From the Dublin University Magazine. THE CLOSING YEARS OF DEAN SWIFT'S LIFE. "The Closing Years of Dean Swift's Life; with an Appendix, containing several of his Poems hitherto unpublished, and some remarks on Stella." By W. R. Wilde, M.R.I.A., F.R.C.S. 8vo. Dublin: Hodges & Smith, Grafton-st. 1849. poems, found in the handwriting of Swift, and some of which are probably of his composition, in an interleaved copy of an old almanac, lent to Mr. Wilde for the purposes of this essay The history of this volume is this:-Dr. Mackenzie, of Glasgow, writes to Mr. Wilde to learn whether there is any record of Swift's disease known, either to Mr. Wilde or to the readers of the Dublin Medical Journal, a work edited by Mr. Wilde. It occurred to Mr. Mackenzie that there might be something preserved on the subject either in the deanery or in Trinity College. The first part of Mr. Wilde's book is a reply to this question, and was originally published in Mr. Wilde's journal. Of the disease itself, Mr. Wilde gives us Swift's own description: THIS is a volume of no ordinary interest. | To the medical inquirer it gives such details as can be now recovered of cerebral disease, extending over a period of fifty-five yearsthe particular symptoms described by the sufferer himself-for the most part in confidential letters to intimate friends-that sufferer the most accurate observer of whatever came within his reach, of any man gifted with the same degree of genius that has ever used the English language as a medium of communication, and the man of all others who has, on most subjects, expressed himself with such distinctness, that we do not remember, in any case, a doubt as to the precise meaning of a sentence in his works, although those works are on subjects which actuate and influence the passions, and although he has often written in a dictatorial tone of authority, which of itself provokes "Swift, writing to Mrs. Howard, in 1727, thus resistance, and therefore forces readers into describes the commencement of his complaint: something more than the unquestioning indo-About two hours before you were born' conselence in which we are satisfied to look over most books. Mr. Wilde has given us Swift's own account of Swift's distemper. But the interest of this volume is not to the medical inquirer alone. The relation of intimate friendship in which Swift and Stella lived for some five-and-twenty years, and the mystery thrown over it by a number of idle guesses which have found their way into the biographies of Swift, have led Mr. Wilde to other inquiries, in themselves not unamusing. He has brought together, from obscure and forgotten sources, some of the explanations which were given of parts of Swift's conduct, by persons who had peculiar means of information as to some of the circumstances of the case. Mr. Wilde has given us two portraits of Stella, neither of which had been before engraved; and the volume is closed by a number of quently in 1690-'I got my giddiness by eating a hundred golden pippins at a time, at Richmond; and when you were four years and a quarter old, twenty miles farther in Surrey, where I used to bating two days, having made a fine seat, about read-and, there I got my deafness; and these two friends have visited me, one or other, every year since, and being old acquaintance, have now thought fit to come together.' Overloading the cold by sitting on a damp, exposed seat, were stomach in the manner described, and catching of which, when once established, was likely to be very apt to produce both these complaints-neither easily removed from a system so nervous, and with a temper so irritable, and a mind so excessively active, as that of Swift's. From this period a disease, which, in all its symptoms and by its fatal termination, plainly appears to have been (in set in, and exhibited itself in well-marked periodic its commencement at least) cerebral congestion, attacks which, year after year, increased in intensity and duration."-pp. 8, 9. While living in the country, and with his mind comparatively at ease, he made but few complaints. It is probable that his disease gave him but little trouble while at Laracor; but whether it did or not, we have little opportunity of any knowledge, as few of his letters are dated from his parsonage. He had not formed at that time his acquaintanceships and friendships with the great persons, in passages of his letters to whom we find these occasional notices of his health; and Stella and Mrs. Dingley were living in his immediate vicinity, so that there are no letters to them of that date. Swift was a shrewd observer of human nature, and dwelling on his deafness and giddiness to those who suffered from similar ailments, seems to have been a piece of skillful flattery. We have not time to look over the correspondence for the purpose of proving this; but the reader, who turns to his letters to Mrs. Howard, will find instances illustrative of what we mean. In the journal to Stella, we find the following entry-"I have no fits of giddiness, but only some little disorders towards it, and I walk as much as I can. Lady Kerry is just as I am, only a deal worse. I dined to day at Lord Shelburn's, where she is, and we con ailments, which makes us very fond of each other." In another note in the same journal, we find this-" Did I ever tell you that the Lord Treasurer hears ill with the left ear, just as I do? He always turns the right, and his servants whisper to him in that only. I dare not tell him that I am so too, for fear that he should think that I counterfeited to make my court." In one of Swift's letters to Archbishop King, we find him saying "I have been so extremely ill with an old disorder in my head, that I was unable to write to your grace." And in a letter of King's to him, inadvertently quoted by Mr. Wilde as a letter from Swift to King, we find King complaining, in Swift's temper, of very much the same symptoms as Swift is perpetually describing. In the journal to Stella, we find Swift again recurring to the effect of cordiality being created by identity of suffering "I was this morning with poor Lady Kerry, who is much worse in her head than I. She sends me bottles of her bitter, and we are so fond of one another, because our ailments are the same. Do you know that Madam Stell? Have not I seen you conning ailments with Joe's wife and some others, sirrah ?" Mr. Wilde must have looked back almost with envy on the golden harvest of blighted ears that presented itself to the physicians of that auspicious time. Five persons could scarce hold him for a week from tearing out his eyes." This is Mrs. Whiteway's language, who adds 'He is now free from torture; his eye almost well," thus showing that but one eye suffered. In many passages, where he speaks of tottering, we find nothing to fix the fact of whether the one side was affected more than the other; but this, too, is established by a passage which Mr. Wilde quotes from the journal to Stella-" My left hand is very weak and trembles, but my right side has not been touched." It seems plain then that there was a paralysis of the left side. It would seem, from several passages, that Swift took too much wine and that he poisoned himself with snuff-" By Docter Radcliffe's advice, he left off bohea tea, which he had observed to disagree with him frequently before." We suspect, therefore, that in this luxury he had indulged too much. Mr. Wilde does not think there is any evidence of Swift's being subject to epileptic fits, as is stated by many of his biographers. The mistake, if it be such, he thinks, arises from the frequent recurrence in his letters of "fits of giddiness," &c. The language is equivocal, and we think there is something to be said for the interpretation put upon it by non-medical readers. Take this sentence, for instance-"I dined to-day with the secretary, and found my head very much out of order, but no absolute fit; and I have not been well all this day. It has shook me a little." We wish we had room for extracts from this most interesting volume. It is really a wonderful thing to see, after an interval of a century, a scientific man inferring the true character of a disease, that baffled the eminent men of Swift's day: "In answer to a recommendation of Mr. Pulteney's on the subject of physicians, the Dean in have esteemed many of them as learned and inhis answer of the 7th of March, 1737, writes: 'I And genious men; but I never received the least benefit from their advice or prescriptions. poor Dr. Arbuthnot was the only man of the faculty who seemed to understand my case, but could not remedy it. But to conquer five physicians, all eminent in their way, was a victory that Alexander and Cæsar could never pretend to. I desire that my prescription of living may be published (which you design to follow,) for the benefit of mankind; which, however, I do not value a rush, nor the animal itself, as it now acts; neither will I ever value myself as a Philanthropus, because it is now a creature (taking a vast majority) that I hate more than a toad, a viper, a wasp, a stork, a fox, or any other that you will please to add."p. 40. him she was "6 66 t Nothing can be more affecting than the exhibition of gradual decay and deterioration of the instruments by which the mind acts. Insanity, in the proper sense of the word, Mr. Wilde does not regard as having existed in Swift's case. There was the weakness of old age, and the childishness that accompanies it. He would, at times, utter incoherent words and syllables. 'But," says Mr. Deane Swift, writing to Lord Orrery, "he never yet, as far as I could hear, talked nonsense, or said a foolish thing." There was a long period, we believe of more than a year, in which he was wholly silent, with but one or two recorded interruptions. A negligent servant girl blew out a candle in his chamber, and the smell offended him; she was told by a nasty slut." A servant man was breaking a large, stubborn coal, and he told him, "That's a stone, you blackguard." On another occasion, not finding words to express something he wished, he exhibited much uneasiness, and said, "I am a fool." When insanity is spoken of, it is not possible to be very accurate, and we suppose that in denying the existence of insanity in this case, Mr. Wilde does not, in reality mean very much more than Hawkesworth had long ago expressed. "Some intervals of sensibility and reason, after his madness, seemed to prove that his disorder, whatever it was, had not destroyed, but only suspended, the powers of his mind." The question is, after all, but one of language. Mr. Wilde has shown, almost to demonstration, that Swift's was organic disease of the brain; and many writers-we believe, among others, Dr. Conolly -would say that in this consisted insanity, calling mere functional disease "mental de "We know of at least eight medical men who attended Swift at different times, viz. Sir Patrick Dun, Drs. Arbuthnot, Radcliffe, Cockburn, Helsham, and Gratten, and Surgeons Nichols and Whiteway." We doubt the fact of Swift's having been attended by Sir Patrick Dun; and do not know on what authority Mr. Wilde's statement of the fact rests. rangement." In Swift's life and conductin his caprice--in his violent passions-in his oddities-even in his vindictive patriotism-in his misanthropy, whether it be regarded as a pretence or a reality-in the morbid delight with which he dwells on disgusting images, we see very distinct traces of incipient disease. We exclude from our consideration, in coming to this conclusion, the language of his epitaph in St. Patrick's Cathedral, breathing resentment-" Hic depositum est corpus Jonathan Swift, ubi særa indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit." We exclude the strange humor exhibited in the half-serious bequests in his will. We exclude a hundred well-authenticated extravagancies of conduct, some of them accompanied with circumstances which could not but be felt as intolerably insulting to his best friends, because all these things are consistent with states of mind, which no one calls by the name of insanity except in metaphorical language, but when conduct, unintelligible on any ordinary principle, exists, and when we have the additional fact of organic disease of the brain, we think it is hypercriticism in Mr. Wilde to fall out with the application of the term insanity, to a case so circumstanced. is an account of the examination of the head An interesting part of Mr. Wilde's book of Swift, in 1835, by Surgeons Houston and Hamilton. About the middle of the last century, frequent floods of the Poddle river, and the insufficiency of sewers to carry off the superabundant water, occasioned much injury to St. Patrick's Cathedral.* One of the last acts of the Dean was an effort to remedy this; and when he directed that he should be buried in Ireland, he requested that his body should be deposited in any dry part of the cathedral. "It is remarkable," says Mr. Wilde, "that the continuance of damp and inundations, in the year 1835, was the cause of his remains being disturbed.” of this journal to follow Dr. Wilde in his It would be altogether out of the province account of the details of the examination. Dr. Houston, describing the head, saysindications of previous chronic disease. "The bones cannot be regarded as free from There are certainly no marks of caries or of fungous growth on any part of the head, but the condition of the cerebral surface of the whole frontal region, is evidently of a character indicating the presence, during lifetime, of diseased action in the adjacent membranes of the brain." Some doubt was for * Mason's "History of St. Patrick's." a while entertained of the remains examined by Dr. Houston being those of Swift at all. The phrenologists did not like the head; it did not accord with any of the then theories; but that the head was Swift's, there could be no doubt. Among other proofs is this, that it exhibited the marks of a post mortem examination made immediately after his death: "What the exact recent appearances were we have not been enabled to discover. If they were known to, they have not been handed down by any of Swift's many biographers. We have and made diligent search among the newspapers there was brain mixed with water to such an amount as to fill the basin, and by their quantity to call forth expressions of astonishment from the medical gentlemen engaged in the examination.' -pp. 60, 61. Wilde gives a profile view of Swift's cranium from a drawing by Mr. Hamiliton, and then tells us: | "In its great length, in the antero-posterior diameter, its low anterior development, prominent frontal sinuses, comparative lowness at the vertex, projecting nasal bones, and large posterior projection, it resembles, in a most extraordinary manner, those skulls of the so-called Celtic aborigines of Northern Europe, of which we have elsewhere given a description, and which are found in the early tumuli of this people throughout Ireland."-p. 62. The way in which Mr. Wilde, from concurring pieces of evidence, has elicited some of the details of this remarkable case, can scarcely be exhibited without quoting his own language. The following passage remarkably exemplifies his sagacity: "After the Dean's death, and subsequently to the post mortem examination, a plaster mask was taken from his face, and from this a bust was made, which is now in the museum of the University, and which, notwithstanding its possessing much of the cadaverous appearance, is, we are strongly inclined to believe, the best likeness of Swift during, at least, the last few years of his life-now in existence. The annexed engraving accurately and faithfully represents a profile view of the right side of this bust, the history of which . the night one side larger Opened before. The mould is in pieces.' "Still this proof was inconclusive; but a deep indention running nearly parallel with the brow, "In Nicholl's edition of Sheridan's Life and Writings of Swift, we find a full-face portrait of the Dean, said to have been taken the night after his death. It was this, perhaps, led Sir Walter into the error we have alluded to. Mr. M. Mason supposed, but without adducing any evidence to support his assertion, that the engraving in Sheridan's Life of Swift was taken from this bust. We are inclined to believe Mr. Nicholl's statement that the engraving was made from a picture taken after death." "We are indebted to Mr. Ball, the able director of the museum of the University, for permission to publish this drawing which was made by Mr. G. Du Noyer, and cut by Mr. Hanlon." "The original mask remained in the museum, T. C. D., till within a few years ago, when it was accidentally destroyed." shows us where the calvarium had been sawn, and the pericranium drawn over it subsequently, and this indentation accurately corresponds with the division of the skull found in Swift's coffin, in 1835, thus proving incontestably the identity of both; they also correspond in the breadth, height, and general outline and measurements of the forehead, allowing about three-sixteenths of an inch for the thickness of the integuments. Posteriorly, however, the bust and skull do not correspond; nevertheless this fact does not in any way militate against our argument, but rather tends to strengthen it, for upon a careful examination of the bust, it is at once manifest that all the posterior part is fictitious, and evidently finished out, and modelled in clay, and afterwards the plaster rasped down according to the eye of the artist. It was made in two parts, and the difference in surface between the hinder part and the smooth, polished, anterior portion, at once stamps it as fictitious. There is no ear upon the left side, and that upon the right was evidently taken off the body separately, and afterwards fitted into the bust. That it was a cast from the ear of Swift, the reader has only to look at Lord Orrery's portrait, or any of the busts of the Dean, to be convinced, for Swift's ear was of a very pecu liar formation. "This bust, like the skull, is quite edentulous; the nose slightly turned to the left side, and the left eye much less full and prominent than the right; in fact, it is comparatively sunken and collapsed within the orbit. It is well known that Swift had remarkably large, full, and prominent blue eyes. We may, perhaps, account for the hinder portion of the bust being constructed in the manner I have described, by the fact of the Dean having a quantity of long, white hair on the back of his head, which his attendants would not permit to be either removed or injured by taking the mould.”—pp. 63–67. Mr. Wilde tells us that there is a general belief that Swift was the first patient in his own hospital, "although," as he adds, "it was not erected for several years after his death." Mr. Wilde refers this popular belief to a careless expression of Lord Orrery's. Speaking of Swift's state after 1742, he says: His rage increased absolutely to a degree of madness; in this miserable state, he seemed to be appointed as the first proper inhabitant of his own hospital, especially as from an outrageous lunatic he sank afterwards into a quiet speechless idiot, and dragged out the remainder of his life in that helpless situation." We think the fact of Swift's marriage with Stella has been too easily believed. It was first published by Lord Orrery, many years after Swift's death. The evidence on which Mason in his "History of St. Patrick's," and the report rests has been examined by Mr. we cannot but agree in his conclusion that the balance of probabilities is greatly against any ceremony of marriage having ever taken place. Mr. Wilde believes the fact of a marriage, and that on the day of its celebration it was communicated to Swift that both he and Stella were children of Sir William Temple. The circumstances of Swift's birth render the fact of his being Temple's son impossible; and if there were any object in examining the evidence as to Stella, when the case as to Swift is disposed of, as to her too it is, above measure, unlikely. She and her mother were both brought from Lady Giffard's house to Temple's, and Stella was educated under Lady Temple's care; a fact in itself, perhaps, not inconsistent with the supposition which Mr. Wilde countenances; but assuredly her mother, were the story of her being Temple's mistress true, would not be allowed to reside in the same house with Lady Temple in any capacity whatever. We think if there was any deeper mystery We find Mr. Wilde expressing surprise "that Swift did not become deranged years previously.. But that Swift was either mad in middle life, or mad or imbecile in late years, as tried and tested by the meaning and definition of these terms, as laid down by the most esteemed authors, has not been proved." In all this we differ from Mr. Wilde. We think it would be difficult to frame any definition of insanity which would exclude such a case as Swift's. The mere fact of the logical powers still existing in unimpaired vigor, is little to the purpose; for we are not quite sure that one of the characteristics of insanity is not the selfwilled and disputative temper that disregards every consideration of time, and place, and circumstance. When there is conduct such as Swift's, and with it organic disease of the brain, we think it approaches to certainty that the two are connected; and from ding as ambassador in Holland, from April, 1666, a very early period, we think Swift had * " Swift's parents resided in Ireland from before 1665, until his birth in 1667; and Temple was resi to January, 1668."-Scott. |