1742 in Poetry - Events

Events

  • Jonathan Swift suffers what appears to have been a stroke, losing the ability to speak and realizing his worst fears of becoming mentally disabled. ("I shall be like that tree," he once said, "I shall die at the top.") To protect him from unscrupulous hangers on, who had begun to prey on him, Swift's closest companions had him declared of "unsound mind and memory."

Read more about this topic:  1742 In Poetry

Famous quotes containing the word events:

    The great events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion.
    Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

    The phenomenon of nature is more splendid than the daily events of nature, certainly, so then the twentieth century is splendid.
    Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)

    When the world was half a thousand years younger all events had much sharper outlines than now. The distance between sadness and joy, between good and bad fortune, seemed to be much greater than for us; every experience had that degree of directness and absoluteness which joy and sadness still have in the mind of a child
    Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)