Dr. Busby's "Monologue."manager, walked at this moment upon the stage accompanied by a constable, and gave the amateur performer into custody. It is said that his father, not content with this failure, actually made an attempt to recite the "monologue" from his box, until hissed and howled down by the half laughing, half indignant audience. The circumstance is commemorated by an admirable pictorial satire entitled, A Buz in a Box, or the Poet in a Pet, published by S. W. Fores on the 21st of October, in which we see the doctor gesticulating from his box, and imploring the audience to listen to his "monologue." Young Busby, seated on his father's Pegasus (an ass), quotes one of the verses of the absurd composition, while the animal (after the manner of its kind) answers the hisses of the audience by elevating its heels and uttering a characteristic "hee haw." By the side of Busby junior stands the manager (Raymond), apologetically addressing the audience. Certain pamphlets lie scattered in front of the stage, on which are inscribed (among others) the following doggerel:—
" A Lord and a Doctor once started for Fame,
Which for the best poet should pass;
The Lord was cried up on account of his name,
The Doctor cried down for an ass."
"Doctor Buz, he assures us, on Drury's new stage
No horses or elephants there should engage;
But pray, Doctor Buz, how comes it to pass,
That you your own self should produce there an ass?"
Dr. Busby was a person desirous of achieving literary notoriety at any amount of personal inconvenience. He translated Lucretius, and is said to have given public recitations, accompanied with bread and butter and tea; but in spite of these attractions, the public did not come and the book would not sell, facts which a wicked wag of the period ridiculed, by inserting the following announcement in the column of births of one of the newspapers: "Yesterday, at his house in Queen Anne Street, Dr. Busby of a stillborn Lucretius"
1813.The medical profession is ridiculed in a satire published in
