The Sun.
London, England, 1849-06-08 00:00:00

graceful pencil. Some of the vignettes at the end of
the chapters are beautifully appropriate ; for example,
at the close of the description of the amelioration
effected in the madman's lot, we find a group of
flowers interweaving themselves in the links of a
chain. We cannot doubt but that this work of the
brothers Mayhew will be greeted with the same
spirit by which it is inspired—the spirit of kindness.

THE CLOSING YEARS OF DEAN SWIFTS
LIFE; his Unpublished Poems; and some Re-
marks on Stella By W. R. Wilde, MR lA.
More than a century has elapsed since the illus-
trious subject of this memoir left his place empty
amongst the wise, the witty, and the learned of his
age ; yet the recollection of him is still fresh and
green, not only in his own loved land, but in this
country, where he spent much of his early life, and
was the friend and associate of its " brightest orna-
ments." His friends, as well as his enemies—and he
had a host of both—unanimously agreed that he died
an insane imbecile. The acquiescence of a century
has given a sanction to their verdict, yet the able
author of this interesting and remarkable essay has
had the courage to canvass and examine this time-
honoured error, and has gore far to shake, if he has
not altogether overthrown, the fallacies upon which
it was founded. "The commencement of his complaint
is thus described by Swift himself, in a letter to Mrs.
Howard in 1727 :—‘ About two hours before you
were born (1690) I got my giddiness by eating a
hundred golden pippins at a time, at Richmond ; and
when you were tour years and a quarter old,
bating two days, having made a fine seat
about twenty miles farther in Surrey, where
I used to 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
stomach in the manner described, and catching cold
by sitting on a damp, exposed seat, were very apt to
produce both these complaints, neither of which,
when established, was likely to be easily removed
from a system so nervous, and with a temper so irri-
table, and with a mind so excessively active, as that
of Swift's. From this period, Swift being then about
23 years of age, a disease which, in all its symptoms,
and by its fatal termination, plainly appears to have
been (in its commencement at least) cerebral con-
gestion, set in and exhioited itself in well-marked
periodic attacks, which year after year increased in
intensity and duration." It would seem that many
of his friends at that time were affected in the same
way—Harley, Gay, Mrs. Barber, Pope, Mrs.
Howard, Lady Germain, Arbuthnot, and others.
Writing from London in 1711, he says—" I have no
fits of giddiness, but only some little disorders to-
wards it, and I walk as much as I can—Lady Kerry
is just as I am, only a great deal
worse." In another letter he says, " Fig
for your physician and his advice, Madame Dingley 1"
" If I grow worse I will, otherwise I will trust to
temperance and exercise. Your fall of the leaf!
What care I when the leaves fall ? lam sorry to
see them fall with all my heart ; but why should I
take physic for that ?" With regard to change of
weather, he says, " I never impute any illness or
health to good or ill weather, but to want of exercise
or ill air, or something I have eaten, or hard study,
or sitting up, and so I fence against those as well as
I can." In 1727, he was in London, and his mind
was painfully occupied with the illness of Stella. In
reference to it he says—" My weakness, my age, my
friendship will bear no more. A fresh attack of his
complaint drew from him this prophetic sentence—
" I believe this giddiness is the disorder that will at
last get the better of me." Indeed, from his first
attack, at the early age of three-and-twenty, this pre-
sentiment always haunted him. We cannot avoid
extracting the following well-known and remarkable
instance of this :—" Dr. Young, the author of the
Night Thoughts,' relates that walking out with
Swift and some others, about a mile from Dublin,
he suddenly missed the Dean, who had stayed
behind the rest of the company. He turned back in
order to know the occasion of it and found Swift
at some distance, gazing intently at the top of a lofty
elm, whose head had been blasted; upon Young's ap-
proach he pointed to it, saying—l shall be like that
tree, I shall die first at the top." Byron had a simi-
lar feeling and more than once spoke of dying like
Swift, at the top first. In 1736 he writes to Alder-
man Barber, " I have for almost three years past been
only the shadow of my former self; with years of
sickness, and rage against all public proceedings, espe-
cially in this miserably oppressed country, I
have entirely lost my memory, except when
it is roused by perpetual subjects of vexation."
In 1742, it was deemed necessary to appoint
guardians of his person and property, but on what
precise grounds does not appear. Indeed, the legal
proceedings in this lunacy case would be calculated
to throw some additional light upon the subject,
and we have no doubt the untiring industry of the
learned author will enable him to search out those

interesting records and give them to the world, to-
gether with any unpublished writings which have or
may fall into his hands. These guardians were in the
habit of taking him out occasionally for air and exer-
cise ; on one of these days, when in the park,
he observed a new building which he had not seen
before, and inquired for what it was designed, to
which Dr. Kingsbury answered, " That, Mr. Dean,
is the magazine for arms and powder, for the security
of the city." "Ohloh 1" says the Dean pulling out
his pocket-book, "let me take an item of that; this
is worth remarking. My tablets, as Hamlet says,
my tablets,—memory, put down that," which pro-
duced these lines, said to be the last he ever wrote :
" Behold a proof of Irish sense;
Here Irish wit is seen!
When nothing's left that's worth defence
We build a magazine!"
These lines certainly bear not the impress of insanity.
After this his insane biographers know little that can
be relied on to the time of his death, which occurred
on Saturday, the 19th October, 1745, in the 78th
year of his age. The only one of those who saw
him during the three years previous to his death was
Mr. Deane Swift, and up to the latest moments of his
life he gives instances of his possessing his rational
faculties, such as " his endeavours to speak his mind,
but could not recollect words to express his meaning,
upon which he would shrug up his shoulders, shake
his head, and sigh heartily.' Indeed this gentleman
adds, " that he never yet, as far as he could
learn, talked nonsense or said a foolish
thing." In the post mortem examination there
was found much water on the brain. The
medical part of the case we will not enter into, but
we will confess that in examining the whole case
s7uochand :
aOeyzeteanrst
owfithmeanntxialoudsisaetatesne,tiobne,y‘ovneacatnhnt see any y
oonaturaldesoaympttom
hat
as this great man did. It is not to be of mightagel:ewehxop etcatxe
edd in
hai s
mfaancubl teitews eteon
won-
dered at that a great censor like Swift should
have made enemies. The vile epithets heaped on his
memory by some recent essayists might well have
been spared ; but the lion is dead, otherwise these
carrion birds would have sought other prey. His
admirers—and they are those whose admiration is
true praise—can, however, comfort themselves with
the consolation that Swift's name will be ever dear to

his country, and that his memory will live not only
in his writings, but in his more solid works of charity
and love, when these miserable scribblers shall be
forgotten.

LECTURE ON SHIPWRECKS.—Mr. Wm. Bradford,
the Superintendent of the Mariners' Friend Society,
delivered a lecture yesterday evening to the members of
the Institution for Mutual Improvement, in their Lec-
ture-room, Blackfriars-road, on the causes of ship-
wreck, and the means of its prevention. The lecturer
said the importance of the shipping interest and the
shipping population, their prosperity, morals, comfort,
and safety, were involved in the duties of Englishmen.
In the royal navy there were 30,000 men; at one time
there were 133,000. Of pilots, fishermen, watermen,
and men of kindred vocations, there were 250,000. Our
merchant vessels numbered 28,000, and 38,000,0001.
sterling was invested in British shipping. Much bad
been done to benefit seamen, but little compared with
the demand; besides, seamen were a moving population,
and the work that was done to ameliorate their condi-
tion one week required to be renewed the next. On an
average ten English merchant vessels were wrecked on
our coasts every week, and about twenty-four lives lost.
That was not all. There were several hundreds lost in
the rivers and docks, making about 2,000 lives lost
annually, and about 3,000,0001. worth of property ;
and all that belonging to Britain alone. o
18th of last August 120 fishermen perishedn the
on
one occasion within twenty-four hours. On the
27th of last month an emigrant ship was wrecked on an
iceberg; the captain and the first and second mates and
some others took to the boat and left the ship. About
250 of the crew and passengers perished and the rest
were frost-bitten. The lecturer then directed the atten-
tion of the audience to the causes of shipwrecks, the
most prominent of which he assigned to drunkenness.
Thousands of lives were lost through drunkenness and
great numbers of ships. The Saint George, ft vessel of
98 guns, was burnt through some of the crew getting
into the spirit room and becoming intoxicated, and 150
men were lost. The Edgar, a ship of 70 guns, was burnt
at Spithead and a great number of lives sacrificed
through an act of drunkenness. The Ajax whilst I) ing
in the Dardanelles was destroyed in a similar way, and
350 men perished; as was also the ill-fated vessel the
Kent East Indiamen. The lecturer then entered upon
a history and description of the means employed to
prevent shipwrecks and of rescue therefrom, now in
use; and took occasion to suggcst certain improve-
ments which might be made in those means, illustrating
his remarks by diagrams and modelsmost marked at-
. The lecturer
was listened to throughout with the
tention and was occasionally warmly applauded.
THE EGYPTIAN STEAM•FRIGATE
SuAItIE: Ad-
miral Haifa Bey. commander of this fine frigate, at pre-
sent lying at Blackwell, has issued cards. of invitation to
the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty and a select
partyof the nobility _ and distinguished persons, to ac-
company him down the river to-morrow (Saturday), to
partake :of his, hospitality, and inspect the 6haikie, now
finished, and nady to returti to ggyptei