in this sense in the first apology of Apuleius.* He addresses himself to Emilianus, his adversary, to justify himself from the accusation of having bewitched one Thallus, who was fallen extremely ill with an epilepsy. Imo si verum velis, Æmiliane, tu potius caducus qui jam tot calumniis, cecidisti, neque enim gravius est corpore quam corde collabi, pede potius quam mente corruere, in cubiculo despui, quam in isto splendidissimo cætu detestari.

3. And he marked the posts of the gates. This is the version of the late Mr. Martin, but allow me to lay aside all the versions of our modern divines, and even those of the most celebrated Rabbies, and to abide by my Septuagint and my Vulgate. The Septuagint renders it a Inter Exi" Tas Bupas The US, and the Vulgate says, et impingebat in ostia portia and he hurt himself, or he dashed himself against the posts of the gate. Munstert pretends indeed that the Latin interpreter first wrote, et pingebat in ostia portiæ, and that it was afterwards changed into impingebut; but though this ingenious conjecture has been adopted by able critics, yet it seems to me futile, because on the one hand the Vulgate evidently follows the Septuagint, and on the other, because the Latin interpreter would have contradicted himself, collabebatur inter manus corum, et pingebat in ostia portiæ, if he fell into their hands how could he write, or scratch with his fingers on the gate or the door? Nor is it necessary with the celebrated Lewis Capelt to suppose the change of a letter, and to say that the Septuagint reads vajatoph, instead of vajetau. The verb tava signifies to mark, to make an impression, or some print with the hand, or an instrument, and to shake, and make the body tremble where the mark is imprinted. David was violently hurt against the posts of the gate, so that marks were left in his flesh. This signification of the verb is agreeable to the Chaldean language, in which leva signifies to tremble, to shiver, and in the Arabic, where the same root signifies to be troubled or astonished.

4. King Achish uses another word, which modern translations render fool, madman. Lo, you see the man is mad. Have I need of madmen, and so on. The Septuagint, which I follow step by step, and the authors of which understood Hebrew better than we, translates it, adou aders ardga #TTO and so on: Why have you brought this man? Do you not see that he is attacked with an epilepsy? Have I need of epileptics, that you have brought him to fall into convulsions in my presence? This single testimony of the Septuagint ought to determine this question.

2. My second class of arguments is taken from the scope of the place, and I think, even supposing the original terms were as favourable to the idea of folly or madness as they are to that of an epilepsy, yet we should be more inclined to the latter sense than to the

ormer.

Apuleius Apol, pro se ipso prima.

† Munsterus in h. Î. in criticis magnis.-See Bayle. Achish. Rem. C.

L. Capellus criticis sacra libro. iv. cap. 5. S. 35.

First, if there be some examples of persons frightened into folly or madness, there are more of persons terrified into an epilepsy. Among the various causes of this sickness, the author of a book on the subject, supposed to be Hippocrates,* has given sudden fright as one. It would be needless to multiply proofs when a sorrowful experience daily gives us so many! But I recollect one instance of the zeal of St. Barnard,t which deserves to be related, I do not say to be applauded. William the Xth Duke of Aquitain, and Count of Thoulouse, declared himself against Innocent the IId in favour of Peter de Leon, an antipope who had taken the name of Anacletus the Ild. The Duke had driven the Bishops of Poictiers, and of Limoges, from their sees. St. Barnard was sent into Guienne to engage him to reconcile himself to the holy see, and to re-establish the two bishops, but he could not prevail with him to be reconciled to the bishop of Poictiers. While they were talking at the church gate, St. Barnard went up to the altar and said mass. Having consecrated the host, and pronounced the benediction on the people, he took the body of the Lord in a patine, and going out with a countenance on fire, and with eyes in a flame, he addressed with a threatening air these terrible words to the Duke: We have entreated you, but you have despised us. In a former interview, a great number of the servants of God besought you, and you treated them with contempt. Behold, now the Son of the Virgin comes to you, the head and lord of the church you persecute. Behold your judge, at whose name every name in heaven, earth, and hell, bow. Behold the avenger of your crimes, into whose hand, sooner or later, your stubborn soul shall fall. Have you the hardiness to despise him? And will you contemn the master as you have done the servants?" The spectators were all dissolved in tears, and the count himself, unable to bear the sight of the abbott, who addressed him with so much vehemence, and who held up to him all the while the body of the Lord, fell all shaking and trembling, to the earth. Being raised up by his soldiers, he fell back again, and lay on his face, saying nothing and looking at nobody, but uttering deep groans, and letting his spittle fall down on his beard, and discovering all the signs of a person convulsed in an epilepsy. St. Barnard approached, pushed him with his foot, commanded him to rise, and to stand up and hear the decree of God. The bishop of Poictiers, whom you have

* Hippocrates p segas voσcu. T. ii. S. xi. p. 336. Vita Sancti Bernardi. lib. i. cap. 6. n. 38. Rogavimus te, et sprevisti nos, supplicavit tibi in altero quam jam tecum habuimus, conventu servorum Dei ante te adunata multitudo, et contempsisti. Ecce ad te processit filius virginis, qui est caput et Dominus ecclesiæ, quam tu persequeris. Adest Judex tuus, in cujus nomine omne genu curvatur cælestium, terrestrium et infernorum. Adest vindex tuus, in cujus manua illa anima tua deveniet. Nunquid et ipsum spernes? Nunquid et ipsum sicut servos ejus contemnes?

Elevatus a militibus, rursum in faciem ruit, nec quippiam alieni loquens, aut intendens in aliquem, salivis in barbam defluentibus, cum profundis efflatis gemitibus, epilepticus videbatur.

2. I return, sir, from this digression, which is not quite foreign to my subject, to observe, in the second place, that the sacred historian attributes to David the three characteristical marks of the falling sickness, falling, convulsion, and frothing. Falling, for it is said he fell into the hands' of the officers of the king: convulsion, for he hurt himself against the 'posts of the gate:' and frothing, for he let fall his 'spittle upon his beard.' These are symptoms, which Isidore of Seville gives of an epilepsy,* cujus tanta vis est, ut homo valens concidal, spumetque. We may see the cause, or at least what physicians say of it, in the work of Hippocrates just now quoted, in the posthumous works of Mr. Manjot, and in all the treatises of pathological physic. The manner in which Hippocrates explains the symptom of froth seems very natural, aqpou de ex TUTTOμATOS, &c. The froth, that comes out of the mouth, proceeds from the lungs, which, not receiving any fresh air, throw up little bubbles, like those of a dying man.

του

3. The horror of king Achish concerning the condition of David, is a third reason, which confirms our opinion. You see,' said this prince to his officers, 'this man is epileptic, shall such a man come into my house? And he drove him away,' as it is said in the title of the thirty-fourth psalm. According to the common opinion, David feigned himself a natural, a fool, not a madman: he did actions of imbecility, and silliness, not of madness and fury. Now the ancients, far from having any aversion to this sort of fools, kept them in their palaces to make diversion. Tarquin the proud kept Lucius Junius Brutus in his family less as a relation of whom he meant to take care, than as a fool to please his children by absurd discourses and ridiculous actions. Anacharsis, who lived about three hundred years after David, could not bear this custom of the Greeks. This wise Scythian said, 'Man was a thing too serious to be destined to a usage so ridiculous.'t Seneca, in one of his letters to Lucilius, speaks of a female fool, whom his wife had left him for a legacy, and who had suddenly lost her sight. She did not know she was blind, and was always asking to be let out of a house where she could see nothing. Seneca says, that he had a great dislike to this kind of singularities; that if ever he should take it into his head to divert himself with a

Isidor, Hispaliensis originum lib. iii. cap. 7. De chronicis morbis, voce Epilepsia. p. 33. Col. A. lit c. Hippocrat. ut supra.

Apud Eustathium in Homerum. * Seneca. Epist. 30.

Harpasta the fool of his wife. Every body knows, adds this philosopher,* ambition is not my vice, but we cannot live otherwise at Rome. I dislike luxury, but to live at a great expense is essential to living in this great city; and so on. Pliny the younger, writing to one of his friends, complained of having misspent his time at an elegant supper through the impertinence of these fools, who interrupted conversation: he says, that every one had his own whim; that he had no relish for such absurdities; but that some complaisance was necessary to the taste of our acquaintances.

It was not the same with madmen, and particularly epileptics. Every body carefully avoided them, and thought, to meet them was a bad omen. Dion Cassius says, the Roman senate always broke up, when any one of them happened to be taken with an epilepsy, for which reason it was called morbus comitialis,t witness these verses of Serenus Sammonicus:

Est subiti species morbi, cui nomen ab illo est,
Quod fieri nobis suffragia justa recusat:
Sæpe etenim membris acri languore caducis,
Consilium populi labes horrenda diremit.

Pliny the elder, who relates the same thing, informs us of another custom, that was, to spit at the sight of an epileptic: Despuimus comitiales morbos, hoc est, contagia regerimus; simili modo et fascinationes repercutimus, dextræque clauditatis accursum. There was then as much superstition in this custom as aversion to the illness. Accordingly Theophrastes has not forgotten, in his character of a superstitious man, to represent him seized with horror, and spitting at meeting a madman, or an epileptic. This was so common, and so much confined to an epilepsy, that it was frequently called the sickness to be spitted at: Thus Plautus, in the comedy of the Captives, where Tyndarus, to prevent Hegio from staying with Aristophontes, accuses him of being subject to the illness that is spit at.

In this custom of spitting at the sight of an epileptic, I think I have formed a very probable conjecture on another famous passage of Scripture; but, sir, I shall do myself the honour to treat of this in a future letter to you. At present, I avail myself of this custom to explain why Achish discovered so much indignation against his courtiers, and so much disdain for David, and why he drove him so quickly from his palace.

4. In fine, I think, it is easy to see in the thanksgiving psalms, which David composed after he had escaped this imminent danger, several indications of the nature of the illness that had seized him so suddenly. It is agreed that he composed the thirty-fourth and the fifty-sixth on this occasion, as the titles assure us, and to them I add the thirty-first and the

*Hoc, quod in illa videmus, omnibus nobis accidere liqueat tibi.-Plin. Ep. lib. ix. 17.