02 - Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon by Henry Fielding

Embark on a memorable sailing voyage from England to Portugal in the mid-eighteenth century, as narrated by one of the eras leading humorists, satirists, novelists, and playwrights. This poignant work, recorded during the final chapter of his life, interweaves the authors declining health with the captivating details of his journey.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Part one of Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon by
Henry Fielding. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
Dedication to the public. Your candor is desired on the
perusal of the following sheets, as they are the product
of a genius that has long been your delight and entertainment.

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It must be acknowledged that a lamp almost burnt out
does not give so steady and uniform a light as
when it blazes in its full vigor. But yet it
is well known that by its wavering, as if struggling
against its own dissolution, it sometimes darts array as bright
as ever. In like manner, a strong and lively genius will,

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in its last struggles, sometimes mount aloft and throw forth
the most striking marks of its original luster, wherever these
are to be found. Do you, the genuine patrons of
extraordinary capacities, be as liberal in your applauses of him

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who is now no more as you were of him
whilst he was yet amongst you. And on the other hand,
if in this little work there should appear any traces
of a weakened and decayed life, let your own imaginations
place before your eyes a true picture in that of
a hand trembling in almost its latest hour, of a

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body emaciated with pains, yet struggling for your entertainment. And
let this affecting picture open each tender heart, and call
forth a melting tear to blot out whatever failings may
be found in a work begun in pain and finished
almost at the same period with life. It was thought

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proper by the friends of the deceased that this little
piece should come into your hands, as it came from
the hands of the author, it being judged that you
would be butter pleased to have an opportunity of observing
the faintest traces of a genius you have long admired,
than have it patched by a different hand, by which

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means the marks of its true author might have been effaced.
That the success of the last written, though first published
volume of the authour's posthumous pieces may be attended with
some convenience to those innocence he hath left behind, will
no doubt be a motive to encourage its circulation through

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the Kingdom, which will engage every future genius to exert
itself for your pleasure. The principles and spirit which breathe
in every line of the small fragment begun in answer
to Lord Bolingbroke, will unquestionably be a sufficient apology for
its publication. Although Vital Strength was wanting to finish a

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works so happily begun and so well designed preface, there
would not perhaps be a more pleasant or profitable study
among those which have their principal end in amusement than
that of travels or voyages, if they were wrote as
they might be and ought to be, with a joint

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view to the entertainment and information of mankind. If the
conversation of travelers be so eagerly sought after as it is,
we may believe their books will be still more agreeable company,
as they will in general be more instructive and more entertaining.
But when I say the conversation of travelers is usually

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so welcome, I must be understood to mean that only
of such as have had good sense enough to apply
their peregrinations to a proper use, so as to acquire
from them a real and valuable knowledge of men and things,
both which are best known by comparison. If the customs
and manners of men were everywhere the same, there would

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be no office so dull as that of a traveler,
for the difference of hills, valleys, rivers. In short, the
various views of which we may see the face of
the earth would scarce afford him a pleasure worthy of
his labor, and surely it would give him very little
opportunity of communicating any kind of entertainment or improvement to others.

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To make a traveler an agreeable companion to a man
of sense, it is necessary not only that he should
have seen much, but that he should have overlooked much
of what he hath seen. Nature is not any more
than a great genius, always admirable in her productions, and
therefore the traveler, who may be called her commentator should

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not expect to find everywhere subjects worthy of his notice.
It is certain, indeed, that one may be guilty of
omission as well as of the opposite extreme, but a
fault on that side will be more easily pardoned. As
it is better to be hungry than surfeited, and to
miss your dessert at the table of a man whose

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gardens abound with the choicest fruits, than to have your
taste affronted with every sort of trash that can be
picked up at the green stall or the wheelbarrow. If
we should carry on the analogy between the traveler and
the commentator, it is impossible to keep one's eye a
moment off from the laborious, much read doctor Zachary Gray,

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of whose redundant notes on Houddbros. I shall only say
that it is I am confident the single book extent
in which above five hundred authors are quoted, not one
of which could be found in the collection of the
late doctor Meade. As there are few things which a
traveler is to record, there are fewer on which he

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is to offer his observations. This is the office of
the reader, and it is so pleasant a one that
he seldom chooses to have it taken from him under
the pretense of lending him assistance. Some occasions, indeed, there are,
when proper observations are pertinent, and others when they are necessary,

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but a good sense alone must point them out. I
shall lay down only one general rule, which I believe
to be of universal truth between relator and hearer, as
it is between author and reader. This is that the
latter never forgive any observation of the former which doth
not convey some knowledge that they are sensible they could

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not possibly have attained of themselves. But all his pains
in collecting knowledge, all his judgment in selecting, and all
his art in communicating it, will not suffice unless it
can make himself in some degree an agreeable as well
as instructive companion. The highest instruction we can derive from

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the hideous tale of a dull fellow, scarce ever pays
us for our attention. There is nothing I think half
so valuable as knowledge. And yet there is nothing which
men will give themselves so little trouble to attain, unless
it be perhaps that lowest degree of it, which is
the object of curiosity, and which hath therefore that active

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passion constantly employed in its service. This, indeed, it is
in the power of every traveler to gratify, But it
is the leading principle in weak minds, only to render
his relation agreeable to the man of sense. It is
therefore necessary that the voyager should possess several eminent and

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rare talents. So eere indeed, that it is almost wonderful
to see them ever united in the same person. And
if all these talents must concur in the relator, they
are certainly in a more eminent degree necessary to the writer.
For here the narration admits of higher ornaments of style,

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and every fact and sentiment offers itself to the fullest
and most deliberate examination. It would appear, therefore, I think
somewhat strange if such writers as these should be found
extremely common, since nature hath been a most parsimonious distributor
of her richest talents, and have seldom bestowed many on

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the same person. But on the other hand, why there
should scarce exist a single writer of this kind worthy
our regard? And whilst there is no other branch of history,
for this is history which hath not exercised the greatest
pens why this alone should be overlooked by all men

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of great genius and air erudition, and delivered up to
the Goths and Vandals as their lawful property is altogether
as difficult to determine. And yet that this is the case,
with some very few exceptions, is most manifest. Of these.
I shall willingly admit Burnet and Attison if the former

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was not perhaps to be considered as a political essayist,
and the latter as a commentator on the classics, rather
than as a writer of travels which last title, perhaps
they would both of them have been least ambitious to affect. Indeed,
if these two and two or three more should be

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removed from the mass, there would remain such a heap
of dullness behind that the appellation of voyage writer would
not appear very desirable. I am not here unapprized that
old Homer himself is by some considered as a voyage writer,
and indeed the beginning of his Odyssey may be urged

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to countenance that opinion, which I shall not controvert. But
whatever a species of writing the Odyssey is of, it
is surely at the head of that species, as much
as the Iliad is of another. And so far the
excellent Longinus would allow, I believe at this day. But

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in reality the Odyssey, the Telemachus, and all of that
kind are to be voyage writing. I here intend what
romance is to true history, the former being the confounder
and corruptor of the latter. I am far from supposing
that Homer, Hesiod, and the other ancient poets and mythologists

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had any settled design to pervert and confuse the records
of antiquity. But it is certain they have effected it.
And for my part, I must confess I should have
honored and loved Homer more than had he written a
true history of his own times in humble prose, than
those noble poems that have so justly collected the praise

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of all ages. For though I read these with more
admiration and astonishment, I still read Herodotus, Thucicides, and Xenophon
with more amusement and more satisfaction. The original poets were not, however,
without excuse. They found the limits of nature too straight

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for the immensity of their genius, which they had not
room to exert without extending fact by fiction, and that
especially at a time when the manners of men were
too simple to afford that variety which they have since
offered in vain to the choice of the meanest writers.
In doing this, they are again excusable, for the manner

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in which they have done it would Speciosia de Henae
Miraculas promont. They are not, indeed so properly said to
turn reality into fiction, as fiction into reality. Their paintings
are so bold, their colors so strong, that everything they

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touch seems to exist in the very manner they represent it.
Their portraits are so just, and their landscapes so beautiful,
that we acknowledge the strokes of nature in both, without
inquiring whether nature herself or her journeyman. The poet formed
the first pattern of the peace. But other writers, I

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will put plenty at their head, have no such pretensions
to indulgence. They lie for lying's sake, or in order
insolently to impose the most monstrous improbabilities and absurdities upon
their readers on their own authority, treating them as some
fathers treat children, and as other fathers to laymen, exacting

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their belief of whatever they relate on no other foundation
than their own authority, without ever taking the pains or
adapting their allies to human credulity, and of a calculating
them for the meridian of a common understanding. But with
as much weakness as wickedness, and with more impudence often

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than either. They assert facts contrary to the honor of God,
to the visible order of the creation, to the known
laws of nature, to the histories of former ages, and
to the experience of our own, and which no man
can at once understand and believe, if it should be objected,
and it can nowhere be objected better than where I write.

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In a footnote, the author states that he is in
Lisbon as there is nowhere more pomp of bigotry, that
whole nations have been firm believers in such most absurd suppositions.
I reply, the fact is not true. They have known
nothing of the matter and have believed that they knew

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not what it is. Indeed, with me no matter of doubt,
but that the Pope and his clergy might teach any
of those Christian heterodoxies, the tenets of which are the
most diametrically opposite to their own, Nay all the doctrines
of Zoroaster, Confucius, and Mahomet, not only with certain and

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immediate success, but without one Catholic in a thousand knowing
he had changed his religion. What motive a man can
have to sit down and to draw forth a list
of stupid, senseless, incredible lies upon paper would be difficult
to determine? Did not vanity present herself so immediately as

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the adequate cause. The vanity of knowing more than other
men is, perhaps, besides hunger, the only inducement to writing,
at least to publishing at all. Why then should not
the voyage writer be inflamed with the glory of having
seen what no man ever did or will see but himself.

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This is the true source of the wonderful in the
discourse and the writing, and sometimes I believe in the
actions of men. There is another fault of a kind
directly opposite to this, to which the writers are sometimes liable, when,
instead of filling their pages with monsters which nobody hath
ever seen, and with adventures which never have nor could

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possibly have happened to them, waste their time and paper
with recording things and facts of so common a kind
that they challenge no other right of being remembered than
as they had the honor of having happened to the author,
to whom nothing seems trivial that in any manner happens

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to himself of such consequence to his own actions appear
to one of this kind that he would probably think
himself guilty of infidelity should he omit the minutest thing
in the detail of his journal. That the fact is
true is sufficient to give it a place there, without

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any consideration whether it is capable of pleasing or surprising,
of diverting or informing the reader. I have seen a play,
If I mistake not it is one of Missus Ben's,
or of Missus Saint Libre, where this vice in a
voyage writer is finely ridiculed, an ignorant pedant to whose government,

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for I know not what reason, the conduct of a
young nobleman in his travels is committed, and who is
sent abroad to show my Lord the world of which
he knows nothing himself. Before his departure from a town,
calls for his journal to record the goodness of the
wine and tobacco, with other articles of the same importance,

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which are to furnish the materials of a voyage at
his return home. The humor, it is true, is here
carried very far, and yet perhaps very little beyond what
is to be found in writers who profess no intention
of dealing in humor at all. Of one or other

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or both of these kinds are I conceive all that
vast pile of books which pass under the names of voyages, travels, adventures, lives, memoirs, histories,
et cetera, some of which a single traveler sends into
the world in many volumes, and others are by judicious

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booksellers collected into vast bodies in folio and inscribed with
their own names, as if they were indeed their own travels,
thus unjustly attributing to themselves the merit of others. Now,
from both these faults we have endeavored to steer clear
in the following narrative, which, however, the contrary may be

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insinuated by ignorant, unlearned, and fresh water critics who have
never traveled, either in books or ships. I do solemnly
declare doth, in my own impartial opinion, deviate less from
truth than any other voyage extent, my Lord Anson's alone
being perhaps accepted, some few embellishments must be allowed to

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every historian, For we are not to conceive that the
speeches in Livy Solaced or Thusicides were literally spoken in
the very words in which we now read them. It
is sufficient that every fact hath its foundation in truth,
as I do seriously aver is the ease in the

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ensuing pages. And when it is so, a good critic
will be so far from denying all kind of ornament,
of style or diction, or even of circumstance to his author,
that he would be rather sorry if he omitted it,
For he could hence derive no other advantage than the
loss of an additional pleasure in the perusal. Again, if

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any merely common incident should appear in this journal, which
will seldom, I apprehend, be the case, the candid reader
will easily perceive it is not introduced for its own sake,
but for some observations and reflections naturally resulting from it,
and which if but little to his amusement, tended directly

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to the instruction of the reader, or to the information
of the public, to whom, if I choose to convey
such instruction or information with an air of joke and
a life after none but the dullest of fellow's will
I believe censure it. But if they should, I have
the authority of more than one passage in Horace to
allege in my defense. Having thus endeavored to obviate some

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censures to which a man without the gift of foresight
or any fear of the imputation of being a conjurer,
might conceive, this work would be liable. I might now
undertake a more pleasing task and fall at once to
the direct and positive praises of the work itself, of
which indeed I could say a thousand good things. But

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the task is so very pleasant, that I shall leave
it wholly to the reader, And it is all the
task that I impose on him, a moderation for which
he may think himself obliged to me when he compares
it with the conduct of authors, who often fill a
whole sheet with their own praises, to which they sometimes

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set their own real names, and sometimes a fictitious one.
One hint, however, I must give the kind reader, which
is that if he should be able to find no
sort of amusement in the book, he will be pleased
to remember the public utility which will arise from it.
If entertainment, as mister Richardson observes, be but a secondary

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consideration in a romance with which mister Addison I think agrees,
affirming the use of the pastry cook to be the first.
If this I say to be true of a mere
work of invention, sure it may well be so considered
in a work founded like this on truth, and where

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the political reflections form so distinguishing a part. But perhaps
I may hear from some critic of the most saturnine
complexion that my vanity must have made a horrid dupe
of my judgment, if it hath flattered me with an
expectation of having anything here seen in a grave light,

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or of conveying any useful instruction to the public or
to their guardians. I answer with the great man whom
I just now quoted, that my purpose is to convey
instruction in the vehicle of entertainment, and so to bring
about it, once, like the revolution in the rehearsal, a
perfect reformation of the laws relating to our maritime affairs,

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an undertaking, I will not say, more modest, but surely
more feasible than that of reforming a whole people by
making use of a vehicular story to wheel in among
them worse manners than the Rhone introduction. In the beginning
of August seventeen fifty three, when I had taken the

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Duke of Portland's medicine, as it is called, near a year,
the effects of which had been the carrying off the
symptoms of a lingering, imperfect account, I was persuaded by
Mister ranby the King's premier sergeant surgeon, and the ablest
advice I believe in all branches of the physical profession,

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to go immediately to bath. I accordingly wrote that very
night to missus Bowden, who by the next post informed
me she had taken me a lodging for a month certain.
Within a few days after this, whilst I was preparing
for my journey, and when I was almost fatigued to

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death with several long examinations relating to the five different murders,
all committed within the space of a week by different
gangs of street robbers, I received a message from His Grace,
the Duke of Newcastle, by mister Carrington, the King's messenger,
to attend his Grace the next morning in Lincoln's inn

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Fields upon some business of importance. But I excused myself
from complying with the message, as besides being lame, I
was very ill with the great fatigues I had lately undergone,
added to my distemper. His Grace, however, sent mister Carrington
the very next morning with another summons, with which, though

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in the utmost distress, I immediately complied. But the Duke,
happening unfortunately for me, to be then particularly engaged, after
I had waited some time, sent a gentleman to discourse
with me on the best plan which could be invented
for putting an immediate end to those murders and robberies

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which were every day committed in the streets, upon which
I promised to transmit my opinion in writing to His grace, who,
as the Gentleman informed me, intended to lay it before
the Privy Council. Though this visit cost me a severe call,
I notwithstanding, set myself down to work, and in about

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four days sent the Duke as regular a plan as
I could form, with all the reasons and arguments I
could bring to support it, drawn out in several sheets
of paper, and soon received a message from the Duke
by mister Carrington, acquainting me that my plan was highly
approved of and that all the terms of it would

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be complied with. The principal and most material of those
terms was the immediately depositing six hundred pounds in my hands,
at which small charge I undertook to demoledge the then
reigning gangs and to put the civil policy into such
order that no such gangs should ever be able for

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the future to form themselves into bodies, or at least
to remain any time formidable to the public. I had
delayed my bath journey for some time, contrary to the
repair advice of my physical acquaintance, and to the ardent
desire of my warmest friends. Though my distemper was now

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turned to a deep jaundice, in which case the bath
waters were generally reputed to be almost infallible. But I
had the most eager desire of demolishing this gang of
villains and cutthroats, which I was sure of accomplishing the
moment I was enabled to pay a fellow who had
undertaken for a small sum to betray them into the

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hands of a set of thief takers, whom I had
enlisted into the service, all men of known and approved
fidelity and intrepidity. After some weeks the money was paid
at the treasury, and within a few days, after two
hundred pounds of it had come to my hands, the
whole gang of cutthroats was entirely dispersed. Seven of them

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were in actual custody, and the rest driven, some out
of the town and others out of the kingdom. Though
my health was now reduced to the last extremity, I
continued to act with the utmost vigor against these villains.
In examining whom and in taking the depositions against them,

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I have often spent whole days nay, sometimes whole nights,
especially when there was any difficulty in procuring sufficient evidence
to convict them, which is a very common case in
street robberies, even when the guilt of the party is
sufficiently apparent to satisfy the most tender conscience. But courts

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of justice know nothing of a cause more than what
is told them on oath by a witness, And the
most flagitious villain upon earth is tried in the same
manner as a man of the best character who is
accused of the same crime. Meanwhile, amidst all my fatigues
and distresses, I had the satisfaction to find my endeavor

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had been attended with such success that this hellish society
were almost utterly extirpated, and that instead of reading of
murders and street robberies in the news almost every morning,
there was in the remaining part of the month of November,
and in all December, not only no such thing as
a murder, but not even a street robbery committed. Some such, indeed,

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were mentioned in the public papers, but they were all found,
on the strictest inquiry to be false. In this entire
freedom from street robberies, during the dark months, no man
will I believe scruple to acknowledge that the winter of
seventeen fifty three stands unrivaled during a course of many years.

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And this may possibly appear the more extraordinary to those
who recollect the outrages with which it began. Having thus
fully accomplished my undertaking, I went into the country in
a very week and deplorable condition, with no fewer or
less diseases than a jaundice, a dropsy, and an asthma,

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altogether uniting their forces in the destruction of a body
so entirely emaciated that it had lost all its muscular flesh.
Mine was now no longer what was called bath case,
Nor if it had been so, had I strength remaining
sufficient to go thither a ride of six miles, only

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being attended with an intolerable fatigue. I now discharged my
lodgings at Bath, which I had hitherto kept. I began
in earnest to look on my case as desperate, and
I had vanity enough to rank myself with those heroes
who of old times became voluntary sacrifices to the good

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of the public. But lest the reader should be too
eager to catch at the word vanity, and should be
unwilling to indulge me with so sublime a gratification. For
I think he is not too apt to gratify me.
I will take my key a pitch lower, and will
frankly own that I had a stronger motive than the

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love of the public to push me on. I will
therefore confess to him that my private affairs at the
beginning of the winter had but a gloomy aspect, For
I had not plundered the public or the poor of
those sums, which men who are always ready to plunder
both as much as they can, have been pleased to

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suspect me of taking. On the contrary, by composing instead
of inflaming the quarrels of porters and beggars, which I
blush when I say hath not been universally practiced, and
by refusing to take a shilling from a man who
most undoubtedly would not have had another left, I had

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reduced an income of about five hundred pounds. In a footnote,
the author adds here a predecessor of mine used to
boast that he made one thousand pounds a year in
his office. But how he did this? If indeed he
did it is to me a secret. His clerk, now mine,
told me I had more business than he had ever known.

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There I am sure I had as much as any
man could do. The truth is, the fees are so
very low when any are due, and so much is
done for nothing, that if a single justice of peace
had business enough to employ twenty clerks, neither he nor
they would get much for their labor. And that's the

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end of the footnote of the dirtiest money upon earth,
too little more than three hundred pounds, a considerable proportion
of which remained with my clerk. And indeed, if the
whole had done so as it ought, he would be
but ill paid for sitting almost sixteen hours in the
twenty four in the most unwholesome as well as nauseous

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heir in the universe, and which hath in his case,
corrupted a good constitution without contaminating his morals. The public
will not, therefore, I hope, think I betray a secret
when I informed them that I received from the government
a yearly pension out of the public service, money which
I believe indeed would have been larger had my great

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patron been convinced of an error which I have heard
him utter more than once that he could not indeed
say that the acting as a principal Justice of peace
in Westminster was on all accounts very desirable, but that
all the world knew it a very lucrative office. Now,
to have shown him plainly that a man must be

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a rogue to make a very little this way, and
that he could not make much by being as great
a rogue as he could be, would have required more
confidence than I believe he had in me, and more
of his conversation than he chose to allow me. I
therefore resigned the office and the farther execution of my

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plan to my brother, who had long been my assistant.
And now, lest the case between me and the reader
should be the same in both instances as it was
between me and the great Man, I will not add
another word on the subject, but not to trouble the
reader with anecdotes contrary to my own rule laid down

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in my preface, I assure him I thought my family
was very slenderly provided for, and that my health began
to decline so fast that I had very little more
of life left to accomplish what I had thought of
too late. I rejoiced therefore greatly in seeing an opportunity

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as I apprehended, of gaining such merit in the eye
of the public, that if my life were the sacrifice
to it, my friends might think they did a popular
thing in putting my family at least beyond the reach
of necessity, which I myself began to despair of doing.
And though I disclaim all pretense to that Spartan or

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Roman patriotism which loved the public so well that it
was always ready to become a voluntary sacrifice to the
public good, I do solemnly declare I have that love
for my family. After this confession therefore, that the public
was not the principal deity to which my life was

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offered a sacrifice. And when it is farther considered, what
a poor sacrifice this was, being indeed no other than
the giving up what I saw little likelihood of being
able to hold much longer, and which, upon the terms
I held it, nothing but the weakness of human nature
could represent to me as worth holding it. All the world,

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may I believe, without envy, allow me all the praise
to which I have any title. My aim, in fact,
was not praise, which is the last gift they care
to bestow. At least, This was not my aim as
an end, but rather as a means of purchasing some
moderate provision for my family, which, though it should exceed

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my merit must fall infinitely short of my service. If
I succeeded in my attempt to say the truth, the
public never act more wisely than when they act most
liberally in the distribution of their rewards, and here the
good they receive is often more to be considered than

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the motive from which they receive it. Example alone is
the end of all public punishments and rewards. Laws never
inflict disgrace in resentment, nor confer honor from gratitude, for
it is very hard, my lord, said a convicted felon
at the bar to the late excellent Judge Burnet, to

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hang a poor man for stealing a horse. You are
not to be hanged, sir, answered my ever honored and
beloved friend, for stealing a horse. But you are to
be hanged. That horses may not be stolen in like manner.
It might have been said to the late Duke of Marlborough,

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when the Parliament was so deservedly liberal to him after
the Battle of Blenheim. You receive not these honors and
bounties on account of a victory past, but that other
victories may be obtained. I was now in the opinion
of all men dying of a complication of disorders, and

(36:52):
were I desirous of playing the advocate. I have an
occasion fair enough, but I disdain such an a tempt.
I relate facts plainly and simply as they are, and
let the world draw from them what conclusions they please,
taking with them the following facts for their instruction. The

(37:13):
one is that the proclamation offering one hundred pounds for
the apprehending felons for certain felonies committed in certain places,
which I prevented from being revived, had formerly cost the
government several thousand pounds within a single year. Secondly, that
all such proclamations, instead of curing the evil, had actually increased.

(37:38):
It had multiplied. The number of robberies, had propagated, the
worst and wickedness of perjuries, had laid snares for youth
and ignorance, which, by the temptation of these rewards had
been sometimes drawn into guilt, and sometimes which cannot be
thought on without the highest horror, had destroyed them without it. Thirdly,

(38:03):
that my plan had not put the government to more
than three hundred pound expense, and had produced none of
the ill consequences above mentioned. But lastly, had actually suppressed
the evil for a time, and had plainly pointed out
the means of suppressing it forever. This I would myself

(38:23):
have undertaken, had my health permitted at the annual expense
of the above mentioned sum, after having stood the terrible
six weeks which succeeded at last Christmas, and put a
lucky end. If they had known their own interests, two
such numbers of aged and infirm Valedictinarians who might have

(38:46):
gasped through two or three mild winters more. I returned
to town in February in a condition less despaired of
by myself than by any of my friends. I now
came the patient of doctor Ward, who wished I had
taken his advice earlier. By his advice, I was tapped

(39:08):
and fourteen quarts of water drawn from my belly. The
sudden relaxation which this caused added to my enervate, emaciated
habit of body, so weakned me that within two days
I was thought to be falling into the agonies of death.
I was at the worst on that memorable day when

(39:29):
the public lost mister Pellham. From that day I began slowly,
as it were, to draw my feet out of the grave,
till in two months time I had again acquired some
little degree of strength, but was again full of water.
During this whole time I took mister Ward's medicines, which

(39:51):
had seldom any perceptible operation, Those in particular of the
diaphoretic kind, the working of which is thought to require
a great strength of constitution to support, had so little
effect on me that mister Ward declared it was as
vain to attempt sweating me as a deal board. In

(40:14):
this situation, I was tapped a second time. I had
one quarter of water less taken for me now than before,
but I bore all the consequences of the operation much better.
This I attributed greatly to a dose of laudanum prescribed
by my surgeon. It first gave me the most delicious

(40:36):
flow of spirits, and afterwards as comfortable a nap. The
month of May, which was now begun, it seemed reasonable
to expect, would introduce the spring and drive of that winter,
which yet maintained its footing on the stage. I resolved
therefore to visit a little house of mine in the country,

(40:57):
which stands at Ealing, in the County of Middlesex, in
the best air, I believe in the whole Kingdom, and
a far superior to that of Kensington gravel pits. For
the gravel is here much wider and deeper, the place
higher and more open towards the south, whilst it is
guarded from the north wind by a ridge of hills,

(41:20):
and from the smells and smoke of London by its distance.
Which last is not the fate of Kensington, when the
wind blows from any corner of the east. Obligations to
mister Ward, I shall always confess, for I am convinced
that he omitted no care in endeavoring to serve me

(41:44):
without any expectation or desire of fee or reward. The
powers of mister Ward's remedies want, indeed no unfair puffs
of mine to give them credit. And though this distemper
of the Dropsy stands I believe first in the list
of those over which he is always certain of triumphing.

(42:06):
Yet possibly there might be something particular in my case
capable of eluding that radical force which had healed so
many thousands. The same distemper in different constitutions may possibly
be attended with such different symptoms that to find an
infallible nostrum for the curing of any one distemper in

(42:30):
every patient may be almost as difficult as to find
a panacea for the cure of all. But even such
a panacea, one of the greatest scholars and best of men,
did lately apprehend he had discovered. It is true indeed
he was no physician, that is, he had not, by

(42:51):
the forms of his education, acquired a right of applying
his skill in the art of physic to his own
private advantage. And yet perhaps it may be truly asserted
that no other modern hath contributed so much to make
his physical skill useful to the public, at least, that
none hath undergone the pains of communicating this discovery in

(43:16):
writing to the world. The reader, I think will scarce
need to be informed that the writer I mean is
the late Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland. And the discovery
that of the virtues of tar water I then happened
to recollect upon a hint given me by the inimitable
and shamefully distressed author of the Female Quixote, that I

(43:41):
had many years before, from curiosity, only taken a cursory
view of Bishop Berkeley's treatises on the Virtues of tar water,
which I had formerly observed. He strongly contends to be
that real panacea which Sydenham supposes to have an existence

(44:02):
in nature, though it yet remains undiscovered, and perhaps will
always remain so. Upon the reperusal of this book, I
found the Bishop only asserting his opinion that tar water
might be useful in the dropsy, since he had known
it to have a surprising success in the cure of

(44:25):
a most stubborn an as sarka, which is indeed no
other than, as the word implies, the dropsy of the flesh,
and this was at that time a large part of
my complaint. After a short trial therefore of a milk diet,
which I presently found did not suit with my case,

(44:46):
I betook myself to the Bishop's prescription and adduced myself
every morning and evening with half a pint of tar water.
It was no more than three weeks since my last timepping,
and my belly and limbs were distended with water. This
did not give me the worse opinion of tar water,

(45:09):
for I never supposed there could be any such virtue
in tar water as immediately to carry off a quantity
of water already collected for my delivery. From this, I
knew well I must be again obliged to the trochar,
and that if tar water did me any good at all,
it must be only by the slowest degrees, and that

(45:32):
if it should ever get the better of my distemper,
it must be by the tedious operation of undermining, and
not by a sudden attack and storm. Some visible effects, however,
and far beyond what my most sanguine hopes could with
any modesty expect, I very soon experienced the tar water,

(45:56):
having from the very first lessened my illness, in increased
my appetite, and added, though in a very slow proportion,
to my bodily strength. But if my strength had increased
a little, my water daily increased much more, so that
by the end of May my belly became again ripe

(46:17):
for the trochar, and I was a third time tapped,
upon which two very favorable symptoms appeared. I had three
quarts of water taken from me, less than had been
taken the last time. And I bore the relaxation with
much less, indeed with scarce any faintness. Those of my

(46:39):
physical friends on whose judgment I chiefly depended seemed to
think my only chance of life consisted in having the
whole summer before me, in which I might hope to
gather sufficient strength to encounter the inclemencies of the ensuing winter.
But this chance began daily to less. I saw the

(47:01):
summer moldering away, or rather indeed the year passing away
without intending to bring on any summer at all. In
the whole month of May, the sun scarce appeared three times,
so that the early fruits came to the fullness of
their growth and to some appearance of ripeness, without acquiring

(47:23):
any real maturity, having wanted the heat of the sun
to soften and merely orate their juices. I saw the
dropsy gaining rather than losing ground, the distance growing still
shorter between the tappings. I saw the asmer, likewise beginning
again to become more troublesome. I saw the Midsummer quarter

(47:46):
drawing towards a close, so that I conceived, if the
Michaelmas quarter should steal off into the same manner as
it was, in my opinion, very much to be apprehended.
It would I should be delivered up to the attacks
of winter before I recruited my forces so as to
be any wise able to withstand them. And now began

(48:10):
to recall an intention which from the first dawnings of
my recovery I had conceived, of removing to a warmer climate,
and finding this to be approved of by my very
eminent position, I resolved to put it into immediate execution.
Axent Provence was the place first thought on, but the

(48:32):
difficulties of getting thither were insuperable. The journey by land,
beside the expense of it, was infinitely too long and fatiguing,
and I could hear of no ship that was likely
to sail out from London within any reasonable time for
Marseilles or any other port in that part of the Mediterranean.

(48:55):
Lisbon was presently fixed on in its room. The air here,
as it was near four degrees to the south of Eggs,
must be more mild and warm, and the winter shorter
and less piercing. It was not difficult to find a
ship bound to a place with which we carry on
so immense a trade. Accordingly, my brother soon informed me

(49:19):
of the excellent accommodations for passengers which were to be
found on board a ship that was obliged to sail
for Lisbon in three days. I eagerly embraced the offer,
notwithstanding the shortness of the time, and having given my
brother full power to contract for our passage, I began

(49:40):
to prepare my family for the voyage with the utmost expedition.
But our great haste was needless, for the captain, having
twice put off his sailing, I at length invited him
to dinner with me at ford Hook, a full week
after the time on which he had declared, and that,
with many ass everations, he must and would weigh anchor.

(50:05):
He dined with me according to his appointment, and when
all matters were settled between us, left me with positive
orders to be on board the Wednesday following, when he
declared he would fall down the river to graves End
and would not stay a moment for the greatest man
in the world. He advised me to go to graves

(50:28):
End by land and there wait the arrival of his ship,
assigning many reasons for this, every one of which was,
as I well remember, among those that had before determined
me to go on board near the tower end of
part one,