whose high imaginations, and hot spirits, have waked them
into distraction. Their boiling tempers are not to be wrought upon by my
gruels and juleps, but must ever be employed, or appear to be so, or
their recovery will be impracticable. I shall therefore make use of such
poets as preserve so constant a mediocrity as never to elevate the mind
into joy, or depress it into sadness, yet at the same time keep the
faculties of the readers in suspense, though they introduce no ideas of
their own. By this means, a disordered mind, like a broken limb, will
recover its strength by the sole benefit of being out of use, and lying
without motion. But as reading is not an entertainment that can take up
the full time of my patients, I have now in pension a proportionable
number of storytellers, who are by turns to walk about the galleries of
the house, and by their narrations second the labours of my pretty good
poets. There are among these storytellers some that have so earnest
countenances, and weighty brows, that they will draw a madman, even when
his fit is just coming on, into a whisper, and by the force of shrugs,
nods, and busy gestures, make him stand amazed so long as that we may
have time to give him his broth without danger.

But as Fortune has the possession of men's minds, a physician may cure
all the sick people of ordinary degree in the whole town, and never come
into reputation. I shall therefore begin with persons of condition; and
the first I shall undertake, shall be the Lady Fidget, the general
visitant, and Will Voluble, the fine talker. These persons shall be
first locked up, for the peace of all whom the one visits, and all whom
the other talks to.

The passion which first touched the brain of both these persons was
envy; and has had such wondrous effects, that to this, Lady Fidget owes
that she is so courteous; to this, Will Voluble that he is eloquent.
Fidget has a restless torment in hearing of any one's prosperity, and
cannot know any quiet till she visits her, and is eyewitness of
something that lessens it. Thus her life is a continual search after
what does not concern her, and her companions speak kindly even of the
absent and the unfortunate, to tease her. She was the first that visited
Flavia after the small-pox, and has never seen her since because she is
not altered. Call a young woman handsome in her company, and she tells
you, it is a pity she has no fortune: say she is rich, and she is as
sorry t