he returned to his Deanery, settled in Dublin, and “commenced Irishman for life.” A man of strong passions, he usually spent his birthday in reading that chapter of the Book of Job which contains the verse, “Let the day perish in which I was born.” He died insane in 1745, and left his fortune to found a lunatic asylum in Dublin. One day, when taking a walk with a friend, he saw a blasted elm, and, pointing to it, he said: “I shall be like that tree, and die first at the top.” For the last three years of his life he never spoke one word. 6. Swift has written verse; but it is his prose-works that give him his high and unrivalled place in English literature. His most powerful work, published in 1704, is the +Tale of a Tub+-- a satire on the disputes between the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Presbyterian Churches. His best known prose-work is the +Gulliver’s Travels+, which appeared in 1726. This work is also a satire; but it is a satire on men and women,-- on humanity. “The power of Swift’s prose,” it has been said by an able critic, “was the terror of his own, and remains the wonder of after times.” His style is strong, simple, straightforward; he uses the plainest words and the homeliest English, and every blow tells. Swift’s style-- as every genuine style does-- reflects the author’s character. He was an ardent lover and a good hater. Sir Walter Scott describes him as “tall, strong, and well made, dark in complexion, but with bright blue eyes (Pope said they were “as azure as the heavens”), black and bushy eyebrows, aquiline nose, and features which expressed the stern, haughty, and dauntless turn of his mind.” He grew savage under the slightest contradiction; and dukes and great lords were obliged to pay court to him. His prose was as trenchant and powerful as were his manners: it has been compared to “cold steel.” His own definition of a good style is “proper words in proper places.”