your predecessor the famous Hippocrates, whom the mistaken citizens of Abdera sent for in this very manner to cure the philosopher Democritus; he returned full of admiration at the wisdom of that person, whom he had supposed a lunatic. Behold, Doctor, it was thus Aristotle himself, and all the great ancients, spent their days and nights, wrapt up in criticism, and beset all around with their own writings. As for me, whom you see in the same manner, be assured I have none other disease than a swelling in my legs, whereof I say no more, since your art may further satisfy you."

I began now to be in hopes, that his case had been misrepresented, and that he was not so far gone, but some timely medicines might recover him. I therefore proceeded to the proper queries, which, with the answers made to me, I shall set down in form of a dialogue, in the very words they were spoken, because I would not omit the least circumstance in this narrative; and I call my conscience to witness, as if upon oath, that I shall tell the truth without addition or diminution.

Dr. Pray, Sir, how did you contract this swelling? Denn. By a criticism.

Dr. A criticism! that's a distemper I never heard of.

Denn. S'death, Sir, a distemper! It is no distemper, but a noble art. I have sat fourteen hours a-day at it; and are you a doctor, and don't know there's a communication between the legs and the brain?

Dr. What made you sit so many hours, Sir?

Denn. Cato, Sir.

Dr. Sir, I speak of your distemper; what gave you this tumour?

Denn. Cato, Cato, Cato2.

2 Remarks upon Cato, published by Mr. D. in the year 1712.— Warton.

Old Wom. For God's sake, Doctor, name not this evil spirit; it is the whole cause of his madness: alas! poor master is just falling into his fits.

Mr. Lintot. Fits! Z- what fits! a man may well have swelling in his legs, that sits writing fourteen hours in a day. He got this by the Remarks.

Dr. The Remarks! what are those?

Denn. S'death! have you never read my Remarks? I will be damned if this dog Lintot ever published my advertisements.

Mr. Lintot. Z-! I published advertisement upon advertisement; and if the book be not read, it is none of my fault, but his that made it. By G-, as much has been done for the book, as could be done for any book in Christendom.

Dr. We do not talk of books, Sir; I fear those are the fuel that feed the delirium; mention them no more. You do very ill to promote this discourse.

I desire a word in private with this other gentleman, who seems a grave and sensible man: I suppose, Sir, you are his apothecary?

Gent. Sir, I am his friend. Dr. I doubt it not. What regimen have you observed, since he has been under your care? You remember, I suppose, the passage of Celsus, which says, if the patient on the third day have an interval, suspend the medicaments at night? Let fumigations be used to corroborate the brain. I hope you have upon no account promoted sternutation by hellebore?

Gent. Sir, no such matter: you utterly mistake.

Dr. Mistake! am I not a physician? and shall an apothecary dispute my nostrums? You may perhaps have filled up a prescription or two of Ratcliff's, which chanced to succeed, and with that very prescription, injudiciously prescribed to different constitutions, have destroyed a multitude. Pharmacopola componat, me

dicus solus prescribat. Fumigate him, I say, this very evening, while he is relieved by an interval.

Denn. S'death, Sir! my friend an apothecary! a base mechanic! He who, like myself, professes the noblest sciences in the universe, criticism and poetry! Can you think I would submit my writings to the judgment of an apothecary! By the immortals, he himself inserted three whole paragraphs in my Remarks, had a hand in my Public Spirit, nay, assisted me in my description of the furies and infernal regions in my Appius.

Mr. Lintot. He is an author; you mistake the gentleman, Doctor; he has been an author these twenty years, to his bookseller's knowledge, and no man's else.

Denn. Is all the town in a combination? Shall poetry fall to the ground? Must our reputation be lost to all foreign countries! O destruction! perdition! Opera! Opera! As poetry once raised cities, so when poetry fails, cities are overturned, and the world is no

more.

Dr. He raves, he raves! Mr. Lintot, I pray you pinion down his arms, that he may do no mischief. Denn. O I am sick, sick to death!

Dr. That is a good symptom, a very good symptom. To be sick to death (say the modern physicians) is an excellent symptom. When a patient is sensible of his pain, it is half a cure. Pray, Sir, of what are you sick?

Denn. Of every thing, of every thing. I am sick of the sentiments, of the diction, of the protasis, of the epitasis, and the catastrophe.-Alas! what is become of the drama, the drama?

Old Wom. The dram, Sir! Mr. Lintot drank up all the gin just now; but I'll go fetch more presently.

3 He wrote a treatise proving the decay of public spirit to proceed from Italian operas.-Warton.

Denn. O shameful want, scandalous omission! By all the immortals, here is no peripatia, no change of fortune in the tragedy; Z- no change at all!

Old Wom. Pray, good Sir, be not angry, I'll fetch change.

Dr. Hold your peace, woman; his fit increases; good Mr. Lintot, hold him.

Mr. Lintot. Plague on't! I'm damnably afraid they are in the right of it, and he is mad in earnest. If he should be really mad, who the devil would buy the Remarks? (Here Mr. Lintot scratched his head.)

Dr. Sir, I shall order you the cold bath to-morrow.

-Mr. Lintot, you are a sensible man; pray send for Mr. Verdier's servant, and as you are a friend to the patient, be so kind as to stay this evening, whilst he is cupped on the head. The symptoms of his madness seem to be desperate; for Avicen says, that if learning be mixed with a brain that is not of a contexture fit to receive it, the brain ferments, till it be totally exhausted. We must eradicate these undigested ideas out of the pericranium, and reduce the patient to a competent knowledge of himself.

Denn. Caitiffs, stand off, unhand me, miscreants! Is the man, whose whole endeavours are to bring the town to reason, mad? Is the man, who settles poetry on the basis of antiquity, mad? Dares any one assert, there is a peripatia in that vile piece that's foisted upon the town for a dramatic poem? That man is mad, the town is mad, the world is mad. See Longinus in my right hand, and Aristotle in my left; I am the only man among the moderns that support them. Am I to be assassinated? and shall a bookseller, who hath lived upon my labours, take away that life to which he owes his support?

Gent. By your leave, gentlemen, I apprehend you I must not see my friend ill treated; he is no

not.

more affected with lunacy than myself: I am also of the same opinion as to the peripatia-Sir, by the gravity of your countenance and habit, I should conceive you to be a graduate physician; but by your indecent and boisterous treatment of this man of learning, I perceive you are a violent sort of person, I am loath to say quack, who, rather than his drugs should lie upon his own hands, would get rid of them by cramming them into the mouths of others: the gentleman is of good condition, sound intellectuals, and unerring judgment: I beg you will not oblige me to resent these proceedings.

THESE were all the words that passed among us at this time; nor was there need for more, it being necessary we should make use of force in the cure of my patient.

I privately whispered the old woman to go to Mr. Verdier's in Long Acre, with orders to come immediately with cupping-glasses; in the mean time, by the assistance of Mr. Lintot, we locked his friend into a closet, who, it is plain, from his last speech, was likewise touched in his intellects; after which we bound our lunatic hand and foot down to the bedstead, where he continued in violent ravings, notwithstanding the most tender expressions we could use to persuade him to submit to the operation, till the servant of Verdier arrived. He had no sooner clapped half a dozen cupping-glasses on his head, and behind his ears, but the gentleman above mentioned bursting open the closet, ran furiously upon us, cut Mr. Dennis's bandages, and let drive at us with a vast folio, which sorely bruised the shin of Mr. Lintot; Mr. John Dennis also starting up with cupping-glasses on his head, seized another folio, and with the same dangerously wounded me in the skull, just above my right temple. The truth