The liberty which Swift upheld was the liberty of Ireland. He sought
to free Ireland from that system of laws restricting all industrial
development, whose consequences are with us to-day. He came to Dublin
in 1715, a politician in disgrace, and was hooted in the streets. Seven
years later he was king of the mobs, and no jury could be bullied to
convict, no informer could be bought to denounce, when Government
sought the author of those pamphlets which every living soul knew to be
his. He began the work which Grattan and the volunteers completed--yet
he was an Englishman and no lover of Ireland. Born in Ireland by
chance, bred there of necessity, consigned to a preferment there
against his hope and will, he was spurred on to work for Ireland by
that _saeva indignatio_ which his epitaph speaks of, which he himself
renders in this sentence of a letter:--
"Does not the corruption and folly of men in high places eat into
your heart like a canker!"
The greatest perhaps of British humorists, he died mad and miserable;
and died as he expected to die. His other monument is Swift's Hospital,
built for a madhouse out of the money willed by him in a bequest, which
his savage pen thus characterized:--
"He left the little wealth he had
To build a house for fools and mad,
And showed by one satiric touch
No nation wanted it so much".
In the north transept an epitaph written by Swift marks the tomb
of "Mrs. Hester Johnson, better known to the world by the name of
'Stella', under which she is celebrated in the writings of Dr. Jonathan
Swift, Dean of this Cathedral". The world has always wanted to know,
and never will know for certain, whether she ought to have borne the
name of him who celebrated her. But his bones were laid by hers, and
still lie there, under a column in the nave; though the indecency of
antiquarians dragged out their skulls when the cathedral was under
restoration, made a show of them at parties, and preserved a memorial
of this outrage in plaster casts, now deposited in the robing-room.
You can see also, in the vestry, not a cast, but the authentic skull
of William's General Schomberg, who fell in glory at the head of
victorious troops crossing the Boyne. You can read also Swift's epitaph
on the tomb which Schomberg's relatives and heirs declined to pay for,
leaving the pious task to Swift and his chapter. The Latin sentence
keeps the vibrant ring of Swift's indignation. If only his ghost
could write the epitaph of those who ransacked tombs and groped among
mouldering relics of the immortal and unforgotten dead, to find objects
for a peepshow! Yet after all it is in keeping with the story. In the
dark end of Swift's life, while he paced his guarded room between
keepers, servants used to admit strangers for a fee, to see that
white-haired body which had once housed so great and terrible a mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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