ABSTRACT
The bad health which kept Swift from thanking his neighbours in person during the Bettesworth fracas also gave rise, during January 1734, to a rumour that the dean was dead. 1 But even while erupting into politics and poetry, he continued to enjoy his favourite kind of society. Although his chronic diseases and fading eyesight dogged him through the spring and summer too, he enjoyed the boon of Sheridan’s company and often dined with him. 2 Language games had become for them almost a regular entertainment. As they once had matched puns, so they now practised Hibernicisms on each other 3 and competed in letters composed of ‘Anglo-Angli’ and Anglo-Latin—and sometimes the dean in this disguise said what he otherwise suppressed. 4
