ABSTRACT
With no Lord Lieutenant in residence, and no Parliament, Dublin afforded little excitement to an elderly moralist during the autumn of 1730. In September the dean came back, carrying ‘an ill head’ to his cathedral chores, though he was ‘constantly at morning prayers by nine, and superintending [his] vicars’. 1 However, Charles Ford’s mother had died; and her son arrived on a visit to settle the estate; so Swift had the satisfaction of his favourite Irish company.
