and Eugene, he could put forth his hand and save France and its proud monarch from just humiliation, but he could not extort from the reluctant queen, even by the combined hands of Oxford and Bolingbroke, the object of his own ambition, a mitre. The Tale of a Tub stood in his way; it was only just in time that his friends, themselves falling, secured for him the deanery of St. Patrick's, to which he retired to act the ostensible patriot by indulging his own private resentment against his enemies and his fate.
Laracor is about two English miles from Trim. It lies in a drearyish sort of a farming country, and to Swift, full of ambition, and accustomed to town life and the stirring politics of the time, with which he was so much mixed up, one would have thought must prove a perfect desert. There is no village there, nor does there appear to have been one. It was a mere church and parsonage, and huts were very likely scattered about here and there, as they are now. The church still stands; one of the old, plain, barn-like structures of this part of the country, with a low belfry. The grave-yard is pretty well filled with headstones and tombs, and some that seem to belong to good families. The church-yard is surrounded by a wall and trees, and in a thatched cottage at the gate lives the sexton. He said he had built the house himself; that he was seventy-five or so; and his wife, who had been on the spot fifty years, as old; but that the incumbent, a Mr. Irvine, was eighty-four, and that he was but the third from Swift. Swift held it fifty-five years, the next incumbent nearly as long, and this clergyman thirty-six, or thereabouts. It must, therefore, be a healthy place. The old man complained that all the gentry who used to live near were gone away. His wife used to get £20 at Christmas for Christmas-boxes, "and now she does not get even a cup o' tay. Poor creature! and she so fond of the tay!"
Like his house at Dublin, Swift's house here is gone. There remains only one tall, thick ruin of a wall. "What is that?" I asked of a man at a cottage door close by. "It's been there from the time of the dane," said he. For a moment I imagined he meant the Danes, but soon recollected myself. Close to it, at the side of the high road, is a clear spring, under some bushes, and margined with great stones, which they call "the Dane's Cellar" and "the Dane's Well." "He was a very good man to the poor," say they. "He was a fine, bright man." This, however, is all the remains of his place here. The present vicar has built himself a good house in the fields, nearer to Trim; and not only the dean's house is all gone except this piece of wall, but his holly hedge, his willows, and cherry-trees have vanished. A common Irish hut now stands in what was his garden. The canal may still be traced, but the river walk is now a marsh.
Trim, where Stella lived when Swift was at Laracor, though the county town of Meath, is now little more than a large village. It bears, however, all the marks of its ancient importance. The ruins all about it, on the banks of the Boyne, are most extensive. They are those of a great palace, a castle, a cathedral, and other buildings. It is a great haunt for antiquarians, and not far distant from it is Tara, with its hill, the seat of ancient kings. As you leave the town to go to Laracor, you come, at the town-end, to a lofty column in honor of Wellington, who was born at Dangan Castle, a few miles beyond Laracor. The way to Laracor then lies along a flattish country, with a few huts here and there by the wayside. On your left, as you approach Laracor, runs an old ruinous wall, with tall trees within it, as having once formed a park. The first object, connected with Swift, which arrests your attention, is the ruin of his house, with its spring, which lies on the right hand of the road; and on the left side of the road, perhaps a hundred yards further, stands the church in its inclosure.
From Laracor, Swift's remove was to Dublin, where he spent the remainder of his life. Here the deanery has been quite removed, and a modern house occupies its place. The old Cathedral of St. Patrick is a great object connected with his memory here. Though wearing a very ancient look, St. Patrick's was rebuilt after its destruction in 1362, and its present spire was added only in 1750. In size and proportion the cathedral is fine. It is three hundred feet long, and eighty broad. It can not boast much of its architecture, but contains several monuments of distinguished men; among them, those of Swift and Curran. These two are busts. Aloft in the nave hang the banners of the Knights of St. Patrick; and again, in the choir, hang newly-emblazoned banners of the knights; and over the stalls which belong to the knights are fixed gilt helmets, and by each stall hangs the knight's sword. The whole fabric is now undergoing repair, and not before it was needed. Of course, the monuments of highest interest here are those of Swift and Stella. These occupy two contiguous pillars on the south side of the nave. They consist of two plain slabs of marble, in memory of the dean and Mrs. Johnson—Stella. The inscription on the dean's slab is expressive "of that habit of mind which his own disappointments and the oppressions of his country had produced." It was written by himself:
"Hic depositum est corpus Jonathan Swift, S. T. D. Hujus Ecclesiæ Cathedralis Decani Ubi sæva indignatio Ulterius Cor lascerare nequit. Abi Viator Et imitare, si poteris, Strenuum pro virili Libertatis vindicatorem. Obiit 19o. die mensis Octobris, a.d. 1745. Anno Ætatis 78."
Over this monument has been placed his bust in marble, sculptured by Cunningham, and esteemed a good likeness. It was the gift of T. T. Faulkner, Esq., nephew and successor to Alderman George Faulkner, Swift's bookseller, and the original publisher of most of his works. The inscription over his amiable and much-injured wife is as follows: "Underneath lie the mortal remains 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. She was a person of extraordinary endowments and accomplishments of body, mind, and behavior, justly admired and respected by all who knew her, on account of her many eminent virtues, as well as for her great natural and acquired perfections. She died January 27th, 1727–8, in the forty-sixth year of her age, and by her will bequeathed one thousand pounds toward the support of a chaplain to the hospital founded in this city by Dr. Steevens."
In an obscure corner, near the southern entrance, is a small tablet of white marble, with the following inscription: "Here lieth the body of Alexander M'Gee, servant to Doctor Swift, dean of St. Patrick's. His grateful master caused this monument to be erected in memory of his discretion, fidelity, and diligence in that humble station. Obiit Mar. 24, 1721–2. Ætatis 29."
There are other monuments, ancient and modern, in the cathedral worthy of notice, but this is all that concerns our present subject. How little, indeed, seems to remain in evidence of Swift, where he lived so many years, and played so conspicuous a part. The hospital for the insane which he founded is perhaps his most genuine monument. It still flourishes. The sum which was made over by the dean's executors for this purpose was £7720. This has been augmented by Parliamentary grants and voluntary donations, and is capable of accommodating upward of a hundred pauper patients, besides nearly an equal number of paying ones.
At the deanery house there is an excellent portrait of Swift, by Bindon. Another, by Bindon, and said to be one of the best likenesses of him, is in the possession of Dr. Hill, of Dublin; and there is a third at Howth Castle. But nothing can, to the visitor, fill up the vacuum made by the destruction of the house in which he lived. We want to see where the author of the Drapier's Letters and of Gulliver's Travels lived; where he conversed with Stella and Mrs. Whiteway, and joked with Sheridan and Delany, and where he finally sank into moody melancholy, and died.
Of all the lives of Swift which have been written, it would be difficult to say whether Dr. Johnson's or Sir Walter Scott's is the most one-sided. Johnson's is like that of a man who had a personal pique, and Scott's is that of a regular pleader. In his admiration of his author, he seems unconsciously to take all that comes as excellent and right, and slurs over acts and principles in Swift which in another he would denounce as most disgraceful. When we recollect that Swift was bitterly disappointed in his ambition of a miter, and that he retired to Ireland to brood not only over this, but over the utter wreck of his political patrons and party, the impartial reader finds it difficult to concede to him so much the praise of real patriotism as of personal resentment. He was ready to lay hold on any thing that could at once annoy government and enhance his own popularity. In all relations of life, an intense selfishness was his great characteristic, if we except this in his character of author: there he certainly displayed
