that much blood trickled down his visage. —— He looked so ghastly, and his passion was grown to such a prodigious height, that myself, Mr. Lintot, and Verdier's servant, were obliged to leave the room in all the expedition imaginable.
I took Mr. Lintot home with me, in order to have our wounds dressed, and laid hold of that opportunity of entering into discourse with him about the madness of this person, of whom he gave me the following remarkable relation:
That on the 17th of May, 1712, between the hours of ten and eleven in the morning, Mr. John Dennis entered into his shop, and, opening one of the volumes of the Spectator, in the large paper, did suddenly, without the least provocation, tear out that of No. ——, where the author treats of poetical justice, and cast it into the street. That the said Mr. John Dennis, on the 27th of March, 1712, finding on the said Mr. Lincot's counter a book called An Essay on Criticism, just then published, he read a page or two with much frowning, till, coming to these two lines,
Some have at first for wits, then poets past,
Turn'd criticks next, and prov'd plain fools at last —
he flung down the book in a terrible fury, and cried out, "By G-d he means me."
That, being in his company on a certain time, when Shakspeare was mentioned as of a contrary opinion to Mr. Dennis, he swore the said Shakspeare was a rascal, with other defamatory expressions, which gave Mr. Lintot a very ill opinion of the said Shakspeare.
