Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/316

310 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 horseshoe, 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, 'Sdeath! a messenger from the French king! I shall die in the Bastille.'"

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 lunatick 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 fullness 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, "'Sdeath, a Frenchman! I am betrayed to the tyrant! who could have thought the " queen