GOOCH. 311 Royal Infirmary, and became a member of the Medical and Speculative Societies. In these societies lie very soon acquired the power of ex- pressing himself with tolerable facility ; but he spoke much better the second year than the first, and before the end of the third session, few men were more formidable debaters. He never affected to declaim, but he was a close reasoner, and a most unsparing opponent. On one occasion, when a medical coxcomb had written a paper, as full of pretension as it was void of merit, Gooch so severely handled him in the debate, that he burst into tears, and left the meeting. Though, at this part of his life, he was in private society remarkably shy in the company of strangers, in public speaking he was perfectly confident and self-possessed. During the first season of - his abode at Edin- burgh, he associated almost exclusively with Mr. Lockyer, who afterwards settled as a physician at Plymouth ; Mr. Fearon, who had been in Egypt, as surgeon to the Coldstream, and had returned nearly blind from the ophthalmia, and who afterwards practised as a physician at Sun- derland ; (a man whom no one could know without loving — cheerful and liberal, full of know- ledge, with a clear head and a warm heart, free from every selfish feeling ;) and Mr. Henry Southey : the very different characters of these individuals may have contributed in no trifling degree to their intimacy. The sole survivor of the party still looks back to their convivial meet- ings with a conviction that they did not owe their charm merely to the joyous period of life at which
