the same to other members of Parliament; who spake thereof unto the Peers of the realm. Lo! thus did our councils enter into the hearts of our Generals and our lawgivers; and from henceforth, even as we devised, thus did they.

After this, the whole book is turned on a sudden from his own life, to a history of all the public transactions of Europe, compiled from the newspapers of those times. I could not comprehend the meaning of this, till I perceived at last (to my no small astonishment) that all the measures of the four last years of the Queen, together with the peace at Utrecht, which have been usually attributed to the E- of O, D— of 0—, Lords H- and B— and other great men, do here most plainly appear to have been wholly owing to Robert Jenkins, Amos Turner, George Pilcocks, Thomas White, but above all, to P. P.

The reader may be sure I was very inquisitive after this extraordinary writer, whose work I have here abstracted. I took a journey into the country on purpose; but could not find the least trace of him: till by accident I met an old Clergyman, who said he could not be positive, but thought it might be one Paul Philips, who had been dead about twelve years. And upon inquiry, all he could learn of that person from the neighbourhood, was, That he had been taken notice of for swallowing loaches, and remembered by some people by a black and white cur with one ear, that constantly followed him.

In the church-yard I read his epitaph, said to be written by himself:

O reader, if that thou canst read,

Look down upon this stone;

Do all we can, Death is a man,

That never spareth none.

THE

NARRATIVE

OF

DR. ROBERT NORRIS'.

It is an acknowledged truth, that nothing is so dear to an honest man as his good name, nor ought he to neglect the just vindication of his character, when it is injuriously attacked by any man. The person I have at present cause to complain of, is indeed in very melancholy circumstances, it having pleased God to deprive him of his senses, which may extenuate the crime in him. But I should be wanting in my duty, not only to myself, but also to my fellow-creatures, to whom my talents may prove of benefit, should I suffer my profession or honesty to be undeservedly aspersed. I have therefore resolved to give the public an account of all that has passed between the unhappy gentleman and myself.

On the 20th instant, while I was in my closet, pondering the case of one of my patients, I heard a knocking at my door, upon opening of which, entered an old woman with tears in her eyes, and told me, that

1 Addison highly disapproved of this bitter satire on Dennis, and Pope was not a little chagrined at this disapprobation; for the narrative was intended to court the favour of Addison, by defending his Cato: in which seeming defence Addison was far from thinking our author sincere.-Warton.

The circumstances under which this narrative was written require much further examination than Dr. Warton has bestowed on them, before we can form an impartial judgment of the conduct of the parties. Some observations respecting them may be found in the Life of the Author, prefixed to the present edition, vol. i. chap. 2.

without my assistance her master would be utterly ruined. I was forced to interrupt her sorrow, by inquiring her master's name and place of abode. She told me, he was one Mr. Dennis, an officer of the custom-house, who was taken ill of a violent frenzy last April, and had continued in those melancholy circumstances with few or no intervals. Upon this I asked her some questions relating to his humour and extravagancies, that I might the better know under what regimen to put him, when the cause of his distemper was found out. "Alas! Sir," says she, “this day fortnight in the morning, a poor simple child came to him from the printer's; the boy had no sooner entered the room, but he cried out, the devil was come. He often stares ghastfully, raves aloud, and mutters between his teeth the word Cator, or Cato, or some such thing. Now, Doctor, this Cator is certainly a witch, and my poor master is under an evil tongue; for I have heard him say Cator has bewitched the whole nation. It pitied my very heart to think, that a man of my master's understanding and great scholarship, who, as the child told me, had a book of his own in print, should talk so outrageously. Upon this I went and laid out a groat for a horse-shoe, which is at this time nailed on the threshold of his door; but I don't find my master is at all the better for it; he perpetually starts and runs to the window when any one knocks, crying out, S'death! a messenger from the French King! I shall die in the Bastile."

Having said this, the old woman presented me with a vial of his urine; upon examination of which I perceived the whole temperament of his body to be exceeding hot. I therefore instantly took my cane and my beaver, and repaired to the place where he dwelt.

When I came to his lodgings near Charing-cross, up three pair of stairs (which I should not have published

in this manner, but that this lunatic conceals the place of his residence, on purpose to prevent the good offices of those charitable friends and physicians, who might attempt his cure), when I came into the room, I found this unfortunate gentleman seated on his bed, with Mr. Bernard Lintot, bookseller, on the one side of him, and a grave elderly gentleman on the other, who, as I have since learned, calls himself a grammarian; the latitude of whose countenance was not a little eclipsed by the fulness of his peruke. As I am a black lean man, of a pale visage, and hang my clothes on somewhat slovenly, I no sooner went in, but he frowned upon me, and cried out with violence, "S'death, a Frenchman! I am betrayed to the tyrant! Who could have thought the queen would have delivered me up to France in this treaty, and least of all that you, my friends, would have been in a conspiracy against me?".

66

Sir," said I, "here is neither plot nor conspiracy, but for your advantage. The recovery of your senses requires my attendance, and your friends sent for me on no other account." I then took a particular survey of his person, and the furniture and disposition of his apartment. His aspect was furious, his eyes were rather fiery than lively, which he rolled about in an uncommon manner. He often opened his mouth as if he would have uttered some matter of importance, but the sound seemed lost inwardly. His beard was grown, which they told me he would not suffer to be shaved, believing the modern dramatic poets had corrupted all the barbers in the town to take the first opportunity of cutting his throat. His eye-brows were grey, long, and grown together, which he knit with indignation when any thing was spoken, insomuch that he seemed not to have smoothed his forehead for many years. His flannel night-cap, which was exceedingly begrimed with sweat and dirt, hung upon his left ear; the flap

of his breeches dangled between his legs, and the rolls of his stockings fell down to his ankles.

I observed his room was hung with old tapestry, which had several holes in it, caused, as the old woman informed me, by his having cut out of it the heads of divers tyrants, the fierceness of whose visages had much provoked him. On all sides of his room were pinned a great many sheets of a tragedy called Cato, with notes on the margin with his own hand. The words absurd, monstrous, execrable, were every where written in such large characters, that I could read them without my spectacles. By the fire-side lay three farthings' worth of small coal in a Spectator, and behind the door huge heaps of papers of the same title, which his nurse informed me she had conveyed thither out of his sight, believing they were books of the black art; for her master never read in them, but he was

either quite moped, or in raving fits. There was nothing neat in the whole room, except some books on his shelves, very well bound and gilded, whose names I had never before heard of, nor I believe were any where else to be found; such as Gibraltar, a comedy; Remarks on Prince Arthur; The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry; An Essay on Public Spirit. The only one I had any knowledge of was a Paradise Lost, interleaved. The whole floor was covered with manuscripts, as thick as a pastry-cook's shop on a Christmas-eve. On his table were some ends of verse and of candles; a gallipot of ink with a yellow pen in it, and a pot of half dead ale covered with a Longinus.

As I was casting mine eyes round on all this odd furniture with some earnestness and astonishment, and in a profound silence, I was on a sudden surprised to hear the man speak in the following manner:

"Beware, Doctor, that it fare not with you as with