In Depth

Hard to Love: Jonathan Swift

For all his cynicism, the sardonic writer Jonathan Swift loved Dublin and its residents. While dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral from 1713 to 1745, he wrote many of his most controversial works, and he knew that he owed the church and the city a great deal for supporting him when, given that they were often the targets of his barbed wit, they could hardly have been blamed for throwing him out. Heaven knows the English wouldn't have wanted him -- he'd already written such sharp polemics about English governmental corruption that he was infamous in that country. In his own way, Swift understood the Irish and the English a bit too well for their comfort. But the Irish kept him on, even after he published his infamous essay "A Modest Proposal," in which he advocated (sarcastically) that the English should eat Irish babies in order to solve Ireland's famine problems.

One of Swift's biggest causes was humane treatment for the mentally ill, which, in his time, was unheard of. When he died, he bequeathed much of his estate to found St. Patrick's Hospital for the mentally ill.

Typically, though, he couldn't just leave it at that. Instead, he wrote one last caustic verse, as if seeking to guarantee that no Irish person would ever leave flowers on his grave:

"He left the little wealth he had

No nation needed it so much."