John Radcliffe, the eccentric, niggardly, self-indulgent, ill-educated, and intensely Jacobitish physician, who, at the end of the seventeenth century, rose to an eminent place in the capital and at Court, was the son of a comfortable Yorkshire yeoman. He resided for some years at Oxford University, and afterwards practised there; but in 1684 he went up to London, and speedily made himself a great name and income. As, however, at Oxford he had found enemies who, as was the fashion of these days, spoke very openly and bitterly against their rising rival--so was it also in London: Gibbons, Blackmore, and others, were hostile to the new-comer--the first expending his sarcasm on Radcliffe's defects of scholarship. Radcliffe replied, by fixing on Gibbons, as is well known the epithet of "_Nurse_;" ridiculing his mode of treatment by slops and gruels, and so forth,--Radcliffe's faith being placed in fresh air and exercise, generous nourishment, and the use of cordials. Sir Edward Hannes was, like Radcliffe, an Oxford man; and hence, perhaps, the peculiar jealousy and hatred with which he regarded Radcliffe. Hannes started in London, whither he followed Radcliffe, a splendid carriage and four, that drew upon it the eyes of all the town, and provoked Radcliffe, when told by a friend that the horses were the finest he had ever seen, to the savage reply, "Then he'll be able to sell them for all the more!" Hannes employed a stratagem that, in sundry shapes, has since been not quite unfamiliar in medical practice. He instructed his livery servants to run about the streets, and, putting their heads into every coach they met, to inquire in tones of anxiety and alarm, whether Dr. Hannes was there. Once one of these servants entered on this advertising errand Garraway's Coffeehouse, in Exchange Alley--a great resort of the medical profession; and called out, all breathless with haste, "Gentlemen, can any of your honours tell me if Dr. Hannes is here?" "Who wants Dr. Hannes, fellow?" asked Radcliffe, who was in the room. "Lord A----, and Lord B----," was the assurance of the servant. "No, no, my man," said Radcliffe, in a voice deliberate and full of enjoyment of the irony; "no, no, you are mistaken; it isn't the Lords that want your master, but he that wants them." Hannes was reputed the son of a basket-maker; Blackmore had been a schoolmaster--circumstances which furnished Radcliffe with material for a savage attack on both, when called in to attend the young Duke of Gloucester, for whom they had prescribed until the illness took a fatal turn. He accused them to their faces, and with no particular gentleness of language, for having abominably mismanaged a mere attack of rash; and said, "It would have been happy for this nation had you, Sir, been bred up a basket-maker, and you, Sir, remained a country schoolmaster, rather than have ventured out of your reach, in the practice of an art to which you are an utter stranger,