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16 LEINSTER
which Grattan and the volunteers completed— yet he
was an Englishman and no lover of Ireland. Born
in Ireland by chance, bred there of necessity, con-
signed to a preferment there against his hope and
will, he was spurred on to work for Ireland by that
saeva indignatio which his epitaph speaks of, which
he himself renders in this sentence of a letter:
" Does not the corruption and folly of men in high places eat
into your heart like a canker!"
The greatest perhaps of British humorists, he died
mad and miserable; and died as he expected to die.
His other monument is Swift's Hospital, built for a
madhouse out of the money willed by him in a bequest,
which his savage pen thus characterized :
—
" He left the little wealth he had
To build a house for fools and mad,
And showed by one satiric touch
No nation wanted it so much".
In the north transept an epitaph written by Swift
marks the tomb of " Mrs. Hester Johnson, better
known to the world by the name of * Stella', under
which she is celebrated in the writings of Dr. Jonathan
Swift, Dean of this Cathedral ". The world has always
wanted to know, and never will know for certain,
whether she ought to have borne the name of him
who celebrated her. But his bones were laid by
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