We exclude a hundred well-authenticated extravagancies of conduct, some of them accompanied with circumstances which could not but be felt as intolerably insulting to his best friends, because all these things are consistent with states of mind, which no one calls by the name of insanity except in metaphorical language, but when conduct, unintelligible on any ordinary principle, exists, and when we have the additional fact of organic disease of the brain, we think it is hypercriticism in Mr. Wilde to fall out with the application of the term insanity, to a case so circumstanced.

An interesting part of Mr. Wilde's book is an account of the examination of the head of Swift, in 1835, by Surgeons Houston and Hamilton. About the middle of the last century, frequent floods of the Poddle river, and the insufficiency of sewers to carry off the superabundant water, occasioned much injury to St. Patrick's Cathedral. One of the last acts of the Dean was an effort to remedy this; and when he directed that he should be buried in Ireland, he requested that his body should be deposited in any dry part of the cathedral. "It is remarkable," says Mr. Wilde, "that the continuance of damp and inundations, in the year 1835, was the cause of his remains being disturbed."

It would be altogether out of the province of this journal to follow Dr. Wilde in his account of the details of the examination. Dr. Houston, describing the head, says "The bones cannot be regarded as free from indications of previous chronic disease. There are certainly no marks of caries or of fungus growth on any part of the head, but the condition of the cerebral surface of the whole frontal region, is evidently of a character indicating the presence, during lifetime, of diseased action in the adjacent membranes of the brain." Some doubt was for a while entertained of the remains examined by Dr. Houston being those of Swift at all. The phrenologists did not like the head it did not accord with any of the then theories; but that the head was Swift's, there could be no doubt.

*

Among other proofs is this, that it exhibited the marks of a post mortem examination made immediately after his death :

"What the exact recent appearances were we have not been enabled to discover. If they were known to, they have not been handed down by any of Swift's many biographers. We have made diligent search among the newspapers and periodicals of the day, but have not been able to discover anything further than that which is already known, viz., that his head was opened after death, when it was found that his brain was loaded with water.' To this may be added the tradition of old Brennan, his servant, who, according to Dr. Houston, on the authority of Mr. Maguire, boasted, that he himself had been present at the operation, and that he even held the basin in which the brain was placed after its removal from the skull. He told, moreover, that there was brain mixed with water to such an amount as to fill the basin, and by their quantity to call forth expressions of astonishment from the medical gentlemen engaged in the examination.'". PP. 60, 61.

Wilde gives a profile view of Swift's cranium from a drawing by Mr. Hamilton, and then tells us

"In its great length, in the anteroposterior diameter, its low anterior development, prominent frontal sinuses, comparative lowness at the vertex, projecting nasal bones, and large posterior projection, it resembles, in a most extraordinary manner, those skulls of the so-called Celtic aborigines of Northern Europe, of which we have elsewhere given a description, and which are found in the early tumuli of this people throughout Ireland."—p. 62.

The way in which Mr. Wilde, from concurring pieces of evidence, has elicited some of the details of this remarkable case, can scarcely be exhibited without quoting his own language. The following passage remarkably exemplifies his sagacity:

"After the Dean's death, and subsequently to the post mortem examination,

a plaster mask was taken from his face, and from this a bust was made, which is now in the Museum of the University, and which, notwithstanding its possessing much of the cadaverous appearance, is, we are strongly inclined to believe, the best likeness of Swit-during, at least, the last few years of his life-now in existence. The annexed engraving accurately and faithfully represents a profile view of the right side of this bust, the history of which it is here necessary to relate. This old bust, which has remained in the Museum of Trinity College from a period beyond the memory of living man, has been generally believed to be the bust of Swift; but as there was no positive proof of its being so, it has been passed over by all his biographers, except Scott and Monck Mason, the former of whom thus describes it: In the museum of Trinity College, Dublin, there is a dark plaster bust or cast of Dean Swift. It is an impression taken from the mask applied to the face after death. The expression of countenance is most unequivocally maniacal, and one side of the mouth (the left) horribly contorted downwards, as if convulsed by pain.' He further adds: 'It is engraved for Mr. Barrett's essay;' but if it was, it never appeared, and has never before been published either with or without Barrett's essay. Sir Walter has greatly exaggerated the amount of contortion which the face exhibits; on the contrary, the expression is remarkably placid, but there is an evident drag in the left side of the mouth, exhibiting a paralysis of the facial muscles of the right side, which, we have reason to believe, existed for some years previous to his death, for we find the same appearance (though much glossed over by the artist), together with a greater fulness, or plumpness, of the right check, shewn in a very admirable marble bust of Swift (probably the last ever taken), in the possession of Mr. Watkins, the picture-dealer, of this city. Here, then, we have another and a very important and well-marked fea

ture in this very interesting case, brought to light above a hundred years after death. But before we proceed with the evidence adduced by the bust, it becomes necessary to prove its identity, which, until now, could not be done satisfactorily. Upon the back of this cast, and running nearly from ear to ear, we find two lines of writing, greatly defaced, and a part of the upper and middle lines completely obliteratcd. This much, however, can still be read:

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Dean Swift, taken off his the night of his burial, and the f one side larger than the other in nature. Opened before. The mould is in pieces.'‡

Still this proof was inconclusive; but a deep indention running nearly parallel with the brow, shews us where the calvarium had been sawn, and the pericranium drawn over it subsequently, and this indentation accurately corresponds with the division of the skull found in Swift's coffin, in 1835, thus proving incontestibly the identity of both: they also correspond in the breadth, height, and general outline and measurements of the forehead, allowing about threesixteenths of an inch for the thickness

of the integuments. Posteriorly, how. ever, the bust and skull do not corres. pond; nevertheless this fact does not in any way militate against our argument, but rather tends to strengthen it, for upon a careful examination of the bust, it is at once manifest that all the posterior part is fictitious, and evidently finished out, and modelled in clay, and afterwards the plaster rasped down according to the eye of the artist, as may be seen in the annexed engraving. It was made in two parts, and the difference in surface between the hinder part and the smooth, polished, anterior portion, at once stamps it as fictitious. There is no ear upon the left side, and that upon the right was evidently taken off the body separately, and afterwards fitted into the bust. That it was a cast from the ear of Swift, the reader has only to

after death."

case as Swift's. The mere fact of the logical powers still existing in unimpaired vigour, is little to the purpose; for we are not quite sure that one of the characteristics of insanity is not the self-willed and disputative temper that disregards every consideration of time, and place, and circumstance. When there is conduct such as Swift's, and with it organic disease of the brain, we think it approaches to certainty that the two are connected; and from a very early period, we think Swift had ground enough to predict, as he did predict, the melancholy termination of a disease which we cannot call by any other name than that of insanity. This is, however, after all, a mere question of words. We agree in Mr. Wilde's description of Swift's case, and if the existence of some morbid delusion, irresistibly overbearing reason, be necessary to constitute the notion of insanity, we do not think that any such delusion existed.

Mr. Wilde tells us that there is a general belief that Swift was the first patient in his own hospital, "al

though," as he adds, "it was not erected for several years after his death." Mr. Wilde refers this popular belief to a careless expression of Lord Orrery's. Speaking of Swift's state after 1742, he says "His rage increased absolutely to a degree of madness; in this miserable state, he seemed to be appointed as the first proper inhabitant of his own hospital, especially as from an outrageous lunatic he sank afterwards into a quiet speechless idiot, and dragged out the remainder of his life in that helpless situation."

We think the fact of Swift's marriage with Stella has been too easily believed. It was first published by Lord Orrery, many years after Swift's death. The evidence on which the report rests has been examined by Mr. Mason in his "History of St. Patrick's," and we cannot but agree in his conclusion that the balance of probabilities is greatly against any ceremony of marriage having ever taken place. Mr. Wilde believes the fact of a marriage, and that on the day of its celebration it was communicated to Swift that both he and Stella were children of Sir William Temple. The circum. stances of Swift's birth render the fact of his being Temple's son impossible; and if there were any object in examining the evidence as to Stella, when the case as to Swift is disposed of, as to her too it is, above measure, unlikely. She and her mother were both brought from Lady Giffard's house to Temple's, and Stella was educated under Lady Temple's carea fact in itself, perhaps, not inconsistent with the supposition which Mr. Wilde countenances; but assuredly her mother, were the story of her being Temple's mistress true, would not be allowed to reside in the same house with Lady Temple in any capacity whatever. We think if there was any deeper mystery in Swift's not marrying than the absorbing passion of saving money, and the fear of the expenses that marriage would bring with it, it most probably was his consciousness of lurking insanity, which he feared to transmit to children. His uncle, Godwin Swift, had died in a state not very different from that in which the last

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years of Swift's life were passed; and as Mr. Mason reasonably suggests, Swift might have known in his family other instances of the same malady, of which we have now no record.

An interesting document, for the first time published in Mr. Wilde's book, is Stella's will. It is in her maiden name—on our theory, she had no other-but this incident has been laid hold of by Swift's biographers as a proof that she felt impatiently towards him. So far from this, we agree with Mr. Wilde that the will must have been drawn up by Swift himself, or under his immediate directions. In both Swift's will and hers, certain of the bequests are given only during the continuance of the present Established Episcopal Church as the national religion of the kingdom. This alone would, as Mr. Wilde says, point to one author of both wills.

It is quite impossible in a notice of this kind to bring forward all that is new in Mr. Wilde's remarkable book. A very interesting part of it is his criticism on the portraits of Stella. The picture in Mr. Berwick's possession, which Scott believed to be genuine, is disproved by its having brown, not black hair. Mr. Wilde himself gives us two, which have not been before engraved—one a medallion painted on one of the walls at Delville-Delany's residence which tradition calls a portrait of Stella; another-and this manifestly the picture of a very beautiful woman-engraved as the frontispiece to Mr. Wilde's book, answers every description of Stella, and is confirmed (as far as there can be confirmation of such a kind) by the skull of Stella, as exhibited in 1835. It was in the possession of the Fords of Woodpark, where Stella had been some months in 1723, "where," says Mr. Wilde, "it was probably painted."

"It remained, along with an original picture of Swift, at Woodpark for many years, with an unbroken thread of tradition attached to it, till it came, with the property and effects of the Ford family, into the possession of the Preston family. It now belongs to Mr. Preston of Bellinter, through whose kindness we have been permitted to engrave it.

The hair is jet black, the eyes dark to match, the forehead high and expansive, the nose rather prominent, and the features generally regular and well-marked. Notwithstanding that it has not been highly worked by the artist, there is a 'pale cast of thought' and an indescribable expression about this picture, which heighten the interest its historic recollections awaken. She is attired in a plain white dress, with a blue scarf; and around her bust a blue ribbon, to which a locket appears to be attached; and she wears a white and red rose. It is a very good full-sized oil painting, and matches one of the Dean, which is likewise preserved in the same family. It may have been painted by Jervas, who was a particular friend of Swift's." -p. 120.

Mr. Wilde's volume closes with a

rious, and some of them may be, and probably are, Swift's.

To the future biographer of Swift this volume will be truly valuable. There is not a page of it that does not supply much that is new. Its great value is, no doubt, the accurate examination of a very singular case of disease, exhibited with such perspicuity of detail, as even to be interesting to readers who would, in ordinary circumstances, lay aside what would seem at first to be a mere professional essay. But in addition to this its great merit, there is the illustration which it throws on every part of Swift's life, and the refutation which it contains of many popular errors. Scott's life of Swift is an exceedingly amusing romance, weaving together whatever he found related of his hero by any one and every one We, however, agree with Mr. Wilde in thinking Mr. Mason's "Life of Swift" the best that we have. Mr. Wilde's own volume in every point of view in which we can consider it, is a most valuable addition to the literature of his coun

A.