he common people than with the Irish
aristocracy, who, he thought, were arrant "grafters." Of one in
particular he said,

"So great was his bounty--
He erected a bridge--at the expense of the county."

The last thing Swift wrote was an epigram. It was in almost the final
lucid interval between periods of insanity that he was riding in the
park with his physician. As they drove along, Swift saw, for the first
time, a building that had recently been put up.

"What is that?" he inquired.

"That," said the physician, "is the new magazine in which are stored
arms and powder for the defence of the city."

"Oh!" said the dean, pulling out his notebook. "Let me take an item of
that; this is worth remarking: 'My tablets!' as Hamlet says, 'my
tablets! Memory put down that.'" Then he scribbled the following lines,
the last he ever penned:

"Behold a proof of Irish sense!
Here Irish wit is seen!
When nothing's left that's worth defence,
We build a magazine."

With the exception of _Gulliver's Travels_, very
little that Dean Swift wrote is now read by anyone
but students.

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS

INTRODUCTION

Gulliver's Travels was published in 1726 and without any allusion to the
real author, though many knew that the work must have come from the pen
of Dean Swift. Though the dean was habitually secretive in what he did,
he had some reason for not wishing to say in public that he had written
so bitter a satire on the government and on mankind.

The work was immediately popular, not only in the British Isles but on
the Continent as well. No such form of political satire had ever
appeared, and everyone was excited over its possibilities. Not all parts
of the work were considered equally good; some parts were thought to be
failures, and the Fourth Voyage was as a whole deservedly unpopular. The
Voyages to Lilliput and to Brobdingnag were considered the best, and to
them is to be attributed the greater part of the author's fame. Their
popularity continues with the years.

Lemuel Gulliver is represented as a British sailor who had been educated
as a doctor but whose wandering instincts led him back to the sea. On
his return from his voyages he writes the account of his adventures; and
the manner in which this account is written is so masterly that we
almost believe the things he tells.

In describing the manners, customs, and governments of the several
countries, he shows in his inimitable way