Part 23 (2/2)
The poets and wits of his own time had a high respect for his critical opinion, and admitted the excellence of his poetry--but almost invariably with some qualification. And Akenside was one who thirsted for the complete a.s.sent of the applauding world. He died after a brief illness in his forty-ninth year, on the 23rd of June, 1770; and we doubt not, when the Angel of Death touched him, the heart that ceased to beat was one that had known much sorrow.
Akenside's poetical career was one of unfulfilled promise. At the age of twenty-three he had written ”The Pleasures of the Imagination.”
Pope was so struck with the merits of the poem, that when Dodsley consulted him about the price set on it by the author (?120), he told him to make no n.i.g.g.ardly offer, for it was the work of no every-day writer. But he never produced another great work. Impressed with the imperfections of his achievement, he occupied himself with incessantly touching and re-touching it up, till he came to the unwise determination of re-writing it. He did not live to accomplish this suicidal task; but the portion of it which came to the public was inferior to the original poem, both in power and art.
CHAPTER XIX.
LETTSOM.
High amongst literary, and higher yet amongst benevolent, physicians must be ranked John Coakley Lettsom, formerly president of the Philosophical Society of London. A West Indian, and the son of a planter, he was born on one of his father's little islands, Van d.y.k.e, near Tortola, in the year 1744. Though bred a Quaker, he kept his heart so free from sectarianism, and his life so entirely void of the formality and puritanic asceticism of the Friends, that his ordinary acquaintance marvelled at his continuing to wear the costume of the brotherhood. At six years of age he was sent to England for education, being for that purpose confided to the protection of Mr. Fothergill, of Warrington, a Quaker minister, and younger brother of Dr. John Fothergill. After receiving a poor preparatory education, he was apprenticed to a Yorks.h.i.+re apothecary, named Sutcliffe, who, by industry and intelligence, had raised himself from the position of a weaver to that of the first medical pract.i.tioner of Settle. In the last century a West Indian was, to the inhabitants of a provincial district, a rare curiosity; and Sutcliffe's surgery, on the day that Lettsom entered it in his fifteenth year, was surrounded by a dense crowd of gaping rustics, anxious to see a young gentleman accustomed to walk on his head. This extraordinary demonstration of curiosity was owing to the merry humour of Sutcliffe's senior apprentice, who had informed the people that the new pupil, who would soon join him, came from a country where the feet of the inhabitants were placed in an exactly opposite direction to those of Englishmen.
Sutcliffe did not find his new apprentice a very handy one. ”Thou mayest make a physician, but I think not a good apothecary,” the old man was in the habit of saying; and the prediction in due course turned out a correct one. Having served an apprentices.h.i.+p of five years, and walked for two the wards of St. Thomas's Hospital, where Akenside was a physician, conspicuous for supercilious manner and want of feeling, Lettsom returned to the West Indies, and settled as a medical pract.i.tioner in Tortola. He practised there only five months, earning in that time the astonis.h.i.+ng sum of ?2000; when, ambitious of achieving a high professional position, he returned to Europe, visited the medical schools of Paris and Edinburgh, took his degree of M.D. at Leyden on the 20th of June, 1769, was admitted a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of London in the same year, and in 1770 was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.
From this period till his death, in 1815 (Nov. 20), he was one of the most prominent figures in the scientific world of London. As a physician he was a most fortunate man; for without any high reputation for professional acquirements, and with the exact reverse of a good preliminary education, he made a larger income than any other physician of the same time. Dr. John Fothergill never made more than ?5000 in one year; but Lettsom earned ?3600 in 1783--?3900 in 1784--?4015 in 1785-and ?4500 in 1786. After that period his practice rapidly increased, so that in some years his receipts were as much as ?12,000. But although he pocketed such large sums, half his labours were entirely gratuitous. Necessitous clergymen and literary men he invariably attended with unusual solicitude and attention, but without ever taking a fee for his services. Indeed, generosity was the ruling feature of his life. Although he burdened himself with the public business of his profession, was so incessantly on the move from one patient to another that he habitually knocked up three pairs of horses a-day, and had always some literary work or other upon his desk, he nevertheless found time to do an amount of labour, in establis.h.i.+ng charitable inst.i.tutions and visiting the indigent sick, that would by itself have made a reputation for an ordinary person.
To give the mere list of his separate benevolent services would be to write a book about them. The General Dispensary, the Finsbury Dispensary, the Surrey Dispensary, and the Margate Sea-bathing Infirmary, originated in his exertions; and he was one of the first projectors of--the Philanthropic Society, St. Georges-in-the-Fields, for the Prevention of Crimes, and the Reform of the Criminal Poor; the Society for the Discharge and Relief of Persons Imprisoned for Small Debts; the Asylum for the Indigent Deaf and Dumb; the Inst.i.tution for the Relief and Employment of the Indigent Blind; and the Royal Humane Society, for the recovery of the apparently drowned or dead. And year by year his pen sent forth some publication or other to promote the welfare of the poor, and succour the afflicted. Of course there were crowds of clever spectators of the world's work, who smiled as the doctor's carriage pa.s.sed them in the streets, and said he was a deuced clever fellow to make ten thousand a-year so easily; and that, after all, philanthropy was not a bad trade. But Lettsom was no calculating humanitarian, with a tongue discoursing eloquently on the sufferings of mankind, and an eye on the sharp look-out for his own interest.
What he was before the full stare of the world, that he was also in his own secret heart, and those private ways into which hypocrisy cannot enter. At the outset of his life, when only twenty-three years old, he liberated his slaves--although they const.i.tuted almost his entire worldly wealth, and he was anxious to achieve distinction in a profession that offers peculiar difficulties to needy aspirants. And when his career was drawing to a close, he had to part with his beloved countryseat because he had impoverished himself by lavish generosity to the unfortunate.
There was no sanctimonious affectation in the man. He wore a drab coat and gaiters, and made the Quaker's use of _Thou_ and _Thee_; but he held himself altogether apart from the prejudices of his sect. A poet himself of some respectability, he delighted in every variety of literature, and was ready to shake any man by the hand--Jew or Gentile. He liked pictures and works of sculpture, and spent large sums upon them; into the various scientific movements of the time he threw himself with all the energy of his nature; and he disbursed a fortune in surrounding himself at Camberwell with plants from the tropics. He liked good wine, but never partook of it to excess, although his enemies were ready to suggest that he was always glad to avail himself of an excuse for getting intoxicated. And he was such a devoted admirer of the fair s.e.x, that the jealous swarm of needy men who envied him his prosperity, had some countenance for their slander that he was a Quaker debauchee. He married young, and his wife outlived him; but as a husband he was as faithful as he proved in every other relation of life.
Sat.u.r.day was the day he devoted to entertaining his friends at Grove Hill, Camberwell; and rare parties there gathered round him--celebrities from every region of the civilized world, and the best ”good fellows” of London. Boswell was one of his most frequent guests, and, in an ode to Charles Dilly, celebrated the beauties of the physician's seat and his humane disposition:--
”My cordial Friend, still prompt to lend Your cash when I have need on't; We both must bear our load of care-- At least we talk and read on't.”
”Yet are we gay in ev'ry way, Not minding where the joke lie; On Sat.u.r.day at bowls we play At Camberwell with Coakley.”
”Methinks you laugh to hear but half The name of Dr. Lettsom: From him of good--talk, liquors, food-- His guests will always get some.”
”And guests has he, in ev'ry degree, Of decent estimation: His liberal mind holds all mankind As an extended Nation.
”O'er Lettsom's cheer we've met a peer-- A peer--no less than Lansdowne!
Of whom each dull and envious skull Absurdly cries--'The man's down!'
”Down do they say? How then, I pray, His king and country prize him!
Through the whole world known, his peace alone Is sure t' immortalize him.
”Lettsom we view a _Quaker_ true, 'Tis clear he's so in one sense: His _spirit_, strong, and ever young, Refutes pert Priestley's nonsense.
”In fossils he is deep, we see; Nor knows Beasts, Fishes, Birds ill; With plants not few, some from Pelew, And wondrous Mangel Wurzel!
”West India bred, warm heart, cool head, The city's first physician; By schemes humane--want, sickness, pain, To aid in his ambition.
”From terrace high he feasts his eye, When practice grants a furlough; And, while it roves o'er Dulwich groves, Looks down--even upon Thurlow.”
The concluding line is an allusion to the Lord Chancellor's residence at Dulwich.
In person, Lettsom was tall and thin--indeed, almost attenuated: his face was deeply lined, indicating firmness quite as much as benevolence; and his complexion was of a dark yellow hue. His eccentricities were numerous. Like the founder of his sect, he would not allow even respect for royalty to make an alteration in his costume which his conscience did not approve; and George III., who entertained a warm regard for him, allowed him to appear at Court in the ordinary Quaker garb, and to kiss his hand, though he had neither powder on his head, nor a sword by his side. Lettsom responded to his sovereign's courtesy by presenting him with some rare and unpurchasable medals.
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