Note 36 — Chapter V · THE COLLECTOR OF THE HARLEIAN MSS.

Swift’s account of their first interview after Harley’s partial recovery merits quotation:—‘I went in the evening,’ he notes on the 5th of April, ‘to see Mr. Harley. Mr. Secretary was just going out of the door, but I made him come back; and there was the old Saturday club, Lord Keeper [Harcourt], Lord Rivers, Mr. Secretary, Mr. Harley, and I; the first time since his stabbing. Mr. Secretary went away, but I stayed till nine, and made Mr. Harley show me his breast and tell all his story.... I measured and found that the penknife would have killed him, if it had gone but half the breadth of my thumb-nail lower; so near was he to death. I was so curious as to ask him what were his thoughts while they were carrying him home in the chair. He said he concluded himself a dead man.’—Journal to Stella, as before, pp. 255, 256.