There Are Also Memorable Associations With
Lola Montes, Heinrich Heine, Becky Sharpe, And Above All Colonel
Newcome.
My first care in the place was to discover the rampart
where the Colonel used to parade with little Clive.
Among the
native luminaries are Daunou, Duchenne de Boulogne, one of the
foremost physiologists of the last century, an immediate
predecessor of Charcot in knowledge of the nervous system, Aug.
Mariette, the Egyptologist, Aug. Angellier, the biographer of
Burns, Sainte-Beuve, Prof. Morel, and "credibly," Godfrey de
Bouillon, of whom Charles Lamb wrote "poor old Godfrey, he must
be getting very old now." The great Lesage died here in 1747.]
The antiquaries still dispute about Gessoriacum, Godfrey de
Bouillon, and Charlemagne's Tour. Smollett is only fair in
justifying for the town, the older portions of which have a
strong medieval suggestion, a standard of comparison slightly
more distinguished than Wapping. He never lets us forget that he
is a scholar of antiquity, a man of education and a speculative
philosopher. Hence his references to Celsus and Hippocrates and
his ingenious etymologies of wheatear and samphire, more
ingenious in the second case than sound. Smollett's field of
observation had been wide and his fund of exact information was
unusually large. At Edinburgh he had studied medicine under Monro
and John Gordon, in company with such able and distinguished men
as William Hunter, Cullen, Pitcairn, Gregory, and Armstrong - and
the two last mentioned were among his present correspondents. As
naval surgeon at Carthagena he had undergone experience such as
few literary men can claim, and subsequently as compiler,
reviewer, party journalist, historian, translator, statistician,
and lexicographer, he had gained an amount of miscellaneous
information such as falls to the lot of very few minds of his
order of intelligence.
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