thousand pounds, and had actually agreed for the purchase of an
estate in the West, in order to realise his money; but he quarrelled
with the proprietor about the repairs of the garden wall, and so
returned to town, to follow his old trade of stock-jobbing a little
longer; when an unlucky fluctuation of stock, in which he was
engaged to an immense extent, reduced him at once to poverty and to
madness. Poor wretch! he told me t'other day that against the next
payment of differences he should be some hundreds above a plum."

"It is a spondee, and I will maintain it," interrupted a voice on
his left hand. This assertion was followed by a very rapid recital
of some verses from Homer. "That figure," said the gentleman,
"whose clothes are so bedaubed with snuff, was a schoolmaster of
some reputation: he came hither to be resolved of some doubts he
entertained concerning the genuine pronunciation of the Greek
vowels. In his highest fits, he makes frequent mention of one Mr.
Bentley.

"But delusive ideas, sir, are the motives of the greatest part of
mankind, and a heated imagination the power by which their actions
are incited: the world, in the eye of a philosopher, may be said to
be a large madhouse." "It is true," answered Harley, "the passions
of men are temporary madnesses; and sometimes very fatal in their
effects.


From Macedonia's madman to the Swede."


"It was, indeed," said the stranger, "a very mad thing in Charles to