ABSTRACT
Here, described with White's characteristic directness, is a particularly lively example of Bernstein's 'alternative realities, alternative arrangements in the affairs of men', but one that is framed both by White's memory of 'more than twenty years ago' and by the semi-formal style of the letter (addressed to Daines Barrington). The perspectives that are available for writing about the bee-boy are therefore constrained by distance and by language. If that means that the 'alternative reality' finally escapes, it also means that we can read unusually clearly the features of our mental and linguistic processes that tend to inhibit our laying firm hold on other mental and linguistic 'arrangements'. As such, White's letter exemplifies much eighteenth-century endeavour in writing about madness.
