Page:Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869) v1.djvu/24

4 As a doctor, Ursus wrought cures by varied means. He made use of aromatics; he was versed in simples; he made the most of the immense power which lies in a heap of neglected plants, such as the hazel, the catkin, the white alder, the white briony, the mealy-tree, the traveller's joy, the buckthorn. He treated phthisis with the sun-dew; at opportune moments he would use the leaves of the spurge, which plucked at the bottom are a purgative, and plucked at the top an emetic. He cured sore throat by means of the vegetable excrescence called "Jews' ear." He knew the rush which cures the ox, and the mint which cures the horse. He was well acquainted with the beauties and virtues of the herb mandragora, which, as every one knows, is of both sexes. He had many recipes. He cured burns with salamander wool,—of which, according to Pliny, Nero had a napkin. Ursus possessed a retort and a flask; he effected transmutations; he sold panaceas. It was said that he had once been for a short time in Bedlam; they had done him the honour to take him for a madman, but had set him free on discovering that he was only a poet. This story was probably not true; we all have to submit to some such absurd reports about ourselves.

The fact is, Ursus was a bit of a savant, a man of taste, and an old Latin poet. He was skilled in two forms of verse,—he Hippocratized and he Pindarized. He could have vied in bombast with Rapin and Vida. He could have composed Jesuit tragedies in a style no less successful than that of Father Bouhours. It followed from his familiarity with the venerable rhythms and metres of the ancients that he had peculiar figures of speech, and a whole family of classical metaphors at his command. He would say of a mother followed by her two daughters, "There is a dactyl;" of a father preceded by his two sons, "There is an anapæst;" and