During the last years of his life a brain disease, of which he
had shown frequent symptoms, fastened its terrible hold upon
Swift, and he became by turns an idiot and a madman. He died in
1745, and when his will was opened it was found that he had left
all his property to found St. Patrick’s asylum for lunatics and
incurables. It stands to-day as the most suggestive monument
of his peculiar genius.--WILLIAM J. LONG, “English
Literature.”
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