Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/321

Rh be used to corroborate the brain. I hope you have upon no account promoted sternutation by hellebore.

G. Sir, no such matter: you utterly mistake.

D. Mistake! am I not a physician? and shall an apothecary dispute my nostrums? —— You may perhaps have filled up a prescription or two of Ratcliff's, which chanced to succeed, and with that very prescription, injudiciously prescribed to different constitutions, have destroyed a multitude. Pharmacopola componat, medicus solus præscribat, says Celsus. Fumigate him, I say, this very evening, while he is relieved by an interval.

D. 'Sdeath, sir, my friend an apothecary! a base mechanick! He who, like myself, professes the noblest sciences in the universe, criticism and poetry! Can you think I would submit my writings to the judgment of an apothecary? By the immortals, he himself inserted three whole paragraphs in my Remarks, had a hand in my Publick Spirit, nay, assisted me in my description of the furies and infernal regions, in my Appius.

Mr. L. He is an author; you mistake the gentleman, doctor; he has been an author these twenty years; to his bookseller's knowledge, and no man's else.

D. Is all the town in a combination? Shall poetry fall to the ground? Must our reputation be lost to all foreign countries? O destruction! perdition! Opera! Opera ! As poetry once raised cities, so, when poetry fails, cities are overturned, and the world is no more.

D. He raves, he raves; Mr. Lintot, I pray you