from a bookseller in London,
who lived at the sign of the Black Boy, in Fleet-street."[146]

Now, it seems that he who lived at the Black Boy had combined with
another who lived at the Fleur de Luce, and that the Fleur de Luce had
assured the Black Boy that Dr. Barnard was concerned in writing the Life
of Heylin--this was a strong recommendation. But lo! it appeared that
"one Mr. Vernon, of Gloucester," was to be the man! a gentle,
thin-skinned authorling, who bleated like a lamb, and was so fearful to
trip out of its shelter, that it allows the Black Boy and the Fleur de
Luce to communicate its papers to any one they choose, and erase or add
at their pleasure.[147]

It occurred to the Black Boy, on this proposed arithmetical criticism,
that the work required addition, subtraction, and division; that the
fittest critic, on whose name, indeed, he had originally engaged in the
work, was our Dr. Barnard; and he sent the package to the doctor, who
resided near Lincoln.

The doctor, it appears, had no appetite for a dish dressed by another,
while he himself was in the very act of the cookery; and it was suffered
to lie cold for three weeks at the carrier's.

But entreated and overcome, the good doctor at length sent to the
carrier's for the life of his father-in-law. "I found it, according to
the bookseller's description, most lame and imperfect; ill begun, worse
carried on, and abruptly concluded." The learned doctor exercised that
plenitude of power with which the Black Boy had invested him--he very
obligingly showed the author in what a confused state his materials lay
together, and how to put them in order--

Nec facundia deseret hunc, nec lucidus ordo.

If his rejections were copious, to show his good-will as well as his
severity, his additions were generous, though he used the precaution of
carefully distinguishing by "distinct paragraphs" his own insertions
amidst Vernon's mass, with a gentle hint that "He knew more of Heylin
than any man now living, and ought therefore to have been the
biographer." He returned the MS. to the gentleman with great civility,
but none he received back! When Vernon pretended to ask for
improvements, he did not imagine that the work was to be improved by
being nearly destroyed; and when he asked for correction, he probably
expected all might end in a compliment.

The narrative may now proceed in Dr. Barnard's details of his doleful
mortifications, in being "altered and mangled"