"Here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling."
"To patient study, and unwearied thought,
And wise and watchful nurture of his powers,
Must the true poet consecrate his hours:
Thus, and thus only, may the crown be bought
Which his great brethren all their lives have sought;
For not to careless wreathers of chance-flowers
Openeth the Muse her amaranthine bowers,
But to the few, who worthily have fought
The toilsome fight, and won their way to fame.
With such as these I may not cast my lot,
With such as these I must not seek a name;
Content to please a while and be forgot;
Winning from daily toil--which irks me not--
Rare and brief leisure my poor song to frame."
OUR PATRON, OUR PATTERN.--SOME WRITERS.--SOME BLUNDERS.--AN OLD
SMOKER.--OLD GREEKS.--A DUKE ANSWERED BY A COUNTRY MISS.--THE PILGRIMS
AND THE PEAS.--"LITTLE DAISY."--"CASA WAPPA!"--FINE POETRY.--MORE
SCHOOLMASTERS AND TAILORS.--NAPOLEON'S AND WASHINGTON'S PHYSICIANS.--A
FRENCH "BUTCHER."--A DIF. OF OPINION.--SOME EPITAPHS.--DR. HOLMES'
"ONE-HOSS SHAY."--HEALTHFUL INFLUENCE OF MUSIC.--SAVED BY MUSIC.--A
GERMAN TOUCH-UP.--MUSIC ON ANIMALS.--MUSIC AMONG THE MICE.--MUSIC AND
HEALTH.
Apollo,--the father of Æsculapius, the "father of physicians"--was the god
of poetry and of music, as well as the patron of physicians. He presented
to Mercurius the famous caduceus, which has descended in the semblance of
the shepherd's crook--he being the protector of shepherds and the
Muses--and the physician's cane and surgeon's pole. Apollo is represented
with flowing hair,--which the Romans loved to imitate, with an effort also
at his graces of person and mind. Students at this day who court the
Muses begin by allowing, or coaxing their hair to grow long, forgetting,
as they nurse a sickly goatee or mustache, assisting its show by an
occasional dose of nitrate of silver, that their god was further
represented as a tall, _beardless_ youth, and instead of a bottle or
cigar, he held a lyre in his hand and discoursed music.
[Illustration: AN EMBRYO APOLLO.]
I think Dr. Apollo a very safe pattern for our students to imitate, those
particularly who are "fast," and who only think, with _Bobby Burns_,--
"Just now we're living sound and hale;
Then top and maintop crowd the sail;
Heave care owre side!
And large, before enjoyment's gale,
Let's tak the tide."
It is quite impossible to mention all, even of the most celebrated of our
physicians, who have contributed to the literary and musical world. But I
shall quote a sufficient number to disprove the assertion that "literary
physicians have not, as a rule, prospered as medical practitioners."
Who has developed and promulgated the knowledge relative to anatomy,
chemistry, physiology, botany, etc., but the physicians? The true
representation of sculpture, of painting, of engraving, and most of the
arts, depends upon the learned writing of the doctors.
Da Vinci owed his success as a portrait painter to his knowledge of
anatomy and physiology derived from study under a physician, as also did
Michael Angelo. How would our Powers have succeeded as a sculptor, without
this knowledge, or Miss Bonheur as a painter of animals? Dr. Hunter says
"Vinci (L.) was at the time the best anatomist in the world."
Crabbe, to be sure, failed as a physician, but succeeded as a literary
man; but then Crabbe was no physician, and was unread in medicine and
surgery. Arbuthnot also failed in the same manner, and for the same cause.
All who have so failed may attribute it to the fact they _did not succeed
in what they were not, but did succeed in what they were_--as Oliver
Goldsmith. He squandered at the gaming table the money given him by his
kind uncle to get him through Trinity College, and though spending two
years afterwards in Edinburgh, and passing one year at Leyden, ostensibly
reading medicine, he totally failed to pass an examination before the
surgeons of the college at London, and was rejected "as being
insufficiently informed." He had previously been writing for the
unappreciative booksellers, and authorship now became, per force, his only
means of livelihood.
Goldsmith was an excellent, kind-hearted man; and if he had only got
married and had a good wife to develop him, he would have been a greater
man than he was.
It has been intimated in these pages that Shakspeare was prejudiced
against medicine,--throwing "physic to the dogs;" but it is evident from a
careful perusal of his works that Shakspeare was ignorant, and also
superstitious, as respects this much abused science. Of the superstitions
we need not further treat, but refer the intelligent reader to any of his
plays for the truth of our intimation.
In Act II., Scene 1, of Coriolanus, he says by Menenius Agrippa, the
friend of Coriolanus, "It gives me an estate of seven years' health, in
which time I will make a lip at the physician; the most sovereign
prescription of Galen is but empirical," etc. Coriolanus was banished from
Rome, and died in the fifth century before Christ (about 490), and Galen
was not born till six hundred years afterwards, viz.,--A. D. 130.
We should smile to see the Apollo Belvedere with "glasses on his
nose,"--as many of our young ape-ollos now wear for _effect_; but it would
scarcely be less ridiculous than Gloster saying in Lear, "I shall not want
spectacles." King Lyr reigned during the earliest period of the
Anglo-Saxon history, and spectacles were not introduced into England until
the beginning of the fourteenth century. It is said that the painter
Cigoli in his representation of the aged Simeon at the circumcision of
Christ, made this same error by placing spectacles on the patriarch's
nose.
More ludicrous than either of the above is the painting by Albert Durer,
the German artist (about 1515), of his scene, "Peter denying Christ,"
wherein he represents a Roman soldier leaning against the door-post
comfortably smoking a tobacco pipe. The pipe, to which Germans are
particularly partial, was just being introduced during Durer's latter
years. The tobacco was not introduced into Europe until 1496, and was,
when first burned, twisted together.[8]
The Spaniards, in their report on their return from the first voyage of
Columbus said that "the savages would twist up long rolls of tobacco
leaves, _and lighting one end, smoke away like devils_." (The primitive
cigar.)