Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/323

Rh says, that if learning be mixed with the 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.

D. 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 peripætia in that vile piece, that's foisted upon the town for a dramatick 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 has lived upon my labours, take away that life to which he owes his support?

G. By your leave, gentlemen, I apprehend you not. I must not see my friend ill treated; he is no more affected with lunacy than myself: I am also of the same opinion, as to the peripætia. —— 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 loth 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