finished when Thomson's Winter made its appearance. This was in 1726,
when he was, he himself says, very young. Thomson having heard of this
production by a youth, who was of the same country with himself, desired
to see it, and was so much pleased with the attempt, that he put it into
the hands of Aaron Hill, Mallet, and Young. With Thomson, further than
in the subject, there is no coincidence. The manner is a caricature of
Shakspeare's.

In 1735, we find him in London, publishing a humorous pamphlet, entitled
An Essay for abridging the Study of Physic, which, though he did not
profess himself the writer, Mr. Nichols says [1], he can, on the best
authority, assert to be his. In two years after he published a Medical
Essay. This was soon followed by a licentious poem, which I have not
seen, and the title of which I do not think it necessary to record.--
While thus employed, it was not to be expected that he should rise to
much eminence in his profession. The dying man does not willingly see by
his couch one who has recently disgraced himself by an open act of
profligacy. In January 1741, he solicited Dr. Birch to use his influence
with Mead in recommending him to the appointment of Physician to the
Forces which were then going to the West Indies. It does not appear that
this application was successful; but in five years more, (February
1746,) he was nominated one of the Physicians to the Hospital for
Invalid Soldiers behind Buckingham House; and in 1760, Physician to the
Army in Germany. Meantime (in 1744) he had published his Art of
Preserving Health, a didactic poem, that soon made its way to notice,
and which, by the judiciousness of the precepts, might have tended to
raise some opinion of his medical skill. At the beginning he addresses
Mead:--

--Beloved by all the graceful arts,