Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/198

192 on him, blotches, scabs, and the corona: his brother Martin, though he was not quite so bad, had some nocturnal pains, which his friends pretended were only scorbutical; but he was sure it proceeded from a worse cause." By such malicious insinuations, he had possessed the lady, that he was the only man in the world of a sound, pure, and untainted constitution: though there were some that stuck not to say, that signiora Bubonia and Jack railed at one another, only the better to hide an intrigue; and that Jack had been found with signiora under his cloak, carrying her home in a dark stormy night.

Jack was a prodigious ogler; he would ogle you the outside of his eye inward, and the white upward.

Jack gave himself out for a man of a great estate in the Fortunate Islands; of which the sole property was vested in his person: by this trick he cheated abundance of poor people of small sums, pretending to make over plantations in the said islands; but when the poor wretches came there with Jack's grant, they were beat, mocked, and turned out of doors.

I told you that Peg was whimsical, and loved any thing that was particular: in that way, Jack was her man, for he neither thought, spoke, dressed, nor acted like other mortals: he was for your bold strokes, he railed at fops, though he was himself the most affected in the world; instead of the common fashion, he would visit his mistress in a mourning cloak, band, short cuffs, and a peaked beard. He invented a way of coming into a room backward, which, he said, showed more humility, and less affectation: where other people stood, he sat; where they sat, he stood; when he went to court, he used to kick away the state,