The Quarterly Review Volume 90 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1852 Excerpt: ...so. Simple.--I thank your worship; I shall make my master glad with these tidings.' Simple did wisely to be glad with the tidings, for it is usually all the comfort that can be got. An apothecary, who saw as far into a case as he did into a millstone, always addressed the friends of the patient to this effect: --' He may recover, and he mayn't, and that's the truth.' Set off by an important air and emphasis, the speech to the class among whom he practised had an oracular sound, and all the recoveries were ascribed to the doctor--all the deaths to the disease. The inexorable creditor knocked at last at our doctor's own door. A brother iEsculapius, to evade troublesome inquiries, repeated in jocular tones the wonted saying of his dying friend. But what was meat for the man was not meat for the master. 'Oh, ' he exclaimed, 'let's have no folly now; this is a very serious thing.' Alas for his patients --he had never discovered it before. Mr. Spectator too turned Sir Roger's speech upon himself. An innkeeper on the estate hung up his head for a sign. The Knight, fully alive to the disgrace of the compliment, had the portrait converted into a Saracen's head, which, frowning grimly, retained a comical look of the placid original. He is anxious to learn from his literary guest whether the likeness is visible, and is answered that much may be said on both sides. Modern politicians have Vol. xc. No. Clxxx. x felt felt so deeply the force of the maxim that it seems to have become their rule to take both sides by turns;--nor is there any lack of sympathising and applauding critics and historians. In one of his walks with Sir Roger, Addison meets MoU White, witch for the time being to the parish of Coverley. An account follows of the superstition, as it then existed in Fn...