On this day in 1745 Jonathan Swift died at the age of seventy-eight. He spent his last years in poor physical and mental health, his senile dementia eventually so incapacitating that most friends stayed away in pity or fear. Five years earlier, in his last note to the last person he could still make sense of, his devoted housekeeper Mrs. Whiteway, he had expressed the hope that he might be spared such an end ... FULL STORY »
