'he was dear to me,' in speaking of the pollinctor. But
the law, gentlemen, is stern and harsh: the law will not hear of these
tender motives: to sustain a contract of this nature in law, it is
essential that a 'consideration' should be given. Now what _was_ the
consideration? For thus far all is on the side of the pollinctor: he
will be well paid for his services; but, meantime, the generous, the
noble-minded doctor gets nothing. What _was_ the little consideration
again, I ask, which the law would insist on the doctor's taking? You shall
hear: 'Et ut pollinctor vicissim [Greek: telamonas] quos furabatur de
pollinctione mortuorum medico mitteret doni ad alliganda vulnera eorurn
quos curabat.' Now, the case is clear: the whole went on a principle of
reciprocity which would have kept up the trade for ever. The doctor was
also a surgeon: he could not murder _all_ his patients: some of the
surgical patients must be retained intact; _re infecta_. For these he
wanted linen bandages. But, unhappily, the Romans wore woollen, on which
account they bathed so often. Meantime, there _was_ linen to be had in
Rome; but it was monstrously dear; and the [Greek: telamones] or linen
swathing bandages, in which superstition obliged them to bind up corpses,
would answer capitally for the surgeon. The doctor, therefore, contracts to
furnish his friend with a constant succession of corpses, provided, and be
it understood always, that his said friend in return should supply him with
one half of the articles he would receive from the friends of the parties
murdered or to be murdered. The doctor invariably recommended his
invaluable friend the pollinctor, (whom let us call the undertaker;) the
undertaker, with equal regard to the sacred rights of friendship, uniformly
recommended the doctor. Like Pylades and Orestes, they were models of a
perfect friendship: in their lives they were lovely, and on the gallows, it
is to be hoped, they were not divided.

"Gentlemen, it makes me laugh horribly, when I think of those two friends
drawing and redrawing on each other: 'Pollinctor in account with Doctor,
debtor by sixteen corpses; creditor by forty-five bandages, two of which
damaged.' Their names unfortunately are lost; but I conceive they must have
been Quintus Burkius and Publius Harius. By the way, gentlemen, has anybody
heard lately of Hare? I understand he is comfortably settled in Ireland,
considerably to the west, and does a little business now