Note 15 — [THE PLAYS OF] WILLIAM WYCHERLEY

"He lost his memory (forty years before he died) by a fever, and would repeat the same thought, sometimes in the compass of ten lines, and did not dream of its being inserted but just before: when you pointed it out to him, he would say, 'Gads-so, so it is! I thank you very much: pray blot it out.'"—Pope, in Spence's Anecdotes.

Elsewhere Pope states that he was forty years of age when the illness occurred. It is possible that this illness may have been the fever before mentioned, from which he sought recovery by travel, in the winter of 1678; though Dennis certainly describes him as returning "entirely restored," both in body and mind.—Ed.