Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/336

330 to a degree of purity." On the contrary, when the ingenious particles rise with the vital liquor, they produce an abstraction of the rational part of the soul, which we commonly call madness. The verity of this hypothesis is justified by the symptoms, with which the unfortunate Edmund Curll bookseller has been afflicted, ever since his swallowing the poison at the Swan tavern in Fleet street. For though the neck of his retort, which carries up the animal spirits to the head, is of an extraordinary length; yet the said animal spirits rise muddy, being contaminated with the inflammable particles of this uncommon poison.

The symptoms of his departure from his usual temper of mind were at first only speaking civilly to his customers, singeing a pig with a new purchased libel, and refusing two-and-nine-pence for sir Richard Blackmore's Essays.

As the poor man's frenzy increased, he began to void his excrements in his bed, read Rochester's bawdy Poems to his wife, gave Oldmixon a slap on the chops, and would have kissed Mr. Pemberton's a— by violence.

But at last he came to such a pass, that he would dine upon nothing but copper-plates, took a clyster for a whipt syllabub, and made Mr. Lintot eat a suppository for a radish with bread and butter.

We leave it to every tender wife to imagine, how sorely all this afflicted poor Mrs. Curll: at first she privately put a bill into several churches, desiring the prayers of the congregation for a wretched stationer distempered in mind. But when she was sadly convinced, that his misfortune was publick to all the world, she writ the following letter to her good neighbour Mr. Lintot. A true