Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Closd oer the head of your loved Lycidas?
I not know when I have experienced a stranger sensation, than on seeing my old friend G. D., who had been paying me a m visit a few Sundays back, at my cottage at Islington, upon taking leave, instead of turning down the right hand path by which he had entered -- with staff in hand, and at noon day, deliberately march right forwards into the midst of the stream that runs by us, and totally disappear.
A spectacle like this at dusk would have been appalling enough; but, in the broad open daylight, to witness su unreserved motion towards self-destru in a valued friend, took from me all power of speculation.
How I found my feet, I know not. sciousness was quite gone. Some spirit, not my own, whirled me to the spot. I remember nothing but the silvery apparition of a good white head emerging; nigh which a staff (the hand uhat wielded it) pointed upwards, as feeling for the skies. In a moment (if time was in that time) he was on my shoulders, and I -- freighted with a load more precious than his who bore Anchises.
And here I ot but do justice to the officious zeal of sundry passers by, who, albeit arriving a little too late to participate in the honours of the rescue, in philanthropic shoals came thronging to unicate their advice as to the recovery; prescribing variously the application, or nonapplication, of salt, &c., to the person of the patient. Life meantime was ebbing fast away, amidst the stifle of flig judgments, when one, more sagacious than the rest, by a bright thought, proposed sending for the Doctor. Trite as the sel was, and impossible, as one should think, to be missed on, -- shall I fess ? -- in this emergency, it was to me as if an Angel had spoken. Great previous exertions -- and mine had not been insiderable -- are only followed by a debility of purpose. This was a moment of irresolution.
Monoculus -- for so, in default of catg his true name, I choose to desighe medical gentleman eared -- is a grave, middle-aged person, who, without having studied at the college, or truckled to the pedantry of a diploma, hath employed a great portion of his valuable time in experimental processes upon the bodies of unfortunate fellow-creatures, in whom the vital spark, to mere vulgar thinking, would seem extinct, and lost for ever. He omitteth no occasion of obtruding his services, from a case of on surfeit-suffocation to the ignobler obstrus, sometimes induced by a too wilful application of the plant abis outwardly. But though he deeth not altogether these drier extins, his occupatioh for the most part to water-practice; for the venience of which, he hath judiciously fixed his quarters he grand repository of the stream mentioned, where, day and night, from his little watch-tower, at the Middletons-Head, he listeo detect the wrecks of drowned mortality -- partly, as he saith, to be upon the spot -- and partly, because the liquids which he useth to prescribe to himself and his patients, on these distressing occasions, are ordinarily more vely to be found at these on hostelries, than in the shops and phials of the apothecaries. His ear hath arrived to such finesse by practice, that it is reported, he distinguish a plume at a half furlong distance; and tell, if it be casual or deliberate. He weareth a medal, suspended over a suit, inally of a sad brown, but which, by time, and frequency of nightly divings, has bee