Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/228

 ferences in his letters and journals show how he was harassed by some such fear. Many of these references are collected in the ‘Closing Years of Swift's Life,’ by (Sir) W. R. Wilde, who discusses the disease and shows that Swift did not suffer from insanity proper. Towards the end of his life paralysis came on, and he suffered from aphasia. A last very painful letter is addressed to Mrs. Whiteway, dated 26 July 1740. An ‘exhortation’ to his chapter against allowing the choir to take part in a ‘fiddlers' club,’ is dated 28 Jan. 1741. In March 1741–2 guardians were appointed for him by the court of chancery. In the following summer a strange attack was made upon him by a Dr. Wilson, a prebendary of the cathedral. Wilson, while taking him in a carriage, tried, it was said, by actual violence to extort from him a promise of the subdeanery (Orrery to Deane Swift, 4 Dec. 1742;, p. 493, n.) Great indignation was aroused. Wilson swore that Swift had been violent. In September 1742 a crisis took place. Swift suffered much agony from an abscess in the eye. When this broke the pain ceased; he recognised his friends for a short time, and then sank into a state of apathy. He survived till 19 Oct. 1745. Painful anecdotes of his last days and occasional gleams of intelligence are given by his biographers, chiefly from letters of Mrs. Whiteway and Deane Swift (first published by Orrery, pp. 136–42). At midnight on 22 Oct. Swift was buried privately, according to his own careful directions, in the cathedral of St. Patrick, by the side of Stella. A famous inscription by himself, saying that he was ‘ubi sæva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit,’ was, by his direction, engraved in large letters deeply cut and strongly gilded.

In 1835, some repairs being made in the cathedral, Swift's and Stella's coffins were found side by side. The British Association was holding a meeting at Dublin, and the skulls were examined by various scientific people (, pp. 54, &c.). Wilde describes the results and gives drawings of both skulls (pp. 62, 116) and of a cast from the interior of Swift's (p. 63).

Swift's design of founding a hospital is mentioned in the verses on his own death (1731), and had occupied him in the succeeding years. He made a will in 1735, modified in 1737, and again in 1740 (, pp. 449, 450). He left between 10,000l. and 11,000l. for the purpose, which was increased by other donations; and St. Patrick's Hospital, so called by his direction, was opened on 19 Sept. 1757, to receive fifty patients. It was upon ground adjoining ‘Dr. Steevens's Hospital,’ to which Stella had left 1,000l. to endow a chaplaincy (see her will in, pp. 94–7). Swift left the tithes of Effernock to the vicars of Laracor, with the provision, dictated probably by his fear of the dissenters, that ‘when any other form of the Christian religion shall become the established faith in this kingdom,’ the proceeds shall go to the poor; so long as ‘Christianity in any shape shall be tolerated among us,’ but ‘still excepting professed Jews, atheists, and infidels.’ A similar provision is in Stella's will, no doubt suggested by Swift (Swift's will of March 1737 is printed in the appendix to Scott's ‘Life’).

An interesting portrait of Swift as a student at Trinity College, by an unknown artist, is reproduced as a frontispiece to ‘Swift's Prose Works’ (1897, vol. i.). The present whereabouts of this portrait is unknown; the negative was obtained at South Kensington in 1867. Francis Bindon [q. v.] painted a portrait of Swift in 1738, now in the deanery of St. Patrick's, engraved in mezzotint at the time, and by Scriven in 1818. A portrait, in the theatre of Trinity College, Dublin, is said to be a copy from this. Another at Howth Castle, with Wood writhing in agony at Swift's feet, was painted by Bindon for Lord Howth in 1735. A bust-portrait, ascribed to Bindon, is in the National Gallery at Dublin. A portrait by Jervas was presented to the Bodleian Library by Alderman Barber in 1739. Another by Jervas is in the National Portrait Gallery. An engraving from a portrait by Benjamin Wilson (1741) is the frontispiece to Orrery's ‘Letters.’ A portrait, said to be taken from a cast after death, is prefixed to the first volume of Nichols's edition of the ‘Works.’ A plaster bust in the museum at Trinity College is also taken from a cast after death, the original of which was destroyed. A bust by Roubiliac is in the library of Trinity College.

Wilde gives an engraving of a supposed portrait of Stella and of a medallion at Delville, also supposed to be intended for her.

In Swift the author and the man are identical. No writings ever reflected more perfectly a powerful idiosyncrasy; and his famous sayings resemble groans wrung from a strong man by torture. His misanthropy partly excuses, if it does not justify, the prejudices of Johnson and of Macaulay. Thackeray, in the ‘English Humourists,’ accepted Macaulay's statements of fact too unreservedly, and, while appreciating the power, was alienated by the ferocity, of some of Swift's writings. To deny the ferocity is im-