Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/294

258 : "I am infinitely obliged to you for all your civilities, and shall retain the remembrance of them during my life. I hope you will favour me so far as to present my most humble duty to the queen, and to describe to her majesty my sorrow, that my disorder was of such a nature, as to make me incapable of attending her, as she was pleased to permit me. I shall pass the remainder of my life with the utmost gratitude for her majesty's favours," &c.

On his arrival in Dublin he found Mrs. Johnson in the last stage of a decay, without the smallest hope of her recovery. He had the misery of attending her in this state, and of daily seeing the gradual advances of death during four or five months; and in the month of January he was deprived, as he himself expresses it, of the truest, most virtuous, and valuable friend, that he, or perhaps any other person was ever blessed with. Such a loss at his time of life was irreparable. She had been trained by him from her childhood, and had been his constant companion for five and thirty years, with every merit toward him that it was possible for one human creature to have toward another. His whole plan of life was now changed, and with it all his domestick comforts vanished. The only chance he could have had of enjoying the remainder of his days with any satisfaction, would have been the carrying into execution his proposed removal to England, to live among his old friends; but he soon found that all expectations from that quarter were at an end. In this forlorn state he found himself doomed to pass the remmant of his life in exile, in a country which was one of the last he would have chosen for his abode. But his spirit was too great to give way to despondence; and deprived as he was