Like Davy, Akenside became ashamed of his plebeian origin. His lameness, like Lord Byron's, was a continual source of mortification to him. He became a physician to St. Thomas; and, as he went with the students the rounds of the hospital, the fastidiousness of the little bunch of dignity at having come so closely in contact with the vulgar rabble, induced him, at times, to make the strongest patients precede him with _brooms_, to clear a way for him through the crowd of diseased wretches, who, nevertheless, had wonderful faith in his wisdom, and would cry out, "_Bravo for the butcher boy with a game leg!_" as they fell back before the fearful charge of corn brooms. By the assistance of friends, and his ever extensive practice, Akenside was enabled, to the day of his death, in 1770, to keep his carriage, wear his gold-hilted sword, and his huge well-powdered wig. HOW ONE HOP-PED FROM OBSCURITY. "Dr. Messenger Monsey, in the heyday of his prosperity, used to assert to his friends that the first of his known ancestors was a baker and a retailer of hops. At a critical point of this worthy man's career, when hops were 'down,' and feathers 'up,' in order to raise the needful for present emergencies he ripped up his beds, sold the feathers, and refilled the ticks with hops. When a change occurred in the market soon afterwards the process was reversed; even the children's beds were reopened, and the hops sold for a large profit over the cost of replacing the feathers!" "That's the way, sirs, that my family hop-ped from obscurity," the doctor would conclude, with great gusto. The Duke of Leeds used, in the same manner, to delight in boasting of his lucky progenitor, Jack Osborn, the shop lad, who rescued his master's beautiful daughter from a watery grave at the bottom of the Thames, and won her hand away from a score of noble suitors, who wanted, literally, the young lady's _pin_-money as much as herself. Her father was a pin manufacturer, and had in his shop on London Bridge amassed a considerable wealth in the business. The jolly old man, instead of disdaining to bestow the lovely and wealthy maid--his only child--on an apprentice, exclaimed,-- "Jack Osborn won her, and Jack shall wear her." When Lord Bath vainly endeavored to effect a reconciliation between the doctor and Garrick, who had fallen out, Monsey said,-- "Why will your lordship trouble yourself with the squabbles of a merry-andrew and a _quack_ doctor?" Monsey continued his quarrel with Garrick up to the day of the death of the great tragedian. The latter seldom retaliated, but when he did his sarcasm cut to the bone. Garrick's style of satire may be inferred from his epigram on James Quin, the celebrated actor, and illegitimate son of an Irishman, "whose wife turned out a bigamist." When Garrick make his debut on the London stage, at Godman's Fields playhouse, October 19, 1741, as "Richard the Third," Quin objected to Garrick's original style, saying,--