By Stella’s death Swift’s happiness was deeply affected. He became by degrees more misanthropic, and ungovernable in temper; and more miserly in his personal habits, while at the same time he devoted to charity a large part, it is said one-third, of his income. In 1736 his deafness and giddiness became alarming, and his mental powers gradually declined. In 1741 his friends found it necessary that guardians should be appointed over his person and estate. In 1742 his reason was entirely overthrown; he became lethargic and, except at short intervals, speechless. On the 30th of November his housekeeper told him that the customary preparations were making to celebrate his birthday: he found words to answer, “It is all folly; they had better let it alone.” He died the latter end of October, 1745; in his seventy-eighth year. With the exception of some few legacies, he left his fortune, amounting to about twelve thousand pounds, to the building of an hospital for idiots and lunatics. The extent and variety of Swift’s writings render it necessary to confine our notice to two or three of his most curious productions. Of the ‘Tale of a Tub,’ which, being regarded as an attack upon all religion, brought down a weight of censure on the author, against which he protested in the preface to a later edition, Dr. Johnson says that “it has little resemblance to his other pieces. It exhibits a vehemence and rapidity of mind, a copiousness of images, and vivacity of diction, such as he afterwards never possessed or never exerted. It is a mode so distinct and peculiar, that it must be considered by itself; what is true of that is not true of anything else which he has written. In his other works is found an equable tenor of easy language, which rather trickles than flows.” ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ are now probably better known to the public than any other of his productions. That work is a moral and political romance, exhibiting a wonderful specimen of irregular genius. Not only are human actions placed in the most unfavourable light, but human nature itself is libelled. His wayward temper and his ill-concealed disappointment had put him out of conceit with the world; misanthropy had made some inroad into his heart, and, with his pen in his hand, he indulged in the expression of it with affected exaggeration. But however offensive to good feeling the satire might be, the imagination and wit which pervade this extraordinary work will always attract some readers, while the simple, circumstantial air of truth with which such extravagant fictions are related is a source of amusement to less refined tastes.