'All my faults perchance thou knowest,
All my madness none can know.'
There was a black spot of madness in his brain, and another black spot
in his heart; and the two at last met, and closed up his destiny in
night. Let human nature forgive its most determined and systematic
reviler, for the sake of the wretchedness in which he was involved all
his life long. He was born (in 1667) a posthumous child; he was brought
up an object of charity; he spent much of his youth in dependence; he
had to leave his Irish college without a degree; he was flattered with
hopes from King William and the Whigs, which were not fulfilled; he was
condemned to spend a great part of his life in Ireland, a country he
detested; he was involved--partly, no doubt, through his own blame--in
a succession of fruitless and miserable intrigues, alike of love and
politics; he was soured by want of success in England, and spoiled by
enormous popularity in Ireland; he was tried by a kind of religious
doubts, which would not go out to prayer or fasting; he was haunted by
the fear of the dreadful calamity which at last befell him; his senses
and his soul left him one by one; he became first giddy, then deaf, and
then mad; his madness was of the most terrible sort--it was a 'silent
rage;' for a year or two he lay dumb; and at last, on the 19th of
October 1745,
'Swift expired, a driveller and a show,'
leaving his money to found a lunatic asylum, and his works as a many-
volumed legacy of curse to mankind.
[Note: It has been asserted that there were circumstances in extenuation
of Swift's conduct, particularly in reference to the ladies whose names
were connected with his, which _cannot be publicly brought forward_.]