C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

The Struldbrugs

By Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)

ONE day, in much good company [among the Luggnaggians] I was asked by a person of quality, “whether I had seen any of their struldbrugs, or immortals?” I said, “I had not;” and desired he would explain to me what he meant by such an appellation, applied to a mortal creature. He told me that “sometimes, though very rarely, a child happened to be born in a family, with a red circular spot on the forehead, directly over the left eyebrow, which was an infallible mark that it should never die. The spot,” as he described it, “was about the compass of a silver threepence, but in the course of time grew larger, and changed its color: for at twelve years of age it became green, so continued till five-and-twenty, then turned a deep blue; at five-and-forty it grew coal-black, and as large as an English shilling, but never admitted any further alteration.”…

After this preface, he gave me a particular account of the struldbrugs among them. He said, “They commonly acted like mortals till about thirty years old; after which by degrees they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession; for otherwise, there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionated, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and repine that others are gone to a harbor of rest to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and middle age, and even that is very imperfect; and for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition than upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories: these meet with more pity and assistance because they want many bad qualities which abound in others.”

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