be able  to  impart either pleasure  or pain,
by  operating on the  imagination,.and not them-
selves possess a large share of that imagination,
by the aid of which they operate to so  much effect
upon others.
  Next come dogs.   Dr. Shaw, in his ' Zoology,'
Vol. I. p. 289, informs us, ' that a dog belonging
' to  a nobleman  of  the  Medici  fmily,  always
' attended his  masters table, changed the plates
' for him, carried him his wine in a glass placed
' on a salver, without spilling  the smallest drop.'
The celebrated Leibnitz mentions another a sub- 
97
That though imagination cures,
With aid of pair of patent skewers,
ject of the Elector of Saxony, who could discourse
in an  ' intelligible  manner,' especially on  ' tea,
' coffee, and chocolate;' whether in  Greek, Latin,
German, or English, however, he has not stated;
but Dr. Shaw, alluding to the same dog, says, un-
doubtedly under the influence  of prejudice, ' he
* was somewhat of a truant, and did not willingly
' exert his talents, being rather pressed into the
* service of literature.'
  Indeed our greatest naturalists assure us, that
this  animal is  far before the human  species in
every  ennobling quality.   Buffon makes man a
very devil  compared with the dog; and  had he
come directly to the point, I presume  he would
have told us that the dog is one link above  man
in the  great chain from the  fossil  to the angel.
1  Without the dog,' says Buffon, ' how could man
'  have  been able to tame and reduce other animals
'  into slavery ?   To  preserve his own  safety,  it
'  was necessary to make friends among those ani-
'  mals  whom he found capable of attachment. The
1 fruit of associating with the dog was the conquest
'  and the peaceable possession of the earth.  The
1  dog will always preserve his empire.  He reigns
'  at the head of a flock, and makes  himself better
'  understood than the voice of the shepherd,'  (well
he might, for it appears he is more knowing,  more
powerful,  and more just.)  ' Safety, order, and
'  discipline,  are the fruits of his vigilance and ac-
'  tivity.  They  are a people submitted to his ma-
                      M 
                     98

Still such relief cannot be real,
For pain itself is all ideal 69
- nagement, whom he conducts and protects, and
' against whom he never employs force but for the
1 preservation of peace and good order.'  Barr's
Buffon, Vol. V. p. 302.
  It is to me somewhat remarkable that theorizing
Frenchmen, many of whose discoveries are scarce-
ly less important than my own, cannot make them
apply, in such a manner, as to effect some practi-
cal good in  society.  Buffon discovered that  a dog
was  a species of demi-god,  and appears on the
point of worshipping this  great Anubis of the
Egyptians.  Voltaire tells us, that Frenchmen are
half monkey and half tiger, and every body knows
that the  one is insufferably mischievous, and the
other infinitely ferocious.   Now it is surprising
that these philosophers could not contrive to im-
prove  the  breed  by a little  of the canine blood.
Indeed I should advise them to import some of
our Bond-Street male puppies, to be  paired with
French female monkies, and 1 will venture  to as-
sert there will be very little  of the  tiger perceiva-
ble in their offspring.  And since a dog, as Buf-
fon says, ' reigns v>ith so much dignity, '  at the
' head of a flock, will always preserve his empire,
' never employs force but for the preservation of
1 peace and good order,' and is endowed with so
Kiany other great  qualifications, which  seem to
denote him to be  a proper personage to  wield
the sceptre of dominion, I would seriously ad-
vise the Abbe Sieyes, when he frames his 999th 
                      99

Say that friend Davy, when he was

Inspir'd with his oraculous gas,


constitution for the free French Republic, (which
it  is said he has already begun to manufacture),
so to organize the Executive branch, that at least
one of the Consuls should be a true blooded En-»
glish Bull-dog.
   After the ample proof I  have now given of the
infinite superiority of the dog to  man, when his
merits are fairly estimated, which it is very diffi-
cult for us, being interested, to do without preju-
dice, I shall take it for granted, that he must pos-
sess all the brilliancy even of a poet's  imagina-
tion, and therefore that he is far more likely to
be cured by imagination than any man.
  It now remains to speak of horses, and these,
(not to men-ion the Bucephalus of Alexander, or
the Pegasus of Doctor Caustic) I  shall show, in a
very few words, can  boast of performances and
qualifications, to which a lively fancy in the com-
parison is but as  the wit of an  oyster to the wis-
dom of a philosopher.  One of the most scientific
nations that ever  existed,  renowned alike for its
refinements in the arts, and prowess in war, has
been compelled to yield the palm to the superior
attainments of a  horse, and acknowledge its ina-
bility to achieve what he most readily effected.
Ten long years was the whole power of  Greece
engaged in an ineffectual siege of far-famed Troy.
The bravest of armies, commanded by heroes  al-
lied to the gods, assailed the foe in vain.   At this
disheartening period stepped forth a wooden horse,
and promised a victory, provided his plans were 
100
Utter'd this solemn truth, that nought
E'er had existence, only  thought! I9
 adopted.   Aware of the horse's  great  capacity,
 which enabled him to comprehend a great number
 of subjects, the  sagacious Greeks  entered into his
 measures, and Troy was levelled in the dust.
   If  all this could have been  accomplished by a
 wooden horse, none but a Perkinite will be so ab-
 surd  as to pretend that one composed offlesh and
 blood, like man, does not enjoy far greater privi-
 leges, among which are those of receiving as ma-
 ny cures  by the influence of  imagination  as he
 pleases.
   Now then,  gentlemen, I trust that if any man
 will con over,  digest, comprehend, and admit this
 my ingenious and learned exposition of the fallacy
 of the arguments in favour of the Tractors, so
 much harped upon by our adversaries, which are
 drawn from the  circumstance of their having cur-
 ed  crows  and infants, dogs and  horses, he will
 with great facility be enabled to confound and over-
 throw them on all occasions, provided he enforce
 and proclaim it  with the ardency  its  importance
 deserves.

    68 May trust the younkers under Coleman.

   Search  the field of science, and you will not find
 labourers  more in want of employment  than the
 above gentry.  For so prolific  is this Alma  Mater
 in qualifying the rising generation  of veterinaries,
 that three months looking on, and  twenty guineas
fee to the ingenious professor, will convert the 
101
What though they say, why to be sure,

If we by Fancy's aid can cure ;


veriest dunce into a veterinary  of the first water,
to the no small discomfiture of every farrier within
many miles of his range.
   But 1 would  by  no  means  recommend  your
trusting to the Professor himself for any aid in this
business.   No,  he  has no interest in  the  affair.
Let the Tractors  cure all the infirm horses in
England, and what cares the professor?   Why he
has only to put up  his petition, as he has done
already several times, under the dome of St. Ste-
phen's, and all wants are  satisfied.   Fifteen hun-
dred a year, besides cheese-parings, to twice the
amount, are no inconsiderable matters in the  esti-
mation of a garreteer  like Dr. Caustic.  Were
Parliament to reward me  for my discoveries and
labours, for the good of the human, in proportion
to their munificence to the Professor for his ser-
vices  to the caballine race, I should have  had a
dozen Dukedoms, and the Clerkship of the Pells,
which was lately given, by his  provident  Sire, to
Master Addington, into the bargain.
   Trust, therefore,  the ycunkers under Coleman ;
for they, being actuated by the  same spirit  which
impels me to attack Perkinism, will prove power-
ful allies in  our  glorious cause.


    69 For pain  itself is all ideah

   So said the learned Bishop Berkley, in a  sciei*-
tific treatise called  ' Principles of Human Know-
ledge,' in which his Reverence makes it apparent,
to those who have a  clue  to  his  metaphysical
                       M 2' 
102
Then why not use Imagination,
A cheap and simple operation ?
Say Nature through her works intends
All things to answer some great ends:
Thus  she  form'd  drugs to  purge and
    SHAKE,

Then  man, of  course,  those drugs  to
    take. 7i
labyrinth, that there is no such thing as matter,
entity, or sensation, distinct from the mind which
perceives, or  thinks it perceives, such ideas or
substances. The Bishop's authority being so pat
in point, I cannot but admire that it has not more
frequently been  adduced in opposition to the
Tractors.

    7° E'er had existence, only thought I

  For the particulars of this important discovery
turn back to Note 9.

    7* Then man, of course, those drugs to
        TAKE.

  This capital argument, that it might make a
capital figure, I have ordered my printer to put
in capital letters, and I hope it will make a ca-
pital impression on your Worshipful intellects.
But still I have not given it half that pre-eminence 
103
That learn'd physicians pine with hunger, V-
The while a spruce young patent-monger
which its importance  claims, under existing cir-
cumstances.  A great hue and cry has been raised
by the Perkinites, by which some of the less pe-
netrating part of the profession have been awed
into silence, respecting the duty of medical prac-
titioners.   They say that it is the duty of a Me-
dical Man to employ only such means as will cure
his patient in the most safe, cheap, and expeditious
manner. This infamous pretension takes its origin
from no other person than Perkins himself. That
you may individually be aware of  the effrontery
with which it is brought forward, I shall, in this
note, copy from  Perkins's book  his  manner of
treating the subject.   Your Worships  will form
some idea of the  magnitude of this objection of
our adversaries, in their own estimation, and the
mischief it has already occasioned,  not  only in
Great Britain, but abroad, when I inform you  that
it has been echoed in both the English and foreign
Journals, and in many of them treated  as a com-
plete refutation of the arguments of Dr. Haygarth,
and of all who object against  the Tractors, on
account of their curing diseases merely by ope-
rating on the imagination.  Among other foreign
publications,  I  observe  that the 2 1st  volume of
the  Bibliotheque Bri.-.unni-jue, printed at Geneva,
closes a long account (40 pages) of < Perkinismc'
with this ' petite histoire de Mr. Perkins.' 
                     10 i

Contrives to wheedle simple ninnies,
And tractorise away our guineas.
  * A gentleman came from the country to Lon-
' don, for the advantage of Medical  assistance,
' in a complaint of peculiar obstinacy and distress.
' After being under the care of an eminent phy-
' sician several weeks, and paying him upwards
* of  thirty guineas,, without any  relief, he was
' induced to try the Tractors.   To be  short, they
' performed a remarkable cure; the  person was
' perfectly restored in about ten days..   The phy-
' sician calling soon after,  was  informed of the
' circumstance.  He began lamenting that so sen-
' sible a person as the patient  should be caught
' in the use of so contemptible apiece of quackery
' as the Tractors.  After assuring the patient that
' he had thrown away his five guineas, for that it
f was well established by Dr. Haygarth,  that a
1 brick-bat, tobacco-pipe,  goose-quill, or even the
' bare finger,  would perform the same cures, he
' was interrupted by his patient: " And are you
" sincere in your belief that you could have pro-
" duced,  by those means, the same effects upon
" me, which I have experienced from the  Trac-
*( tors?"   " Do I believe it?  Ay, I know it; and
" that a thousand similar cures  might be effected
" by means  equally  simple and  ridiculous."—
" And  Sir," interrupted the gentleman again, in
* a more  stern and serious  tone, " why did you
" not cure  me  then  by those simple means ?
" Remember I have paid you thirty guineas, un-
" der the  supposition that you were  exerting
" your utmost endeavours  to cure me, and that
" in the most safe, cheap, and expeditious manner. 
105
That many thousand cures attested
Show death's cold hand full oft arrested;
 " You now in substance acknowledge,  that, al-
 " though in possession of the means of restoring
 " me to health, for the dishonourable  purpose of
 " picking my pocket,  you continued me  upon the
" bed of sickness I   Who turns out to be the  im-
 " postor.  Let your  own  conscience  answer."
 ' The justness of the retort, it will be easily be-
 ' lieved, precluded the possibility of an  exculpa-
 1 tion.'
                 Perkins's New Cases, p. 145.

   Had I  been the  physician,  however,  I would
 have rejoined with arguments, not dissimilar to
 that which is so beautifully expressed in the above
 stanza.   I would have told him that the Author
 of Nature most certainly would not have created
 either a  poisonous or salubrious vegetable, with-
 out  intending that it  should ' dose and double
 dose' his creature man.
  Should it be objected that the Tractors being
 also created substances ought  also to  be used, I
 could ingenuously retort, that they were created
 in America, a country, whose natives are Indians,
 an inferior order of beings to man, as some great
 philosophers before me have asserted, and who,
 it is evident, are the only order of creatures, on
 whom it  was intended the  Tractors  should be
 used.
  I have no particular wish to injure Dr. Jenner,
or I should positively overturn  him  and all his
 adherents with  my  resistless  arguments.   If I
were not willing that he should retain his popu- 
106
But those who from his prey would part hinj,

Should manage things secundum artem.


Iarity,  T should make it appear that the  small-pox
was created with  the intent of being universally
propagated among the human  race for the pur-
pose of mortifying female vanity ; and Jenner's
attempt to extirpate it, by substituting the cow-
pox, which ought to have  been confined to the
quadrupeds,  among which it originated, as the
Tractors ought to have been to the Indians, is the
extreme of presumption, and the height of ini-
quity.   I  cannot  but conceive that our  bishops
and clergy are very remiss in  not endeavouring
to dissuade  from  such enormous, innovating
practices.

     72 That learn'd Physicians pine with hunger.
  No man who possesses a heart, certainly none
who possesses bowels, can view  us reduced to this
deplorable condition, and hear  this pathetic ap-
peal, without the sincerestcommisseration.   The
eminent services that our profession have rendered
mankind,  in  contributing to avert  some  of the
greatest curses that ever befel  the civilized part
of the  world, are  too well known, and  have been
too  frequently acknowledged  to  be  forgotten,
ungratefully, in the day of our adversity.  The
testimony to  this effect  of  the judicious, the
humane Addison, ought often to be brought before
the public eye.
  'We may lay  it down as a maxim,' says that
intelligent writer, < that  when  a nation abounds
1 with  physicians  it grows thin ol people.  Sir
' William Temple is very much  puzzled to find 
107
That none should ancient customs vary,

Nor leges physic a mutare-,

And thus to gain a cure unlook'd for.

The patient save, but starve the doctor. 73
 • out a reason why the northern hive, as he calls
 ' it, does not send such prodigious swarms,  and
 ' overrun the world with Goths and Vandals, as it
 ' did formerly; but had that excellent author ob-
 ' served that there were no  students in physic
 ' among the subjects of Thor and Woden,  and
 4 that this science very much flourishes in the
 ' north at present,  he might have found a better
 4 solution for this  difficulty than  any of those he
 ' has made use of.'  Spectator, No. 2i.

     73 The patient save, but starve the doctor.

  This would be abominable.   Physicians, in ge-
 neral, are a hale hearty race  of men, as, indeed,
 must be  readily  conceived  from their  prudent
 maxims in regard to the preservation of their own
 health:—they take no physic.  No, they are too
 well acquainted with its tendency.  Now to starve
 so sturdy and powerful a body, when his  Majesty
 is in want of such  subjects to  check the ambitious
 strides of restless Bonaparte, as appears from the
 King's Declaration  of this day (May the 16th4
 1803), in preference to letting  their miserable
patients  expire, whom  Providence evidently in-
 tended should die  off, is, I trust, too absurd and
 unreasonable an idea to be admitted. 
108
That, though the Perkinistic fellows
May have the impudence to tell us,
That they can muster, on emergence,
Renown'd physicians* learned surgeons;

With many other men of merit,
Philanthropy and public spirit,
Not your self-puffing sons of vanity,
But real Howards of humanity.

Say that those surgeons and physicians
Are but a conjuring set of rich ones,
Who, having made their fortunes, therefore
Have very little else to care for.

Since they've no interest nor right in
The very cause for which they're fighting,
Such non-commission'd volunteers,
In eye of law, are bucaneers.

And as by law a man may fire at,
At any time, a rascal pirate,
So wc, with justice on our side,
May hang these rogues before they're try'd. 
                     log

Then draw a just, but black comparison,
Which, if they've feelings left, will harrass 'em,
'Twixt Tractoring Perkinites, so smart,
And other dealers in black art.
That is, the chimney-sweeps, so sooty,

Whose deeds, like Perkinites, are smutty •,
But as they are aspiring geniuses,
Like Perkinites, they find Macaenasses. 74
But chimney-sweepers and Perk means

Are such a scurvy set of minions,

That not one rogue among them back'd is
Except by knaves retir'd from practice. 75
    74 Like Perkinites they find Macxnasses.
   The Perkineans have no cause to boast of the
extent of their patronage, for the poor tawny rep-
tile-chimney-sweepers have of late interested the
friends of humanity in their behalf quite as much.
Your Worships will derive from this circumstance
a very pleasant source for sneering at our oppo-
nents, which  I am  sure you will gladly embrace,
whenever opportunity presents.
    75 Except by knaves retir'd from practice.
  This, gentlemen, is a circumstance of no small
moment,  and which I trust you will see the neces- 
no
That though certificates he dish up,
From surgeon, doctor, parson, bishop; 7*
si,ty of looking at with some seriousness.   Some
of our profession have, to their eternal disgrace,
since their retirement on their fortunes, deserted
our cause, and are now to be found in the ranks
of our enemies.  These fellows have the presump-
tion to suggest that their duty to the interests of
the community supersedes that which they owe to
their old brethren, the unreasonableness of which
sentiment I conceive to be self-evident, and there-
fore shall not  trouble myself to prove it.  Several
have even addressed to the Perkinean Institution
communications in favour of the Metallic Trac-
tors, for publication, three of which are already
laid before the public.  The first on  this list, is
Mr. Lyster, late of Dublin, who having been above
20 years senior surgeon of the Dublin Hospital,
retired  to Bath, where  he  now seems  even to
take delight in benefitting the mean and misera-
ble poor,  to the wanton injury of his own dear
brethren.  To shew the extent of his malice, he
has, in his communication to the Perkinean So-
ciety, introduced statements of remarkable cures
by the Tractors ; among others one  of total blind-
ness of many  years duration, in which all medical
skill had previously  failed; and,  to wind up this
tale of infamy, he has even ventured to censure,
indirectly, my great champion, Dr. Haygarth, and
to hint that his proceedings were not accompanied
with honourable intentions I
   Next on this trio list are Mr. Yatman, of Chel-
sea, and  Dr.  Fuller, of Upper Brook-street, the 
Ill
From gentle, simple, yeomen, squires,
'Tis written, 4 that all men are liarsP
conduct of both of whom is equally, if not more
reprehensible than Lyster's.  These two also call
in the lame, the halt, and the blind, and, as if to
spite their brethren  who have drugs to sell, cure
them with  the Tractors without fee or reward!
Such conduct is so  atrocious that  if your Wor-
ships should think proper to have them indicted,
and Mr. Erskine or Mr. Garrow object to defend
the cause of such clients, I Counsellor Caustic (re-
member I am LL.D.) will manage it for you, and,
provided I  can but get that same jury which  de-
cided that Capt. Macnamara was not accessary to
the death of Col. Montgomery, I will procure  the
defendants to be sent to Botany Bay, or at least
as far as Coventry.
   To shew the barbarity and wantonness of these
two men,  I will close this note  by  the  following
quotation from the letter of one of them, Dr. Ful-
ler, who, after a practice  of  nearly 30  years in
medicine, and by which he has secured his own
independence, seems now  to amuse himself in
undermining those of us, who are still dependant.
After a statement of a number  of great cures by
the Tractors, and proving, by his  own trials on
infants, &c. that they do not act on imagination,
which  Dr.  Flaygarth  so laudably attempted to
shew, he proceeds:----' I derive much satisfac-
'  tion in noticing among the more liberal and re-
4  spectable  part of my profession an increased fa»
4  vourable opinion of Perkinism, and a readiness
4  to allow of its  use among their patients, when 
112
That grant his Tractors cure diseases,

Folks ought to die just when God pleases;
4 proposed by others.  To expect more than this,
4 would be to expect more than  human nature in
4 its present state will admit.  It must be an ex->
' traordinary exertion of  virtue and humanity for
4 a medical man, whose livelihood depends either
' on the sale  of drugs, or on  receiving a Guinea
4 for writing a prescription, which must relate to
4 those drugs,  to say to his patient, '4 You had bet-
44 ter  purchase a set of Tractors to  keerj in your
44 family ; they will cure  you without the expence
44 of my attendance, or the danger of the common
44 medical practice."  For very obvious reasons
4 medical men must never be  expected to recom-
4 mend the use of Perkinism.  The Tractors must
4 trust for their patronage to the enlightened and
4 philanthropic out of the profession, or  to medi-
' cal men retired from practice, and who know of
' no other interest than the luxury of relieving the
4 distressed.   And I do not despair of seeing the
- day, when but very few of this description as
' well as private families  will  be without  them.'
If Dr.  Fuller were obliged to live  in my garret
one month, he would sing a different tune.

      /6 From surgeon, doctor, parson, bishop.

   The following statement (an arrant lie, I dare
 fcay), I copy  from the report of the  Perkinistic
 Committee, on the establishment of their institu-
 tion.   The reasons  for adducing it  here are two-
 fold,  both of which are weighty.   First, if it be
 false, we  shall be able to blow  them up at once, as 
113
But most of all the dirty poor,
Who make, quoth Darwifi, good manure. 77
 authors of infamous lies;  and secondly, if it be
 true, I need not suggest to you the  pressing  ne-
 cessity there  is for your exertions in arresting a
 growing monster, that is making such rapid strides
 in the invasion of your rights. Hear the following:
   4 Mr. Perkins has annually laid before the pub-
 4 lie a large collection  of new cases, communicat-
 4 ed to him for that purpose, by disinterested and
 4 intelligent characters, fro an almost every quarter
 4 of Great-Britain.  In regard to the competency
 4 of these vouchers, it  will be  sufficient simply to
 4 state, that, amongst  others  whose  names have
 4 been attached to their communications, are eight
 4 Professors in four different Universities, twenty-
 4 one regular Physicians, nineteen Surgeons, thirty
 4 Clergymen, twelve of whom  are Doctors of Di-
 4 vinity, and numerous other characters of equal
 4 respectability.  The  cases published  by  these
 4 gentlemen amounted  in March last, the date of
 4 Mr. Perkins's last publication, to aboutfive thou-
 1 sand.  Supposing that not more than  one  cure
 4 in three hundred, which the Tractors have per-
 4 formed, has been published, and the proportion
 4 is probably much greater, it will be seen, that the
 k number, to March last, will have exceeded one
4 million five hundred thousand 1'
  Now, as I suggested in the beginning of this
note, I have no hesitation in pronouncing the whole
of this statement a string of infamous falsehoods,
 and these pretended respectable characters who
                    N 2 
114
That when the Russians, logger-headed,
Were kill'd by Frenchmen, ever dreaded,
have given their sanction thereto, are neither more
nor less than pensioners of Perkins.  And, as by
the mouth  of two or three witnesses every word
may be established, I hereby offer myself to join
in forming a Trio to go before the Lord Mayor,
and take an oath to that  effect.  Then the busi-
ness will be done.  I have in my eye  a young
surgeon at Bristol, who, I dare say, will make one
most readily, and I am sure that a very redoubted
apothecary of the same name, at Newington, will
turn out for another.

     77 Who make, quoth Darwin, good manure-

  Besides the advantage of  shewing how reve-
rently this  great  philosopher and  philanthropist
could speak of religion,  I am sure I shall render
an essential service to agriculturalists, by adduc-
ing the following quotation.   I bring it  forward
the more readily, as I find that the Board of Agri-
culture have been so negligent of the interest of
that  noble  art,  as not yet to have recommended
the universal adoption of this measure:
  4 There should be no burial places in churches,
4 or church-yards, where the monuments of departed
4 sinners shoulder God's altar and pollute his holy
4 places with dead men's bones.   But proper bu-
4 rial places should be consecrated out  of towns,
4 and divided into  two compartments,  the earth
4 from one of which, saturated with animal de- 
115
Darwin rejoic'd the filthy creatures
Would serve for stock to make musquitoes. 7&
4 composition, should be taken away once in ten
"* or twenty years, for the purposes of agriculture,
* and sand or clay, or less fertile soil, brought into
1 its place.'   Darwin's PhytolcJgia, p. 242.


     7? Would serve for stock to make musquitoes.

   Among other speculations also in the cause of
humanity, bequeathed us by this friend of man,
are the following, which will prove a  great con-
solation to those who have foolishly supposed that
the blood-shed and  devastation, produced by war,
were circumstances which ought to be lamented*
   These  remarks are published by Dr. Darwin,
as written under his own observations in the ma-
nuscript of  his book, by a 4 philosophical friend,'
whom he left in his  library.  It is supposed, how-
ever,  that the Doctor wrote them himself.  At
least the sentiments have his sanctiom
  4 It consoles me  to find, as  I contemplate the
4  whole of organized nature, that it is not in the
4  power of any one personage, whether statesman
4  or hero, to produce by his ill employed activity,
4  so much misery as might have been supposed.
4  Thus if a Russian army, in these  insane times,
4  after having endured a laborious march of many
4  hundred miles,  is destroyed  by  a  French army*
4  in defence of their  Republic, what has happened?
4  Forty thousand  human creatures,  dragged  from
4  their homes and connections, cease to exist, and
*  have manured the  earth j but the quantity of or- 
116
And also urges with propriety,
That war's no evil in Society;
But has a charming  operation,

To check excess of population.
4 Superfluous myriads, from the earth,'
Are swept by pestilence and dearth; 79
4 ganized matter, of which they were composed,
4 presently  revives in the forms  of  millions of
4 microscopic animals, vegetables, and insects, and
4 afterwards of quadrupeds and men ; the sum of
4 whose happiness  is, perhaps, greater than that of
4 trie harassed soldiers, by -.vh.se destruction they
4 have gained their existence!  Is  not this a con-
4 soling idea to a mind of universal sympathy ?
4 I fear you will  think me  a misanthrope,  but  I
4 assure you  a contrary  sensation dwells in my
4 bosom; and though I commisserate the evils of
4 all organized beings,' ' Homo sum, humani nihil
4 a me alienum puto.'  Phytologia, p.  5 58.

    79 Are swept by pestilence and dearth.

  Last words of Dr. Darwin.
  I take no small credit to  myself, for being one
of the first  to bring into notice the latest and the
most  sublime of this  sublime philosopher's sub-
lime speculations.  The fountain from which this
radiant  stream of illumination  flows  is  denomi-
nated, among booksellers,4 The Temple of Na-
ture.' 
117
Which drive his philosophic plan orly
As well as blunderbuss, or cannon.
  To paint all  the writer's conceptions of the
mansion of that  old Lady, and her own most sin-
gular qualifications, would be a task even beyond
the abilities of a Caustic.  Mr. Fuseli, however,
has painted his conceptions on the occasion, which,
in one of his designs, appear, so far as I can com-
prehend him, to be simply these :—In his Frontis-
piece to the Work, he  represents one beautiful
lady pointing  at, or rather fumbling about (some-
what indecently I  must confess) a middle or third
breast of another beautiful lady, whom I suppose
to be Dame Nature ;


     Than  which there's nothing can be apter
     To fill philosophers with rapture.


[your Worships  will excuse my  bursting into
poetry, for the idea set all my insides into such a
Delia Cruscan-like ferment, that I should certainly
have burst open,  had  it not  thus overflowed].
This third breast  I take to be the painter's em-
blem of the Discoveries of Dr. Darwin—implying
that their existence is as evident as that a woman
has three breasts.   But, not to digress; the Doc-
tor ascertains that

   4 Human progenies, if unrestrain'd,
   4 By  climate friended, and by food sustain'd
   '  O'er seas  and soils prolific hordes would spread
   4 Ere long, and deluge their terraqueous bed. 
118
That, in this world's great slaughter-house,

Not only sheep and calves and cows,

But 4 man erect, with thought elate,'

Must 4 duck' to death his stubborn pate. 8°
  4  But war and pestilence, disease and dearth
  4  Sweep the superfluous myriads from the earth.

                  Temple of Nature, Canto iv.

  Some  wnphilosophical theorists have foolishly
supposed that this sweeping plan of Dr. Darwin,
which  that  philosopher  appears to have  intro-
duced, lest 4 prolific hordes' should 4 deluge their
terraqueous beds,' might as well be deferred till
a few  of the 4 superfluous'  acres on the  earth's
surface were reduced to a state of cultivation.  I
should advise to employ these  supernumeraries
in navigating polar  ices within  the tropica,  as
recommended by the Doctor in the ' Botanic Gar-
den,' were I not apprehensive lest I should therehy,
in some  measure,  destroy the operation of Saint
Pierre's  Tides.  See  Note 36.

     80 Must 4 duck' to death his stubborn  pate.

  More last words of Dr. Darwin.

     4 The brow of man erect, with thought elate,
     4 Ducks to the mandate of resistless fate.'

                  Temple of Nature, Canto iv.

  I have exhibited this couplet at all the  assem-
blages of my poetising brethren in Grub Street 
119
That in said butcher's shop, the weakest

Should always be 4 kill'd off' the quickest,

Because Dame Nature gave the strongest

The right and power to live the longest.


That since to 4 die is but to sleep,' 8l

And poor diseas'd  are scabby sheep,


and St. Giles's, not omitting the inhabitants of the
4 Wits corner, at the Chapter Coffee-house, the
elevated tenants of the Cider Cellar in Maiden
Lane, and Col. Hanger's 4 Knights of the Round
Table,' all of whom agree in acknowledging the
elegance and correctness of the  metaphor, and
that its beauties are so transcendantly exquisite,
and beyond the ken of  mortal eye, as to be per-
fectly incomprehensible.

       81 That since to  4 die is but to sleep.'
    4 Long o'er the wrecks of lovely life they weep;
    4 Then pleas'd reflect, to die is but to sleep.'
                 Temple of Nature, Canto ii.

   I suspect that my intimate friend  and corres-
 pondent Bonaparte, is  a full convert to Dr. Dar-
 win's doctrine  of death and  its  consequences.
 For, when he declared to Lord  Whitworlh  his
 determination  to invade England, although  there
 were an hundred chances to one in favour of his
 going to the bottom,  he was undoubtedly calcu-
 lating on  a comfortable nap after the fatigues of
 government. 
120
That none need care a single button
If we should make them all dead mutton.
That deatl> is but a trivial thing,

Because a toadstool, or a king,

Will, after death, be sure to rise

In bats and bed-bugs, fleas and flies. 8a


Besides, they'll make, when kill'd in fight,

Vast4 monuments of past delight;' 83


      8* In bats and bed-bugs, fleas and flies.
  4 Thus,  when a monarch or a mushroom dies,
  * Awhile extinct the  organic matter lies;
  4 But, as a few short  hours or years revolve,
  4 Alchemic powers the changing mass dissolve ;
  4 Born to new life unnumber'd insects pant, 8cc.
                  Temple of Nature, Canto iv.
  It has been a matter of curious inquiry among
some of my corresponding garretteers,  whether
this philosopher himself,  in the latter  stages of
his existence, enjoyed much consolation from re-
flecting that the 4 organic matter' which entered
into his own composition, was about to be em-
ployed for the important  purpose of giving 4 new
life' to 4 unnumbered insects.'
    83 Vast4 monuments of past delight.'
  4 Thus the tall mountains, that emboss the lands,
  4 Huge isles of rock, and continents of sands, 
121
And that to think of is more pleasant,
Than such delight enjoyed at present.


Then no Darwinian philosopher
His conduct can contrive to gloss over,
And make it with his tenets tally,
Unless he round our standard rally.


And join in strenuous endeavour
The wretches' thread  of fate to sever,
   4 Whose dim extent eludes the inquiring sight,
   4 Are mighty monuments of past delight.'

  These 4 monuments of past delight,' Darwin
says,

   4 Rose from the wrecks of animal or herb.'

  Thus taught by this wonderous sage, I trust the
friends to humanity will suppose  it best to let the
poor,  infirm, and decrepid, die off as fast as pos-
sible,  to 4 manure the earth,' that the  ' quantity
4 of organized mutter of which they were compos-
4 ed, may revive in the forms of millions of micro-
4 scopic animals,  vegetables and  insects,  make
4' monuments of past delight," &c.' Therefore it is
to be hoped, that the promoters of the Perkinean
Institution will prove as despicable in respect  to
numbers, as they are deficient in understanding,
especially in comprehending the  great and  glori-
ous truths of modern philosophy.
                     o 
                    122
That having met their final doom,
They may have rest, we—elbow room,

Say that the deepest politicians
Will join their powers with us physicians;
Assist to overset the flummery
Of Perkins' mischief-making mummery.

Nor suffer Tractoring rogues to cure
Such sordid shoals of paltry poor,
Of whom it truly may be said,
That they were ten times better dead.

For when the old Nick comes and  fetches
Away the dirty set of wretches,
Times will improve, because, the fact is,
T'will lessen poor rates, worst  of taxes.

Say that those wights of skill surprising
In science of economismo-
Who cook up most delicious farings,
From cheese rinds, and potatoe parings, 
125
Will thank us when this paltry band

Are 4 kill'd off,' to manure the land ;

And they will make, I ween, besides,

Morocco leather from their hides.


And so contrive that every coffin,

Which serves to lug a dead rogue off in,

Shall answer, if it be not made ill,

For living' child, a clever cradle. 8*


Say Perkinism should be levell'd;

'Tis Galvanism worse bedevill'd:

Indeed they both are but a schism,

From old exploded Mesmerism. 8-*


    8*  For living child, a clever cradle.
  In the enumeration of my plans for universal
improvements,  in  my  first Canto,  I absolutely
forgot to mention this scheme for public econo-
my.  I do  hope, trust, and believe, that, should
it strike the eye or the ear of the  generous and
unassuming Count Rumford,  it will  recommend
me to his kind notice, and  as much liberal patro-
nage, as he once extended to poor Doctor Garnet.

    83  From old exploded  Mesmerism.
  The  whole pretence of Mesmerism, or Animal 
12-1
Though fools say Perkins never took,
Like Mesmer and Do Mainaduc,

His patients wild imagination,

To join in aid of operation—
And though they say, on man and horse,
The Tractors act with equal force;

Still seme among us can get through it,
And swear old Satan helps him do it!
In proof of Tractoring defection
Proclaim that wise and learn'd objection,
The famous argument, so handy,
About their modus operandi.
Magnetism, was long since proved to be a fallacy,
and blown up accordingly, by a set of academi-
cians at Paris.   Our profession have shewn great
ingenuity  in their  endeavours  to persuade man-
kind that Perkinism rested on the  same founda-
tion, and ought of consequence to share the same
fate.  As it is ingenuously  determined to class
every innovation, which militates against our in-
terest, with some exploded practice, I would re-
spectfully propose  that your  Worships should do
the justice to the person, who first suggested the
idea of classing Perkinism with Animal Magne-
tism, of requesting his acceptance of a statue. 
125
That a physician should neglect

To notice e'en a good effect,
Unless the cause, as he supposes,

Is nine times plainer than his nose is;
And though it may be urg'd by some,
That this grave reasoning's all a hum,

Because the learn'd are in the dark

How opium, mercury acts, and' bark;
To such reply you'll make no answers,

For much I question if you can, Sirs ;
But rather for retort uncivil,
The poker  take and lay them level. 86
    86 The poker take and lay them level.
  Please not to imagine that I would be  under-
stood  to recommend this 4 retort courteous' in the
most unqualified sense, or that it be exercised on
every  occasion.  On the  contrary, the due  per-
formance of it will require no small degree of pru-
dence and discretion.  Indeed I would have you
use the polcrr,  or any other violent and weighty
arguments  of  this kind,  only when your antago-
nist happens to be a woman, a child, or some de-
bilitated  and  cowardly  wretch, who will  submit
without any chance of your meeting with unplea-
sant resistance.
                       o  2 
126
From Flaygarth, borrowing a rare hint,
Tell how these Tractors, 'tis apparent,
  As to the justice of this mode of response there
exists no doubt, and therefore dread no decisions
in furo  conscientia,  because the extreme heinous-
ness of  your adversaries' provocation will appear
from the  following consideration.  To deprive
you of an argument, for which you have sacrificed
every thing dear to  obtain, must, confessedly, be
regarded a most outrageous proceeding. Now this
is exactly the case in the present instance,  for, in
your attempt to show that medical men believe and
trust in no medicine, the  modus operandi of which
they do not comprehend, you make a sacrifice of
truth, decency,  and  comimm sense, the full reward
of which sacrifice you ought to enjoy unmolested.
That no man can explain how mercury cures the
syphilis, bark an intermittent fever, or opium pro-
duces sleep, is  confessed by every medical author,
and that all these should be  used in our practice,
without any hesitation, I never heard any person
deny, and for this proper and substantial reason,
their administration is profitable to the faculty.   I
have therefore  to repeat that, when the Perkinites
complain  of  your rejecting the use of  the Trac-
tors, because their  modus operandi cannot be en-
tirely explained, although you adopt the  use  of
drugs,  the operation of which is equally or more
inexplicable,  your  sacrifice  in  support of your
ground  is so great that, whoever attempts to drive
you from such ground, deserves  to be laid low
with the first weapon that comes to hand. 
127
The mo: t insidious things in nature,
Will e'en bewitch the operator! 87
    87 Will e'en bewitch the operator.
  No part of the learned Doctor's management,
in the  Anti-Perkinistic  cause, merits higher Eu-
logy than  his most rational  explanation of that
most irrational practice.  So  cogently does an in-
nate principle of equity controul me,  that I  am
absolutely  coerced to offer,  at the shrine of the
heroic Doctor,  my tributary  dole of the incense
of admiration, for having presented our profession
such a powerful knock-me-down argument, where-
with to buffet the common enemy.
  The sagacious Doctor having published a sci-
entific Treatise against  the Tractors, demonstrat-
ing that ' they act on the patient's  imagination,'
Perkins came out in reply, with all the  fury of an
Irish Rebel, and declared that the Doctor deserved
to be trounced for not  suffering his  readers to
know, that  the Tractors pretended to cure infants
and brute animals, though numerous cases to that
effect had then been published; and in that reply
proclaimed  that Dr. H. purposely endeavoured
to suppress such facts, that he might, with greater
facility, induce the public to swallow the deduc-
tions drawn from his magical manoeuvres in the
Bath and Bristol hospitals.  Now, admitting the
Doctor managed in  this way, I am sure he  was
perfectly right in so doing.   The end in  view,
according to established principles of modern mo-
rality, will  ever justify the means taken to accom-
plish that end.   In this  case, the end in view  was
most  important—nothing less than the downfall 
128
Will break down reason's feeble fences,
And play the deuce with our five senses!
of Perkinism, and the consequent aggrandisement
of our profession.  Should any of our opponents
be so captious  as to assert, that such principles
and such motives of action should  not'be encou-
raged in society—that  they  have a most  perni-
cious tendency, and other nonsense of that sort,
I must take the liberty  to refer them to the First
Consul of the  French Republic, whose conduct
has ever been  modelled according to the princi-
ples above stated, and who is certainly the most
powerful Logician of the age, perfectly able to
confound  those who  shut  their eyes against the
light of conviction.
   But to revert to the Doctor's Treatise, and Per-
kins's impudent replication.   The man who could
raise the very old Gentleman himself, by the le-
gitimate powers of necromancy, was not so easily
defeated.  Accordingly he returns to the charge in
another edition—admits the existence of the nu-
merous cases on infants, horses, Sec. but fays them
all level with the following unanswerable argu-
ment.—' The proselytes of Perkinism having been
4  driven from every other argument,  have, as a
4  last resource, alledged that the Patent Metallic
4  Tractors have removed the disorders of infants
4  and  horses.   Even this fiimsy pretence is capa-
4  ble of a satisfactory refutation.  In these cases
4  it is not  the Patient,  but the Observer, who is
4  deceived by his  own imagination ! 1!'  See Hay-
garth's Book, page 40.  Mirabile Dictu ! 
m
And act a part, so very scurvy,

They turn a man's brains topsy turvy \
Will so bewilder and astound one,
They make a lame horse seem a sound one !
Appear, with but three legs to wag on,
A Pegasus, or flying dragon ! !
Then quoth his ladies ecchymosis, 88
Which rose an inch from where her nose is ;
    88 Then quote his lady's ecchymosis.

  The celebrated story of the lady's ecchymosis
comes handed down to your Worships by five suc-
cessive reporters.  The lady incog, who makes so
cons/iicuous a figure  in  Dr. Haygarth's narration,
told another lady, who told a Medical  Friend of Dr.
H. who told Dr.  Caustic, who tells your  Wor-
ships  this important anecdote.  Now as 4  in the
multitude of counsellors  there is safety,'' so in a
multitude of reporters there  is certainty.  But to
the story, which T shall give in the language  of Dr.
H.'s Medical Friend aforesaid.
  4 A lady informed me  that a lady of her ac-
4  quaintance, who  had great faith in the efficacy
4  of the  Tractors, on seeing a small ecchymosis,
'  about the size of a silver penny,  at  the corner of
4  the  eye, desired to try on it the  effect of her fa-
4  vourite remedy.  The lady,  who  was  intended 
130
And was not bigger much, if any,

He states, than puny 4 silver penny.'
' to be the subject of the trial, consented, and the
4 other lady produced the  instruments, and after
4 drawing  them  four or five times over the  spot
4 declared  that it changed to a paler colour, and
4 on repeating the use of them a few minutes lon-
4 ger, that it had almost vanished, and was scarcely
4 visible, and departed in high triumph athersuc-
4 cess.  I  was assured  by the lady  who under-
4 went the  operation, that she looked in the glass
4 immediately after, and that not the least visible
4 alteration had taken place 1 1'   (From Haygarth's
Book, page 40.)
  I had determined to  exert my influence in all
the Medical societies, that the above case be.read
at the opening of each meeting, until there should
not be left of the Tractors, in this island,  4 a wreck
behind.'  But a far better plan  of Dr. H. himself
has precluded the  necessity of this measure, which
was to announce in all the advertisements of his
book  in the public papers, that ' it explains why
4 the disorders of infants and  horses are said to
4 have been cured by the Tractors.'  (Sec his daily
advertisements in the papers. ,
  Indeed, I am at a loss which to admire most,
the pretty  fanciful relation above cited, which is
all the new edition of the Doctor's Treatise against
the Tractors contains, to justify the assertion in
the advertisements before mentioned, or his  sin-
gular skill  in constructing such a fabric on  this
foundation.  Did I possess the talents of the Doc-
tor in the  advertising  department, I should an- 
131
"Twas then assailed, with courage hearty,
By juggling wench of Perkins' party,
And soon, to her beconjur'd eyes,
It seemed a thousandth part its size.
4 And now,' quoth she, I scarce can view it,
4 These Tractors are the things that do it;
1 Oh la! I vow, it's taken flight,
4 And vanish'd fairly out of sight.
nounce this my pithy performance to the public,
by publishing in all the papers, that the  price of
the Tractors was, in consequence of Dr. Caustic's
opposition, fallen to the price of old iron, and Per-
kin's pamphlets, having been proscribed  by phy-
sicians,  were condemned, and actually burnt by
the hangman on execution-day, at the Old Bailey,
in the presence of every individual of the College
of Physicians, and half the citizens of London.
  I would beg leave  to add to this incomparable
Haygarthian  demonstration  an argument of my
own, which I think is not less powerful.   It is im-
possible that  these Tractors should perform any
real cure,  as they act solely on the  imagination
either of the  patient  or the operator.   But cures
performed by the power of  imagination must be
imaginary cures, that is, no cures at all. 
132
But Madam Hoaxhoax, in her glass,
Beholding what it truly was,
Exclaim'd, l My last new wig I'll burn up,
4  If 'tis not bigger than a turnip! ! !'
In public papers, more's bis glory,
The Doctor advertiz'd this story;
And you'll confound the tractoring  folks
By Haygarth's talc of Lady Hoax. 89
    89 By Haygath's tale of Lady Hoax.

  It is not true, as some sagacious Coffee-house
politicians have asserted, that Madame Hoax (or
more correctly double Ploax) is  the wife of a Chi-
nese Mandarin, settled on the  Mountains  of the
Moon, in Abyssinia, for the purpose of ascertain-
ing the influence of imagination in the cure of dis-
eases.   No,  Gentlemen, she is a Baroness of true
English breed, more sturdy than a Semiramis, a
Penthesilea, or a Joan of Arc, and will prove, in
our cause, a championess of pre-eminent prowess.
Should your Worships wish for further acquaint-
ance with this Lady, which  in my opinion would
be for your mutual advantage,  you will take  the
trouble to enquire  at my garret,  No. 299, Dyot
Street, St. Giles's (having removed from my for-
mer place of residence, third  floor, 327, Grub,
Street, with  a view of being nearer my friend, Sir,
Joseph, in Soho Square), and her address shall be
at your service. 
133
Veil one more tale from ancient sages,
About the wondrous chain of ages,
  I am now preparing a most awful Tragedy for
Drury  Lane Theatre (Mr. Sheridan's approba-
tion being already obtained), to be ' intitled and
4 called' the '  Dreadful Downfall  of Ter-
4 RIBLE TRACTORISING  CONFOUNDED CONJURA-
4 tion;' in which 1 propose to introduce a New
Song,  that I have no doubt will be so celebrated
as to be the theme of every ballad-singer in  the
metropolis.  I cannot forbear  anticipating  some
small share of that applause, which 1 have reason
to suppose will be piled on Dr. Caustic, as soon as
he  is publicly known, as the Author of such an
inimitable production, by obliging your Worships
with a pare of the chorus to the song aforesaid.

         Come now let us coax
         Hogarth and Dame Hoax,
         Like true hearts of oaks,
         To crack off their jokes,
         While dreading their strokes,
         Those sheep-hearted folks,
       The tractoring Perkinites, quiver;

         O may  they with knocks,
         4 And shivering shocks,'
         Pound their jackets and frocks,
         '1 ill dead as horse-blocks,
         (O what a sad  box!)
         They're thrown in the docks,
       Or, just like dead cats, in the river!
                      P 
134
Gold, silver, brass, but not a link,

Compos'd of copper, or of zinc.
That, as it ever was the curse
Of man to go from bad to worse,
This age (the thought might e'en distract us)
Is that of vile Metallic Tractors!
That your last sixpence you will bet all,

Ages will follow of worse metal,
Unless this wickedness you stop,
To sweepings of a black-smith's shop \
Say that the devil never fails 9°
To eat a tiger, stuff'd with nails;
This song is to be set to Music by Mr. Kelly,  in
his very best stile of pathos, sublimity, and crotch-
ets, and to be delightfully demUsemi-quavered to
the admiring audience by Mrs. Billington.  Then,
if Box, Pit, and Gallery,  should not, una vcce,
Nick Bottom-like, cry, 4 Encore! Encore! Let her
4 roar! Let her roar!  Once more, Once more!'
Let the squeak and  the squall  be swelled  to  a
bawl,  Dr. Caustic  will  find the door!  find the
door!  and never  go there any more!! 
135
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 med'eines, 9*
With such effect, that faith she's dead since.
     90 Say that the devil never fails.
  This stanza contains a legendary tale, which I
dare say  is as true, as that which commemorates
a notable exploit of St.  Dunstan in seizing old
Satan, one dark night in the tenth  century, and
wringing the nose of his  Infernal Majesty with a
pair of red-hot blacksmith's pincers, which made
him roar and scold at such a rate, that he awaken-
ed and terrified all the good people of Glasten-
bury and its neighbourhood.

    91 In gulping Tractors down, for med'eines.
  An old lady  of  my acquaintance was actually
advised by an ingenious son of Galen, an Apothe-
cary, resident a few miles north of London,  to
swallow  Tractors for an internal complaint.  If
our profession were to follow this laudable exam-
ple,  and  force their patients to swallow them for
pills, and then give the public 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 public which it
justly deserves. 
136
Then make it plain, by quoting Greek,

That this old hag, of whom we speak,

More brass and iron took in one da}',

Than Satan all the week, with Sunday.
But should the public turn deaf ear to't,
Tell them that I know who will swear to't;
And testify the whole affair

Before his honour, the Lord Mayor!
Say Perkinism was begotten

In wilds where science ne'er was thought on ;
  9' In wilds where science ne'er was thought on.
  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 sci-
ence, where Perkinism originated, in the Monthly
Magazine of January,  1803, under the title of 4 Ani-
' madversions on the present State of Literature
4 and Taste in the United States,  communicated
4 by an English Gentleman lately returned from
4 America.'   This gentleman gives  information
that the Americans  are wretchedly 4  behind-hand
in science with the Britons.'  Indeed those trans-
atlantic vounkers ought, in half a century, to have
established universities and other  seminaries of
learning, at least as old and respectable as those oi' 
137
And had its birth and education
Quite at the fag-end of Creation !
For raree-show, to England smuggled,
That honest Christians, all bejuggled,
Oxford and Cambridge, and  which should have
graduated as many students and produced as many
great men.  As to the parsimonious spirit of Ame-
ricans in encouraging science (which this gentle-
man animadverts upon with laudable indignation)
it ought truly  to be exclaimed against by us En-
glishmen, for the weighty reason following : Great
Britain, 4 from time whereof the memory of man
4 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. Sec. consequently (according
to the same author) she ought to enjoy the exclu-
sive 4 customary privilege' of inflicting the horrors
of starvation on the sons of the muses : but it must
be granted, for the honour of British Munificence,
that the scientific  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 801. per annum !!
  This  instance of liberality, in rewarding merit,
has caused  me to  suspend my animadversions re-
lative 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 Caustic.
                     p 2 
138
Might tamely suffer B. D. Perkins

To pick the pockets of their jerkins.
Say it was twinn'd with monstrous Mammoth,93

And to go near it you'd be d—d loth,94
Because it always eats poor sinners,
As I eat bread and cheese for dinners !
  93 Say it was-twinn'd with monstrous Mammoth.
  And must, of course, be a most terrible wild
beast.—Ladies and Gentlemen may form a tolera-
ble 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,  Sec. under
the appellation Fuseli's  Milton Gallery.

    9* 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,  sanc-
tioned by long and invariable practice, if not found-
ed on act of Parliament, to enforce your sentiments
by  certain  energetic expressions, which,  in  the
mouths of people of less consequence, would be
considered as very vulgar, and nearly allied to pro-
fane sweari?ig.  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. 
                    139
Say that it is t Monstrum horrendum /'
As great a plague as God could send 'em.
Moreover 'tis ' Informe, ingcns /'
Brought up among the Western Indians.

Go on then 4 Lumen cui ademptum?
A worse thing Satan never dreamt on ;
And sure your Worships cannot urge ill,
Such classic matter—all from Virgil.

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

 GRAND  ATTACK!
               ARGUMENT.

  Now Caustic finding Logic sound
  The conjuring crew will not confound,
  Like an indignant hero blusters,
  The mighty Royal College musters ;
  Joins to your Worships' powerful Phalanx
  4 Death-doing' Quacks, and men of all ranks!
  A bolder, and more desperate host,
  Than Jacobinic France can boast.
  Then marches to o'erturn and knock dead
  Each tractoring Perkinistic blockhead;
  Their Institution next attacking,
  He sends them all to Satan—packing!


Our. 'foresaid Manifesto, first  done,
Which shows our cause a good and just one;
The boldest sons of Galen call on, 95
That they with fire and fury fall on!

    95 The boldest sons of Galen call on.
  I say the boldest, for we cannot rely on the aid
of the whole Esculapian  phalanx.   Many white- 
142
 Sound Discord's jarring tocsin louder,

 Than Howard's fulminating powder; 9*


 livered dastards who disgrace our profession have
 shewn a disposition to remain neuter,  or fight un-
 der Perkinean banners I

     9^ Than Howard's fulminating powder.
   It is a long time since the public have had any
 reports from the  honourable Mr. Howard's Ful-
 minating Powder, which, three years since, made
 so much noise, that the world had reason to expect
 that thunderiferous Chemist would make no more
 of exploding to Old Nick a whole army of French-
 men, with Bonaparte at its head, than would a
 Cockney Sportsman of shooting a tame goose on
 the first of September.
   Whether this mighty affair is  all blown  up, or
 what  may  have been  the  cause of the silence of
 those who defended a thing, which so  loudly pro-
 claimed its own merits, it becomes  Mr. Howard
 to explain.
  Of this he may  be assured, if he do not stir his
 stumps in order to fulfil some of the fair promises,
 which he and his friends have made lo the Royal
 Society and the Public, of the astonishing achieve-
ments they were about to perform, by the demi-
omnipotent  power of his new-invented  artificial
thunder,  I hereby give the alarming intelligence
that I will  apply my own superior talents  to this
sonorous subject.  Should that happen, those  lau-
rels which were designed to decorate the brow of
 Mr. Howard, will be tied in a bow-knot round mjr
venerable temples.  For, in that case, the learned 
143
Then into battle like brave men go,
Who late were 4 kill'd off,' at Marengo. 97
chemist's acquisitions, in the art of intonation, will
bear no better comparison to those of Dr. Caustic,
than the  clattering waggon-wheels of Salmoneus
to the world-astounding thunderbolts of Jupiter.
No person can doubt my being able to accomplish
all  this,  who is apprised, as he may be from  pe-
rusing this performance,  of the vast quantity of
the most detonating kind of mercury, which exists
in my composition, and which will fulminate with
greater effect, than the gold and silver that line the
magnipotent purse of  the honourable the heir ap*
parent to the Duke of Norfolk.

     97 4  Kill'd  off' at Marengo.
   I have several times taken a confounded deal of
trouble to haul into  my poem this beautiful  spe-
cimen of parliamentary  elocution; and, in  my
opinion,  nothing can be better imagined or more
happily  accomplished.  Poetry and Oratory, as
the ancients inform us, were both whelped at  one
litter ; consequently the same phrase which  glit-
tered in the harangue of my-bull-baiting friend,
William Windham, a British Senator, cannot fail
to cut a  dash in the stanza of his seraphical friend,
Christopher Caustic, a British Poet.
   Now as  I am a great admirer of  French Prin-
 ciples, and that  new and accommodating kind of
morality, by Frenchmen  discovered, and which I
ever  have  and  ever will  eulogise, to the utmost
extent of  my faculties,  perhaps your  Worships
will express ».o small degree of wendermtnt why 
144
But choose a chief before you start,
A bully bold as Bonapart1;
And to make sure of well succeeding,
Another chap like Charles of Sweden.
Step forth thou Potent Prince of Puffers!

Thou modern Hercules of huffers!

Whose name, as Sternhold us'd to say,

Will ring ' for ever—and a day.'
For thou canst sound (a thing the oddest,

Since an arch  Quaker should  be modest,

And never meddle with a strumpet,) 98

Thine own great name on Fame\ brass trumpet.


I should  be the intimate friend of a gentleman,
the blaze of  whose oratory, one would suppose,
would have blasted Bonaparte, and even singed the
whole French Republic.  But those, who are ad-
mitted behind  the political  curtain,  will perceive
that the  tendency of the  measures, which  Mr.
Windham supports, is to promote those Jacobinic
principles, of which Dr. Caustic openly and hone-alj
professes himself to be the determined propagator
and defender.

    98 And never meddle with a strumpet.
  Surely no person will imagine that 1 would, for 
145
And soon that name's continuous roar

Shall roll sublime from shore to shore;

Among th' Antipodes, be known,

And blaze through either frozen zone.  99


No more shall merciless reviewers

Stick full of satire's savage skewers

The mighty chief of whom I'm boasting,

As one would spit a goose for roasting. I0°


the world, allude to  any other lady than Madam
Fame herself.

    99 And blaze through either frozen zone.
  I have very substantial reasons for spreading
glad tidings of our redoubtable chieftain among
the most distant inhabitants of the globe, in pre-
ference to endeavouring to  add to his great cele-
brity 4 within the periphery of his associates.'  And
whereas it has been said  that this gentleman's re-
putation will ever stand highest where he is either
not known at all, or known only by those literary
productions,  in which he is himself the theme of
his own most 4 ardent praise,' mine shall be the
humble task  of trumpeting the  Doctor's name
among the distant inhabitants of this dirty planet,
while the Doctor  shall himself 4 dip his pen in
4  ethereal and indelible ink, and impress his ob-
4  servations in characters legible in the great vo-
'  lume of the heavens.'
                      Q 
146
For should they raise with dire misprision,
'Gainst thee one finger in derision;
    ioo As one would spit a goose for roasting.

  True it is, though 4 passing strange,' that a. great
and good man, composed, as he himself can attest,
of the very  essence  of humanity, is often most
vilely, most audaciously, and most atrociously be-
spattered by  a set of saucy Reviewers.
  Those wicked  wits, the writers in the Monthly
and Critical Reviews, especially the latter, in a cri-
tique  on one of the  late works of a certain Doctor
of Mangel Wurzel memory, tells  us that 4 The im-
' portance of a man to himself was never more
1 conspicuous than  in this publication.   Dr. Lett-
1 som admits that he has been anticipated by seve-
' ral distinguished authors, but modestly hints that
4 some of his particular friends  will form no opi-
1 nion (respecting the cow-pox)  till they have as-
1 certained his sentiments.' They then have the
audacity to declare, that4 he merits no slight pu-
4 nishment for his pompous inflated language, for
4 his fulsome flattery, and ridiculous exaggeration
* of every part of the  subject.'
  See how they speak of a late publication of the
Doctor on certain charitable Institutions:—4 Un-
4 less  to connect these different Institutions, to lead
4 the different radii to a centre,  while that centre
4 is the Author and  the Editor, who  can boast,
4 Qua ipse misscrima vidi, et quorum pars magnafui.'
4 we see little advantage in this edition.   W e mean
4 not  to intimate the slightest disapprobation of
4 these Institutions, or of humanity in general; 
147
This right hand rudest doggrel's club in,
Shall give the knaves a dreadful drubbing.


But thou, the leader of our throng,
Shalt glitter in a future song,
Which I intend to raise sonorous,
And quack! quack! !  quack! ! !  shall be the
     chorus.
4 but when we  see pomp  and egotism assuming
4 its garb, when vanity and ostentation occasion-
4 ally peep from beneath the robe, we feel no little
4 disgust from comparing the fascinating exterior
4 with the unpleasing contents,' Sec. They likewise
have the impudence to assert, that some of  the
Doctor's plans are 4 better suited to the supersti-
4 tion  of an  Hindoo, than to the  nature of a ra-
4 tional  Christian.'  And in another review they
declare, 4 We mean not to stoop  to any, but will
4 tell Dr. Lettsom his faults (consummate assur-
4 ance! !) as well as any other author, nor will we
4 conceal that mean mark of  a little mind, over-
4 weening vanity.  We saw it in its germ, have
4 watched its opening bud, till it is expanded into
4 its blossom.   The literary life of Dr. L---may
4 well be styled the progress of vanity :  the termi-
4 nation is yet to come: but we have ample mate-
4 rials for the subject.'  See  Monthly Review, of
July, and Critical Review of Sept. 1802, and Feb.
1803. 
148
Then, had I money, I would bet some,
And faith I'll do it, (when I get some),

One half a guinea, Sirs, (a net sum),

They'll fall before  Great Doctor Lettsom.101
    101 They'll fall before great Doctor Lettsom.

  I resolved to recommend your arranging your-
selves under the banners of this Leviathan of the
Galenical throng, from the moment I first heard
of his noble and spirited sally against  the Trac-
tors.  Disdaining the wretched trammels  of why
and wherefore, and without assigning those paltry
trifles, called reasons, for his opinions, on the me-
rits of Perkinism, our intrepid commander deter-
mined  to extirpate it  root and  branch, with his
simple ipse dixit.  This is what we ought to ex-
pect from a hero of such prowess.   See how well
he manages these metallic makers of mischief!
In an Eulogium (a very agreeable thing to a mo-
dest man during his life-time) on his friend Dr.
Haygarth, contained in the work which those wick-
ed Reviewers above-mentioned, have treated so
irreverently, he mentions (page 277) the '  impor-
4 tant object,' which Dr. Haygarth  has so ' hap-
4 pily  effected.'  This is 4 arresting  and subduing
4 two poisons, the most fatal  to  the human  race,
4 (fever and small-pox) and unveiling imposture,
4 clothed in the meretricious  garb of bold  quack-
' ery:' a note on the word 4 imposture,' in the  mar-
gin says, 4 Experiments on  Metallic Tractors.'
Now unless I can borrow the pen of the learned
Doctor, dipped in ' ethereal and indelible ink,' 
149
Thou too, fam'd Knight of Horrid Figure !
With wig than bushel-basket bigger;
and a  whole literary  apparatus  in proportion,  I
shall never be able to express how much I admire
the matter above quoted, on account of the im-
portant intelligence therein contained.   Before Dr.
L. asserted it, I dare  say not an individual in the
kingdom knew that Dr. Haygarth had 4 effected'
such an 4 important object,'  that fever and small-
pox were subdued, altogether extinct, despoiled of
that venom which has  hitherto 4 brought death
into the world,' and so much woe.  But true it is,
they are quite extirpated, and all this by Dr. Hay-
garth ! ! !   One  cannot  but  exclaim  against the
perverseness of those Members of  Parliament,
who, regardless of this news from Dr. L. voted a
reward to  Dr. Jenner for his services in subduing
the small-pox, and to  Dr. Smith, for his discove-
ries in subduing contagious fevers.  In short, I am
almost ready to enforce the  charge of  ignorance
against my brethren in the Profession,  for I have
not yet met with one, possessed of sufficient pe-
netration to see, that neither  fever, nor small-pox,
4 has a local habitation  and  a name  among  us,'
and that they have been both 4 subdued,' and all
this 4 effected' by Dr. Haygarth !
  Now to the latter part  of our quotation, 4 un-
' veiling imposture, clothed  in  the meretricious
1 garb of bold quackery.'  This sentence, from p.
277, presents us the whole proof of this 4 impos-
ture.'   Not another syllable  on the Tractors will
be found in the body of  the work.  In the index,
however, mention is made of the  subjects discuss-
                     Q2 
150
Which, in its orbit vast, contains,
At least, a thimble full of brains!
ed in the book, among which subjects, is the fol-
lowing 4 Imposture of the Metallic Tractors,' page
277 ! !   But this, as before intimated, was  quite
sufficient for a gentleman of such scientific pre-
eminence.   Why  should  he  trouble himself to
search for reasons, when he is sure to be believed,
4 within the periphery of his associates,' although
he has no reasons to give ?
  I must here be indulged in adducing an instruc-
tive dialogue, which actually took place, not many
weeks  since, between a renowned Physician, of
the name of Dr. Leatherhead, and a gentleman,
who was no physician at all, whom I shall call Mr.
Rowland.
  Mr. Rowland. What is your opinion, Dr. Lea-
therhead, of the Metallic Tractors ?
  Dr. Leatherhead.   Why I'll tell thee, friend
Rowland; I think them  as gross an imposition as
ever was attempted.
  Mr. R. But, Doctor,  have you read the differ-
ent cases which have been published?  Can you
believe that such characters would give their names
to false statements ?
  Dr. L. These Tractors, thee may be  assured,
friend  R. never performed a cure in the world.
Tii all trash—all nonsense—all imagination—and
none but fools and  knaves are among their sup-
porters.
  Mr.  R.  How ha^ Perkins become possessed of
the cases he h:;s published? 
151
Come on, with lion heart, like Hector,
And phiz resembling monkey's spectre ;
  Dr. L.  Oh ! that I  can tell thee,  very easily,
friend R.  Has thee never heard of Dr. Godbold I
  Mr. R.   Certainly.
  Dr. L.  Well, as he  could  neither read nor
write, he kept two men in constant employ, one  to
write his cases, and one to swear to them.  Some
times, to  be sure, a few guineas were scattered
about—Strange things these guineas  are, friend
R. ha ?—Now friend R. can thee any longer query
how Perkins comes by  his cases ?  ha ! ha 1  ha  !
  Mr. R.   Have  you ever  seen, Doctor, any  of
the publications of Mr. Perkins ?
  Dr. L.  Not I, truly.   Knowing they could con-
tain  nothing but  lies, I snould have been but  ill
employed in poring over such trash*
  Mr. R.  Did you ever see the Tractors ?
  Dr.L.  No, nor ever wish to see them; they
are—
  Mr. R.   (raising his voice, and taking  a set  of
the Tractors from his pocket) Hear  me, Sir! Can
you pretend to any credit as an honest Physician,
as a man of humanity,  when sordid  self-interest
and disgraceful prejudice impel yon to shut your
eyes against investigation, lest conviction should
follow?  I am ashamed of your conduct.  The facts
in favor of the Metallic  Practice are supported by
testimony  as honorable and disinterested as  Eng-
land can produce.   Your hint  that they are for-
geries, or that they have been purchased,  implies
a supposition  of depravity  among men, which,
let me tell you, Sir, reflects not very favorably on 
15'2
Prepare the batteries of thy Journal,I0*
To blast with infamy eternal,
the virtue of the source whence the idea originat-
ed.  With this set of Tractors (holding them out
to view)  I have cured above thirty indigent poor,
and not by the power of imagination, but  by the
power of the Tractors.
  Dr. L.  (In  a tone of  wonderful  complacency
and  humility) Really, friend R. what thee says
gives me great satisfaction.   I alwrays knew thee
to be a very sensible man,  and  the information
that thee approves of the Metallic Tractors entirely
changes  my opinion  of  them.  Before thee took
them out of thy pocket, I thought thee had no be-
lief  in them.   They  certainly  must be a very
pleasant  remedy, and incapable  of  doing harm  ;
and, as  for  myself, I am such a friend to huma-
nity, I shall ever be ready to stand forward in sup-
port of every thing which can benefit the public.
It really  does my heart good to hear of the ser-
vices the Tractors are now doing my poor afflict-
ed fellow-creatures, for whom my bowels have so
often yearned.   I am sure I shall be  one  of the
greatest  friends  of Perkinism in  England ;  so
farewell friend R. (Exit Dr.  L. as pale as ashes.)
   In this dialogue I think there  is great instruc-
tion.  In case any of our Olivers chance to meet
with a Rowland,  and are involved in  difficulties
like those which  threatened this champion, they
may  here learn the true way of becoming ' all
things to all men,'  and sneak out  of the  scrape
to very little disadvantage :  for though 1 would by
no means advise a retreat, where there is the least 
153
In medical Societies pour
Forth all thy wonted learned lore :
chance of success in fighting (which chance did
not exist in this case, for Rowland was preparing
himself to give Learherhead a most terrible thresh-
ing, had he not yielded) still,

       4 He who fights and runs away,
       ' May live to fight another day ;'

and the Doctor escaping with a whole skin is now
left alive  and mighty to assail the supporters of
Perkinism in a more cautious  but not less deci-
sive manner.

    io: Prepare the batteries of thy Journal.
  Here I can, with certainty, calculate on the most
powerful co-operation.   This----,  what shall I
call it ? This official Gazette of the Profession—
this  Medico-Chemico-Co?m'co-Repository,  for the
effusions of self-puffers, prescribing rules and re-
cipes,

   4 Plow best to fill his purse, and thin the town.'
this powerful instrument  of  offensive and defen-
sive warfare has ever, with becoming vigilance,
guarded  its post against Perkinean Invaders, and
suffered no  occasion to pass,  without a squirt of
the Gallic Acid of Satire, when there was deemed
a possibility  of blackening the common enemy.
  I can never sufficiently express  my approbation
of the Carthaginian  cunning, with  which this 
1,54
Tell the vile deeds by quackery done,
By every nostrum, save thine own. xo3
Journal has been  conducted.   Dr. B. professing
great impartiality, in an early number (see vol. ii.
p. 85)  invited communications on the subject of
the Tractors.  Subsequent management evidently
showed a slight omission in the Doctor's notice,
and that he meant communications on one side only;
for he has omitted no pains to procure and publish
whatsoever could be suggested against the Trac-
tors: but, though reports of cases in their favour,
and all the  publications of the Patentee have been
before  him, not a syllable of these was ever  no-
ticed by that gentleman; neither has it ever ap-
peared by his Journal that such facts ever existed!

     I03 By every nostrum, save thine own.
   I appeal  to any of my brethren, who have been
gratified, as I often have been, with  the Demos-
thenes-like torrent, which has been so frequently
poured forth, in  our Medical  Societies,  by  this
4 Child and Champion' of the Galenical Throng^
against quackery, and all its appurtenances, whe-
ther it were fair to  surmise, as some unconscion-
able rogues have done, that Dr. B. has absolutely
himself become the proprietor of a quack medi-
cine.  The fire of eloquence, with which Perkin-
ism, that most  atrocious kind of quackery,  has
been so frequently,  and so effectually assailed by
the  learned Doctor, at the  Medical Society at
 Guys, the  Lyceum Medico Londonensis, kc. &c.
 &c. ought  to have insured  Dr. B. so much of the
 gratitude  of  the Profession, that,  although he. 
155
For thou didst play the hero rarely,
At Westminster, when routed fairly;
should himself choose to become one of the arrant*
est quacks in the kingdom, he might depend on
your support of his reputation, and your exertions
to uphold him.   No subsequent apostacy on his
part, I maintain, will justify a dereliction of him.
   Recall to your recollection, Gentlemen, the de-
nunciations  he has so often  made  against every
medical practitioner, who should presume, either
directly or indirectly, to offer  any patronage to re-
medies, which bore even the  most distant resem-
blance to a nostrum.   How often have the walls
of the Medical Theatres of Saint Thomas's Hos-
pital, and Windmill Street, echoed loud responses
to his declamations against the varlets, who should
dare to recommend means, in the  profits of the
consumption of which the whole profession could
not participate ?  How often have  you received
his invitations  to send him your effusions and de-
clamations against quackery, to receive an efficient
publication in his Journal, and what number of
that  Journal has appeared, without performing his
promise, by honouring those effusions with a place
in its immortal pages.
   Lest even these most important considerations
should still find you inexorable, I trust I can show,
by examining his conduct in  regard to the quack
medicine in question, that, if it be not praise-wor-
thy,  it is, at least, defensible.
   The title  of the  nostrum, which has  had the
assistance of  Dr. B. in  being introduced to the
notice of a grateful public is 4 A New Medicine 
156
Thy genius shewed such vast resources,
'Gainst Belgraves, Colquhouns, Wilberforccs lx6*
for  the  Gout.'  The pretended  discoverer of
this specific is, for very commendable, or, which
is the same thing, very prudent reasons, kept be-
hind the curtain.  I wish, however, to express my
utter  disbelief  that  either Dr.  Brodum or  Dr.
Solomon is the happy mortal, however similar the
style of the pamphlet, announcing this New Me-
dicine, may be to their erudite writings, and the
pretensions  of the  said medicine  to 4 Balms of
Gilead' and to 4 Nervous Cordials.'   That neither
of these Gentlemen is the person at present incog,
who invented Dr. B's new nostrum aforesaid, ap-
pears to me evident  for three substantial reasons.
  1. Drs. Brodum and Solomon have never shrunk
from  a free exposure of their names, or evinced
an inclination to enjoy the emoluments  of empi-
ricism, without openly and boldly coming forward
to endure the stigma, which is ever its insepara-
ble companion.
  2. They have never declined the public sale of
their nostrums in the shops, nor pretended to offer
it to the public without a remuneration ;  whereas,
in  the present instance, the nostrum is  not  sold
at all in the shops,  but is most  generously  given
away, even two or three spoons-full at a time, by
Dr. Bradley, to any  person, who will call on  him
for advice, and leave with bim a guinea  for  that
advice.
  3. Those two gentlemen, also, have never, ho-
nourably and honestly, saved the commissioner.;, of
the Stamp Office the trouble of collecting a reve- 
157
Though hunted down, thou would't not yield;

Though trodden on, didst keep the field,


nue for government, from the consumption of their
quack medicines, as none can be collected on that
which is given away.
  But why do I labour to prove that, which would
be of no moment, were the reverse of my opinion
found to be the fact, and that the medicine were
in reality even the joint property of that powerful
trio, Brodum, Bradley, and Solomon, when I have
a most  conclusive and honourable document in
favour of Dr. Bradley's honourable and consistent
conduct.  This is no other than his Letter to the
unknown proprietor of this Blessing to the human
race.  Unfortunately for  the  edification of your
learned  body, my limits will not allow of the in-
sertion of the whole of that precious  communica-
tion ; you will, therefore, please to  treasure up
more eagerly  the short extract I shall make.
  The letter begins  with a 4 Sir,' which scarcely
leaves a  doubt that the happy mortal in question
is not Mrs. Williams, the  conjuress.
  4 As I approved of the  manner in which you
4  commenced your trials of the virtues and efficacy
4  of  your gout medicine, I  can have no objection
4  to giving an opinion on the subject.'
  Now could any tljing have been more proper?
Provided Dr. Bradley ' approved' of the composi-
tion  being kept a secret, however disposed he may
be to trample upon  the Metallic Tractors on that
very accoum, he had an undoubted right to express
himself accordingly.   I have  another incontesti-
ble proof of the Doctor's inconprehensible wisdom
                       R 
158
Thus Withcrington, in doleful dumps,
For lack of legs, fought stout on stumps!
and discretion.—He  has ascertained that this in-
ternal medicine, though powerful, 4 is safe and in-
4 nocent,'  which peculiar virtue is not possessed
by any other internal medicine that evtr was, and,
I fear, ever will be discovered again, unless Dr.
B. tries his skill a second time.  4 This point,'
says the Doctor, 4 I ascertained on first receiving
4 a supply of it from you, by taking it myself, and
4 also by  administering  it to  patients labouring
4 under acute rheumatism (so now the gout medi-
4 cine will cure  other diseases 1) in which cases it
4 always relieved pain, without producing any dis-
4 agreeable effect on the constitution!! 1'  But go
on: 4 In acutely inflammatory  and painful attacks
' of the gout, I  have never seen it fail to produce
' the desired effect.'  (Vid.  page 57.)  Euge 1
Euge !  Great Doctor Bradley !
  Let no half-sighted mortal, who is aware of the
achievements of this lordly chieftain and his im-
precations so often poured forth against every sup-
porter  of a nostrum, who values among mankind
that deportment, denominated  consistency, ex-
claim at this modest account of the virtues of the
present nostrum, ' How are  the mighty  fal-
1 len !!'   No! but let him ponder well, and recol-
lect, that Bradley l is an honourable man, and so
' are they all, all honourable men,' who have raised
the standard of defiance against the encroach-
ments  of Perkinism! 
159
And couldst thou, pertinacious Bradley,

But maul these mutton heads, most sadly,

Soon might thy wig (the people staring)

All in a chariot take an airing! I05


    104 'Gainst Belgraves, Colquhouns, Wilber-
        forces!
  What business  had these fellows to  intrude
their noses into the concerns of the Westminster
Infirmary ?  Brother  B. had an undoubted right
to manage, or mismanage, the funds of a Medical
Institution, as best suited his own convenience,
without their troublesome interference.

     i°5 All in a chariot take an airing.

   I hereby enter a protest against any one of my
commentators, whether he be Vascanderdigindich
the elder, or Hansvanshognosuch, his cousin Ger-
man (two  Dutch geniusses, who have promised to
furnish the  next  edition of this  my pithy poem
with a whole ass-load of annotations), or any other
Gentlemen Critics or Reviewers of equal profun-
dity, presuming to intimate, that I intend, by this
passage, the smallest disrespect to your pedestrian
Physicians.   Far  from that;  I  know  that many
good and great men  (like  myself, for example)
eannot even pay a  shilling for hackney-coach hire.
No, Gentlemen ; I have two great Objects in view,
to wit,
   1. To encourage my brother B— to persevere
in his  laudable attempt to kick Perkinism back to
the country whence it originated,  by reminding 
160
Led on by chieftains so redoubted,

These vile Perkineans must be routed ;
him that,  if the feat  were once performed,  he
might, perhaps, soon afford the expence of a cha-
riot to transport, in a respectable manner, all that
wig, without laying the entire burden on the cu-
rious sconce it now envelopes.
   2. To remind Brother B—, and the profession
in general, how much more execution may be done
by a Charioteer than by a Pedestrian Physician.
   Although great men  frequently differ, lam hap-
py to find Mr. Addison's opinion and mine, in this
particular,  perfectly consentaneous.
   4 This body of men,' says he, speaking of Phy-
sicians in  our own country,  4 may be described
%  like the British  army in Csesar's  time.  Some
*  slay in  chariots,  and  some on  foot.   If the In-
*  fantry do  less execution than the Charioteers, it
'  is because they cannot be carried, so soon, into
4  all parts of the town, and dispatch so much bu-
*  siness in so short a time/ Spectator, No. 21.
   Not an individual, I will venture to assert, who
knows my  brother B—, but must feel the really
urgent necessity of elevating him, as soon as pos-
sible, from le pave  and giving those talents their
full swing.  Then  indeed soon might  our cha-
rioteer justly boasted—

   4 London, with all her passing bells, can tell,
   4 By this right arm what mighty  numbers fell.
   4 Whilst others  meanly ask'd whole months to
       slay,
   41 oft  dispatch'd the patient in a  day, 
161
Then, if, in future people be sick,
They'll worship us, the Gods of Physic.
Why stand ye now, like drones, astounded,
The weapons of your warfare grounded ?

Arm'd cap-a-pe, like heroes rush on,

And crush this reptile Institution.
But first, to make the bigger bluster,
Join every quack that you can muster ,

Some place in rear, and some in front on,
From Brodum down to gaseous Thornton.
   4 With pen in hand, I push'd to that degree,
   4 I scarce had left a wretch to give a fee.
   4 Some fell by laudanum, and some by steel,
   4 And death in ambush lay in every pill;
   4 For save, or slay, this privilege we claim,
   4 Though credit suffers, the reward's the same.*

    i°& From Brodum down to gaseous Thornton.

   I am fully sensible that many of my brethren,
of less discernment than myself, would have as-
signed this famous little genius a rank on the em-
pirical list even  above Dr. Brodum.   Making fluf-
fing their criterion, they will argue,  that those
acute half-guinea paragraphs, which we occasion-
                       R 2 
162
Now when the foe you first get sight on,
Shout 5a ira, and then rush right on ;
ally see  at the fag-end  of the  Times and  other
morning papers,  respecting that 4 very  learned
4 Physician,'—his  4 Great Discoveries, and Im-
4 provements  in the  medical application of the
4 Gasses,'—his *- Grand National Botanical Work,'
and fifty others of the same strain,  asserting the     «
high claims of this airy writer on the gratitude of
the public, are inconlestible proofs of his superior
merits in the puffing department, which, say they,
are some of the most necessary ingredients in the
formation of a Charlatan.   All  this is specious
reasoning; but I  trust I shall  show its fallacy.
Pre-eminence, in my opinion, must be founded on
some intrinsic excellence, original and indepen-
dent of adventitious circumstances.  If we closely
examine the merits of this candidate,  we shall find
that there can be no great  claim on this score.
Let any  man enjoy the facilities and advantages of
a general dealer in the airs,  who must of course
have puffs of all descriptions at hand; and where
is the  merit of occasionally  letting off one?
   If their be any  thing like originality in this in-
dustrious little philosopher,  and for the invention
of which I should be inclined to allow  him the
credit of ingenuity, it consists in his mcritometer,
which proposes to measure  the merits of his fel-
low creatures by  the degree of faith they can af-
ford to bestow on the infallibility of his gasses as
a panacea.   See  his plan of this Instrument, or
rather the deductions drawn from his trials of it,
in his large five volume compilation of' Extracts,* 
163
And make as terrible a racket,
As ever did a woman's clack yet.Ta?
vol. i. page 459.  From this scale it appears, that
-££&# of mankind are either fools or knaves, as that
proportion places no confidence in  the efficacy of
his catholicon.   I hope, therefore, after the good
reasons here  assigned for my conduct,  I  shall
not be suspected of partiality to Dr. Brodum in
retaining  him at the head of the  Quacks, nor ill-
will to Dr. T. for not calling him up higher on
the list.

    I07 As ever did a woman's clack yet*
   Notwithstanding what Swift, and other gentle-
men of the order of Cynics, have said or sung to
the disparagement  of  the  fair sex, and  notwith«
standing the many rebuffs I have  myself received,
whenever I have attempted to  win the heart of
any divinity ship, above the order of a Billingsgate-
lady, still I had supposed the fair sex, as being the
weaker vessel, were  entitled  to  a great share of
our indulgence and  protection ;  and could not of
consequence  so  well discover  the motives actuat-
ing those philosophers, who have endeavoured to
persuade  us that the fairer half of  mankind were
made merely for the purpose  of  being a thorn in
the side of the other half.   But my  wife, as before
intimated, (page 42) being an intolerable  scold, I
have, at  length, become a complete woman-hater,
and have  as great an antipathy to a  female as ever
a  toad had to a spider.
   1 have, however,  formerly had so much  expe-
rience in  love affairs, that, for twenty years past, 
164
For should you sound a loud alarum,
Perhaps vou may so sadly scare 'em,
I have thought myself amply qualified to set up
for a  sort of love casuist, have given much good
advice respecting the best mode of adjusting all
affairs of the heart, and have  acquitted myself
much to the  satisfaction of those ladies and gen-
tlemen, who  have consulted me on the occasion.
   Now, as you are about to commence a most ter-
rible combat, from which it is ten to one if one
in ten of your honourable body  ever return alive,
I could wish, out of the superabundance of my
humanity,  that you should enjoy life as  much as
possible, before  you are  4 killed off,'  or, as our
best modern  philosophers (Dr. Darwin and others)
would  have it, go to  sleep, and therefore regale
you, for a moment, with the following titbit of
sentimentality.
   A certain young gentleman of my acquaintance
had read the  4 Sorroivs of IVerter,' and other deli-
cious  novels of that kind, in which the passion of
love  is  represented as irresistible, and of conse-
quence its  existence in the breast of any person
would justify the commission of suicide, provided
he could not  obtain the lovely  object of all his
soul's desire.
   The impressions thus  made  were  of such a
nature,  that the  said gentleman was taken most
terribly in love  the  very first opportunity, pined
away, almost to  a  mere shadow of a skeleton,
worte many a 4 doleful ballad to his mistress' eye-
4  brows,' and  was fully  determined to shoot, hang, 
                     165

Like frighted sheep, they'll huddle right in

The Old Nick's den, without much fighting.
or drown himself, provided his delectable should not
prove as kind as she was fair.
  At this momentous crisis of his disorder I dosed
my whining patient with the  following poetical
panacea, which completely removed his complaint,
or, at least, gave  it such a  direction that it was
perfectly harmless, and had a  tendency rather to
elevate than depress his mental energies.

A Poetical Epistle to a Friend of Doctor Caustic,
  who was uncommonly susceptible of the charms
  of the fair,  and  frequently fell desperately in
  love at the first sight of a fine lady.

     With mute attention lend your ear,
     To hear, 4 and reverence what you hear,'
     While truths more precious I unfold
     Than splendid germ? measM in gold.
     I wish no friend of mine to own
     The nerve of steel, the  heart of stone,
     But beauty's willing votary bow,
     Nor blush allegiance to avow.
     When angry clouds life's Sun o'ercast,
     Preluding rude misfortune's blast \
     When doubts perplex, when cares annoy,
     And bar each avenue of joy;
     When the pale victim of disease,
     Which baffled art cannot appease,
     Torn by affliction's sharpest thong,
     Till hope has ceas'd her syren song, 
166
Just so a gang of Indian savages,
Wlien they set out to make great ravages,
Beholds pale horror's spectred form
Ride moaning in the midnight storm,
The fairer sex possess the power
To tranquillize the torturing hour,*
And bid mild sympathy impart
A cordial  to the bursting heart.
   To cheer with smiles the  vale of woe
Is not the only power they know,
But oft it  is their sweet employ
To light with love the lamp  of joy.
'Tis theirs, in pleasure's brightest noon,
The fibres of the heart to tune
To tones of rapture, which might even
Prelude the harmony of heaven.
Then should you find a fair  one  true
To love, to Nature, and  to you;
What time a thousand tender arts
Denote a unison of hearts ;
When half express'd, half stifled sigh,
And timid glance from downcast eye
Appear, expressively unique,
With crimson flush of beauty's cheek;
And all in tender tone proclaim,
That hopes and wishes  are the same:
Unite assenting hearts and hands
In gentle  Hymeneal bands ;

  * Tf the heart of a man be oppres»'d with care,
    The mist is dispell'd if a woman appear.
                   Gay's Beggar's Opera, 
167
With war-whoop fright their foes (God help 'em)
And then proceed to kill and scalp 'em.
    Then shall fresh rapture crown each day
    Till life and love at once decay.
      But ne'er commence in love's career,
    With silly  plainings 'bout your dear ;
    Nor sit on  moss-grown bank, and snivel,
    Because Miss Sylva is uncivil;
    Nor tell to every brawling brook
    She petrified you with a look;
    Nor think  it right  to hang or drown
    In consequence of Laura's frown ;
    Nor make  your fair, in prose or metre,
    A 4 monstrous pretty' sort of creature;
    Ransack the store-house of dame Nature,
    To find some  simile to mate her;
    Nor conjure up, with deal of pains,
    From vasty deep of poets' brains,
    A heath'nish kind  of wizard battery,
    To take her heart by dint of flattery ;
    That Venus, Dian, and  the rest,
    Compared  with her, are second best.
    For if she's sense, a single grain,
    That sort of stuff will all be vain.
    She'll say your compliments so smart,
    Are from the  head, but not the heart;
    And with your wear and tear of brains,
    You've got 4 your  labour for your pains.'

  This is a specimen,  Gentlemen, of my powers
in the sentimental  and  pathetic.  What succeeds
in this grand performance will be in regular gra-
dation from the sublime to the dreadful, till 1 ar- 
1618
But now, ere further we preceed,
To set forth every mighty deed,

We must exchange  (tho'  horror stiffen ye)
Our Clio for a fell Tisiphone!
For when we do these wretches batter,
'Twill be no water-gruel matter ;

And you'll agree then, I assure ye,

My muse is well chang' for a fury.
Thou sprite! thou hag! thou witch! thou spectre!
Friend Southey's crony and protector:Io8
rive to the acme of the  horrid, where I hope to
take leave of your Worships.

    108 Friend Southey's crony and protector!

  Nothing  but  the most urgent necessity could
have induced me to have formed any intimacy
with the haggard harridan, which my friend sub-
stituted for a Muse, in giving birth to the 9th book
of his Epic  Poem, called ' Joan of Arc'   Wish-
ing for some kind of celestial influence,  (as  is
customary on similar occasions) to assist  in de-
scribing the dreadful battle we are about to com-
mence, 1 sought, in due form, the aid of Apollo, the
Tuneful Nine, Delia Crusca's 4 Genius or Muse,' 
169
Who led'st the bard, with Joan of Arc,

Through death's deep, dreary, dungeon dark!


and all the Gods, Goddesses, Entities, or Nqnenti*.
ties, who were ever known to lift a poor poet from
the bathos of profundity to the hupsos of sublimity.
But not one of their Deity-ships would risk his or
her neck and reputation in our perilous rencontre.
I was, of course, driven as  my dernier  resort, to
this old Fury.
   If your VVorships have any ambition for a fur-
ther acquaintance with this poetical non-descriptv
you will turn to the aforesaid 9th Book of 4 Joan of
Arc,' and between the  20th and  40th lines,  you
will find a  4 female' guiding a 4 crazy vessel' with
a  4 spread sail before the wind,' 4that moans  me-
lancholy mournful to her' (Joan of Arc's) 4 ear, as
1 ever by the dungeon'd wretch was heard howl-
4 ing  at  evening, round the embattled towers of
4 that hell-house of France !' Examine this  4 fe-
4 male more  minutely, (if you are not  already
frightened out of your  senses,) and you will  per-
4 ceivethat 4 wan her face is, and her eyes hollow,
4 and her sunk cheeks are furrowed deep, chan-
4 nelled  by tears;  a few  grey locks hang down
<- beneath her hood ;'  and 4 the night breeze pass-
4 ing, lifting her tattered mantle,' discloses a ser-
4 pent gnawing at her heart.'  Then, if  pleased
with this specimen of the horrible, your  worships,
the right honorable the members  of the Royal
College  of Physicians, may step into the 4 crazy
vessel'  aforesaid, and  proceed with Bard, Hag,
 and Joan aforesaid, and you  will soon be intro-
                       s 
170
Until ye were, 1 dare be bound,
Near half a mile down under ground ;
Mid screeching ghosts and dragons dreadful,
As e'er fill'd dreaming madman's head full!

Give me in proper tone to tell,
Between a mutter and a yell,
How best our fierce avenging choler
May work dire deeds of  doleful dolour.

Come on !  Begin the grand attack
With aloes, squills, and  ipecac ;
And then with glyster-pipe and squirt-gun,
There will  be monstrous deal of hurt done !

Each wray-fac'd rogue,  and dirty trollop,
Must well be dos'd with  drastic Jalap,

duced to Giant  4 Despair,' with  4eye large and
4 rayless ;'  4 blue  flames on  his face,'  with 4 a
4 death cold touch,  &e.'  But as for myself, howe-
ver honoured I should feel, on all other occasions,
with your Worships company, after wishing your
good Worships a stiff breeze, I must beg leave to
be off. 
                    171
And though their insides you should call up,
Still make the numsculls take it all up.

Cram all the ninny-hammers gullets,
With pills as big as pistol bullets ;
Then, Frenchman like, give each a glister,
And next go on to bleed and blister.

Dash at them escharotics gnawing,
Their carcases to pick a flaw in ;
Of nitrous acid huge carboys,
Fill'd to the brim, like Margate hoys.

Thus when the Greeks with their commander,
That fighting fellow, Alexander,
Set out one morning full of ire,
To take and burn the town of Tyre ;

A patriotic stout old woman
Look'd out,  and saw the chaps a coming j
When on a sudden she bethought her
To heat a kettle full of water ; 
172
 And as they went to climb the ladder,

 (Sure never vixen could be madder,

 But so the historian of the fray says)

 She fir'd her water in their faces !


 But to return to our great battle ;

 Now rant! rave! roar! and rend ! and rattle! I0*

 Like earth-born giants when they strove,

 To pull the ears of thundering Jove !


 Pelt the vile foe with weapons missile ;

 Make vials round their sconces whistle ;

 Shower on them a tremendous torrent,

 Of gaily pots and bottles horrent.


 And now make at 'em like Mendozas,

 With forceps pinch and pull their noses,


 J°9 'Now rant!  rave!  roar! and rend !  and rattle.
   I Christopher Caustic, censured by  critics, for
 my apt alliterations,  though  artfully allied, yet
/zresume it is /iolicy, for ayiennyless poet to/zolish
 his puny lays to such a /ntch of  /zerfection, that
/Josterity may/dease to place the phhy  production
paramount to the peaked /aoint of the pinnacle  of
 Pierian Parnassus. 
                    173

With tournequet and dire tooth-drawers,

First gird their necks, then break both jaws.


But lo!  They bid our dread alliance

Of doctors, quacks, and drugs defiance;

And, firm as host of cavaliers.

Convert tlieif- Tractors into spears!


See host to host and man to man set!

A Tractor each, and each a Lancet!

Each meets his foe, so fierce attacks him !

That sure some God or Demon backs him!


Fell Ate's shriek the world alarms !

Bellona bellows 4 arms ! to arms !'

War's Duemon dire, a great red Dragon,

Drives,  Jehu-like, Death's iron waggon!!1I0


    no  Drives, Jehu-like, Death's iron waggon.
   A poet of less judgment than myself would have
seated Mars in the Chariot of Victory, a Valix-
hall car, or some other flimsy vehicle of that kind,
which would be sure to be dashed to pieces in a
conflict  like this in which we are at present en-
gaged.  The carriage  here introduced was made
                    s 2 
174
Loud shouts and dismal yells arise!
Rend the blue ' blanket' of the skies!IIJ
Grim Horror's  scream and Fury's frantic
Howl might be heard across the Atlantic!!


Although 2 comet's tail should hap

To give our globe a fatal slap,
The 4 crush of worlds' and 4  wreck of matter'
Would  make ten thousand times less  clatter!
Now to the Avretches give no quarter,
Pound them in indignation's mortar;
by Vulcan, in his* best stile of workmanship, for
the express purpose of this attack, and in point of
strength and size, bears no more proportion to the
chariot commonly,used by the God of War,  than
one of those huge broa&wheeled Manchester wag-
gons to  the  little whalebone thingamy which the
Duke of Queensbury ran at New Market.

    i«  Rend the blue 4 blanket' of the skies.
  This is the same 4 blanket' which Mr. Canning
said was 4 wet' when he exhibited it in the House
of Commons.   Since his use of it on  that occa-
sion it has been so frequently wrung by the  wits,
that it has now become a perfectly dry and almost
thread-bare article. 
                    175
Let not the women, nor the men chance
To 'scape the pestle of your vengeance!

Make cerebrum and cerebellum,
To rattle like a roll of vellum,
And occiput of every numhead,
To sound as loud as kettle-drum head.

With fell trepaning perforator,
Pierce CYCl'v rascal's stubborn pate, or
With chisel plied with might and mam,
Ope a huge hole in pericrane.

And with a most tremendous process,
With power of elephant's proboscis,
At once crush dura, pia mater,
As one would mash a boil'd potatoe !

Then, with harsh amputating saw,
Slash frontal os from under jaw;
And make a wound,  by cutting slant down,
For Doctor Tasker to descant on. "a 
17*3
Attack Medulla, hight Spinalis,
From where the head to where the tail is;11
    *" For Doctor Tasker to descant on.

  I feel a very great solicitude to mould and mo-
dify every part and parcel of this performance ac-
cording to rules and regulations of the best mas-
ter-builders of Epic Poems, Tragedies, and other
great things of that kind.   The judicious  critic
will perceive that all my wounds are inflicted with
anatomical accuracy, and I have no doubt but my
friend Dr. Haygarth will do himself the honour
to write a treatise upon  this subject, and tell the
world -.villi what terrible propriety we have hewed
and hacked  our opponents  in the field of battle.
The Reverend William Tasker, A.B. has furnish-
ed a model of this species of criticism in 4 A series
of Letters,'  respecting 4 The Anatomical Know-
4 ledge  of Homer,  &c.'  Dr. Haygarth I expect
will prove that the  4 death wounds'  of Sarpedon,
Hector, Ulysses' Dog,  Sec as displayed in the
Treatise of Dr. Tasker,  were mere flea-bites com-
pared with these  of Dr. Caustic.

     "3 From where the head to where the tail is.

   Or more correctly where the tail was.   Lord
 Monboddo tells us  that  men, as well as monkies,
 were formerly dignified with long tails protruding
 from the place where (according to Butler) ho-
 nour is lodged.  Philosophers and antiquaries had
 never been able to  discover how man became di-
 vested of this ornament, till my friend Dr. Ander-
 son furnished a clue  to the mystery.  (See note 
                     17?

Till with rude banging, thumping, thwacking,

You break each bone each booby's back in!


Thus Virgil tells of sturdy fellows,

Dares yclep'd,  and old Entellus,

Who, with a pair of iron mittens,

Attack'd each other like true Britons.


Entellus, stout as Hob the giant,

Made horrid work, you may rely on't;

Exceeding mightiest verse or prose deed,

Knock'd out two teeth, and made his nose bleed!


And now, with desperate trocar,

Urge on the dreadful 4 tug of war;'

And, when you've stuck them in the crop, say

You meant to tap them for the dropsy.


21.) From his  discovery I am led to suppose
that your  antediluvian bucks began  the practice
of cuR-toV-ing these excrescences for gentility's
sake, and what was at first artificial became in due
time natural, till, at length, your right Tippies, as
in modern times, were entirely disencumbered of
that monkey-like appendage ; but our Bond Street 
178
With burning lapis infernalis, "4
Convince them human nature frail is;
loungers, although divested of that exterior mark
pf the monkey, with a laudable desire to prevent
the intentions of Nature  from  being  defeated,
have adopted all the ourang-outang-ical airs, which
she originally designed should discriminate that
species of animals from men.

    114 With burning lapis infernalis.
  The use of this caustic and other escharotics on
this momentous occasion, reminds me of an im-
portant  era in my life, a  succinct  biographical
sketch of which I shall shortly publish, in nineteen
volumes folio; a work which, in point of size, eru-
dition, and interesting anecdote, will be immensely
preferable to the  voluminous produciion of Lord
Orford.
  The event in question was of the  greater con-
sequence, as it gave  rise  to the present family
name of 4 Caustic'
  Just thirty-two years since, from the fourteenth
day of last July, while I was prosecuting some of
my chemical researches, my eldest son, Tom, a
burly-faced boy, since killed in a duel with a hot-
headed Irish gentleman, overturned  a bench, on
which were placed seven carboys full of acids, al-
kalies, &c. and broke  them into inch pieces.  The
consequences of this accident may be more easily
conceived than described.  The whole neighbour-
hood was alarmed, and many most terribly  caus-
ticised, in endeavouring to extinguish the confla-
gration which ensued.  In the consternation, and 
179
And taunting, tell them they're afflicted,
Because they are to sin addicted.
amid the exertion to subdue it, some one cried out
that Dr. Crichton (for such was my former name,
being the lineal  descendant from the celebrated
4 Admirable Crichton') is fairly a Dr. Caustic
  Thus began my honorary name, of which, as it
is scientific,  I  am not a little proud, especially as
it was acquired by virtue of an explosion, similar
to that, which gave the  honorary  appellation of
Bronte, to my moral and modest  friend, Viscount
Nelson of the  Nile.  For  further particulars re-
specting  this important event,  you will please to
inquire at the  Herald's College, v*here, I dare say,
4 Garter Principal King at Arms,' Sir Isaac Heard,
Knt. has done me the justice  to register the oc-
currence.  Instead of Lions, Bulls, Boars,  Camels,
Elephants, and such insignificant animalcula, my
shield is  decorated with insignia more appropriate
to  my great pretensions.   On  the  left are seen
broken carboys couchant, implying that the secrets
of science lie  prostrate before me.   On the  right
are fumes rampant,  indicative of my discoveries,
which soar above those of all other pretenders.  In
the center are nine hedgehogs, with quills, stick-
ant, an happy emblem of my peaceable disposition.
  My motto,  which I trust Sir  Isaac has also re-
gistered,  is worthy of notice.   Dr. Darwin was
much pleased with it, and, desirous to emulate my
fame in the art of motto-making, made 4 omnia e
conchis.'   But your Worships will perceive that
the Doctor's motto bears  no comparison with mine,
in point  of erudition, as I  prove myself versed in 
180
With scalprum scrape off epidermis

And cuticle (I think the term is);


three languages, whereas he can boast of only one.
Here it comes.

         O «v&f6»«r»s, or n yuv»
         Lacessit never me impune ! !

  This, my beautiful and appropriate motto, for the
sake of accommodating those among your Wor-
ships,  who are not versed in the lore of Greece
and Rome, and cannot afford  to subsidise men of
erudition to officiate for you in that department of
science, I shall render into our vernacular idiom,
as follows:

     If I'm attack'd by  man or trollop
     I'll  dose the knave with drastic jalap.

  Lest the more critical and polite reader should
complain, that in  order to  let myself down to the
level of your Worshipful capacities, 1 have angli-
cised my sublime motto in too vulgar  and collo-
quial a stile, I shall take the liberty, politely, to pa-
rodise  thereon, and, as Lord Bacon says, 4 to bring
4 it home to men's business and bosoms,'  that is,
to make the application to that particular  kind of
gentry, against whom my hedgehog quills, afore-
said, are pointed in tcrrorem.

     Ladies and Gentlemen, Reviewers!
     You are a set of mischief brewers;
     A gang of scandalous backbiters,
     Who feast on us, poor murder'd writers. 
181
And all the nerves and muscles various,
Because, say you, their bones are carious.
With antimonials make 'em sweat away ;
Cram each snout full of assafcetida:
Now if you dare to throw the gauntlet,
I tell you honestly I  sha'n't let
Your impudencies, with impunity,
Impose in future on  community.
If you dare say that  greater wit
Than Doctor Caustic ever writ;
If you dare venture to suggest
His every word  is not the best;
If you dare hint that Caustic's noddle
Is not improv'd  from Homer's  model;
It' you dare think he  has not treble
The inspiration  of a Sybil;
If you don't seem to take delight
In puffing him with all your might;
If you don't coin for him  some proper lies
To circulate through this Metropolis,
To give eolat  to this  edition
Of his Poetical  Petition ;
If you don't sing the  same tune o'er
Which he himself has sung before,
4 Ancients and moderns, altogether,
4 Are but the  shadow of a feather,
4 Compar'd with Caustic, even as
4 A puff of hydrogenous gas,
He'il hurl ye  to old  Davy's grotto,
As you'll imagine from his motto.
                  T 
182
Then tell them, if they'll not be vicious,
You'll give them castor oil, delicious.


Dash at them nitrate, hight argentum,
And tell them, though it does torment 'em,
That papists say that purgatory
Is but a passport into glory.
Just so, old Satan was quite merry, "5
When erst, in Heaven, he rais'd old Harry;
    "5 Just so, old Satan, was quite merry, &c.
  So  said Milton, 4 Paradise Lost,' B. vi. where
the hero of the poem (whom I would propose as
a model for your Worships' imitation on all occa-
sions)  together with his merry  companions 4 in
4 gamesome mood  stand  scoffing,' and  4 quips,
cranks,' powder,  grape shot, puns, blunderbuss,
jokes,  and cannon-balls, flash, roar, and bellow in
concert.
  But I am sure  that every candid critic will be
disposed to acknowledge that neither Homer nor
Milton ever described a battle, fraught with such
sublime images and similes,  as this in which we
are so desperately engaged.
  Your Worships will, however,  defer any taunts,
gibes,  sneers, &c.  till you are  sure  of  victory.
Then you will please to force them to swallow the
pills of your raiilery, steeped in  the aquafortis of 
183
With jokes and cannon, in terror em,
He march'd and drove 'em all before him.

Stick your keen penetrating probes
Through right and left hepatic lobes;
Although you pierce the diaphragm,
You need not care a single damn.

So Indians, when a captive's taken,
And they resolve to fry his bacon,
Their savage torture to refine,
First stick him full of splinter'd pine.

In fine, your worships will contrive
To leave not one vile wretch alive,
Except those dirty sons of-------
Whom  nature meant to dig in ditches.

adversity, that  others may be deterred  by their
exemplary fate, from infringing on our privileges,
dignities, and immunities.
  There can be nothing unmanly or improper in
triumphing over a fallen enemy. For thus did
Achilles insult Hector, Patroclus Sarpedonrand so
will Dr. Caustic serve Perkins, when he  has him
fairly under foot. 
                    184
But all who would not make most topping
Fellows to work in docks at Wapping,
Some way or other, Sirs, I'd have ye
Give a quick passport to old Davy.

But if with all this blood and thunder,
The stubborn blockheads won't knock under,
And e'en old women bravely  wield
Their jordans like Achilles' shield;

No more with these our weapons dabble,
But raise a Lord-Georoe-Gordon rabble ;
Pour on the rogues, that they be undone,
The whole mobocracy of London !

Come on, brave fellows, quick surround 'em ;
With canes and cudgels punch and pound 'em;
Brick-bats and broom-sticks, all together,
Like coblers hammering sides of leather.

Brave Belcher,  Lee, Mendoza, Bourke,
Let loose your fists in this great work! 
185
Here's fine amusement for your paws,
Without the dread of police laws.

Let not one Perkinite be found
Encumbering our British ground ;
But keep on pelting, hanging, mauling,
Until old Beelzy's den they're all in.

And I'll be there and blow war's trumpet;
Or with Death's kettle-drum I'll thump it,
Till all's 4 confusion, worse confounded,'
Than e'er in Milton's hell abounded.

Thus, when the Spartans were in trouble,
Tyrtueus help'd them through their hobble,
By singing songs, to raise their courage,
All piping hot, as pepper-porridge.

These are the  methods of < dead doing,'
By which we'll work the wizard's ruin;
And when with Satan all  such trash  is,
We'll rise, like Phoenix, on its ashes.
                    T 2 
186
Now, Sirs, consent to my Petition,
And send these varlets to perdition;
So for your weal and welfare, post hie,
Will ever pray—
                  Christopher Caustic. 
ADDITIONAL  NOTES
           TO THIS AMERICAN EDITION.

  (" ) PaSe *°-—The interview with the Board of Longitude,
adverted to in this Note, there is  reason to believe is substan-
tially true   Mr. S----, the unsuccessful applicant, could noti
after the insult he received, by that pitiful  offer  of remunera-
tion, be prevailed upon to reconstruct his instrument.
  Our poor countryman Churchman also, whose laborious life
has been spent in the pursuit of discoveries relative to the Lon-
gitude, and whose investigations have been amply successful to
merit the liberal protection of an institution, established with
the professed views of the present one, can attest how far a poor
but meritorious  artist may confide in the liberality of either the
Board of Longitude, or the gentlemen of the Trinity House.
  The Salary of the  Clerkship of the Pells, alluded to in  the
latter part of the Note, which Mr. Addington, the Premier,
gave to his oivn son, a child  eleven  years old, is about seven
thousand  pounds sterling per annum. The duties of this office
are necessarily transacted by a nurse,  who probably is rewarded
by our young master with as liberal wages as many of the Cu-
rates of England receive.  They for forty pounds per annum,
discharge the duty  of  the Rector,  whose  tithes  amount  to
three or four thousand, which he often most graciously conde-
scends to bestow in running the race of—not a Christian, but, a
fox or a stag, and  another  species of races at New-Market.'
The Clerkship of the  Pells, until  Mr. Addington discovered
otherwise, was  always  considered as justly belonging to some
meritorious but worn-out and unrequited servant of the country.

  {/>) page 25__In England the point of this would have been
sufficiently evident by the mere emphasis on  " Scotland," which
the italicising of the word imports ; but as in America it is not
generally known that for twelve pounds two shillings and six-
pence, sterling,  any  creature can obtain in the Universities of
Aberdeen and St. Andrews a diploma, whJch will dignify the
possessor with a Doctor's Degree in Divinity, Law, or Physic,
there would have been a wonder how that wiseacre, Dr. An-
derson, came by his.  These appendages te the names of  a
candidate in the trade  of authorship, or in either  of the pro- 
188
 fessions, are  as necessary, in order to insure him success as
 well as respect, in Europe, as tails to a Bashaw in Asia, and in
 both cases the degree of dignity supported, and respect claimed,
 is regulated alike by the number of each.
  A few years since, several Oxonians, who had beheld with an
 unkind aspect the inundation of these titled candidates for em-
 ploy in all the professions, without the sacrifice of any of the
 study, time and expence, which are required of the students
 in the English universities, previous to the attainment of these
 insignia of merit, clubbed, and raised a sum  sufficient to pay
 for three diplomas. Three of  the  long eared species of ani-
 mals, vulgarly yclept Jackasses, were then procured, and ap-
 propriate names given to each,  as the Rev. Mr. Bray, Dr. Ear
 and 'Squire Sulkey. The  cash, accompanied  by a recommen-
 dation of these three distinguished  characters, attested by the
 party in the joke, was transmitted to  the then Principal of
 Aberdeen University, and on the return of the mail,  the  three
 candidates were each raised in Law, Physic and Divinity, to a
 rank with Dr. Anberson.
  It may  perhaps  be useful however to add, for the informa-
 tion of any of our countrymen, who may pant for the posses-
 sion of these academic  honors, in order to be on a par with
 the aforesaid Jackasses and Dr. Anderson, that a recent addi-
tional duty in England upon stamps, and on the postage of let.
ters, will require them  to remit as much as two shillings and
some odd pence over the twelve pounds two shillings and sixpence,
 a circumstance, certainly much to be regretted.

  [c) page 29.—The satire in these lines,  whether it aims at the
very ridiculous deference paid to a certain class of the Escula.
pian fraternity, whom I shall term Htdrognostics, but whom
the reader may, if he please, call " water-doctors,"  or at the
abuse of the privilege of franking, in England, is perhaps as well
founded as any other in the poem.
  Besides the famcus Dr. Mayersback here  alluded to, who
 resides in London, there  is another still  more celebrated in
 Northamptonshire, who can scarcely write his own name, but
 who has already amassed a large fortune by practice in this line.
 Scarcely a post arrives which does not bring to these " Doctors' 
189
many bottles for examination, and' as  no case is entered upo.i
without  that necessary preamble, a golden fee, the money col-
lected is almost incredible.
  The abuse of the privilege of franking, so common among the
heads of the departments, and those who, ex officio, have the
right of  conveying by post a packet of almost any size, had
like to have met with  a serious and  effectual interruption, a
few years since, if the  following story related respecting the
affair can be depended upon.
  An extraordinary Lusus Nature of the human species having
occurred at Plymouth, the obstetric gentleman, into whose hands
it fell, resolved to make a present of it to the Museum of an
eminent anatomical professor in London.  No immediate con-
veyance for it presenting,  the commissioner of the Dock-Yard
kindly undertook to relieve his embarrassment, by fronting it
up by post.  For this purpose the child  was made up into a par-
cel  or packet (not a very small one to be sure) and directed for
London.  The weather growing warmer than was anticipated,
our caput mcr'.uum arrived at the General Post-Office in a con-
dition rather resembling a caput vividum, for it soon produced
a very lively effect on the olfactory nerves of all  the clerks of
the Post-Office.  The Inspector of Franks, suspecting_/"o«/ pliay,
deemed it his duty to examine the contents of the parcel, when
there was presented to the alarmed and astonished eyes of all
around, a being of which they affirmed there did not exist the
likeness either in Heaven above or on the Earth beneath.  Some
fled from alarm and some from stench, till the apartment was
entirely deserted,  except by  old Jowler, a  large mastiff that
was kept as a guard to the office. Attracted by the scent, Jow-
ler  soon satisfied himself that the commodity, so  savory to bis
smell, was  nothing more nor less than a nice piece of dog's-
meat, and  of consequence was, bona fde, his property, so he
quietly took it up in his mouth, and  marched off with it for
his  breakfast.
  An action was afterwards brought against the Post-Office for
the loss of the article in question, but as it was called a child in
the declaration, it was  successfully pleaded in reply that as a
child, it could not be considered in any other  light than a stags
passenger, and as the stage coach and not the letter-bag was es-
tablished for the accommodation and conveyance of patsengerst 
190
 the plaintiff was in fault for not sending the said passenger with
 other passengers in the stage.   This defence was  irresistible
 and the plaintiff, to his sore displeasure, was nonsuited.

   [d)page 37—The Duke of Queensbury, whose sins, on the
 crim. con. list, like his  age, amount to  above fourscore and ten.

   (<?)  page 57—For the  art here  alluded to, see Pope's Dunci-
 ad, Book  III.  where  several of the hero's of that   poem are
 made to plunge for the prize into Fleet Ditch, a large sewer or
 drain, in the centre of London, which receives the contents of
 about a dozen slaughter houses, half as many markets, includ-
 ing Smithfield, and a very plentiful supply  of certain other
 enriching streams,  which are said to render the Thames  water
 superior to any other in the world.
    ' Not so bold Anall ; with a weight of skull,
    ' Furious he dives, precipitately dull ;
    • Whirlpools and storms his circling arms invest,
    *  With all the weight of gravitation blest," &c.  &c

   (/) P"ge  59 —The Institution  here alluded to, although iti
acts are often dwelt upon in the Poem, is in no place sufficiently
explained to enable the American reader  fully to  comprehend
its nature.—A short history of it, therefore may not be unac-
ceptable.
  Several philanthropic characters in London, chiefly  those who
had purchased the  Tractors,  conceiving 'that  the  discovery of
Perkinism merited  the patronage of an establishment, like that
of the discovery of the Cow Pox, announced such an intention
in the newspapers,  and, at the same time,  called  a public
meeting to take the proposed measure into consideration. Here
the undertaking was unanimously resolved upon, and a sub-
scription opened to carry the proposed charity into effect.  The
list was soon honored with above an hundred subscribers, seve-
ral with a donation of ten, and none, excepting one or two, less
than one guinea for annual subscription.  Lord  Rivers was
elected President of the Society, and  eleven other  persons of
distinction, among whom will be found Governor Franklin,
ion of Dr. Franklin, compose the list of Vice-Presidents. 
191
  On the 25th of July last (1803) a large house was opened in
Frith-street, Soho-Square, for the reception of patients, and in
which the Medical attendant, the matron  and servants con-
stantly reside.
  The objects of this establishment  are  stated by the Society,
in their publication on the subject, as follows :
  ' ist. To afford relief to the disorders of the afflicted and in-
' dustrious poor of the metropolis,  if the remedy  should  be
' found capable of that desirable purpose; and
  ' 2dly.  To submit the long controverted question on the mer-
« its of the Metallic Tractors  to the test of the severest scru-
' tiny, the ordeal  of experiment, by disinterested persons, and
« thereby enable the public to form a correct opinion on the just
« pretensions of Perkinism.'
   As one of the ardcles, among the rules and regulations  for
the government of the Society, directs the committee to report,
after a suitable time, the result of the undertaking, there was
published by them  in February last, a book, entitled "  The
Transactions of the Perkinean Society,  consisting of a Report on the
Practice ivitb the Metallic Tractors,  at the Institution in Frith-
street, and  Experiments communicated by several  correspondents.
Published by order of the Committee."
   This " Report" is highly  creditable  to  the Metallic Prac-
tice.  It  states that " The Books  of the Institution, in which
every case  is registered, both  favorable and unfavorable,  will
 shew that nine tenths of the patients have been either cured or
materially relieved "  Among other cases adduced in this report,
are two of  restoration of sight.
   The Report concludes by  expressing  ' The satisfaction  the
« Committee would feel,  should the wisdom of the British Par-
' liament see fit to investigate  the merits of Perkinism, and, if
« convinced of its utility, honor it with similar  patronage, to
 '  other modern discoveries for the benefit of mankind.'
  (g)p*ge 90 —If rhyme or reason could avail any thing against
this barbarous, brutal, foolish and destructive practice, no ra-
tional mind, it is believed, would censure the attempt however
unpleasant the mode may be to the parties, or the friends of
the parties concerned. 
192
  In the present instance much Complaint was raised in London,
by the friends of the two combatants, against these stanzas, as
reflecting on the honorable personages concerned.   If men will
be so superlatively foolish, as well as wicked, however exalted
their stations in life, ought any person, who respects the well-
being of society, to be ashamed of an act which assists to make
this vice " a fixed figure for the time of scorn to point his slow
unmoving finger at ?"   The duel in question, has scarcely its
parallel for absurdity in its cause and disaster in its consequence.
A dog, belonging to Col. Montgomery's kept mistress,  quar-
relled in the Park, with another dog, belonging to  Capt. Mac-
namara.  The Captain's dog proving too strong for his anta-
gonist, necessarily (I speak as a man of honor) raised in the mar-
tial bosom of the Colonel a feeling which  could not be  allayed,
consistently  with the preservation of his dignity among gentle-
men, without challenging the owner of the victorious dog to
meet him, the champion of his kept mistress's dog, before the
setting of the sun, otherwise to be proclaimed a coward and no
gentleman.  Macnamara, a Post-Captain in the Navy, necessarily
accepted the challenge.  On the first fire,  the Colonel was kill-
ed upon  the spot,  and the  Captain also received a  wound,
which, while it will maim him during life,  will assist him, in the
cool moments  of reflection, (if such moments are not incon-
sistent with a  man of honor)  to  feel whether it  were  really
manly to  take  away the life  of  a fellow  creature, and wise to'
hazard his own in so despicable a cause.
   Col. Montgomery was brother to the Marchioness of
Townsend, and otherwise connected with the first families in
the kingdom.   Capt; Macnamara, also, belonged to a  family
of distinction.  As there are in England great numbers, who
know of  no other laws of honor than such  as they see adopted
by the grcrt, and whom they ape in all their movements, such
examples  have  a four-fold influence. There were consequent-
ly, notwithstanding the fatal issue of this combat, more duels,
 and at the same place  (Chalk Farm) within the few weeks fol-
lowing, than had taken place for many  months before.

                        THE END.


               SOUfH'.riCKiSf TlARDCASTLE, PRINTERS. 
 
 
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