Sometime in the summer of 1768, Dr. Samuel Johnson supped at the Crown and Anchor, in the Strand, with a little company that Mr. Boswell had collected to meet him. The company consisted of Dr. Percy, afterwards Bishop of Dromore (Percy’s “Reliques”), Dr. Douglas, Mr. Langton (“Lanky”), Dr. Robertson, the historian, Dr. Blair (Blair’s “Rhetoric”) and Mr. Thomas Davies, the bookseller of Russell Street, Covent Garden. The Scots were all prudent and silent, but Johnson was “in remarkable vigour of mind and eager to exert himself in conversation.” He did exert himself in conversation: to the following effect:

“He was vehement against old Dr. Mounsey, of Chelsea College, as ‘a fellow who swore and talked bawdy.’ ‘I have been often in his company (said Dr. Percy), and never heard him swear or talk bawdy.’ Mr. Davies, who sat next to Dr. Percy, having after this had some conversation ‘aside with him, made a discovery which, in his zeal to pay court to Dr. Johnson, he eagerly proclaimed aloud from the foot of the table: ‘O, Sir, I have found out a very good reason why Dr. Percy never heard Mounsey swear or talk bawdy; for he tells me he never saw him but at the Duke of Northumberland’s table!’, ‘And so, Sir (said Johnson loudly to Dr. Percy), you would shield this man from the charge of swearing and talking bawdy because he did not do so at the Duke of Northumberland’s table. Sir, you might as well tell us that you had seen him hold up his hand at the Old Bailey, and he neither swore nor talked bawdy; or that you had seen him in the cart at Tyburn, and he neither swore nor talked bawdy. And is it thus, Sir, that you presume to controvert what I have related?”, Whereupon Dr. Percy left the room in a huff, and next morning Dr. Johnson observed complacently that there had been “good talk.”

Of course, the passage had been long familiar to me, but not reading Boswell in the luxury of an annotated edition, I had always speculated vainly as to this “old Dr. Mounsey,” who appears on the great lantern show for a moment, sets Johnson and Percy by the ears, and then vanishes. It was only the other day that I found in an odd old book (published, strangely enough, at Louisville, Kentucky) the true history of Dr. Messenger Mounsey (or Monsey), Physician to Chelsea Hospital.

He was the son of a country parson, who refused in 1689 to take the oath of allegiance to the Usurpers, William and Mary. He was educated at Cambridge and settled down as a physician in Bury St. Edmunds, where he married a widow with a handsome jointure. He made an income of ￡300 a year, and grumbled because he had to work too hard for it. Fortunately for him, Lord Godolphin was seized with apoplexy on a journey to his country seat, and Bury was the nearest point where medical help was to be had. Dr. Mounsey was called in, Lord Godolphin got better, liked his physician’s talk, and made Dr. Messenger for life. He had an apartment at Lord Godolphin’s town house, was made Physician to Chelsea Hospital and saw all the best company of the age, from King George II downwards. For a a time he was a great friend of Garrick’s; but Garrick had a sly tongue, and the Doctor had a rough tongue, and the friendship ended in offence and epigrams. Garrick used to make comic business out of Mounsey’s oddities for the entertainment of his friends; Mounsey said that Garrick would never leave the stage “so long as he knows a guinea is cross on one side and pile on the other”— so long as guineas have heads and tails — and the two became sworn enemies. The fact is that Dr. Mounsey was an intensely rude old man, or, in the elegant phrase of my authority, “it became the fashion for the young, the delicate, and the gay to exclaim against him as an interrupter of established forms, and as a violator of those minute rules of good breeding — which, however trifling they may appear to the sage and the philosopher, contribute essentially to the ease and comfort of modern life.” Yet the queer old man had, like the greater Doctor of his age, an interior benevolence. Once, going along Oxford Market, he observed a poor woman asking the price of a fine piece of beef.

“The brute answered the woman, ‘One penny a pound,’ thinking, no doubt, it was too good for her. ‘Weigh that piece of beef,’ said the Doctor.

“‘Ten pounds and a half,’ said Mr. Butcher.

“‘Here, good woman,’ cried the Doctor, ‘hold up your apron and take that beef home to your family.’

“‘God bless your honour!’

“‘Go off, directly, home; no compliments! Here, Mr. Butcher,’ continued the Doctor, ‘give me change out of this shilling for that poor woman’s beef.’

“‘What do you mean, Sir?’ replied the Butcher.

“‘Mean, Sir! why to pay for the poor woman’s beef, what you asked her; a penny a pound. Come, make haste and give me three halfpence; I am in a hurry.’

“‘Why, Sir . . . ’ said the Butcher.

“‘No why sirs with me,’ answered the Doctor, ‘give me my change instantly, or I will break your head.’ The Butcher again began t............