Little's the odds betwixt such a God, and that
Which atheist Lewis wore upon his hat.'
Thus you blaspheme, and rave; but pray, sir, try
What comforts my weak reason can apply,
Who never yet read Plutarch, hardly saw,
And am but meanly versed in Seneca.
In cases dangerous, and hard of cure,
We have recourse to Scarborough,[1] or Lower;[2]
But if they don't so desperate appear,
We trust to meaner doctors' skill and care.
If there were never in the world before
So foul a deed, I'm dumb, not one word more;
In God's name, then, let both your sluices flow,
And all the extravagance of sorrow show;
And tear your hair, and thump your mournful breast,
As if your dearest firstborn were deceased.
- ↑ Sir Charles Scarborough, a distinguished fellow of the College of Physicians, knighted for his great attainments by Charles II., who appointed him his principal physician. Dr. Scarborough acquired considerable reputation by his anatomical lectures delivered at Surgeons' Hall, which he continued annually for sixteen or seventeen years, and is stated to have been the first person who introduced geometrical and mechanical reasoning on the muscles. Having espoused the King's side during the civil wars, he was ejected from a fellowship he held at Caius College, Cambridge; but upon the Restoration ample amends were made to him. He died at eighty years of age in 1696.
- ↑ See ante, p. 10, note.
Christianity so vulnerable as to give an easy victory to the other side. In France he carried the imposition so far as to become a monk in the convent of Guienne, from whence he was afterwards expelled. He obtained high patronage, however, elsewhere; became chaplain to the Mareschal de Bassompierre, with a pension of two hundred crowns, and published, with the King's privilege, a book of Dialogues, in which he took some pains to disguise his real convictions; but the Doctors of the Sorbonne detected the fraud, and condemned the book to the flames. Thus exposed, and held up to universal obloquy, he left Paris, and went to Toulouse, where he commenced a course of lectures, in which he openly resumed and defended his former doctrines. For this offence he was prosecuted, and sentenced to be burned to death. His execution took place on the 19th February, 1619. Gramond, the President of the Parliament of Toulouse, describing his character, says of him, that 'he laughed at everything sacred, abominated the incarnation of our Saviour, and denied the being of a God, ascribing all things to chance.'
