Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/332

 self vanquished. His retort about Napoleon in 1817 to Metternich, whom he personally disliked, ‘Il a rendu la gloire passée douteuse et la renommée future impossible,’ is well known; and the mot that ‘even worse than the cant of patriotism is its recant,’ often attributed to Russell, is also ascribed to him.

He had considerable talents as a writer, and contributed several articles to the ‘Quarterly Review,’ notably an estimate of Horne Tooke, whom he had known when he was young, a review of Rogers's ‘Columbus,’ which he attacked (ix. 207), and an article on Fox (ix. 313). Rogers avenged Dudley's critical censures in the epigram: Ward has no heart, they say, but I deny it; He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it (, Rogers and his Contemporaries, i. 122). Dudley's letters to Copleston, bishop of Llandaff, were edited by the bishop and published in 1840 by John Murray, whom Dudley had long known (Memoirs of John Murray, ii. 443). The portrait prefixed to this book is said to be a bad one (Quarterly Review, lxvi. 78).

[Gent. Mag. 1833, i. 367; Raikes's Journal; Greville Memoirs, 1st ser.; Lord Colchester's Diaries; Croker Papers, ii. 170; Moore's Life of Byron, passim; Edinburgh Review, lxvii. 79.] 

WARD, JOSHUA (1685–1761), quack-doctor, born in 1685, was descended from the family of Ward of Wolverston Hall in Suffolk. Beyond the doubtful statement that he began life as a drysalter in London in Thames Street, in partnership with his brother William, nothing is known of his earlier years. On 27 Jan. 1716–17 he was returned to parliament for Marlborough, but on 13 May 1717 his name was erased by order of the House of Commons, and that of Gabriel Roberts substituted, on the ground that he had been improperly returned, a conclusion hardly surprising, since he had not received a single vote. Previously to his deprivation, however, he had fled to France, perhaps on account of some share in the rising of 1715. He took refuge at St. Germain, and afterwards among the English colony at Dunkirk. In France he supported himself chiefly by the sale of his famous ‘drop and pill,’ with which he professed to cure every human malady. Towards the close of his residence in France he incurred the displeasure of the authorities, and was only saved from imprisonment in the Bastille by the good offices of John Page, afterwards member of parliament for Chichester, and secretary of the treasury.

Ward's drop was first made known in England by Sir Thomas Robinson [q. v.], ‘long Sir Thomas,’ whose zeal was ridiculed in verse by Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams (Poems, 1822, ii. 1). About the end of 1733 Ward obtained a pardon from George II and returned to England. By extensive advertisement and by the accomplishment of some startling cures he soon became famous, and secured for his pill and drop an enormous sale. He enjoyed the patronage of the king, whose immediate displeasure and more lasting esteem he won by curing his dislocated thumb with a violent wrench. George allowed him an apartment in the almonry office, Whitehall, where he ministered to the poor at his majesty's expense. Chesterfield was one of his patrons, and Gibbon enumerates him among those by whom his youth was tortured or relieved (Autobiography). The dying Henry Fielding also consulted him for his ailments, and paid a high tribute to his kindness and sagacity in his ‘Voyage to Lisbon,’ though he was compelled to acknowledge that in his own case Ward's medicines ‘had seldom any perceptible operation,’ and ‘that Mr. Ward declared it was as vain to attempt sweating him as a deal board.’ Ward's most enthusiastic patron, however, was Lieutenant-general Churchill, who rendered him great service by extolling his wares among the aristocracy (cf., Poems, i. 236).

Ward purchased three houses in Pimlico, near St. James's Park, and converted them into a hospital for his poor patients, to whom he showed great generosity. For their benefit he took another house in the city, in Threadneedle Street. Large crowds resorted to him daily, and it became the habit of many ladies of fashion to sit before his doors distributing his medicine to all comers. This extraordinary success was not relished by more regular practitioners. Churchill, when asked by Queen Caroline whether it was true that Ward's medicine had made a man mad, replied ‘Yes, madam: Dr. Mead’ (, Reprint of Miscellaneous Works and Memoirs of Chesterfield, ii. 1, 50, 79). From the close of 1734 Ward was constantly attacked in prose and verse. On 28 Nov. 1734 a writer in the ‘Daily Courant’ declared the pill and drop part of a plot to introduce popery into England, basing his suspicions on the long residence of Ward in France, and on the zeal of the Roman catholic Lady Gage in distributing his pill. On the same day the ‘Grub Street Journal’ commenced a violent attack on Ward's remedy, for which he unsuccessfully proceeded against the proprietor in the