[Footnote 199: Robert Wilks died in 1732, age 62. See No. 182, and the _Spectator_, Nos. 268, 370: "When I am commending Wilks for representing the tenderness of a husband and a father in 'Macbeth', the contrition of a reformed prodigal in 'Harry the Fourth', the winning emptiness of a young man of good-nature and wealth in 'The Trip to the Jubilee', the officiousness of an artful servant in 'The Fox', when thus I celebrate Wilks, I talk to all the world who are engaged in any of those circumstances."]
[Footnote 200: Ben Jonson's "Alchemist" was published in 1610.]
[Footnote 201: Duncan Campbell, who is best known through Defoe's "History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell, a gentleman, who, though deaf and dumb, writes down any strange name at first sight, with their future contingencies of fortune," 1720. Several other books about Campbell appeared, and some said that he only pretended to be deaf and dumb. Campbell had a very large number of clients (_Spectator_, No. 560). He died in 1730.]
[Footnote 202: The name of this quack was Kirleus. He pretended to extraordinary endowments, on the score of his having been introduced into the world by means of the Cesarean operation. In the _Examiner_, vol. i. No. 49, original edition in folio, there is among the advertisements subjoined, July 5, 1711, notice given that some of his nostrums, which had been tested for fifty years, were to be had of "Mary Kirleus, widow of John Kirleus, son of Dr. Tho. Kirleus, a sworn physician in ordinary to K. Charles II." Nichols says that there were two male and two female quacks of the name of Kirleus; Thomas the father, and his son John, Susannah the widow of Thomas, and Mary the relict of John; but it does not appear that any of them all were rich. The women, after the decease of their husbands, engaged in a paper war, which was carried on about this time in polemical advertisements. Dr. Kirleus and Dr. Case (see No. 20) are said to have been sent for to prescribe to Partridge in his last illness. Garth ("Dispensary," canto iii.) wrote:
"Whole troops of quacks shall join us on the place, From great Kirleus down to Doctor Case."
"In Grays-Inn-lane in Plow-yard, the third door, lives Dr. Thomas Kirleus, a Collegiate Physician and sworn Physician in Ordinary to King Charles the Second until his death; who with a drink and pill (hindring no business) undertakes to cure any ulcers," &c. &c. "Take heed whom you trust in physick, for it's become a common cheat to profess it. He gives his opinion to all that writes or comes for nothing" (_Athenian Mercury_, February 13, 1694). See also _Tatler_, Nos. 41, 226, 240.]