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.