Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/304

the folly and baseness of the enslaved people among whom I live." And in the same letter to lord Bolingbroke, he says, "But you think, as I ought to think, that it is time for me to have done with the world; and so I would, if I could get into a better, before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole." In one to Pope, speaking of his letters, he says, "None of them have any thing to do with party, of which you are the clearest of all men, by your religion, and the whole tenour of your life; while I am raging every moment against the corruptions in both kingdoms, especially of this; such is my weakness." And in one to Dr. Sheridan, when he seemed under the dominion of a more than ordinary fit of his spleen, he tells him, that he had just finished his will, in which he had requested that the doctor would attend his body to Holyhead, to see it interred there, for, says he, "I will not lie in a country of slaves." This habit of mind grew upon him immediately after the loss of the amiable Stella, whose lenient hand used to pour the balm of friendship on his wounded spirit. With her vanished all his domestick enjoyments, and of course he turned his thoughts more to publick affairs; in the contemplation of which, he could see nothing but what served to increase the malady. The advances of old age, with all its attendant infirmities; the death of almost all his old friends; the frequent returns of his most dispiriting maladies, deafness and giddiness; and above all, the dreadful apprehensions that he should outlive his understanding,^[1] made life such a burden

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1. Dr. Young has recorded an instance of this, where he relates, that walking out with Swift and some others about a mile from

Dublin