en! whose skill
Attempts no task it cannot well fulfill,
Gives melancholy up to nature's care,
And sends the patient into purer air.'

Cowper's _Poems_, ed. 1786, i. 272.

He is mentioned also by Priestley (_Auto._ ed. 1810, p.66) as one of his
chief benefactors. Lord Eldon, when almost a briefless barrister,
consulted him. 'I put my hand into my pocket, meaning to give him his
fee; but he stopped me, saying, "Are you the young gentleman who gained
the prize for the essay at Oxford?" I said I was. "I will take no fee
from you." I often consulted him; but he would never take a fee.'
Twiss's _Eldon_, i. 104.

[709] How much he had physicked himself is shewn by a letter of May 8.
'I took on Thursday,' he writes, 'two brisk catharticks and a dose of
calomel. Little things do me no good. At night I was much better. Next
day cathartick again, and the third day opium for my cough. I lived
without flesh all the three days.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii.257. He had been
bled at least four times that year and had lost about fifty ounces of
blood. _Ante_, pp.142, 146. On Aug. 3, 1779, he wrote:--'Of the last
fifty days I have taken mercurial physick, I believe, forty.' _Notes and
Queries_, 6th S. v.461.

[710] An exact reprint of this letter is given by Professor Mayor in
_Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v.481. The omissions and the repetitions
'betray,' he says, 'the writer's agitation.' The postscript Boswell had
omitted. It is as follows:--'Dr. Brocklesby will be with me to meet Dr.
Heberden, and I shall have previously make (sic) master of the case as
well as I can.'

[711] Vol. ii. p.268, of Mrs. Thrale's _Collection_. BOSWELL. The
beginning of the letter is very touching:--'I am sitting down in no
cheerful solitude to write a narrative which would once have affected
you with tenderness and sorrow, but which you will perhaps pass over now
with the careless glance of frigid indifference. For this diminution of
regard, however, I know not whether I ought to blame you, who may have
reasons which I cannot know, and I do not blame myself, who have for a
great part of human life done you what good I could, and have never done
you evil.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 268. 'I have loved you,' he continued,
'with virtuous affection; I have honoured you with sincere esteem. Let
not all our endearments be forgotten, but let me have in this great
distress your pity and your prayers. You see I yet turn to you with my
complaints