Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/318

312 that I could read them without my spectacles. By the fireside lay three-farthingsworth 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 Publick 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 my 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 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 supposed a lunatick. 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