Swift survived his final settlement in Ireland for more than thirty years, though during the last five or six it was but the outside shell of him that lived. During every day in all those years Swift must have eaten and drunk, and somehow or other got through the twenty-four hours. The war against Wood's halfpence employed at most a few months in 1724, and all his other political writings would scarcely fill a volume of this size. A modern journalist who could prove that he had written as little in six months would deserve a testimonial. _Gulliver's Travels_ appeared in 1727; and ten years were to pass before his intellect became hopelessly clouded. How was the remainder of his time filled?
The death of Stella marks a critical point. Swift told Gay in 1723 that it had taken three years to reconcile him to the country to which he was condemned for ever. He came back "with an ill head and an aching heart."[78] He was separated from the friends he had loved, and too old to make new friends. A man, as he says elsewhere,[79] who had been bred in a coal-pit might pass his time in it well enough; but if sent back to it after a few months in upper air, he would find content less easy. Swift, in fact, never became resigned to the "coal-pit," or, to use another of his phrases, the "wretched, dirty dog-hole and prison," of which he could only say that it was a "place good enough to die in." Yet he became so far acclimatized as to shape a tolerable existence out of the fragments left to him. Intelligent and cultivated men in Dublin, especially amongst the clergy and the fellows of Trinity College, gathered round their famous countryman. Swift formed a little court; he rubbed up his classics to the academical standard, read a good deal of history, and even amused himself with mathematics. He received on Sundays at the deanery, though his entertainments seem to have been rather too economical for the taste of his guests. "The ladies," Stella and Mrs. Dingley, were recognized as more or less domesticated with him. Stella helped to receive his guests, though not ostensibly as mistress of the household; and, if we may accept Swift's estimate of her social talents, must have been a very charming hostess. If some of Swift's guests were ill at ease in presence of the imperious and moody exile, we may believe that during Stella's life there was more than a mere semblance of agreeable society at the deanery. Her death, as Delany tells us,[80] led to a painful change. Swift's temper became sour and ungovernable; his avarice grew into a monomania; at times he grudged even a single bottle of wine to his friends; the giddiness and deafness which had tormented him by fits, now became a part of his life. Reading came to be impossible, because (as Delany thinks) his obstinate refusal to wear spectacles had injured his sight. He still struggled hard against disease; he rode energetically, though two servants had to accompany him in case of accidents from giddiness; he took regular "constitutionals" up and down stairs when he could not go out. His friends thought that he injured himself by over-exercise; and the battle was necessarily a losing one. Gradually the gloom deepened; friends dropped off by death, and were alienated by his moody temper; he was surrounded, as they thought, by designing sycophants. His cousin, Mrs. Whiteway, who took care of him in his last years, seems to have been both kindly and sensible; but he became unconscious of kindness, and in 1741 had to be put under restraint. We may briefly fill up some details in the picture.