Who reached the acme of medical fame, and became court physician, was Sir
Richard Blackmer. He surely ought not to have been called an ignoramus (by
Dr. Johnson), for he resided thirteen years in the University of Oxford.
After leaving Oxford, his extreme poverty compelled him to adopt the
profession of a schoolmaster. In the year 1700 there were collected
upwards of forty sets of ribald verses, under the title of "Commendary
Verses, or the Author of Two Arthurs, and Satyr against Wit;" in which Sir
Richard was taunted with his earlier poverty, and of having been a
pedagogue!
Every man has his advertisement and his advertisers. The poets and
lampooners were Blackmer's. They assisted in bringing him into notoriety.
Among them were Pope, Steele, and the obscene Dr. Garth. While the authors
of those filthy, licentious productions (which no bar-maid or
kitchen-scullion at this day could read without blushing behind her pots
and kettles) were flattering themselves that they were injuring the
honest doctor, they were bringing him daily into the notice of better men
than themselves, and heaping ignominy upon the authors of such vile
lampoons.