Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/124

112 delivered to me, it cleared my brow, diverted my ill humour, and at least made me forget my pain. I told the persons, who were sitting round my bed, and who testified some surprise at so sudden a change, that this powerful epistle came from Ireland; at which, to say the truth, I did not observe that their surprise diminished. But the dullest fellow among them, who was a priest (for that happens to be the case sometimes in this country), told the others, that Ireland formerly had been called insula sanctorum: that by the acquaintance he had at the Irish college, he made no doubt of her deserving still the same appellation: and that they might be sure the three pages were filled with matière d' èdification, et matière de consolation, which he hoped I would be so good as to communicate to them. A learned rosicrusian of my acquaintance, who is a fool of as much knowledge and as much wit as ever I knew in my life, smiled at the doctor's simplicity; observed, that the effect was too sudden for a cause so heavy in its operations; said a great many extravagant things about natural and theurgick magick; and informed us, that though the sages who deal in occult sciences have been laughed out of some countries, and driven out of others, yet there are, to his knowledge, many of them in Ireland. I stopped these guessers, and others who were perhaps ready, by assuring them, that my correspondent was neither a saint nor a conjurer. They asked me, what he was then? I answered, that they should know it from yourself; and opening your letter, I read to them in French the character which you draw of yourself. Particular parts of it were approved or condemned by every one, as every one's own habits induced