“Then he took agues--and afterwards scrofula--under his protection; patronized by his old dowager, and lucky in some of his desperate quackery, Dr. Frumpton’s reputation rapidly increased, and from different counties fools came to consult him. His manners were bearish even to persons of quality who resorted to his den; but these brutal manners _imposed_ upon many, heightened the idea of his confidence in himself, and commanded the submission of the timid.--His tone grew higher and higher, and he more and more easily bullied the credulity of man and woman-kind.--It seems that either extreme of soft and polished, or of rough and brutal manner, can succeed with certain physicians.--_Dr._ Frumpton’s name, and Dr. Frumpton’s wonderful cures, were in every newspaper, and in every shop-window. No man ever puffed himself better even in this puffing age.--His success was viewed with scornful yet with jealous eyes by the regularly bred physicians, and they did all they could to keep him down--Sir Amyas Courtney, in particular, who would never call him any thing but _that farrier_, making what noise he could about Frumpton’s practising without a diploma. In pure spite, Frumpton took to learning--late as it was, he put himself to school--with virulent zeal he read and _crammed_ till, Heaven knows how! he accomplished getting a diploma--stood all prescribed examinations, and has grinned defiance ever since at Sir Amyas. “Frumpton, delighted with the story of the _made shell_, and conceiving me to be the enemy of his enemy, resolved, as he declared, to take me by the hand; and, such is the magical deception of self-love, that his apparent friendliness towards me made him appear quite agreeable, and notwithstanding all that I had heard and known of him, I fancied his brutality was frankness, and his presumption strength of character.--I gave him credit especially for a happy instinct for true merit, and an honourable antipathy to flattery and meanness.--The manner in which he pronounced the words, _fawning puppy!_ applied to Sir Amyas Courtney, pleased me peculiarly--and I had just exalted Frumpton into a great man, and an original genius, when he fell flat to the level, and below the level of common mortals. “It happened, as I was walking home with him, we were stopped in the street by a crowd, which had gathered round a poor man, who had fallen from a scaffold, and had broken his leg. Dr. Frumpton immediately said, ‘Send for Bland, the surgeon, who lives at the corner of the street.’ The poor man was carried into a shop; we followed him. I found that his leg, besides being broken, was terribly bruised and cut. The surgeon in a few minutes arrived. Mr. Bland, it seems, is a _protégé_ of Frumpton’s, who formerly practised human farriery under him.