About the year 1705, one Roger Grant rose into public notice in London, by
his publication of his own "marvellous cures." This fellow was no fool,
though a great knave. He was formerly a travelling tinker, subsequently a
cobbler, and Anabaptist preacher. From tinkering of pots, he became
mender of soles of men's boots and shoes; thence saver of souls from
perdition, a tinkerer of sore eyes, and lightener of the body. The
following bit of poetry was written in 1708 for his benefit, the "picture"
being one which Grant, who was a very vain man, had gotten up from a
copperplate likeness of himself, to distribute among his friends. The
picture was found posted up conspicuously with the lines:--
"A tinker first, his scene of life began;
That failing, he set up for a cunning man;
But, wanting luck, puts on a new disguise,
And now pretends that he can cure your eyes.
But this expect, that, like a tinker true,
Where he repairs one eye, he puts out two."
[Illustration: THE EYE DOCTOR.]
He worked himself into notoriety by the publication, in pamphlet form, of
his cures,--a mixture of truth strongly spiced with falsehood,--and
scattering it over the community. "His plan was to get hold of some poor,
ignorant person, of imperfect vision, and, after treating him with
medicine and half-crowns for a few weeks, induce him to sign a
testimonial, which he probably had never read, that he was born blind, and
by the providential intervention of Dr. Grant, he had been entirely
restored. To this certificate the clergyman and church-wardens of the
parish, in which the patient had been known to wander in mendicancy, were
asked to attest; and if they proved impregnable to the cunning
representations of the importunate solicitors, and declined to sign the
certificate, the doctor did not scruple to save them that trouble by
signing their names himself."
More than once was the charge of being a tinker preferred against him. The
following satire was written and published for his benefit--with Dr.
Reade's--after Queen Anne had Dr. Grant sworn in as her "oculist in
ordinary":--
"Her majesty sure was in a surprise,
Or else was very short-sighted,
When a tinker was sworn to look to her eyes,
And the mountebank Reade was knighted."
"THE LITTLE CARVER DAVY."
The distinguished chemical philosopher and physician of Penzance, Sir
Humphry Davy, Bart., was the son of a poor wood-carver, at which trade
Humphry worked in his earlier days, and was named by his familiar
associates, the "Little Carver Davy." On the death of his father, the
widow established herself as a milliner at Penzance, where she apprenticed
her son to an apothecary. His mother was a woman of talent and great moral
sense. When, as Sir Humphry, he had reached the summit of his fame, he
looked back upon the facts of his humble origin, his father's plebeian
occupation and associates, and his mother's mean pursuit, followed for his
benefit, with mortification instead of regarding them as sources of
pride.