IMAGINE to yourself a little squat, uncourtly figure of a Doctor
_Slop_, of about four feet and a half perpendicular height, with a
breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly, which might have done
honour to a serjeant in the horse-guards.
Such were the out-lines of Dr. _Slop_’s figure, which—if you have read
_Hogarth_’s analysis of beauty, and if you have not, I wish you
would;——you must know, may as certainly be caricatured, and conveyed to
the mind by three strokes as three hundred.
Imagine such a one,—for such, I say, were the outlines of Dr. _Slop_’s
figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling thro’ the dirt upon
the vertebræ of a little diminutive pony, of a pretty colour——but of
strength,——alack!——scarce able to have made an amble of it, under such
a fardel, had the roads been in an ambling condition.——They were
not.——Imagine to yourself, _Obadiah_ mounted upon a strong monster of a
coach-horse, pricked into a full gallop, and making all practicable
speed the adverse way.
Pray, Sir, let me interest you a moment in this description.
Had Dr. _Slop_ beheld _Obadiah_ a mile off, posting in a narrow lane
directly towards him, at that monstrous rate,—splashing and plunging
like a devil thro’ thick and thin, as he approached, would not such a
phænomenon, with such a vortex of mud and water moving along with it,
round its axis,—have been a subject of juster apprehension to Dr.
_Slop_ in his situation, than the _worst_ of _Whiston_’s comets?—To say
nothing of the NUCLEUS; that is, of _Obadiah_ and the coach-horse.—In
my idea, the vortex alone of ’em was enough to have involved and
carried, if not the doctor, at least the doctor’s pony, quite away with
it. What then do you think must the terror and hydrophobia of Dr.
_Slop_ have been, when you read (which you are just going to do) that
he was advancing thus warily along towards _Shandy-Hall_, and had
approached to within sixty yards of it, and within five yards of a
sudden turn, made by an acute angle of the garden-wall,—and in the
dirtiest part of a dirty lane,—when _Obadiah_ and his coach-horse
turned the corner, rapid, furious,—pop,—full upon him!—Nothing, I
think, in nature, can be supposed more terrible than such a
rencounter,—so imprompt! so ill prepared to stand the shock of it as
Dr. _Slop_ was.
What could Dr. _Slop_ do?——he crossed himself +—Pugh!—but the doctor,
Sir, was a Papist.—No matter; he had better have kept hold of the
pummel.—He had so;—nay, as it happened, he had better have done nothing
at all; for in crossing himself he let go his whip,——and in attempting
to save his whip betwixt his knee and his saddle’s skirt, as it
slipped, he lost his stirrup,——in losing which he lost his seat;——and
in the multitude of all these losses (which, by the bye, shews what
little advantage there is in crossing) the unfortunate doctor lost his
presence of mind. So that without waiting for _Obadiah_’s onset, he
left his pony to its destiny, tumbling off it diagonally, something in
the stile and manner of a pack of wool, and without any other
consequence from the fall, save that of being left (as it would have
been) with the broadest part of him sunk about twelve inches deep in
the mire.
_Obadiah_ pull’d off his cap twice to Dr. _Slop_;—once as he was
falling,—and then again when he saw him seated.——Ill-timed
complaisance;—had not the fellow better have stopped his horse, and got
off and help’d him?—Sir, he did all that his situation would allow;—but
the MOMENTUM of the coach-horse was so great, that _Obadiah_ could not
do it all at once; he rode in a circle three times round Dr. _Slop_,
before he could fully accomplish it any how;—and at the last, when he
did stop his beast, ’twas done with such an explosion of mud, that
_Obadiah_ had better have been a league off. In short, never was a Dr.
_Slop_ so beluted, and so transubstantiated, since that affair came
into fashion.