those days than since, sometimes roused him to defend the church, and Ireland his asylum, against any encroachments. — View him now in his decline. Passions decay, and the lamp of life and reason grows dim. It is the fate of many, I may say most geniuses, who have secluded themselves from the world, to lose their senses in their old age; especially those who have worn them out in thought and application. Providence, perhaps, has therefore ordained, that the eyes, the inlets of knowledge, should be impaired, before the understanding, the repository of it, is decayed; that the defects of the former may protract the latter. Few of us are enough sensible how much the conjugal tie, and the several connexions which follow from it, how much even domestick troubles, when surmountable, are the physick of the soul; which, at the same time that they quicken the senses, preserve them too."
Not wishing to trouble the publick with any more last words of Dr. Swift; the editor contented himself with writing in the margin of his own books such particulars as occurred relative either to the dean, or to his writings; a circumstance which now enables him to supply several matters which had escaped Mr. Sheridan's observation, and to elucidate some passages which were left unexplained[1]. Careful, however, not to interfere with the general arrangement of the last edition; what has been done to the seventeen volumes, though attended with no small
- ↑ Neither Mr. Sheridan, nor any other of the dean's biographers, has noticed, that he once possessed the prebend of Dunlavin; see vol. XI, pp. 76, 259.
a 4
