Note 42 — CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS: (continued 2)

“The narrative of the frenzy of Mr. John Dennis,” published in the Miscellanies of Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot, and said to have been written by Pope, is a grave banter on his usual violence. It professes to be the account of the physician who attended him at the request of a servant, who describes the first attack of his madness coming on when “a poor simple child came to him from the printers; the boy had no sooner entered the room, but he cried out ‘the devil was come!’” The constant idiosyncrasy he had that his writings against France and the Pope might endanger his liberty, is amusingly hit off; “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 Bastile!’”—Ed.