Sir Launcelot, boiling with indignation at the venality1 and faction2 of the electors, whom he had harangued4 to so little purpose, retired5 with the most deliberate disdain6 towards one of the gates of the town, on the outside of which his curiosity was attracted by a concourse of people, in the midst of whom stood Mr. Ferret, mounted upon a stool, with a kind of satchel7 hanging round his neck, and a phial displayed in his right hand, while he held forth8 to the audience in a very vehement9 strain of elocution.
Crabshaw thought himself happily delivered when he reached the suburbs, and proceeded without halting; but his master mingled10 with the crowd, and heard the orator11 express himself to this effect:—
“Very likely you may undervalue me and my medicine, because I don’t appear upon a stage of rotten boards, in a shabby velvet12 coat, and tie-periwig, with a foolish fellow in a motley coat, to make you laugh, by making wry13 faces; but I scorn to use these dirty arts for engaging your attention. These paltry14 tricks, ad captandum vulgus, can have no effect but on idiots; and if you are idiots, I don’t desire you should be my customers. Take notice, I don’t address you in the style of a mountebank15, or a High German doctor; and yet the kingdom is full of mountebanks, empirics, and quacks16. We have quacks in religion, quacks in physic, quacks in law, quacks in politics, quacks in patriotism18, quacks in government—High German quacks, that have blistered19, sweated, bled, and purged20 the nation into an atrophy21. But this is not all; they have not only evacuated22 her into a consumption, but they have intoxicated23 her brain, until she is become delirious24; she can no longer pursue her own interest, or, indeed, rightly distinguish it. Like the people of Nineveh, she can hardly tell her right hand from her left; but, as a changeling, is dazzled and delighted by an ignis fatuus, a Will-o’-the-wisp, an exhalation from the vilest25 materials in nature, that leads her astray through Westphalian bogs26 and deserts, and will one day break her neck over some barren rocks, or leave her sticking in some H——n pit, or quagmire27.
“For my part, if you have a mind to betray your country, I have no objection. In selling yourselves and your fellow-citizens, you only dispose of a pack of rascals28 who deserve to be sold. If you sell one another, why should not I sell this here Elixir29 of Long Life, which, if properly used, will protract30 your days till you shall have seen your country ruined. I shall not pretend to disturb your understandings, which are none of the strongest, with a hotchpotch of unintelligible31 terms, such as Aristotle’s four principles of generation, unformed matter, privation, efficient, and final causes. Aristotle was a pedantic32 blockhead, and still more knave33 than fool. The same censure34 we may safely put on that wiseacre, Dioscorides, with his faculties35 of simples— his seminal36, specific, and principal virtues37; and that crazy commentator38, Galen, with his four elements, elementary qualities, his eight complexions39, his harmonies and discords40. Nor shall I expatiate41 on the alkahest of that mad scoundrel, Paracelsus, with which he pretended to reduce flints into salt; nor archaeus or spiritus rector of that visionary Van Helmont, his simple, elementary water, his gas, ferments42, and transmutations; nor shall I enlarge upon the salt, sulphur, and oil, the acidum vagum, the mercury of metals, and the volatilised vitriol of other modern chemists, a pack of ignorant, conceited43, knavish44 rascals, that puzzle your weak heads with such jargon45, just as a Germanised m——r throws dust in your eyes, by lugging46 in and ringing the changes on the balance of power, the Protestant religion, and your allies on the continent; acting47 like the juggler48, who picks your pockets while he dazzles your eyes and amuses your fancy with twirling his fingers and reciting the gibberish of hocus pocus; for, in fact, the balance of power is a mere49 chimera50. As for the Protestant religion, nobody gives himself any trouble about it; and allies on the continent, we have none, or, at least, none that would raise an hundred men to save us from perdition, unless we paid an extravagant51 price for their assistance.
“But, to return to this here Elixir of Long Life, I might embellish53 it with a great many high-sounding epithets54; but I disdain to follow the example of every illiterate55 vagabond, that, from idleness, turns quack17, and advertises his nostrum56 in the public papers. I am neither a felonious drysalter returned from exile, an hospital stump-turner, a decayed staymaker, a bankrupt printer, or insolvent57 debtor58, released by act of parliament. I do not pretend to administer medicines without the least tincture of letters, or suborn wretches59 to perjure60 themselves in false affidavits61 of cures that were never performed; nor employ a set of led captains to harangue3 in my praise at all public places. I was bred regularly to the profession of chemistry, and have tried all the processes of alchemy; and I may venture to say, that this here elixir is, in fact, the chruseon pepuromenon ek puros, the visible, glorious, spiritual body, from whence all other beings derive62 their existence, as proceeding63 from their father the sun, and their mother the moon; from the sun, as from a living and spiritual gold, which is mere fire; consequently, the common and universal first-created mover, from whence all moveable things have their distinct and particular motions; and also from the moon, as from the wife of the sun, and the common mother of all sublunary things.
“And forasmuch as man is, and must be, the comprehensive end of all creatures, and the microcosm, he is counselled in the Revelation to buy gold that is thoroughly64 fired, or rather pure fire, that he may become rich and like the sun; as, on the contrary, he becomes poor, when he abuses the arsenical poison; so that, his silver, by the fire, must be calcined to a caput mortuum, which happens when he will hold and retain the menstruum, out of which he partly exists, for his own property, and doth not daily offer up the same in the fire of the sun, that the woman may be clothed with the sun, and become a sun, and thereby65 rule over the moon; that is to say, that he may get the moon under his feet. Now, this here elixir, sold for no more than sixpence a phial, contains the essence of the alkahest, the archaeus, the catholicon, the menstruum, the sun, the moon, and, to sum up all in one word, is the true, genuine, unadulterated, unchangeable, immaculate, and specific chruseon pepuromenon ek puros.”
The audience were variously affected66 by this learned oration67. Some of those who favoured the pretensions68 of the Whig candidate, were of opinion, that he ought to be punished for his presumption69, in reflecting so scurrilously70 on ministers and measures. Of this sentiment was our adventurer, though he could not help admiring the courage of the orator, and owning within himself, that he had mixed some melancholy71 truths with his scurrility72.
Mr. Ferret would not have stood so long in his rostrum unmolested, had not he cunningly chosen his station immediately without the jurisdiction73 of the town, whose magistrates74 therefore could not take cognisance of his conduct; but application was made to the constable76 of the other parish, while our nostrum-monger proceeded in his speech, the conclusion of which produced such an effect upon his hearers, that his whole cargo77 was immediately exhausted78. He had just stepped down from his stool, when the constable with his staff arrived, and took him under his guidance. Mr. Ferret, on this occasion, attempted to interest the people in his behalf, by exhorting79 them to vindicate80 the liberty of the subject against such an act of oppression; but finding them deaf to the tropes and figures of his elocution, he addressed himself to our knight81, reminding him of his duty to protect the helpless and the injured, and earnestly
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