801 



SWIFT, JONATHAN, D.D. 



SWIFT, JONATHAN, D.D. 



802 



Swift's popularity was now unbouucled. Tbo Drapier's head was 

 painted on si^ns, eiigraved on copper-plates, Btruck on medals, woven 

 on pocket-hand kerchief*. As if to shelter himself from this storm of 

 public applause, he retired with Stella and Mrs. Dingley to Quilc.-i, a 

 country-house belonging to Dr. Sheridan, in a retired situation about 

 seven miles from Kells, where he remained several months. He had 

 the company of Dr. Sheridan and other friends, and produced several 

 light pieces of humour, in which he was emulated by Sheridan, who 

 followed him at no great distance. He also occupied himself in 

 revising and completing the ' Travels into several remote Nations of 

 the World, by Lemuel Gulliver.' 



In 1726 Swift visited England again, for the first time since Queen 

 Anne's death. Bolingbroke was now returned from exile. Tho Dean 

 redded at Twickenham with Pope, but ruade frequent visits to 

 Dawley, tho residence of Bolingbroko. His other associates were 

 chiefly Arbuthnot, Gay, and Lord Bathurst. 



At this time tho Prince of Wales, afterwards George II., and the 

 Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen Caroline, kept a sort of court at 

 Leicester House. The favourite of the princess was Mrs. Howard, 

 afterwards Countess of Suffolk. Pope, Gay, and Arbuthnot were fre- 

 quent attendants at this court. Swift was introduced to the princess 

 by Arbuthnot, at her own particular request. His visits afterwards 

 were frequent, especially when she resided at Richmond, but always 

 by special invitation from the princess. 



In July 1726 the Dean received letters informing him that Stella 

 was in a state of dangerous illness. He hastened to Ireland, and was 

 gratified, on his arrival in Dublin, to find that her health was better. 

 He now made the world acquainted with the ' Travels of Gulliver.' 

 The work was published in London, anonymously as usual, through 

 the agency of his friend Charles Ford. Such was the interest and 

 admiration which it excited, that the price of the first edition was 

 raised before the second could be printed. 



Stella being now in a tolerably good state of health, Swift, in March 

 1727, paid his last visit to London. His reception by his friends and 

 at Leicester House was as cordial as ever. After spending the summer 

 with Pope at Twickenham, he contemplated a voyage to France for the 

 benefit of his health, when the death of George I. seemed to open a new 

 prospect to the friends of the Princess of Wale?. It was expected that 

 Walpole's dismissal would have taken place forthwith ; and the Dean, 

 at the earnest request of his friends, especially of Mrs. Howard, who 

 said that his going abroad at that time would look like disaffection, 

 remained in England. 



Swift was suffering under a severe attack of deafness, which seems 

 generally to have been more or less combined with his other and 

 worse complaint, vertigo, when he received information that Stella 

 was again in danger. He left England suddenly, almost capriciously 

 as it appeared to his friends, who had but an indistinct notion of his 

 connection with Stella, and in October 1727, landed in Dublin to find 

 his companion on the brink of the grave. She died January 28, 1728. 

 When Swift had somewhat recovered from this last and severest shock, 

 he found Walpole still in power, and high in favour with the queen as 

 well as the king. He now kept no terms with the court ; he attacked 

 Walpole especially, and the ministry generally, and did not spare even 

 the king and queen. At the same time he applied himself vigorously 

 to the affairs of Ireland : he published several tracts for the ameliora- 

 tion of the unhappy state of that country ; and, with the same object 

 in view, commenced a periodical publication, in conjunction with 

 Dr. Sheridan, called ' The Intelligencer,' which however was soon 

 dropped. In 1728-9 the Dean spent about a year with Sir Arthur 

 Achesou, at his seat of Gosford, in the north of Ireland ; here he 

 wrote several light pieces of poetry, which were intended for the 

 amusement of the family and guests ; among these was ' The Grand 

 Question debated, whether Hamilton's Bawu should be turned into a 

 Malthouse or a Barracks,' affording evidence that age had not iu the 

 least impaired those peculiar powers of humour which he had first 

 displayed in the family of Lord Berkeley. In 1730 the Dean was a 

 guest for six months in the house of Mr. Leslie at Market Hill, a 

 small town at a short distance from Sir Arthur Acheson's. Near this 

 town he intended to build a house, on ground to be leased from Sir 

 Arthur, and which was to have been called Drapier's Hill ; an inten- 

 tion however which he did not carry into effect. 



In a satire upon the Dissenters, in 1733, the Dean had directed a 

 few lines against " the booby Bettesworth," who was a serjeant-at-lav/ 

 and a member of the Irish parliament, and who, on reading the lines 

 was so highly incensed that he drew a knife, and swore he would cut 

 off the Dean's ears ; he proceeded direct to the deanery with that 

 intention, but as Swift was on a visit at Mr. WorraU's, Bettesworth 

 went there, and requested to speak with the Dean alone, whom he 

 addressed with great pomposity, "Dr. Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. 

 Patrick's, I am Serjeant Bettesworth." "Of what regiment ?" asked 

 Swift. An altercation ensued, which soon became so loud and 

 violent, that the servants rushed into the room and turned Bettes- 

 worth into tho street. To guard against any similar attack in future, 

 the Dean's neighbours formed an association, for the purpose of 

 watching the deanery, and guarding the person of the Dean from 

 violence. In the year 1735 he supported the clergy in their claim of 

 the tithe of pasturage, or agistment tithe, in opposition to the Irish 

 House of Commons, and gave vent to his indignation against the 



obnoxious members in one of the last but most animated and pointed 

 of his satires, 'The Legion Club.' The poem was hardly finished 

 when he had one of the most intense and long-continued attacks of 

 vertigo which he had ever suffered, and from which indeed he never 

 thoroughly recovered. In 1736 Swift opposed the primate Boulter's 

 scheme for regulating the exchange with Ireland by diminishing the 

 value of the gold coin in order to increase the quantity of silver ; he 

 spoke against it in public ; he wrote ballads against it ; and on the day 

 when the proclamation of the government for carrying the measure 

 into effect was read, the bells of the cathedral rang a muffled peal, and 

 a black flag was seen to wave on the steeple. 



Swift's public life may now be said to have closed. From 1708 to 

 1736 he had been actively, strenuously, and often dangerously busied 

 in guiding by his pen the course of public affairs ; but during the 

 latter part of this period his infirmities and sufferings rapidly increased. 

 In 17.32 Bolingbroke had attempted to bring him to England by 

 negotiating an exchange of his deanery for the living of Burfield in 

 Berkshire, worth about 400?., but it was too late; the sacrifice of 

 dignity and income was greater than, at that period of his life, he was 

 willing to submit to. He still continued to correspond with Boliug- 

 broke, Pope, Gay, the Duchess of Queensberry, and Lady Betty 

 Germain, by all of whom he was constantly pressed to come over to 

 England ; but as his attacks of deafness and giddiness became more 

 frequent, more violent, and continued longer, he did not think it 

 prudent to venture. Gay died in 1732, and Arbuthnot in 1734, and 

 Bolingbroke went to France. With Pope he kept up an affectionate 

 correspondence as long as he retained the power of expressing his 

 thoughts upon paper. For several years before his mind gave way, he 

 was hardly ever freo from suffering, and never from the fear of it ; and 

 it was his custom to pray every morning that he might not live another 

 day, and often when he parted at night with those friends who were 

 dearest to him, after social hours spent at the deanery, he would say with 

 a sigh, " I hope I shall never see you again." In the intervals of his fits 

 of giddiness his powers of judgment remained unimpaired, but his 

 memory failed rapidly. On the 26th of July, 1740, in a short note to 

 Mrs. Whiteway, he says " I have been very miserable all night, and 

 to-day extremely deaf and full of pain. I cannot express the mortifi- 

 cation I am under of body and mind. All I can say is, that I am not 

 in torture, but I daily and hourly expect it. Pray let me know how 

 your health is, and your family. I hardly understand one word I 

 write. I am sure my days will be very few ; few and miserable they 

 must be. I am, for those few days, yours entirely, J. Swift. If I do 

 not blunder, it is Saturday." 



In 1741 Swift's memory had almost failed, his understanding was 

 much impaired, and he became subject to violent fits of passion, which 

 soon terminated in furious lunacy. He wa? intrusted to the care of 

 the Rev. Dr. Lyons, who was gratefully attached to him. He con- 

 tinued in this state till 1742, when, after a week of indescribable bodily 

 suffering, he sank into a state of quiet idiotcy, in which he continued 

 till the 19th of October 1745, when he died as gently as if he had 

 only fallen asleep. He was in his seventy-eighth year. The imme- 

 diate cause of death, and probably of the giddiness which had so long 

 afflicted him, was found to be water on the brain. 



On the announcement of his death, the enthusiasm of Irish gratitude 

 broke out as if there had been no interruption of his public services. 

 The house was surrounded by a mournful crowd, who begged the 

 most trifling article that had belonged to him to be treasured as a 

 relic "yea, begg'd a hair of him for memory." He was buried, 

 according to his own direction, in the great aisle of the cathedral, 

 where there is a Latin inscription to hia memory, written by himself : 

 " Hie depositum est corpus Jonathan Swift, S. T. I., hujus Ecclesiao 

 Cathedralis Decani, ubi sseva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit. 

 Abi, viator, et imitare, si poteris, strenuum pro virili libertatis vin- 

 dicem. Obiit," &c. 



Swift left the bulk of his property, the savings of about thirty years 

 of his life, to found and endow an hospital for lunatics and idiots. 

 In 1735 he presented a memorial to the corporation of Dublin, praying 

 that a piece of ground on Oxmantown Green might be assigned for 

 the purpose, which was immediately assented to, but the site which he 

 ultimately fixed on was in James-street, Dublin, near Steevens's 

 Hospital. The funds which finally devolved upon the hospital 

 amounted to about 10,000?. 



For some years before his intellect failed, the general superintendence 

 of the Dean's domestic affairs had been intrusted by him to Mrs. 

 Whiteway, who was a daughter of his uncle Ac! am : she was a woman 

 of property, of superior understanding, and elegant manners. She was 

 not his housekeeper, as has been erroneously stated. His housekeeper 

 was Mrs. Brent, who by a second marriage became Mrs. Ridgeway. 



Swift in his youth was considered handsome : he was tall, muscular, 

 and well made ; his complexion was dark, and his look heavy, but 

 Pope says that his " eyes, which were azure as the heavens, had an 

 expression of peculiar acuteuess." His face was generally expressive 

 of the stern decision of his character. He never laughed, and seldom 

 smiled, and when he did enaile it was 



" As if he mock'd himself, and scorn'd his spirit 

 That could be moved to smile at anything." 



In his person he was scrupulously clean; in his habits he was regular j 



