Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/485

 and be amused with the company of his old friends. This hope, however, was but of short duration; for a few days afterward, he sunk into a state of total insensibility, slept much, and could not, without great difficulty, be prevailed on to walk across the room. This was the effect of another bodily disease, his brain being loaded with water. Mr. Stevens, an ingenious clergyman of his chapter, pronounced this to be the case during his illness, and upon opening his head it appeared that he was not mistaken: but though he often intreated the dean's friends and physicians that his skull might be trepanned and the water discharged, no regard was paid to his opinion or advice.

After the dean had continued silent a whole year in this helpless state of idiocy, his housekeeper went into his room on the 30th of November in the morning, telling him that it was his birthday, and that bonfires and illuminations were preparing to celebrate it as usual; to this he immediately replied — "It is all folly, they had better let it alone."

Some other instances of short intervals of sensibility and reason, after his madness had ended in stupor, seem to prove that his disorder, whatever it was, had not destroyed, but only suspended the powers of his mind.

He was sometimes visited by Mr. Deane Swift, a relation, and about Christmas, 1743, he seemed desirous to speak to him. Mr. Swift then told him he came to dine with him; and Mrs. Ridgeway the housekeeper immediately said, "Won't you give Mr. Swift a glass of wine, sir?" To this he made no answer, but showed he understood the question, by shrugging up his shoulders, as he had been used to do when he had a mind a friend should spend the evening with him, and which was as much as to say "you will ruin me in wine." Soon after he again endeavoured, with a good deal of