Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/245

Rh He had a tongue so musculous and subtile, that he could twist it up into his nose, and deliver a strange kind of speech from thence. He was also the first in these kingdoms, who began to improve the Spanish accomplishment of braying; and having large ears, perpetually exposed and arrected, he carried his art to such a perfection, that it was a point of great difficulty to distinguish, either by the view or the sound, between the original and the copy.

He was troubled with a disease, reverse to that called the stinging of the tarantula; and would run dog-mad at the noise of musick, especially a pair of bag-pipes. But he would cure himself again, by taking two or three turns in Westminster-hall, or Billingsgate, or in a boarding-school, or the Royal-Exchange, or a State coffee-house.

He was a person that feared no colours, but mortally hated all, and upon that account bore a cruel aversion against painters ; insomuch that in his paroxysms, as he walked the streets, he would have his pockets loaden with stones to pelt at the signs.

Having, from this manner of living, frequent occasion to wash himself, he would often leap over head and ears into water, though it were in the midst of the winter, but was always observed to come out again much dirtier, if possible, than he went in. . II.