to him, that he had no hope left but in a speedy dissolution, which was the object of his daily prayer to the Almighty.
About the year 1736, his memory was greatly impaired and his other faculties of imagination and intellect decayed, in proportion as the stores from which they were supplied diminished. When the understanding was shaken from its seat, and reason had given up the reins, the irascible passions, which at all times he had found difficult to be kept within due bounds, now raged without control, and made him a torment to himself, and to all who were about him. An unusually long fit of deafness, attended with giddiness, which lasted almost a year, had disqualified him wholly for conversation, and made him lose all relish for society. Conscious of his situation, he was little desirous of seeing any of his old friends and companions, and they were as little solicitous to visit him in that deplorable state. He could now no longer amuse himself with writing; and a resolution he had formed of never wearing spectacles, to which he obstinately adhered, prevented him from reading. Without employment, without amusements of any kind, thus did his time pass heavily along; not one white day in the calendar, not one hour of comfort, nor did even a ray of hope pierce through the gloom. The state of his mind is strongly pictured in a letter to Mrs. Whiteway. "I have been very miserable
Dublin, he suddenly missed the dean, who had staid behind the rest of the company. He turned back in order to know the occasion of it; and found Swift at some distance gazing intently at the top of a lofty elm, whose head had been blasted; upon Young's approach he pointed to it, saying, "I shall be like that tree, I shall die first at the top."
