Queen Mary and Westfield College London University PhD Thesis ...

sympathy for 'those under such Dismal Circumstances' as the mad 244 . Rather than ostracising
the insane, Swift had initially suggested to Fownes 'a spot in a close place almost in the heart of
the Citty', as a site for the hospital, and ordained in his will that it be either near Dr. Steven's
hospital, or...somewhere in or near the City of Dublin' 245. It was the moral reformers of the
late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who hid the insane away from the pub ic eye in country
retreats, in the interests not only of health and tranquility, but also of decorum.
It is going too far to 'assume', as does Professor Moore, that the rule governing St. Patrick's
hospital from its very foundation banning 'access to the patients except in the presence of the
Governors or by order of the state physician or surgeon general', was 'inspired by Swift's dismay
at Bedlam's parade of human suffering' 246 . The hospital was not opened until 1757, twelve
years after Swift's death, six years after St. Luke's had taken the first institutional stand on
this issue, and when a considerable shift in attitudes had already occurred since earlier tolerance
for the spectacle of insanity. Swift and his contemporaries, themselves, visited Bethlem in the
first decades of the eighteenth century with few overt signs of disapproval. Yet, visiting the
insane, like social visiting, was conceived of as a 'poor Amusement' by the Augustan literati247.
Swift plainly regarded 'three Pence...shew[s]' (or, more specifically, the anatomising of executed
felons) as barbarous, let alone the penny show of Bethlem248.
Nor did Augustans absolutely repudiate the existence of 'Virtues' in madness. While refus-
ing to accept madness as an excuse or an exculpation for 'Enormities' of conduct, Swift seems to
have concurred with the verdict of 'the Curators of Bedlam' 'that Madness...operates by inflam-
ing and enlarging [either] the good or evil Dispositions of the Mind' 249 . Whie Swift regularly
assumed the identity of the madman in his writings, Pope, too, despite calling his enemies 'mad'
and verbally incarcerating Dennis and others in Bedlam, identified with Lee and Budgell when
attacked himself, and vowed indignantly, whatever his fate:
244 Swift, Correspondence, vol. iv, hr dated 9 September 1732, 65-70.
245 Ibid, 67; Will, 150.
246 Moore, in Tercentenarp Tribute, 141-2.
247 See Swift's Hints towards an Essay on Conversa gion, in Prose Works, vol. 4, 94.
248 See ,dem, A Vindication of his Excellency (John) Lord (CartereJt (London, 1730), in Prose Work,, vol. 12,
157-8.
249 Thid, 158. See, also, idem, A Defence of English Commod,f lea... (Dublin, 1720), in frisk Tracts & Sermon,,
1720-U (ed), Laws Londa (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1948), 271-2, re. 'Madness as a Virtue'.
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