was put into your hands to be given to Doctor King of St. Mary Hall in Oxford, to be published as he could agree with some bookseller or printer : but I have never heard a word from the Doctor since. How will you answer this, my Dear Lord? This proceeding is directly against all the Rules of Justice, Honour, Friendship, and conscience. My chief design in that History was with the utmost truth and zeal to defend the Proceedings of that blessed Queen and her Ministry, as well as myself, who had a greater share than usually falls to men of my level. I did thorough (sic) the whole treatise impartially adhere to Truth. I had some regard to increase my own Reputation, and besides I should have been glad to have seen my small Fortune increased by an honest means. I therefore wish that (your) Lordship would please, if your time and leisure permit, to see Doctor King, and desire he would explain himself concerning his long silence, and his very slow, or no proceedings in a point which I have so much at heart for a hundred reasons. I believe you sometimes see my friend, Mr. Pope. Pray report to him the state of my health, and the disposition of my mind, that I am become good for less than nothing. He is one of the oldest and dearest friends I have remaining. *** Do you know my old friend Erasmus Lewis? If so, I desire your Lordship will present him with my true Love and Esteem. And if my Lord Bathurst be one of your acquaintance let him know how grateful I desire to be for the continual marks of his Favour and Friendship. Thus I treat you, my Lord, in the phrase of Plautus, as one of my Pueri Salutigeruli." There is not a little of pathos in the sorrow with which he sees the efforts of his old age neglected, and in the eagerness with which he presses himself on the remembrance of his old friends. APPENDIX XIII. SWIFT'S DISEASE In the account which I have given of Swift's later years, and in my references to his disease, and to the effect which it had upon his character and ultimately upon his reason, it has been my object to deal with the question from what may be called the biographical, and not the medical, point of view. The most recent medical opinion clearly establishes the fact, which is of main interest in his biography, that Swift's disease was not a case of gradually developing insanity, which might have affected his reason, even while its developement was proceeding; but a case of specific malady, which tortured him during life, and which ultimately produced a definite injury to the brain, but which up to that point in no way obliterated his reason. It may be well to state very shortly one or two of the facts which medical science has proved. Sir William Wilde, in his "Closing Years of Dean Swift," gave the first careful analysis of Swift's symptoms: and successfully proved that the term insanity had been far too sweepingly applied to Swift. He showed that the Dean suffered throughout life from brain pressure, aggravated by gastric attacks: and that congestion, to which he says the name of epileptic vertigo might be applied, was ultimately accompanied by paralysis, under which the brain sank into lethargy rather than insanity. Dr. Bucknill, F.R.S. in the number of Brain, which appeared in January (1882), has carried further Sir William Wilde's inquiries, in the light of the recent discoveries of medical science. He proves that the two maladies of giddiness and deafness from which Swift suffered, sometimes separately, and sometimes conjointly, and for which he himself assigned causes in a surfeit of fruit and in a cold, respectively, really had their common origin in a disease in the region of the ear, to which the name of Labyrinthine vertigo has been given. This physical malady, as Dr. Bucknill shows, would have an increasingly depressing effect as years went on, or strength failed, and as other causes for melancholy came to ally themselves with it. The Dean was, in short, reduced to the state of profound gloom, apathy, and physical suffering, which his own words repeatedly describe, and which he sums up with more force than metrical accuracy in the Latin line, Vertiginosus, inops, surdus, male gratus amicis. But nothing that could be called insanity came on, until this physical and local malady produced paralysis, a symptom of which was the not uncommon one of aphasia, or the automatic utterance of words, ungoverned by intention. As a consequence of that paralysis, but not before, the brain, already weakened by senile decay, at length gave way, and Swift sank into the dementia which preceded his death. INDEX. A. A Long History of a Short Parliament, Addison, and Swift, 131; 132 note; 137; Amory, Thomas, Memories of Ladies, Arbuthnot, appointed Physician to Queen BATHURST. Ashburnham, Lady, daughter of the Ashe, Dr. St. George (afterwards Bishop Atterbury, Francis, Archdeacon of Totnes, 69; as leader of the High Church party B. BALDWIN, Dr., Provost of Trinity Barber, Alderman, 244, and note; 469 Barber, Mrs., 440; Swift's assistance to, Barrett, Dr., Essay on Swift, 14; 413. Bathurst, Lord, 221; 396; correspondence BEDELL. Bedell, Bishop, 48; death, 1641, 87 note. Berkeley, Bishop, of Cloyne, with Judge Marshall, appointed Vanessa's executor, Berkeley, Lord, 77; Swift's satire on, Berkeley, Lady Betty, 79. See also GER- MAINE. Berkeley, Lady Mary, 79. Berkeley, Mr. Monck, his evidence as to Bettesworth, ("Serjeant Kite"), Swift's Bickerstaff, Isaac, Swift as, attacks John Birch, Dr., his abstract of the Four Last Blackmore, attack on the Tale of a Tub, Blenheim, Battle of, 122. Bolingbroke, Viscount, Treaty of Com- merce Bill defeated, 267; the Schism Bolton, Dr. Theophilus, appointed Dean Boulter, Dr. Hugh, (Archbishop,) 132 CASTLEDURROW. note; Letters, 339 note; appointed Boyer, Abel, Political State, 277. Boyle, Michael, Archbishop, 48. Brent, Mrs., 19, and note. Brodrick, appointed Lord Chief Justice, Bromley, William, elected Speaker, 209; Temple, 25. Browne, Dr., Bishop of Cork, 305, and Browne, Sir John, Scheme of the Money Burgess, Dissenting preacher, 190, and note, Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop of Sarum, 50; Butler, Lady Betty, and Swift, 254. C. CAERMARTHEN, Marchioness of, death, 276. Carlyle, Dr. Alexander, 230, note. |