ABSTRACT
While the Drapier throve in glory, Swift humbly contended with bodily afflictions and managed his domestic economy. There was not much tempering of prudence with rashness, or preaching with clowning, in this aspect of his life. Dealing with his health, Swift was all sermons and sobriety. Once when he fell ill in the country, he wrote to a friend who was anxious in Dublin, ‘Do you not believe, that if I had any sickness of consequence, I should have got a coach to come to town, or sent there for a doctor. I assure you I have been very careful of myself.’ 1 And so he was; and consequently, for all his talk of sickness, Swift, with one exception, had remarkably good health in an age of valetudinarians.
