IMAGINE to yourself a little squat, uncourtly figure of a
Doctor Slop, of about four feet and a half perpendicular
height, with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly,
which might have done honour to a serjeant in the horse-
guards.
Such were the outlines of Dr Slop's figure, which,-if you
have read Hogarth's analysis of beauty, and if you have not,
I wish you would;-you must know, may as certainly be
caricatured, and conveyed to the mind by three strokes as
three hundred.
Imagine such a one,-for such, I say, were the outlines
of Dr Slop's figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot,
waddling through the dirt upon the vertebrae of a little
diminutive pony, of a pretty colour;-but of strength,
alack !-scarce able to have made an amble of it, under
such a fardel, had the roads been in an ambling condition.
-They were not.-Imagine to yourself, Obadiah
mounted upon a strong monster of a coach-horse, pricked
into a full gallop, and making all practicable speed the
adverse way. Pray, Sir, let me interest you a
moment in this description.
Had Dr Slop beheld Obadiah a mile off, posting in a
narrow lane directly towards him, at that monstrous rate;-
splashing and plunging like a devil through thick and thin,
as he approached, would not such a phenomenon, with such
a vortex of mud and water moving along with it, round its
axis,-have been a subject of juster apprehension to Dr Slop
in his situation, than the worst of Whiston's comets?-To
say nothing of the NUCLEUS; that is, of Obadiah and the
coach-horse.-In my idea, the vortex alone of 'em was
enough to have involved and carried, if not the doctor, at
least the doctor's pony, quite away with it. What then do
you think must the terror and hydrophobia of Dr Slop have
been, when you read (which you are just going to do) that he
was advancing thus warily along towards Shandy Hall, and
had approached to within sixty yards of it, and within five
yards of a sudden turn, made by an acute angle of the garden-
wall,-and in the dirtiest part of a dirty lane,-when Obadiah
and his coach-horse turned the corner, rapid, furious,-pop,
-full upon him I-Nothing, I think, in nature, can be sup-
posed more terrible than such a Rencounter,-so imprompt!
so ill prepared to stand the shock of it as Dr Slop was !
What could Dr Slop do?-He crossed himself +-
Pugh !-but the doctor, Sir, was a Papist.-No matter; he
had better have kept hold of the pummel.-He had so;-nay
as it happened, he had better have done nothing at all;
for in crossing himself he let go his whip,-and in attempt-
ing to save his whip betwixt his knee and his saddle's skirt,
as it slipped, he lost his stirrup,-in losing which, he lost
his seat;-and in the multitude of all these losses (which,
by the bye, shews what little advantages there is in crossing)
the unfortunate doctor lost his presence of mind. So that,
without waiting for Obadiah's onset, he left his pony to its
destiny, tumbling off it diagonally, something in the stile
and manner of a pack of wool, and without any other con-
sequence from the fall, save that of being left (as it would
have been) with the broadest part of him sunk about twelve
inches deep in the mire.
Obadiah pulled off his cap twice to Dr Slop;once as he
was falling,-and then again when he saw him seated.
Ill-timed complaisance!-had not the fellow better have
stopped his horse, and got off and helped him?-Sir, he did
all that his situation would allow; but the MOMENTUM Of
the coach-horse was so great, that Obadiah could not do it
all at once; he rode in a circle three times round Dr Slop,
before he could fully accomplish it any how;-and at the
last, when he did stop his beast, 'twas done with such an
explosion of mud, that Obadiah had better been a league
off. In short, never was a Dr Slop so beluted, and so trans-
substantiated, since that affair came into fashion.