Читать книгу The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 473, January 29, 1831 - Various - Страница 6
THE STRAND, ANCIENT AND MODERN
WHO WAS KATERFELTO?
Оглавление(To the Editor.)
Perhaps some of your curious readers would oblige me with a little information concerning the personage mentioned in these lines of Cowper:—
"And Katerfelto, with his hair on end,
At his own wonders wondering for his bread,"
Task—Winter Evening.
All that I could discover about him, I found accidentally in a pamphlet on Quackery, published in 1805, at Kingston-upon-Hull. In a note to that little work, I am informed that Dr. Katerfelto practised on the people of London in the influenza of 1782; that he added to his nostrum the fascinations of hocus pocus; and that among other philosophical apparatus, he employed the services of some extraordinary black cats, with which he astonished the ignorant, and confounded the vulgar. But he was not, it seems, so successful in his practice when out of London: not long before his death, he was committed by the Mayor of Shrewsbury to the common House of Correction in that town, as a vagrant and impostor. When or how he died does not appear.
Cowper, when he mentions the name of Katerfelto, in the Task, in alluding to the advertisements of the London newspapers—and probably wrote the passage in the year 1782. The Task was published complete in 1785.
Whoever has easy access to the newspapers of 1782 or thereabout (as I, at this moment have not) will most probably discover some amusing particulars about this Doctor, that may attract your readers, few of whom will be more gratified than
Great Russell-st.
W.C.
