Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

A Discourse Concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit. In a Letter to a Friend. A Fragment

London

1704

"Here it may not be amiss to add a few words upon the laudable practice of wearing quilted caps; which is not a matter of mere custom, humour, or fashion, as some would pretend, but an institution of great sagacity and use; these, when moistened with sweat, stop all perspiration, and by reverberating the heat prevent the spirit from evaporating any way but at the mouth: even as a skilful house-wife, that covers her still with a wet clout, for the same reason, and finds the same effect."

Here it may not be amiss to add a few words upon the laudable practice of wearing quilted caps; which is not a matter of mere custom, humour, or fashion, as some would pretend, but an institution of great sagacity and use; these, when moistened with sweat, stop all perspiration, and by reverberating the heat prevent the spirit from evaporating any way but at the mouth: even as a skilful house-wife, that covers her still with a wet clout, for the same reason, and finds the same effect. For, it is the opinion of choice virtuosi, that the brain is only a crowd of little animals, but with teeth and claws extremely sharp, and therefore cling together in the contexture we behold, like the picture of Hobbes's Leviathan, or like bees in perpendicular swarm upon a tree, or like a carrion corrupted into vermin, still preserving the shape and figure of the mother animal; that all invention is formed by the morsure of two or more of these animals, upon certain capillary nerves, which proceed from thence, whereof three branches spread into the tongue, and two into the right hand. They hold also, that these animals are of a constitution extremely cold; that their food is the air we attract, their excrement phlegm; and that what we vulgarly called rheums, and colds, and distillations, is nothing else but an epidemical looseness, to which that little commonwealth is very subject from the climate it lies under. Further, that nothing less than a violent heat can disentangle these creatures from their hamated station of life, or give them vigour and humour to imprint the marks of their little teeth. That, if the morsure be hexagonal, it produces Poetry; the circular gives Eloquence; if the bite hath been conical, the person, whose nerve is so affected, shall be disposed to write upon Politics; and so of the rest.
(pp. 134-5)

Liquid::Evaporation

Reading

More than 40 entries in ECCO and ESTC (1704, 1705, 1710, 1711, 1720, 1724, 1726, 1727, 1733, 1734, 1739, 1741, 1743, 1747, 1750, 1751, 1752, 1753, 1754, 1756, 1760, 1761, 1762, 1766, 1768, 1769, 1771, 1772, 1774, 1776, 1781, 1784, 1798).

Reading Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub and Other Works, eds. Angus Ross and David Woolley. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). Some text drawn from ebooks@Adelaide.

Note, the textual history is complicated. First published May 10, 1704. The second edition of 1704 and the fifth of 1710 include new material. Ross and Woolley's text is an eclectic one, based on the three authoritative editions.

See A Tale of a Tub. Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind. To Which Is Added, an Account of a Battel Between the Antient and Modern Books in St. James's Library, 2nd edition, corrected (London: Printed for John Nutt, 1704). <Link to ESTC>

07/09/2009