|
|
THE PUBLISHER TO THE READER.
[As given in the original edition.]
The author of these Travels, Mr. Lemuel Gulliver, is my ancient and
intimate friend; there is likewise some relation between us on the
mother’s side. About three years ago, Mr. Gulliver growing weary
of the concourse of curious people coming to him at his house in Redriff,
made a small purchase of land, with a convenient house, near Newark, in
Nottinghamshire, his native country; where he now lives retired, yet in
good esteem among his neighbours.
Although Mr. Gulliver was born in Nottinghamshire, where his father
dwelt, yet I have heard him say his family came from Oxfordshire; to
confirm which, I have observed in the churchyard at Banbury in that
county, several tombs and monuments of the Gullivers.
Before he quitted Redriff, he left the custody of the following papers
in my hands, with the liberty to dispose of them as I should think fit.
I have carefully perused them three times. The style is very plain
and simple; and the only fault I find is, that the author, after the
manner of travellers, is a little too circumstantial. There is an
air of truth apparent through the whole; and indeed the author was so
distinguished for his veracity, that it became a sort of proverb among
his neighbours at Redriff, when any one affirmed a thing, to say, it was
as true as if Mr. Gulliver had spoken it.
By the advice of several worthy persons, to whom, with the author’s
permission, I communicated these papers, I now venture to send them into
the world, hoping they may be, at least for some time, a better
entertainment to our young noblemen, than the common scribbles of
politics and party.
This volume would have been at least twice as large, if I had not made
bold to strike out innumerable passages relating to the winds and tides,
as well as to the variations and bearings in the several voyages,
together with the minute descriptions of the management of the ship in
storms, in the style of sailors; likewise the account of longitudes and
latitudes; wherein I have reason to apprehend, that Mr. Gulliver may be
a little dissatisfied. But I was resolved to fit the work as much
as possible to the general capacity of readers. However, if my own
ignorance in sea affairs shall have led me to commit some mistakes, I
alone am answerable for them. And if any traveller hath a
curiosity to see the whole work at large, as it came from the hands of
the author, I will be ready to gratify him.
As for any further particulars relating to the author, the reader will
receive satisfaction from the first pages of the book.
RICHARD SYMPSON.
A LETTER FROM CAPTAIN GULLIVER TO HIS COUSIN SYMPSON.
WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1727.
I hope you will be ready to own publicly, whenever you shall be called
to it, that by your great and frequent urgency you prevailed on me to
publish a very loose and uncorrect account of my travels, with
directions to hire some young gentleman of either university to put them
in order, and correct the style, as my cousin Dampier did, by my advice,
in his book called “A Voyage round the world.” But I do not
remember I gave you power to consent that any thing should be omitted,
and much less that any thing should be inserted; therefore, as to the
latter, I do here renounce every thing of that kind; particularly a
paragraph about her majesty Queen Anne, of most pious and glorious
memory; although I did reverence and esteem her more than any of human
species. But you, or your interpolator, ought to have considered,
that it was not my inclination, so was it not decent to praise any
animal of our composition before my master Houyhnhnm: And
besides, the fact was altogether false; for to my knowledge, being in
England during some part of her majesty’s reign, she did govern by a
chief minister; nay even by two successively, the first whereof was the
lord of Godolphin, and the second the lord of Oxford; so that you have
made me say the thing that was not. Likewise in the account of the
academy of projectors, and several passages of my discourse to my master
Houyhnhnm, you have either omitted some material circumstances,
or minced or changed them in such a manner, that I do hardly know my own
work. When I formerly hinted to you something of this in a letter,
you were pleased to answer that you were afraid of giving offence; that
people in power were very watchful over the press, and apt not only to
interpret, but to punish every thing which looked like an innuendo
(as I think you call it). But, pray how could that which I spoke
so many years ago, and at about five thousand leagues distance, in
another reign, be applied to any of the Yahoos, who now are said
to govern the herd; especially at a time when I little thought, or
feared, the unhappiness of living under them? Have not I the most
reason to complain, when I see these very Yahoos carried by Houyhnhnms
in a vehicle, as if they were brutes, and those the rational creatures?
And indeed to avoid so monstrous and detestable a sight was one
principal motive of my retirement hither.
Thus much I thought proper to tell you in relation to yourself, and to
the trust I reposed in you.
I do, in the next place, complain of my own great want of judgment, in
being prevailed upon by the entreaties and false reasoning of you and
some others, very much against my own opinion, to suffer my travels to
be published. Pray bring to your mind how often I desired you to
consider, when you insisted on the motive of public good, that the Yahoos
were a species of animals utterly incapable of amendment by precept
or example: and so it has proved; for, instead of seeing a full stop put
to all abuses and corruptions, at least in this little island, as I had
reason to expect; behold, after above six months warning, I cannot learn
that my book has produced one single effect according to my intentions.
I desired you would let me know, by a letter, when party and faction
were extinguished; judges learned and upright; pleaders honest and
modest, with some tincture of common sense, and Smithfield blazing with
pyramids of law books; the young nobility’s education entirely
changed; the physicians banished; the female Yahoos abounding in
virtue, honour, truth, and good sense; courts and levees of great
ministers thoroughly weeded and swept; wit, merit, and learning
rewarded; all disgracers of the press in prose and verse condemned to
eat nothing but their own cotton, and quench their thirst with their own
ink. These, and a thousand other reformations, I firmly counted
upon by your encouragement; as indeed they were plainly deducible from
the precepts delivered in my book. And it must be owned, that
seven months were a sufficient time to correct every vice and folly to
which Yahoos are subject, if their natures had been capable of
the least disposition to virtue or wisdom. Yet, so far have you
been from answering my expectation in any of your letters; that on the
contrary you are loading our carrier every week with libels, and keys,
and reflections, and memoirs, and second parts; wherein I see myself
accused of reflecting upon great state folk; of degrading human nature
(for so they have still the confidence to style it), and of abusing the
female sex. I find likewise that the writers of those bundles are
not agreed among themselves; for some of them will not allow me to be
the author of my own travels; and others make me author of books to
which I am wholly a stranger.
I find likewise that your printer has been so careless as to confound
the times, and mistake the dates, of my several voyages and returns;
neither assigning the true year, nor the true month, nor day of the
month: and I hear the original manuscript is all destroyed since the
publication of my book; neither have I any copy left: however, I have
sent you some corrections, which you may insert, if ever there should be
a second edition: and yet I cannot stand to them; but shall leave that
matter to my judicious and candid readers to adjust it as they please.
I hear some of our sea Yahoos find fault with my sea-language, as
not proper in many parts, nor now in use. I cannot help it.
In my first voyages, while I was young, I was instructed by the oldest
mariners, and learned to speak as they did. But I have since found
that the sea Yahoos are apt, like the land ones, to become
new-fangled in their words, which the latter change every year;
insomuch, as I remember upon each return to my own country their old
dialect was so altered, that I could hardly understand the new.
And I observe, when any Yahoo comes from London out of curiosity
to visit me at my house, we neither of us are able to deliver our
conceptions in a manner intelligible to the other.
If the censure of the Yahoos could any way affect me, I should
have great reason to complain, that some of them are so bold as to think
my book of travels a mere fiction out of mine own brain, and have gone
so far as to drop hints, that the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos have
no more existence than the inhabitants of Utopia.
Indeed I must confess, that as to the people of Lilliput, Brobdingrag
(for so the word should have been spelt, and not erroneously Brobdingnag),
and Laputa, I have never yet heard of any Yahoo so
presumptuous as to dispute their being, or the facts I have related
concerning them; because the truth immediately strikes every reader with
conviction. And is there less probability in my account of the Houyhnhnms
or Yahoos, when it is manifest as to the latter, there are so
many thousands even in this country, who only differ from their brother
brutes in Houyhnhnmland, because they use a sort of jabber, and
do not go naked? I wrote for their amendment, and not their
approbation. The united praise of the whole race would be of less
consequence to me, than the neighing of those two degenerate Houyhnhnms
I keep in my stable; because from these, degenerate as they are, I still
improve in some virtues without any mixture of vice.
Do these miserable animals presume to think, that I am so degenerated as
to defend my veracity? Yahoo as I am, it is well known
through all Houyhnhnmland, that, by the instructions and example
of my illustrious master, I was able in the compass of two years
(although I confess with the utmost difficulty) to remove that infernal
habit of lying, shuffling, deceiving, and equivocating, so deeply rooted
in the very souls of all my species; especially the Europeans.
I have other complaints to make upon this vexatious occasion; but I
forbear troubling myself or you any further. I must freely
confess, that since my last return, some corruptions of my Yahoo
nature have revived in me by conversing with a few of your species, and
particularly those of my own family, by an unavoidable necessity; else I
should never have attempted so absurd a project as that of reforming the
Yahoo race in this kingdom: But I have now done with all such
visionary schemes for ever.
April 2, 1727
PART I - A VOYAGE TO LILLIPUT.
CHAPTER I.
[The author gives some account of himself and family. His first
inducements to travel. He is shipwrecked, and swims for his life.
Gets safe on shore in the country of Lilliput; is made a prisoner, and
carried up the country.]
My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire: I was the third of five
sons. He sent me to Emanuel College in Cambridge at fourteen years
old, where I resided three years, and applied myself close to my
studies; but the charge of maintaining me, although I had a very scanty
allowance, being too great for a narrow fortune, I was bound apprentice
to Mr. James Bates, an eminent surgeon in London, with whom I continued
four years. My father now and then sending me small sums of money,
I laid them out in learning navigation, and other parts of the
mathematics, useful to those who intend to travel, as I always believed
it would be, some time or other, my fortune to do. When I left Mr.
Bates, I went down to my father: where, by the assistance of him and my
uncle John, and some other relations, I got forty pounds, and a promise
of thirty pounds a year to maintain me at Leyden: there I studied physic
two years and seven months, knowing it would be useful in long voyages.
Soon after my return from Leyden, I was recommended by my good master,
Mr. Bates, to be surgeon to the Swallow, Captain Abraham Pannel,
commander; with whom I continued three years and a half, making a voyage
or two into the Levant, and some other parts. When I came back I
resolved to settle in London; to which Mr. Bates, my master, encouraged
me, and by him I was recommended to several patients. I took part
of a small house in the Old Jewry; and being advised to alter my
condition, I married Mrs. Mary Burton, second daughter to Mr. Edmund
Burton, hosier, in Newgate-street, with whom I received four hundred
pounds for a portion.
But my good master Bates dying in two years after, and I having few
friends, my business began to fail; for my conscience would not suffer
me to imitate the bad practice of too many among my brethren.
Having therefore consulted with my wife, and some of my acquaintance, I
determined to go again to sea. I was surgeon successively in two
ships, and made several voyages, for six years, to the East and West
Indies, by which I got some addition to my fortune. My hours of
leisure I spent in reading the best authors, ancient and modern, being
always provided with a good number of books; and when I was ashore, in
observing the manners and dispositions of the people, as well as
learning their language; wherein I had a great facility, by the strength
of my memory.
The last of these voyages not proving very fortunate, I grew weary of
the sea, and intended to stay at home with my wife and family. I
removed from the Old Jewry to Fetter Lane, and from thence to Wapping,
hoping to get business among the sailors; but it would not turn to
account. After three years expectation that things would mend, I
accepted an advantageous offer from Captain William Prichard, master of
the Antelope, who was making a voyage to the South Sea. We set
sail from Bristol, May 4, 1699, and our voyage was at first very
prosperous.
It would not be proper, for some reasons, to trouble the reader with the
particulars of our adventures in those seas; let it suffice to inform
him, that in our passage from thence to the East Indies, we were driven
by a violent storm to the north-west of Van Diemen’s Land. By an
observation, we found ourselves in the latitude of 30 degrees 2 minutes
south. Twelve of our crew were dead by immoderate labour and ill
food; the rest were in a very weak condition. On the 5th of
November, which was the beginning of summer in those parts, the weather
being very hazy, the seamen spied a rock within half a cable’s length
of the ship; but the wind was so strong, that we were driven directly
upon it, and immediately split. Six of the crew, of whom I was
one, having let down the boat into the sea, made a shift to get clear of
the ship and the rock. We rowed, by my computation, about three
leagues, till we were able to work no longer, being already spent with
labour while we were in the ship. We therefore trusted ourselves
to the mercy of the waves, and in about half an hour the boat was
overset by a sudden flurry from the north. What became of my
companions in the boat, as well as of those who escaped on the rock, or
were left in the vessel, I cannot tell; but conclude they were all lost.
For my own part, I swam as fortune directed me, and was pushed forward
by wind and tide. I often let my legs drop, and could feel no
bottom; but when I was almost gone, and able to struggle no longer, I
found myself within my depth; and by this time the storm was much
abated. The declivity was so small, that I walked near a mile
before I got to the shore, which I conjectured was about eight o’clock
in the evening. I then advanced forward near half a mile, but
could not discover any sign of houses or inhabitants; at least I was in
so weak a condition, that I did not observe them. I was extremely
tired, and with that, and the heat of the weather, and about half a pint
of brandy that I drank as I left the ship, I found myself much inclined
to sleep. I lay down on the grass, which was very short and soft,
where I slept sounder than ever I remembered to have done in my life,
and, as I reckoned, about nine hours; for when I awaked, it was just
day-light. I attempted to rise, but was not able to stir: for, as
I happened to lie on my back, I found my arms and legs were strongly
fastened on each side to the ground; and my hair, which was long and
thick, tied down in the same manner. I likewise felt several
slender ligatures across my body, from my arm-pits to my thighs. I
could only look upwards; the sun began to grow hot, and the light
offended my eyes. I heard a confused noise about me; but in the
posture I lay, could see nothing except the sky. In a little time
I felt something alive moving on my left leg, which advancing gently
forward over my breast, came almost up to my chin; when, bending my eyes
downwards as much as I could, I perceived it to be a human creature not
six inches high, with a bow and arrow in his hands, and a quiver at his
back. In the mean time, I felt at least forty more of the same
kind (as I conjectured) following the first. I was in the utmost
astonishment, and roared so loud, that they all ran back in a fright;
and some of them, as I was afterwards told, were hurt with the falls
they got by leaping from my sides upon the ground. However, they
soon returned, and one of them, who ventured so far as to get a full
sight of my face, lifting up his hands and eyes by way of admiration,
cried out in a shrill but distinct voice, Hekinah degul: the
others repeated the same words several times, but then I knew not what
they meant. I lay all this while, as the reader may believe, in
great uneasiness. At length, struggling to get loose, I had the
fortune to break the strings, and wrench out the pegs that fastened my
left arm to the ground; for, by lifting it up to my face, I discovered
the methods they had taken to bind me, and at the same time with a
violent pull, which gave me excessive pain, I a little loosened the
strings that tied down my hair on the left side, so that I was just able
to turn my head about two inches. But the creatures ran off a
second time, before I could seize them; whereupon there was a great
shout in a very shrill accent, and after it ceased I heard one of them
cry aloud Tolgo phonac; when in an instant I felt above a hundred
arrows discharged on my left hand, which, pricked me like so many
needles; and besides, they shot another flight into the air, as we do
bombs in Europe, whereof many, I suppose, fell on my body, (though I
felt them not), and some on my face, which I immediately covered with my
left hand. When this shower of arrows was over, I fell a groaning
with grief and pain; and then striving again to get loose, they
discharged another volley larger than the first, and some of them
attempted with spears to stick me in the sides; but by good luck I had
on a buff jerkin, which they could not pierce. I thought it the
most prudent method to lie still, and my design was to continue so till
night, when, my left hand being already loose, I could easily free
myself: and as for the inhabitants, I had reason to believe I might be a
match for the greatest army they could bring against me, if they were
all of the same size with him that I saw. But fortune disposed
otherwise of me. When the people observed I was quiet, they
discharged no more arrows; but, by the noise I heard, I knew their
numbers increased; and about four yards from me, over against my right
ear, I heard a knocking for above an hour, like that of people at work;
when turning my head that way, as well as the pegs and strings would
permit me, I saw a stage erected about a foot and a half from the
ground, capable of holding four of the inhabitants, with two or three
ladders to mount it: from whence one of them, who seemed to be a person
of quality, made me a long speech, whereof I understood not one
syllable. But I should have mentioned, that before the principal
person began his oration, he cried out three times, Langro dehul san
(these words and the former were afterwards repeated and explained to
me); whereupon, immediately, about fifty of the inhabitants came and cut
the strings that fastened the left side of my head, which gave me the
liberty of turning it to the right, and of observing the person and
gesture of him that was to speak. He appeared to be of a middle
age, and taller than any of the other three who attended him, whereof
one was a page that held up his train, and seemed to be somewhat longer
than my middle finger; the other two stood one on each side to support
him. He acted every part of an orator, and I could observe many
periods of threatenings, and others of promises, pity, and kindness.
I answered in a few words, but in the most submissive manner, lifting up
my left hand, and both my eyes to the sun, as calling him for a witness;
and being almost famished with hunger, having not eaten a morsel for
some hours before I left the ship, I found the demands of nature so
strong upon me, that I could not forbear showing my impatience (perhaps
against the strict rules of decency) by putting my finger frequently to
my mouth, to signify that I wanted food. The hurgo (for so
they call a great lord, as I afterwards learnt) understood me very well.
He descended from the stage, and commanded that several ladders should
be applied to my sides, on which above a hundred of the inhabitants
mounted and walked towards my mouth, laden with baskets full of meat,
which had been provided and sent thither by the king’s orders, upon
the first intelligence he received of me. I observed there was the
flesh of several animals, but could not distinguish them by the taste.
There were shoulders, legs, and loins, shaped like those of mutton, and
very well dressed, but smaller than the wings of a lark. I ate
them by two or three at a mouthful, and took three loaves at a time,
about the bigness of musket bullets. They supplied me as fast as
they could, showing a thousand marks of wonder and astonishment at my
bulk and appetite. I then made another sign, that I wanted drink.
They found by my eating that a small quantity would not suffice me; and
being a most ingenious people, they slung up, with great dexterity, one
of their largest hogsheads, then rolled it towards my hand, and beat out
the top; I drank it off at a draught, which I might well do, for it did
not hold half a pint, and tasted like a small wine of Burgundy, but much
more delicious. They brought me a second hogshead, which I drank
in the same manner, and made signs for more; but they had none to give
me. When I had performed these wonders, they shouted for joy, and
danced upon my breast, repeating several times as they did at first, Hekinah
degul. They made me a sign that I should throw down the two
hogsheads, but first warning the people below to stand out of the way,
crying aloud, Borach mevolah; and when they saw the vessels in
the air, there was a universal shout of Hekinah degul. I
confess I was often tempted, while they were passing backwards and
forwards on my body, to seize forty or fifty of the first that came in
my reach, and dash them against the ground. But the remembrance of
what I had felt, which probably might not be the worst they could do,
and the promise of honour I made them - for so I interpreted my
submissive behaviour - soon drove out these imaginations. Besides,
I now considered myself as bound by the laws of hospitality, to a people
who had treated me with so much expense and magnificence. However,
in my thoughts I could not sufficiently wonder at the intrepidity of
these diminutive mortals, who durst venture to mount and walk upon my
body, while one of my hands was at liberty, without trembling at the
very sight of so prodigious a creature as I must appear to them.
After some time, when they observed that I made no more demands for
meat, there appeared before me a person of high rank from his imperial
majesty. His excellency, having mounted on the small of my right
leg, advanced forwards up to my face, with about a dozen of his retinue;
and producing his credentials under the signet royal, which he applied
close to my eyes, spoke about ten minutes without any signs of anger,
but with a kind of determinate resolution, often pointing forwards,
which, as I afterwards found, was towards the capital city, about half a
mile distant; whither it was agreed by his majesty in council that I
must be conveyed. I answered in few words, but to no purpose, and
made a sign with my hand that was loose, putting it to the other (but
over his excellency’s head for fear of hurting him or his train) and
then to my own head and body, to signify that I desired my liberty.
It appeared that he understood me well enough, for he shook his head by
way of disapprobation, and held his hand in a posture to show that I
must be carried as a prisoner. However, he made other signs to let
me understand that I should have meat and drink enough, and very good
treatment. Whereupon I once more thought of attempting to break my
bonds; but again, when I felt the smart of their arrows upon my face and
hands, which were all in blisters, and many of the darts still sticking
in them, and observing likewise that the number of my enemies increased,
I gave tokens to let them know that they might do with me what they
pleased. Upon this, the hurgo and his train withdrew, with
much civility and cheerful countenances. Soon after I heard a
general shout, with frequent repetitions of the words Peplom selan;
and I felt great numbers of people on my left side relaxing the cords to
such a degree, that I was able to turn upon my right, and to ease myself
with making water; which I very plentifully did, to the great
astonishment of the people; who, conjecturing by my motion what I was
going to do, immediately opened to the right and left on that side, to
avoid the torrent, which fell with such noise and violence from me.
But before this, they had daubed my face and both my hands with a sort
of ointment, very pleasant to the smell, which, in a few minutes,
removed all the smart of their arrows. These circumstances, added
to the refreshment I had received by their victuals and drink, which
were very nourishing, disposed me to sleep. I slept about eight
hours, as I was afterwards assured; and it was no wonder, for the
physicians, by the emperor’s order, had mingled a sleepy potion in the
hogsheads of wine.
It seems, that upon the first moment I was discovered sleeping on the
ground, after my landing, the emperor had early notice of it by an
express; and determined in council, that I should be tied in the manner
I have related, (which was done in the night while I slept;) that plenty
of meat and drink should be sent to me, and a machine prepared to carry
me to the capital city.
This resolution perhaps may appear very bold and dangerous, and I am
confident would not be imitated by any prince in Europe on the like
occasion. However, in my opinion, it was extremely prudent, as
well as generous: for, supposing these people had endeavoured to kill me
with their spears and arrows, while I was asleep, I should certainly
have awaked with the first sense of smart, which might so far have
roused my rage and strength, as to have enabled me to break the strings
wherewith I was tied; after which, as they were not able to make
resistance, so they could expect no mercy.
These people are most excellent mathematicians, and arrived to a great
perfection in mechanics, by the countenance and encouragement of the
emperor, who is a renowned patron of learning. This prince has
several machines fixed on wheels, for the carriage of trees and other
great weights. He often builds his largest men of war, whereof
some are nine feet long, in the woods where the timber grows, and has
them carried on these engines three or four hundred yards to the sea.
Five hundred carpenters and engineers were immediately set at work to
prepare the greatest engine they had. It was a frame of wood
raised three inches from the ground, about seven feet long, and four
wide, moving upon twenty-two wheels. The shout I heard was upon
the arrival of this engine, which, it seems, set out in four hours after
my landing. It was brought parallel to me, as I lay. But the
principal difficulty was to raise and place me in this vehicle.
Eighty poles, each of one foot high, were erected for this purpose, and
very strong cords, of the bigness of packthread, were fastened by hooks
to many bandages, which the workmen had girt round my neck, my hands, my
body, and my legs. Nine hundred of the strongest men were employed
to draw up these cords, by many pulleys fastened on the poles; and thus,
in less than three hours, I was raised and slung into the engine, and
there tied fast. All this I was told; for, while the operation was
performing, I lay in a profound sleep, by the force of that soporiferous
medicine infused into my liquor. Fifteen hundred of the
emperor’s largest horses, each about four inches and a half high, were
employed to draw me towards the metropolis, which, as I said, was half a
mile distant.
About four hours after we began our journey, I awaked by a very
ridiculous accident; for the carriage being stopped a while, to adjust
something that was out of order, two or three of the young natives had
the curiosity to see how I looked when I was asleep; they climbed up
into the engine, and advancing very softly to my face, one of them, an
officer in the guards, put the sharp end of his half-pike a good way up
into my left nostril, which tickled my nose like a straw, and made me
sneeze violently; whereupon they stole off unperceived, and it was three
weeks before I knew the cause of my waking so suddenly. We made a
long march the remaining part of the day, and, rested at night with five
hundred guards on each side of me, half with torches, and half with bows
and arrows, ready to shoot me if I should offer to stir. The next
morning at sun-rise we continued our march, and arrived within two
hundred yards of the city gates about noon. The emperor, and all
his court, came out to meet us; but his great officers would by no means
suffer his majesty to endanger his person by mounting on my body.
At the place where the carriage stopped there stood an ancient temple,
esteemed to be the largest in the whole kingdom; which, having been
polluted some years before by an unnatural murder, was, according to the
zeal of those people, looked upon as profane, and therefore had been
applied to common use, and all the ornaments and furniture carried away.
In this edifice it was determined I should lodge. The great gate
fronting to the north was about four feet high, and almost two feet
wide, through which I could easily creep. On each side of the gate
was a small window, not above six inches from the ground: into that on
the left side, the king’s smith conveyed fourscore and eleven chains,
like those that hang to a lady’s watch in Europe, and almost as large,
which were locked to my left leg with six-and-thirty padlocks.
Over against this temple, on the other side of the great highway, at
twenty feet distance, there was a turret at least five feet high.
Here the emperor ascended, with many principal lords of his court, to
have an opportunity of viewing me, as I was told, for I could not see
them. It was reckoned that above a hundred thousand inhabitants
came out of the town upon the same errand; and, in spite of my guards, I
believe there could not be fewer than ten thousand at several times, who
mounted my body by the help of ladders. But a proclamation was
soon issued, to forbid it upon pain of death. When the workmen
found it was impossible for me to break loose, they cut all the strings
that bound me; whereupon I rose up, with as melancholy a disposition as
ever I had in my life. But the noise and astonishment of the
people, at seeing me rise and walk, are not to be expressed. The
chains that held my left leg were about two yards long, and gave me not
only the liberty of walking backwards and forwards in a semicircle, but,
being fixed within four inches of the gate, allowed me to creep in, and
lie at my full length in the temple.
CHAPTER II.
[The emperor of Lilliput, attended by several of the nobility, comes to
see the author in his confinement. The emperor’s person and
habit described. Learned men appointed to teach the author their
language. He gains favour by his mild disposition. His
pockets are searched, and his sword and pistols taken from him.]
When I found myself on my feet, I looked about me, and must confess I
never beheld a more entertaining prospect. The country around
appeared like a continued garden, and the enclosed fields, which were
generally forty feet square, resembled so many beds of flowers.
These fields were intermingled with woods of half a stang, {1}
and the tallest trees, as I could judge, appeared to be seven feet high.
I viewed the town on my left hand, which looked like the painted scene
of a city in a theatre.
I had been for some hours extremely pressed by the necessities of
nature; which was no wonder, it being almost two days since I had last
disburdened myself. I was under great difficulties between urgency
and shame. The best expedient I could think of, was to creep into
my house, which I accordingly did; and shutting the gate after me, I
went as far as the length of my chain would suffer, and discharged my
body of that uneasy load. But this was the only time I was ever
guilty of so uncleanly an action; for which I cannot but hope the candid
reader will give some allowance, after he has maturely and impartially
considered my case, and the distress I was in. From this time my
constant practice was, as soon as I rose, to perform that business in
open air, at the full extent of my chain; and due care was taken every
morning before company came, that the offensive matter should be carried
off in wheel-barrows, by two servants appointed for that purpose.
I would not have dwelt so long upon a circumstance that, perhaps, at
first sight, may appear not very momentous, if I had not thought it
necessary to justify my character, in point of cleanliness, to the
world; which, I am told, some of my maligners have been pleased, upon
this and other occasions, to call in question.
When this adventure was at an end, I came back out of my house, having
occasion for fresh air. The emperor was already descended from the
tower, and advancing on horseback towards me, which had like to have
cost him dear; for the beast, though very well trained, yet wholly
unused to such a sight, which appeared as if a mountain moved before
him, reared up on its hinder feet: but that prince, who is an excellent
horseman, kept his seat, till his attendants ran in, and held the
bridle, while his majesty had time to dismount. When he alighted,
he surveyed me round with great admiration; but kept beyond the length
of my chain. He ordered his cooks and butlers, who were already
prepared, to give me victuals and drink, which they pushed forward in a
sort of vehicles upon wheels, till I could reach them. I took
these vehicles and soon emptied them all; twenty of them were filled
with meat, and ten with liquor; each of the former afforded me two or
three good mouthfuls; and I emptied the liquor of ten vessels, which was
contained in earthen vials, into one vehicle, drinking it off at a
draught; and so I did with the rest. The empress, and young
princes of the blood of both sexes, attended by many ladies, sat at some
distance in their chairs; but upon the accident that happened to the
emperor’s horse, they alighted, and came near his person, which I am
now going to describe. He is taller by almost the breadth of my
nail, than any of his court; which alone is enough to strike an awe into
the beholders. His features are strong and masculine, with an
Austrian lip and arched nose, his complexion olive, his countenance
erect, his body and limbs well proportioned, all his motions graceful,
and his deportment majestic. He was then past his prime, being
twenty-eight years and three quarters old, of which he had reigned about
seven in great felicity, and generally victorious. For the better
convenience of beholding him, I lay on my side, so that my face was
parallel to his, and he stood but three yards off: however, I have had
him since many times in my hand, and therefore cannot be deceived in the
description. His dress was very plain and simple, and the fashion
of it between the Asiatic and the European; but he had on his head a
light helmet of gold, adorned with jewels, and a plume on the crest.
He held his sword drawn in his hand to defend himself, if I should
happen to break loose; it was almost three inches long; the hilt and
scabbard were gold enriched with diamonds. His voice was shrill,
but very clear and articulate; and I could distinctly hear it when I
stood up. The ladies and courtiers were all most magnificently
clad; so that the spot they stood upon seemed to resemble a petticoat
spread upon the ground, embroidered with figures of gold and silver.
His imperial majesty spoke often to me, and I returned answers: but
neither of us could understand a syllable. There were several of
his priests and lawyers present (as I conjectured by their habits), who
were commanded to address themselves to me; and I spoke to them in as
many languages as I had the least smattering of, which were High and Low
Dutch, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and Lingua Franca, but all to no
purpose. After about two hours the court retired, and I was left
with a strong guard, to prevent the impertinence, and probably the
malice of the rabble, who were very impatient to crowd about me as near
as they durst; and some of them had the impudence to shoot their arrows
at me, as I sat on the ground by the door of my house, whereof one very
narrowly missed my left eye. But the colonel ordered six of the
ringleaders to be seized, and thought no punishment so proper as to
deliver them bound into my hands; which some of his soldiers accordingly
did, pushing them forward with the butt-ends of their pikes into my
reach. I took them all in my right hand, put five of them into my
coat-pocket; and as to the sixth, I made a countenance as if I would eat
him alive. The poor man squalled terribly, and the colonel and his
officers were in much pain, especially when they saw me take out my
penknife: but I soon put them out of fear; for, looking mildly, and
immediately cutting the strings he was bound with, I set him gently on
the ground, and away he ran. I treated the rest in the same
manner, taking them one by one out of my pocket; and I observed both the
soldiers and people were highly delighted at this mark of my clemency,
which was represented very much to my advantage at court.
Towards night I got with some difficulty into my house, where I lay on
the ground, and continued to do so about a fortnight; during which time,
the emperor gave orders to have a bed prepared for me. Six hundred
beds of the common measure were brought in carriages, and worked up in
my house; a hundred and fifty of their beds, sewn together, made up the
breadth and length; and these were four double: which, however, kept me
but very indifferently from the hardness of the floor, that was of
smooth stone. By the same computation, they provided me with
sheets, blankets, and coverlets, tolerable enough for one who had been
so long inured to hardships.
As the news of my arrival spread through the kingdom, it brought
prodigious numbers of rich, idle, and curious people to see me; so that
the villages were almost emptied; and great neglect of tillage and
household affairs must have ensued, if his imperial majesty had not
provided, by several proclamations and orders of state, against this
inconveniency. He directed that those who had already beheld me
should return home, and not presume to come within fifty yards of my
house, without license from the court; whereby the secretaries of state
got considerable fees.
In the mean time the emperor held frequent councils, to debate what
course should be taken with me; and I was afterwards assured by a
particular friend, a person of great quality, who was as much in the
secret as any, that the court was under many difficulties concerning me.
They apprehended my breaking loose; that my diet would be very
expensive, and might cause a famine. Sometimes they determined to
starve me; or at least to shoot me in the face and hands with poisoned
arrows, which would soon despatch me; but again they considered, that
the stench of so large a carcass might produce a plague in the
metropolis, and probably spread through the whole kingdom. In the
midst of these consultations, several officers of the army went to the
door of the great council-chamber, and two of them being admitted, gave
an account of my behaviour to the six criminals above-mentioned; which
made so favourable an impression in the breast of his majesty and the
whole board, in my behalf, that an imperial commission was issued out,
obliging all the villages, nine hundred yards round the city, to deliver
in every morning six beeves, forty sheep, and other victuals for my
sustenance; together with a proportionable quantity of bread, and wine,
and other liquors; for the due payment of which, his majesty gave
assignments upon his treasury:- for this prince lives chiefly upon his
own demesnes; seldom, except upon great occasions, raising any subsidies
upon his subjects, who are bound to attend him in his wars at their own
expense. An establishment was also made of six hundred persons to
be my domestics, who had board-wages allowed for their maintenance, and
tents built for them very conveniently on each side of my door. It
was likewise ordered, that three hundred tailors should make me a suit
of clothes, after the fashion of the country; that six of his
majesty’s greatest scholars should be employed to instruct me in their
language; and lastly, that the emperor’s horses, and those of the
nobility and troops of guards, should be frequently exercised in my
sight, to accustom themselves to me. All these orders were duly
put in execution; and in about three weeks I made a great progress in
learning their language; during which time the emperor frequently
honoured me with his visits, and was pleased to assist my masters in
teaching me. We began already to converse together in some sort;
and the first words I learnt, were to express my desire “that he would
please give me my liberty;” which I every day repeated on my knees.
His answer, as I could comprehend it, was, “that this must be a work
of time, not to be thought on without the advice of his council, and
that first I must lumos kelmin pesso desmar lon emposo;” that
is, swear a peace with him and his kingdom. However, that I should
be used with all kindness. And he advised me to “acquire, by my
patience and discreet behaviour, the good opinion of himself and his
subjects.” He desired “I would not take it ill, if he gave
orders to certain proper officers to search me; for probably I might
carry about me several weapons, which must needs be dangerous things, if
they answered the bulk of so prodigious a person.” I said,
“His majesty should be satisfied; for I was ready to strip myself, and
turn up my pockets before him.” This I delivered part in words,
and part in signs. He replied, “that, by the laws of the
kingdom, I must be searched by two of his officers; that he knew this
could not be done without my consent and assistance; and he had so good
an opinion of my generosity and justice, as to trust their persons in my
hands; that whatever they took from me, should be returned when I left
the country, or paid for at the rate which I would set upon them.”
I took up the two officers in my hands, put them first into my
coat-pockets, and then into every other pocket about me, except my two
fobs, and another secret pocket, which I had no mind should be searched,
wherein I had some little necessaries that were of no consequence to any
but myself. In one of my fobs there was a silver watch, and in the
other a small quantity of gold in a purse. These gentlemen, having
pen, ink, and paper, about them, made an exact inventory of every thing
they saw; and when they had done, desired I would set them down, that
they might deliver it to the emperor. This inventory I afterwards
translated into English, and is, word for word, as follows:
“Imprimis: In the right coat-pocket of the great
man-mountain” (for so I interpret the words quinbus flestrin,)
“after the strictest search, we found only one great piece of
coarse-cloth, large enough to be a foot-cloth for your majesty’s chief
room of state. In the left pocket we saw a huge silver chest, with
a cover of the same metal, which we, the searchers, were not able to
lift. We desired it should be opened, and one of us stepping into
it, found himself up to the mid leg in a sort of dust, some part whereof
flying up to our faces set us both a sneezing for several times
together. In his right waistcoat-pocket we found a prodigious
bundle of white thin substances, folded one over another, about the
bigness of three men, tied with a strong cable, and marked with black
figures; which we humbly conceive to be writings, every letter almost
half as large as the palm of our hands. In the left there was a
sort of engine, from the back of which were extended twenty long poles,
resembling the pallisados before your majesty’s court: wherewith we
conjecture the man-mountain combs his head; for we did not always
trouble him with questions, because we found it a great difficulty to
make him understand us. In the large pocket, on the right side of
his middle cover” (so I translate the word ranfulo, by which
they meant my breeches,) “we saw a hollow pillar of iron, about the
length of a man, fastened to a strong piece of timber larger than the
pillar; and upon one side of the pillar, were huge pieces of iron
sticking out, cut into strange figures, which we know not what to make
of. In the left pocket, another engine of the same kind. In
the smaller pocket on the right side, were several round flat pieces of
white and red metal, of different bulk; some of the white, which seemed
to be silver, were so large and heavy, that my comrade and I could
hardly lift them. In the left pocket were two black pillars
irregularly shaped: we could not, without difficulty, reach the top of
them, as we stood at the bottom of his pocket. One of them was
covered, and seemed all of a piece: but at the upper end of the other
there appeared a white round substance, about twice the bigness of our
heads. Within each of these was enclosed a prodigious plate of
steel; which, by our orders, we obliged him to show us, because we
apprehended they might be dangerous engines. He took them out of
their cases, and told us, that in his own country his practice was to
shave his beard with one of these, and cut his meat with the other.
There were two pockets which we could not enter: these he called his
fobs; they were two large slits cut into the top of his middle cover,
but squeezed close by the pressure of his belly. Out of the right
fob hung a great silver chain, with a wonderful kind of engine at the
bottom. We directed him to draw out whatever was at the end of
that chain; which appeared to be a globe, half silver, and half of some
transparent metal; for, on the transparent side, we saw certain strange
figures circularly drawn, and thought we could touch them, till we found
our fingers stopped by the lucid substance. He put this engine
into our ears, which made an incessant noise, like that of a water-mill:
and we conjecture it is either some unknown animal, or the god that he
worships; but we are more inclined to the latter opinion, because he
assured us, (if we understood him right, for he expressed himself very
imperfectly) that he seldom did any thing without consulting it.
He called it his oracle, and said, it pointed out the time for every
action of his life. From the left fob he took out a net almost
large enough for a fisherman, but contrived to open and shut like a
purse, and served him for the same use: we found therein several massy
pieces of yellow metal, which, if they be real gold, must be of immense
value.
“Having thus, in obedience to your majesty’s commands, diligently
searched all his pockets, we observed a girdle about his waist made of
the hide of some prodigious animal, from which, on the left side, hung a
sword of the length of five men; and on the right, a bag or pouch
divided into two cells, each cell capable of holding three of your
majesty’s subjects. In one of these cells were several globes,
or balls, of a most ponderous metal, about the bigness of our heads, and
requiring a strong hand to lift them: the other cell contained a heap of
certain black grains, but of no great bulk or weight, for we could hold
above fifty of them in the palms of our hands.
“This is an exact inventory of what we found about the body of the
man-mountain, who used us with great civility, and due respect to your
majesty’s commission. Signed and sealed on the fourth day of the
eighty-ninth moon of your majesty’s auspicious reign.
CLEFRIN FRELOCK, MARSI FRELOCK.”
When this inventory was read over to the emperor, he directed me,
although in very gentle terms, to deliver up the several particulars.
He first called for my scimitar, which I took out, scabbard and all.
In the mean time he ordered three thousand of his choicest troops (who
then attended him) to surround me at a distance, with their bows and
arrows just ready to discharge; but I did not observe it, for mine eyes
were wholly fixed upon his majesty. He then desired me to draw my
scimitar, which, although it had got some rust by the sea water, was, in
most parts, exceeding bright. I did so, and immediately all the
troops gave a shout between terror and surprise; for the sun shone
clear, and the reflection dazzled their eyes, as I waved the scimitar to
and fro in my hand. His majesty, who is a most magnanimous prince,
was less daunted than I could expect: he ordered me to return it into
the scabbard, and cast it on the ground as gently as I could, about six
feet from the end of my chain. The next thing he demanded was one
of the hollow iron pillars; by which he meant my pocket pistols. I
drew it out, and at his desire, as well as I could, expressed to him the
use of it; and charging it only with powder, which, by the closeness of
my pouch, happened to escape wetting in the sea (an inconvenience
against which all prudent mariners take special care to provide,) I
first cautioned the emperor not to be afraid, and then I let it off in
the air. The astonishment here was much greater than at the sight
of my scimitar. Hundreds fell down as if they had been struck
dead; and even the emperor, although he stood his ground, could not
recover himself for some time. I delivered up both my pistols in
the same manner as I had done my scimitar, and then my pouch of powder
and bullets; begging him that the former might be kept from fire, for it
would kindle with the smallest spark, and blow up his imperial palace
into the air. I likewise delivered up my watch, which the emperor
was very curious to see, and commanded two of his tallest yeomen of the
guards to bear it on a pole upon their shoulders, as draymen in England
do a barrel of ale. He was amazed at the continual noise it made,
and the motion of the minute-hand, which he could easily discern; for
their sight is much more acute than ours: he asked the opinions of his
learned men about it, which were various and remote, as the reader may
well imagine without my repeating; although indeed I could not very
perfectly understand them. I then gave up my silver and copper
money, my purse, with nine large pieces of gold, and some smaller ones;
my knife and razor, my comb and silver snuff-box, my handkerchief and
journal-book. My scimitar, pistols, and pouch, were conveyed in
carriages to his majesty’s stores; but the rest of my goods were
returned me.
I had as I before observed, one private pocket, which escaped their
search, wherein there was a pair of spectacles (which I sometimes use
for the weakness of mine eyes,) a pocket perspective, and some other
little conveniences; which, being of no consequence to the emperor, I
did not think myself bound in honour to discover, and I apprehended they
might be lost or spoiled if I ventured them out of my possession.
CHAPTER III.
[The author diverts the emperor, and his nobility of both sexes, in a
very uncommon manner. The diversions of the court of Lilliput
described. The author has his liberty granted him upon certain
conditions.]
My gentleness and good behaviour had gained so far on the emperor and
his court, and indeed upon the army and people in general, that I began
to conceive hopes of getting my liberty in a short time. I took
all possible methods to cultivate this favourable disposition. The
natives came, by degrees, to be less apprehensive of any danger from me.
I would sometimes lie down, and let five or six of them dance on my
hand; and at last the boys and girls would venture to come and play at
hide-and-seek in my hair. I had now made a good progress in
understanding and speaking the language. The emperor had a mind
one day to entertain me with several of the country shows, wherein they
exceed all nations I have known, both for dexterity and magnificence.
I was diverted with none so much as that of the rope-dancers, performed
upon a slender white thread, extended about two feet, and twelve inches
from the ground. Upon which I shall desire liberty, with the
reader’s patience, to enlarge a little.
This diversion is only practised by those persons who are candidates for
great employments, and high favour at court. They are trained in
this art from their youth, and are not always of noble birth, or liberal
education. When a great office is vacant, either by death or
disgrace (which often happens,) five or six of those candidates petition
the emperor to entertain his majesty and the court with a dance on the
rope; and whoever jumps the highest, without falling, succeeds in the
office. Very often the chief ministers themselves are commanded to
show their skill, and to convince the emperor that they have not lost
their faculty. Flimnap, the treasurer, is allowed to cut a caper
on the straight rope, at least an inch higher than any other lord in the
whole empire. I have seen him do the summerset several times
together, upon a trencher fixed on a rope which is no thicker than a
common packthread in England. My friend Reldresal, principal
secretary for private affairs, is, in my opinion, if I am not partial,
the second after the treasurer; the rest of the great officers are much
upon a par.
These diversions are often attended with fatal accidents, whereof great
numbers are on record. I myself have seen two or three candidates
break a limb. But the danger is much greater, when the ministers
themselves are commanded to show their dexterity; for, by contending to
excel themselves and their fellows, they strain so far that there is
hardly one of them who has not received a fall, and some of them two or
three. I was assured that, a year or two before my arrival,
Flimnap would infallibly have broke his neck, if one of the king’s
cushions, that accidentally lay on the ground, had not weakened the
force of his fall.
There is likewise another diversion, which is only shown before the
emperor and empress, and first minister, upon particular occasions.
The emperor lays on the table three fine silken threads of six inches
long; one is blue, the other red, and the third green. These
threads are proposed as prizes for those persons whom the emperor has a
mind to distinguish by a peculiar mark of his favour. The ceremony
is performed in his majesty’s great chamber of state, where the
candidates are to undergo a trial of dexterity very different from the
former, and such as I have not observed the least resemblance of in any
other country of the new or old world. The emperor holds a stick
in his hands, both ends parallel to the horizon, while the candidates
advancing, one by one, sometimes leap over the stick, sometimes creep
under it, backward and forward, several times, according as the stick is
advanced or depressed. Sometimes the emperor holds one end of the
stick, and his first minister the other; sometimes the minister has it
entirely to himself. Whoever performs his part with most agility,
and holds out the longest in leaping and creeping, is rewarded with the
blue-coloured silk; the red is given to the next, and the green to the
third, which they all wear girt twice round about the middle; and you
see few great persons about this court who are not adorned with one of
these girdles.
The horses of the army, and those of the royal stables, having been
daily led before me, were no longer shy, but would come up to my very
feet without starting. The riders would leap them over my hand, as
I held it on the ground; and one of the emperor’s huntsmen, upon a
large courser, took my foot, shoe and all; which was indeed a prodigious
leap. I had the good fortune to divert the emperor one day after a
very extraordinary manner. I desired he would order several sticks
of two feet high, and the thickness of an ordinary cane, to be brought
me; whereupon his majesty commanded the master of his woods to give
directions accordingly; and the next morning six woodmen arrived with as
many carriages, drawn by eight horses to each. I took nine of
these sticks, and fixing them firmly in the ground in a quadrangular
figure, two feet and a half square, I took four other sticks, and tied
them parallel at each corner, about two feet from the ground; then I
fastened my handkerchief to the nine sticks that stood erect; and
extended it on all sides, till it was tight as the top of a drum; and
the four parallel sticks, rising about five inches higher than the
handkerchief, served as ledges on each side. When I had finished
my work, I desired the emperor to let a troop of his best horses
twenty-four in number, come and exercise upon this plain. His
majesty approved of the proposal, and I took them up, one by one, in my
hands, ready mounted and armed, with the proper officers to exercise
them. As soon as they got into order they divided into two
parties, performed mock skirmishes, discharged blunt arrows, drew their
swords, fled and pursued, attacked and retired, and in short discovered
the best military discipline I ever beheld. The parallel sticks
secured them and their horses from falling over the stage; and the
emperor was so much delighted, that he ordered this entertainment to be
repeated several days, and once was pleased to be lifted up and give the
word of command; and with great difficulty persuaded even the empress
herself to let me hold her in her close chair within two yards of the
stage, when she was able to take a full view of the whole performance.
It was my good fortune, that no ill accident happened in these
entertainments; only once a fiery horse, that belonged to one of the
captains, pawing with his hoof, struck a hole in my handkerchief, and
his foot slipping, he overthrew his rider and himself; but I immediately
relieved them both, and covering the hole with one hand, I set down the
troop with the other, in the same manner as I took them up. The horse
that fell was strained in the left shoulder, but the rider got no hurt;
and I repaired my handkerchief as well as I could: however, I would not
trust to the strength of it any more, in such dangerous enterprises.
About two or three days before I was set at liberty, as I was
entertaining the court with this kind of feat, there arrived an express
to inform his majesty, that some of his subjects, riding near the place
where I was first taken up, had seen a great black substance lying on
the around, very oddly shaped, extending its edges round, as wide as his
majesty’s bedchamber, and rising up in the middle as high as a man;
that it was no living creature, as they at first apprehended, for it lay
on the grass without motion; and some of them had walked round it
several times; that, by mounting upon each other’s shoulders, they had
got to the top, which was flat and even, and, stamping upon it, they
found that it was hollow within; that they humbly conceived it might be
something belonging to the man-mountain; and if his majesty pleased,
they would undertake to bring it with only five horses. I
presently knew what they meant, and was glad at heart to receive this
intelligence. It seems, upon my first reaching the shore after our
shipwreck, I was in such confusion, that before I came to the place
where I went to sleep, my hat, which I had fastened with a string to my
head while I was rowing, and had stuck on all the time I was swimming,
fell off after I came to land; the string, as I conjecture, breaking by
some accident, which I never observed, but thought my hat had been lost
at sea. I entreated his imperial majesty to give orders it might
be brought to me as soon as possible, describing to him the use and the
nature of it: and the next day the waggoners arrived with it, but not in
a very good condition; they had bored two holes in the brim, within an
inch and half of the edge, and fastened two hooks in the holes; these
hooks were tied by a long cord to the harness, and thus my hat was
dragged along for above half an English mile; but, the ground in that
country being extremely smooth and level, it received less damage than I
expected.
Two days after this adventure, the emperor, having ordered that part of
his army which quarters in and about his metropolis, to be in readiness,
took a fancy of diverting himself in a very singular manner. He
desired I would stand like a Colossus, with my legs as far asunder as I
conveniently could. He then commanded his general (who was an old
experienced leader, and a great patron of mine) to draw up the troops in
close order, and march them under me; the foot by twenty-four abreast,
and the horse by sixteen, with drums beating, colours flying, and pikes
advanced. This body consisted of three thousand foot, and a
thousand horse. His majesty gave orders, upon pain of death, that
every soldier in his march should observe the strictest decency with
regard to my person; which however could not prevent some of the younger
officers from turning up their eyes as they passed under me: and, to
confess the truth, my breeches were at that time in so ill a condition,
that they afforded some opportunities for laughter and admiration.
I had sent so many memorials and petitions for my liberty, that his
majesty at length mentioned the matter, first in the cabinet, and then
in a full council; where it was opposed by none, except Skyresh Bolgolam,
who was pleased, without any provocation, to be my mortal enemy.
But it was carried against him by the whole board, and confirmed by the
emperor. That minister was galbet, or admiral of the realm,
very much in his master’s confidence, and a person well versed in
affairs, but of a morose and sour complexion. However, he was at
length persuaded to comply; but prevailed that the articles and
conditions upon which I should be set free, and to which I must swear,
should be drawn up by himself. These articles were brought to me
by Skyresh Bolgolam in person attended by two under-secretaries, and
several persons of distinction. After they were read, I was
demanded to swear to the performance of them; first in the manner of my
own country, and afterwards in the method prescribed by their laws;
which was, to hold my right foot in my left hand, and to place the
middle finger of my right hand on the crown of my head, and my thumb on
the tip of my right ear. But because the reader may be curious to
have some idea of the style and manner of expression peculiar to that
people, as well as to know the article upon which I recovered my
liberty, I have made a translation of the whole instrument, word for
word, as near as I was able, which I here offer to the public.
“Golbasto Momarem Evlame Gurdilo Shefin Mully Ully Gue, most mighty
Emperor of Lilliput, delight and terror of the universe, whose dominions
extend five thousand blustrugs (about twelve miles in
circumference) to the extremities of the globe; monarch of all monarchs,
taller than the sons of men; whose feet press down to the centre, and
whose head strikes against the sun; at whose nod the princes of the
earth shake their knees; pleasant as the spring, comfortable as the
summer, fruitful as autumn, dreadful as winter: his most sublime majesty
proposes to the man-mountain, lately arrived at our celestial dominions,
the following articles, which, by a solemn oath, he shall be obliged to
perform:-
“1st, The man-mountain shall not depart from our dominions, without
our license under our great seal.
“2d, He shall not presume to come into our metropolis, without our
express order; at which time, the inhabitants shall have two hours
warning to keep within doors.
“3d, The said man-mountain shall confine his walks to our principal
high roads, and not offer to walk, or lie down, in a meadow or field of
corn.
“4th, As he walks the said roads, he shall take the utmost care not to
trample upon the bodies of any of our loving subjects, their horses, or
carriages, nor take any of our subjects into his hands without their own
consent.
“5th, If an express requires extraordinary despatch, the man-mountain
shall be obliged to carry, in his pocket, the messenger and horse a six
days journey, once in every moon, and return the said messenger back (if
so required) safe to our imperial presence.
“6th, He shall be our ally against our enemies in the island of
Blefuscu, and do his utmost to destroy their fleet, which is now
preparing to invade us.
“7th, That the said man-mountain shall, at his times of leisure, be
aiding and assisting to our workmen, in helping to raise certain great
stones, towards covering the wall of the principal park, and other our
royal buildings.
“8th, That the said man-mountain shall, in two moons’ time, deliver
in an exact survey of the circumference of our dominions, by a
computation of his own paces round the coast.
“Lastly, That, upon his solemn oath to observe all the above articles,
the said man-mountain shall have a daily allowance of meat and drink
sufficient for the support of 1724 of our subjects, with free access to
our royal person, and other marks of our favour. Given at our
palace at Belfaborac, the twelfth day of the ninety-first moon of our
reign.”
I swore and subscribed to these articles with great cheerfulness and
content, although some of them were not so honourable as I could have
wished; which proceeded wholly from the malice of Skyresh Bolgolam, the
high-admiral: whereupon my chains were immediately unlocked, and I was
at full liberty. The emperor himself, in person, did me the honour
to be by at the whole ceremony. I made my acknowledgements by
prostrating myself at his majesty’s feet: but he commanded me to rise;
and after many gracious expressions, which, to avoid the censure of
vanity, I shall not repeat, he added, “that he hoped I should prove a
useful servant, and well deserve all the favours he had already
conferred upon me, or might do for the future.”
The reader may please to observe, that, in the last article of the
recovery of my liberty, the emperor stipulates to allow me a quantity of
meat and drink sufficient for the support of 1724 Lilliputians.
Some time after, asking a friend at court how they came to fix on that
determinate number, he told me that his majesty’s mathematicians,
having taken the height of my body by the help of a quadrant, and
finding it to exceed theirs in the proportion of twelve to one, they
concluded from the similarity of their bodies, that mine must contain at
least 1724 of theirs, and consequently would require as much food as was
necessary to support that number of Lilliputians. By which the
reader may conceive an idea of the ingenuity of that people, as well as
the prudent and exact economy of so great a prince.
CHAPTER IV.
[Mildendo, the metropolis of Lilliput, described, together with the
emperor’s palace. A conversation between the author and a
principal secretary, concerning the affairs of that empire. The
author’s offers to serve the emperor in his wars.]
The first request I made, after I had obtained my liberty, was, that I
might have license to see Mildendo, the metropolis; which the emperor
easily granted me, but with a special charge to do no hurt either to the
inhabitants or their houses. The people had notice, by
proclamation, of my design to visit the town. The wall which
encompassed it is two feet and a half high, and at least eleven inches
broad, so that a coach and horses may be driven very safely round it;
and it is flanked with strong towers at ten feet distance. I
stepped over the great western gate, and passed very gently, and
sidling, through the two principal streets, only in my short waistcoat,
for fear of damaging the roofs and eaves of the houses with the skirts
of my coat. I walked with the utmost circumspection, to avoid
treading on any stragglers who might remain in the streets, although the
orders were very strict, that all people should keep in their houses, at
their own peril. The garret windows and tops of houses were so
crowded with spectators, that I thought in all my travels I had not seen
a more populous place. The city is an exact square, each side of
the wall being five hundred feet long. The two great streets,
which run across and divide it into four quarters, are five feet wide.
The lanes and alleys, which I could not enter, but only view them as I
passed, are from twelve to eighteen inches. The town is capable of
holding five hundred thousand souls: the houses are from three to five
stories: the shops and markets well provided.
The emperor’s palace is in the centre of the city where the two great
streets meet. It is enclosed by a wall of two feet high, and
twenty feet distance from the buildings. I had his majesty’s
permission to step over this wall; and, the space being so wide between
that and the palace, I could easily view it on every side. The
outward court is a square of forty feet, and includes two other courts:
in the inmost are the royal apartments, which I was very desirous to
see, but found it extremely difficult; for the great gates, from one
square into another, were but eighteen inches high, and seven inches
wide. Now the buildings of the outer court were at least five feet
high, and it was impossible for me to stride over them without infinite
damage to the pile, though the walls were strongly built of hewn stone,
and four inches thick. At the same time the emperor had a great
desire that I should see the magnificence of his palace; but this I was
not able to do till three days after, which I spent in cutting down with
my knife some of the largest trees in the royal park, about a hundred
yards distant from the city. Of these trees I made two stools,
each about three feet high, and strong enough to bear my weight.
The people having received notice a second time, I went again through
the city to the palace with my two stools in my hands. When I came
to the side of the outer court, I stood upon one stool, and took the
other in my hand; this I lifted over the roof, and gently set it down on
the space between the first and second court, which was eight feet wide.
I then stept over the building very conveniently from one stool to the
other, and drew up the first after me with a hooked stick. By this
contrivance I got into the inmost court; and, lying down upon my side, I
applied my face to the windows of the middle stories, which were left
open on purpose, and discovered the most splendid apartments that can be
imagined. There I saw the empress and the young princes, in their
several lodgings, with their chief attendants about them. Her
imperial majesty was pleased to smile very graciously upon me, and gave
me out of the window her hand to kiss.
But I shall not anticipate the reader with further descriptions of this
kind, because I reserve them for a greater work, which is now almost
ready for the press; containing a general description of this empire,
from its first erection, through along series of princes; with a
particular account of their wars and politics, laws, learning, and
religion; their plants and animals; their peculiar manners and customs,
with other matters very curious and useful; my chief design at present
being only to relate such events and transactions as happened to the
public or to myself during a residence of about nine months in that
empire.
One morning, about a fortnight after I had obtained my liberty,
Reldresal, principal secretary (as they style him) for private affairs,
came to my house attended only by one servant. He ordered his
coach to wait at a distance, and desired I would give him an hours
audience; which I readily consented to, on account of his quality and
personal merits, as well as of the many good offices he had done me
during my solicitations at court. I offered to lie down that he
might the more conveniently reach my ear, but he chose rather to let me
hold him in my hand during our conversation. He began with
compliments on my liberty; said “he might pretend to some merit in
it;” but, however, added, “that if it had not been for the present
situation of things at court, perhaps I might not have obtained it so
soon. For,” said he, “as flourishing a condition as we may
appear to be in to foreigners, we labour under two mighty evils: a
violent faction at home, and the danger of an invasion, by a most potent
enemy, from abroad. As to the first, you are to understand, that
for about seventy moons past there have been two struggling parties in
this empire, under the names of Tramecksan and Slamecksan,
from the high and low heels of their shoes, by which they distinguish
themselves. It is alleged, indeed, that the high heels are most
agreeable to our ancient constitution; but, however this be, his majesty
has determined to make use only of low heels in the administration of
the government, and all offices in the gift of the crown, as you cannot
but observe; and particularly that his majesty’s imperial heels are
lower at least by a drurr than any of his court (drurr is
a measure about the fourteenth part of an inch). The animosities
between these two parties run so high, that they will neither eat, nor
drink, nor talk with each other. We compute the Tramecksan,
or high heels, to exceed us in number; but the power is wholly on our
side. We apprehend his imperial highness, the heir to the crown,
to have some tendency towards the high heels; at least we can plainly
discover that one of his heels is higher than the other, which gives him
a hobble in his gait. Now, in the midst of these intestine
disquiets, we are threatened with an invasion from the island of
Blefuscu, which is the other great empire of the universe, almost as
large and powerful as this of his majesty. For as to what we have
heard you affirm, that there are other kingdoms and states in the world
inhabited by human creatures as large as yourself, our philosophers are
in much doubt, and would rather conjecture that you dropped from the
moon, or one of the stars; because it is certain, that a hundred mortals
of your bulk would in a short time destroy all the fruits and cattle of
his majesty’s dominions: besides, our histories of six thousand moons
make no mention of any other regions than the two great empires of
Lilliput and Blefuscu. Which two mighty powers have, as I was
going to tell you, been engaged in a most obstinate war for
six-and-thirty moons past. It began upon the following occasion.
It is allowed on all hands, that the primitive way of breaking eggs,
before we eat them, was upon the larger end; but his present majesty’s
grandfather, while he was a boy, going to eat an egg, and breaking it
according to the ancient practice, happened to cut one of his fingers.
Whereupon the emperor his father published an edict, commanding all his
subjects, upon great penalties, to break the smaller end of their eggs.
The people so highly resented this law, that our histories tell us,
there have been six rebellions raised on that account; wherein one
emperor lost his life, and another his crown. These civil
commotions were constantly fomented by the monarchs of Blefuscu; and
when they were quelled, the exiles always fled for refuge to that
empire. It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at
several times suffered death, rather than submit to break their eggs at
the smaller end. Many hundred large volumes have been published
upon this controversy: but the books of the Big-endians have been long
forbidden, and the whole party rendered incapable by law of holding
employments. During the course of these troubles, the emperors of
Blefusca did frequently expostulate by their ambassadors, accusing us of
making a schism in religion, by offending against a fundamental doctrine
of our great prophet Lustrog, in the fifty-fourth chapter of the
Blundecral (which is their Alcoran). This, however, is thought to
be a mere strain upon the text; for the words are these: ‘that all
true believers break their eggs at the convenient end.’ And
which is the convenient end, seems, in my humble opinion to be left to
every man’s conscience, or at least in the power of the chief
magistrate to determine. Now, the Big-endian exiles have found so
much credit in the emperor of Blefuscu’s court, and so much private
assistance and encouragement from their party here at home, that a
bloody war has been carried on between the two empires for
six-and-thirty moons, with various success; during which time we have
lost forty capital ships, and a much a greater number of smaller
vessels, together with thirty thousand of our best seamen and soldiers;
and the damage received by the enemy is reckoned to be somewhat greater
than ours. However, they have now equipped a numerous fleet, and
are just preparing to make a descent upon us; and his imperial majesty,
placing great confidence in your valour and strength, has commanded me
to lay this account of his affairs before you.”
I desired the secretary to present my humble duty to the emperor; and to
let him know, “that I thought it would not become me, who was a
foreigner, to interfere with parties; but I was ready, with the hazard
of my life, to defend his person and state against all invaders.”
CHAPTER V.
[The author, by an extraordinary stratagem, prevents an invasion.
A high title of honour is conferred upon him. Ambassadors arrive
from the emperor of Blefuscu, and sue for peace. The empress’s
apartment on fire by an accident; the author instrumental in saving the
rest of the palace.]
The empire of Blefuscu is an island situated to the north-east of
Lilliput, from which it is parted only by a channel of eight hundred
yards wide. I had not yet seen it, and upon this notice of an
intended invasion, I avoided appearing on that side of the coast, for
fear of being discovered, by some of the enemy’s ships, who had
received no intelligence of me; all intercourse between the two empires
having been strictly forbidden during the war, upon pain of death, and
an embargo laid by our emperor upon all vessels whatsoever. I
communicated to his majesty a project I had formed of seizing the
enemy’s whole fleet; which, as our scouts assured us, lay at anchor in
the harbour, ready to sail with the first fair wind. I consulted
the most experienced seamen upon the depth of the channel, which they
had often plumbed; who told me, that in the middle, at high-water, it
was seventy glumgluffs deep, which is about six feet of European
measure; and the rest of it fifty glumgluffs at most. I
walked towards the north-east coast, over against Blefuscu, where, lying
down behind a hillock, I took out my small perspective glass, and viewed
the enemy’s fleet at anchor, consisting of about fifty men of war, and
a great number of transports: I then came back to my house, and gave
orders (for which I had a warrant) for a great quantity of the strongest
cable and bars of iron. The cable was about as thick as packthread
and the bars of the length and size of a knitting-needle. I
trebled the cable to make it stronger, and for the same reason I twisted
three of the iron bars together, bending the extremities into a hook.
Having thus fixed fifty hooks to as many cables, I went back to the
north-east coast, and putting off my coat, shoes, and stockings, walked
into the sea, in my leathern jerkin, about half an hour before high
water. I waded with what haste I could, and swam in the middle
about thirty yards, till I felt ground. I arrived at the fleet in
less than half an hour. The enemy was so frightened when they saw
me, that they leaped out of their ships, and swam to shore, where there
could not be fewer than thirty thousand souls. I then took my
tackling, and, fastening a hook to the hole at the prow of each, I tied
all the cords together at the end. While I was thus employed, the
enemy discharged several thousand arrows, many of which stuck in my
hands and face, and, beside the excessive smart, gave me much
disturbance in my work. My greatest apprehension was for mine
eyes, which I should have infallibly lost, if I had not suddenly thought
of an expedient. I kept, among other little necessaries, a pair of
spectacles in a private pocket, which, as I observed before, had escaped
the emperor’s searchers. These I took out and fastened as
strongly as I could upon my nose, and thus armed, went on boldly with my
work, in spite of the enemy’s arrows, many of which struck against the
glasses of my spectacles, but without any other effect, further than a
little to discompose them. I had now fastened all the hooks, and,
taking the knot in my hand, began to pull; but not a ship would stir,
for they were all too fast held by their anchors, so that the boldest
part of my enterprise remained. I therefore let go the cord, and
leaving the looks fixed to the ships, I resolutely cut with my knife the
cables that fastened the anchors, receiving about two hundred shots in
my face and hands; then I took up the knotted end of the cables, to
which my hooks were tied, and with great ease drew fifty of the
enemy’s largest men of war after me.
The Blefuscudians, who had not the least imagination of what I intended,
were at first confounded with astonishment. They had seen me cut
the cables, and thought my design was only to let the ships run adrift
or fall foul on each other: but when they perceived the whole fleet
moving in order, and saw me pulling at the end, they set up such a
scream of grief and despair as it is almost impossible to describe or
conceive. When I had got out of danger, I stopped awhile to pick
out the arrows that stuck in my hands and face; and rubbed on some of
the same ointment that was given me at my first arrival, as I have
formerly mentioned. I then took off my spectacles, and waiting
about an hour, till the tide was a little fallen, I waded through the
middle with my cargo, and arrived safe at the royal port of Lilliput.
The emperor and his whole court stood on the shore, expecting the issue
of this great adventure. They saw the ships move forward in a
large half-moon, but could not discern me, who was up to my breast in
water. When I advanced to the middle of the channel, they were yet
more in pain, because I was under water to my neck. The emperor
concluded me to be drowned, and that the enemy’s fleet was approaching
in a hostile manner: but he was soon eased of his fears; for the channel
growing shallower every step I made, I came in a short time within
hearing, and holding up the end of the cable, by which the fleet was
fastened, I cried in a loud voice, “Long live the most puissant king
of Lilliput!” This great prince received me at my landing with
all possible encomiums, and created me a nardac upon the spot,
which is the highest title of honour among them.
His majesty desired I would take some other opportunity of bringing all
the rest of his enemy’s ships into his ports. And so
unmeasureable is the ambition of princes, that he seemed to think of
nothing less than reducing the whole empire of Blefuscu into a province,
and governing it, by a viceroy; of destroying the Big-endian exiles, and
compelling that people to break the smaller end of their eggs, by which
he would remain the sole monarch of the whole world. But I
endeavoured to divert him from this design, by many arguments drawn from
the topics of policy as well as justice; and I plainly protested,
“that I would never be an instrument of bringing a free and brave
people into slavery.” And, when the matter was debated in
council, the wisest part of the ministry were of my opinion.
This open bold declaration of mine was so opposite to the schemes and
politics of his imperial majesty, that he could never forgive me.
He mentioned it in a very artful manner at council, where I was told
that some of the wisest appeared, at least by their silence, to be of my
opinion; but others, who were my secret enemies, could not forbear some
expressions which, by a side-wind, reflected on me. And from this
time began an intrigue between his majesty and a junto of ministers,
maliciously bent against me, which broke out in less than two months,
and had like to have ended in my utter destruction. Of so little
weight are the greatest services to princes, when put into the balance
with a refusal to gratify their passions.
About three weeks after this exploit, there arrived a solemn embassy
from Blefuscu, with humble offers of a peace, which was soon concluded,
upon conditions very advantageous to our emperor, wherewith I shall not
trouble the reader. There were six ambassadors, with a train of
about five hundred persons, and their entry was very magnificent,
suitable to the grandeur of their master, and the importance of their
business. When their treaty was finished, wherein I did them
several good offices by the credit I now had, or at least appeared to
have, at court, their excellencies, who were privately told how much I
had been their friend, made me a visit in form. They began with
many compliments upon my valour and generosity, invited me to that
kingdom in the emperor their master’s name, and desired me to show
them some proofs of my prodigious strength, of which they had heard so
many wonders; wherein I readily obliged them, but shall not trouble the
reader with the particulars.
When I had for some time entertained their excellencies, to their
infinite satisfaction and surprise, I desired they would do me the
honour to present my most humble respects to the emperor their master,
the renown of whose virtues had so justly filled the whole world with
admiration, and whose royal person I resolved to attend, before I
returned to my own country. Accordingly, the next time I had the
honour to see our emperor, I desired his general license to wait on the
Blefuscudian monarch, which he was pleased to grant me, as I could
perceive, in a very cold manner; but could not guess the reason, till I
had a whisper from a certain person, “that Flimnap and Bolgolam had
represented my intercourse with those ambassadors as a mark of
disaffection;” from which I am sure my heart was wholly free.
And this was the first time I began to conceive some imperfect idea of
courts and ministers.
It is to be observed, that these ambassadors spoke to me, by an
interpreter, the languages of both empires differing as much from each
other as any two in Europe, and each nation priding itself upon the
antiquity, beauty, and energy of their own tongue, with an avowed
contempt for that of their neighbour; yet our emperor, standing upon the
advantage he had got by the seizure of their fleet, obliged them to
deliver their credentials, and make their speech, in the Lilliputian
tongue. And it must be confessed, that from the great intercourse
of trade and commerce between both realms, from the continual reception
of exiles which is mutual among them, and from the custom, in each
empire, to send their young nobility and richer gentry to the other, in
order to polish themselves by seeing the world, and understanding men
and manners; there are few persons of distinction, or merchants, or
seamen, who dwell in the maritime parts, but what can hold conversation
in both tongues; as I found some weeks after, when I went to pay my
respects to the emperor of Blefuscu, which, in the midst of great
misfortunes, through the malice of my enemies, proved a very happy
adventure to me, as I shall relate in its proper place.
The reader may remember, that when I signed those articles upon which I
recovered my liberty, there were some which I disliked, upon account of
their being too servile; neither could anything but an extreme necessity
have forced me to submit. But being now a nardac of the
highest rank in that empire, such offices were looked upon as below my
dignity, and the emperor (to do him justice), never once mentioned them
to me. However, it was not long before I had an opportunity of
doing his majesty, at least as I then thought, a most signal service.
I was alarmed at midnight with the cries of many hundred people at my
door; by which, being suddenly awaked, I was in some kind of terror.
I heard the word Burglum repeated incessantly: several of the
emperor’s court, making their way through the crowd, entreated me to
come immediately to the palace, where her imperial majesty’s apartment
was on fire, by the carelessness of a maid of honour, who fell asleep
while she was reading a romance. I got up in an instant; and
orders being given to clear the way before me, and it being likewise a
moonshine night, I made a shift to get to the palace without trampling
on any of the people. I found they had already applied ladders to
the walls of the apartment, and were well provided with buckets, but the
water was at some distance. These buckets were about the size of
large thimbles, and the poor people supplied me with them as fast as
they could: but the flame was so violent that they did little good.
I might easily have stifled it with my coat, which I unfortunately left
behind me for haste, and came away only in my leathern jerkin. The
case seemed wholly desperate and deplorable; and this magnificent palace
would have infallibly been burnt down to the ground, if, by a presence
of mind unusual to me, I had not suddenly thought of an expedient.
I had, the evening before, drunk plentifully of a most delicious wine
called glimigrim, (the Blefuscudians call it flunec, but
ours is esteemed the better sort,) which is very diuretic. By the
luckiest chance in the world, I had not discharged myself of any part of
it. The heat I had contracted by coming very near the flames, and
by labouring to quench them, made the wine begin to operate by urine;
which I voided in such a quantity, and applied so well to the proper
places, that in three minutes the fire was wholly extinguished, and the
rest of that noble pile, which had cost so many ages in erecting,
preserved from destruction.
It was now day-light, and I returned to my house without waiting to
congratulate with the emperor: because, although I had done a very
eminent piece of service, yet I could not tell how his majesty might
resent the manner by which I had performed it: for, by the fundamental
laws of the realm, it is capital in any person, of what quality soever,
to make water within the precincts of the palace. But I was a
little comforted by a message from his majesty, “that he would give
orders to the grand justiciary for passing my pardon in form:” which,
however, I could not obtain; and I was privately assured, “that the
empress, conceiving the greatest abhorrence of what I had done, removed
to the most distant side of the court, firmly resolved that those
buildings should never be repaired for her use: and, in the presence of
her chief confidents could not forbear vowing revenge.”
CHAPTER VI.
[Of the inhabitants of Lilliput; their learning, laws, and customs; the
manner of educating their children. The author’s way of living
in that country. His vindication of a great lady.]
Although I intend to leave the description of this empire to a
particular treatise, yet, in the mean time, I am content to gratify the
curious reader with some general ideas. As the common size of the
natives is somewhat under six inches high, so there is an exact
proportion in all other animals, as well as plants and trees: for
instance, the tallest horses and oxen are between four and five inches
in height, the sheep an inch and half, more or less: their geese about
the bigness of a sparrow, and so the several gradations downwards till
you come to the smallest, which to my sight, were almost invisible; but
nature has adapted the eyes of the Lilliputians to all objects proper
for their view: they see with great exactness, but at no great distance.
And, to show the sharpness of their sight towards objects that are near,
I have been much pleased with observing a cook pulling a lark, which was
not so large as a common fly; and a young girl threading an invisible
needle with invisible silk. Their tallest trees are about seven
feet high: I mean some of those in the great royal park, the tops
whereof I could but just reach with my fist clenched. The other
vegetables are in the same proportion; but this I leave to the
reader’s imagination.
I shall say but little at present of their learning, which, for many
ages, has flourished in all its branches among them: but their manner of
writing is very peculiar, being neither from the left to the right, like
the Europeans, nor from the right to the left, like the Arabians, nor
from up to down, like the Chinese, but aslant, from one corner of the
paper to the other, like ladies in England.
They bury their dead with their heads directly downward, because they
hold an opinion, that in eleven thousand moons they are all to rise
again; in which period the earth (which they conceive to be flat) will
turn upside down, and by this means they shall, at their resurrection,
be found ready standing on their feet. The learned among them
confess the absurdity of this doctrine; but the practice still
continues, in compliance to the vulgar.
There are some laws and customs in this empire very peculiar; and if
they were not so directly contrary to those of my own dear country, I
should be tempted to say a little in their justification. It is
only to be wished they were as well executed. The first I shall
mention, relates to informers. All crimes against the state, are
punished here with the utmost severity; but, if the person accused makes
his innocence plainly to appear upon his trial, the accuser is
immediately put to an ignominious death; and out of his goods or lands
the innocent person is quadruply recompensed for the loss of his time,
for the danger he underwent, for the hardship of his imprisonment, and
for all the charges he has been at in making his defence; or, if that
fund be deficient, it is largely supplied by the crown. The
emperor also confers on him some public mark of his favour, and
proclamation is made of his innocence through the whole city.
They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom
fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance,
with a very common understanding, may preserve a man’s goods from
thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since
it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying
and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and
connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always
undone, and the knave gets the advantage. I remember, when I was
once interceding with the emperor for a criminal who had wronged his
master of a great sum of money, which he had received by order and ran
away with; and happening to tell his majesty, by way of extenuation,
that it was only a breach of trust, the emperor thought it monstrous in
me to offer as a defence the greatest aggravation of the crime; and
truly I had little to say in return, farther than the common answer,
that different nations had different customs; for, I confess, I was
heartily ashamed. {2}
Although we usually call reward and punishment the two hinges upon which
all government turns, yet I could never observe this maxim to be put in
practice by any nation except that of Lilliput. Whoever can there
bring sufficient proof, that he has strictly observed the laws of his
country for seventy-three moons, has a claim to certain privileges,
according to his quality or condition of life, with a proportionable sum
of money out of a fund appropriated for that use: he likewise acquires
the title of snilpall, or legal, which is added to his name, but
does not descend to his posterity. And these people thought it a
prodigious defect of policy among us, when I told them that our laws
were enforced only by penalties, without any mention of reward. It
is upon this account that the image of Justice, in their courts of
judicature, is formed with six eyes, two before, as many behind, and on
each side one, to signify circumspection; with a bag of gold open in her
right hand, and a sword sheathed in her left, to show she is more
disposed to reward than to punish.
In choosing persons for all employments, they have more regard to good
morals than to great abilities; for, since government is necessary to
mankind, they believe, that the common size of human understanding is
fitted to some station or other; and that Providence never intended to
make the management of public affairs a mystery to be comprehended only
by a few persons of sublime genius, of which there seldom are three born
in an age: but they suppose truth, justice, temperance, and the like, to
be in every man’s power; the practice of which virtues, assisted by
experience and a good intention, would qualify any man for the service
of his country, except where a course of study is required. But
they thought the want of moral virtues was so far from being supplied by
superior endowments of the mind, that employments could never be put
into such dangerous hands as those of persons so qualified; and, at
least, that the mistakes committed by ignorance, in a virtuous
disposition, would never be of such fatal consequence to the public
weal, as the practices of a man, whose inclinations led him to be
corrupt, and who had great abilities to manage, to multiply, and defend
his corruptions.
In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man
incapable of holding any public station; for, since kings avow
themselves to be the deputies of Providence, the Lilliputians think
nothing can be more absurd than for a prince to employ such men as
disown the authority under which he acts.
In relating these and the following laws, I would only be understood to
mean the original institutions, and not the most scandalous corruptions,
into which these people are fallen by the degenerate nature of man.
For, as to that infamous practice of acquiring great employments by
dancing on the ropes, or badges of favour and distinction by leaping
over sticks and creeping under them, the reader is to observe, that they
were first introduced by the grandfather of the emperor now reigning,
and grew to the present height by the gradual increase of party and
faction.
Ingratitude is among them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in
some other countries: for they reason thus; that whoever makes ill
returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of
mankind, from whom he has received no obligation, and therefore such a
man is not fit to live.
Their notions relating to the duties of parents and children differ
extremely from ours. For, since the conjunction of male and female
is founded upon the great law of nature, in order to propagate and
continue the species, the Lilliputians will needs have it, that men and
women are joined together, like other animals, by the motives of
concupiscence; and that their tenderness towards their young proceeds
from the like natural principle: for which reason they will never allow
that a child is under any obligation to his father for begetting him, or
to his mother for bringing him into the world; which, considering the
miseries of human life, was neither a benefit in itself, nor intended so
by his parents, whose thoughts, in their love encounters, were otherwise
employed. Upon these, and the like reasonings, their opinion is,
that parents are the last of all others to be trusted with the education
of their own children; and therefore they have in every town public
nurseries, where all parents, except cottagers and labourers, are
obliged to send their infants of both sexes to be reared and educated,
when they come to the age of twenty moons, at which time they are
supposed to have some rudiments of docility. These schools are of
several kinds, suited to different qualities, and both sexes. They
have certain professors well skilled in preparing children for such a
condition of life as befits the rank of their parents, and their own
capacities, as well as inclinations. I shall first say something
of the male nurseries, and then of the female.
The nurseries for males of noble or eminent birth, are provided with
grave and learned professors, and their several deputies. The
clothes and food of the children are plain and simple. They are
bred up in the principles of honour, justice, courage, modesty,
clemency, religion, and love of their country; they are always employed
in some business, except in the times of eating and sleeping, which are
very short, and two hours for diversions consisting of bodily exercises.
They are dressed by men till four years of age, and then are obliged to
dress themselves, although their quality be ever so great; and the women
attendant, who are aged proportionably to ours at fifty, perform only
the most menial offices. They are never suffered to converse with
servants, but go together in smaller or greater numbers to take their
diversions, and always in the presence of a professor, or one of his
deputies; whereby they avoid those early bad impressions of folly and
vice, to which our children are subject. Their parents are
suffered to see them only twice a year; the visit is to last but an
hour; they are allowed to kiss the child at meeting and parting; but a
professor, who always stands by on those occasions, will not suffer them
to whisper, or use any fondling expressions, or bring any presents of
toys, sweetmeats, and the like.
The pension from each family for the education and entertainment of a
child, upon failure of due payment, is levied by the emperor’s
officers.
The nurseries for children of ordinary gentlemen, merchants, traders,
and handicrafts, are managed proportionably after the same manner; only
those designed for trades are put out apprentices at eleven years old,
whereas those of persons of quality continue in their exercises till
fifteen, which answers to twenty-one with us: but the confinement is
gradually lessened for the last three years.
In the female nurseries, the young girls of quality are educated much
like the males, only they are dressed by orderly servants of their own
sex; but always in the presence of a professor or deputy, till they come
to dress themselves, which is at five years old. And if it be
found that these nurses ever presume to entertain the girls with
frightful or foolish stories, or the common follies practised by
chambermaids among us, they are publicly whipped thrice about the city,
imprisoned for a year, and banished for life to the most desolate part
of the country. Thus the young ladies are as much ashamed of being
cowards and fools as the men, and despise all personal ornaments, beyond
decency and cleanliness: neither did I perceive any difference in their
education made by their difference of sex, only that the exercises of
the females were not altogether so robust; and that some rules were
given them relating to domestic life, and a smaller compass of learning
was enjoined them: for their maxim is, that among peoples of quality, a
wife should be always a reasonable and agreeable companion, because she
cannot always be young. When the girls are twelve years old, which
among them is the marriageable age, their parents or guardians take them
home, with great expressions of gratitude to the professors, and seldom
without tears of the young lady and her companions.
In the nurseries of females of the meaner sort, the children are
instructed in all kinds of works proper for their sex, and their several
degrees: those intended for apprentices are dismissed at seven years
old, the rest are kept to eleven.
The meaner families who have children at these nurseries, are obliged,
besides their annual pension, which is as low as possible, to return to
the steward of the nursery a small monthly share of their gettings, to
be a portion for the child; and therefore all parents are limited in
their expenses by the law. For the Lilliputians think nothing can
be more unjust, than for people, in subservience to their own appetites,
to bring children into the world, and leave the burthen of supporting
them on the public. As to persons of quality, they give security
to appropriate a certain sum for each child, suitable to their
condition; and these funds are always managed with good husbandry and
the most exact justice.
The cottagers and labourers keep their children at home, their business
being only to till and cultivate the earth, and therefore their
education is of little consequence to the public: but the old and
diseased among them, are supported by hospitals; for begging is a trade
unknown in this empire.
And here it may, perhaps, divert the curious reader, to give some
account of my domestics, and my manner of living in this country, during
a residence of nine months, and thirteen days. Having a head
mechanically turned, and being likewise forced by necessity, I had made
for myself a table and chair convenient enough, out of the largest trees
in the royal park. Two hundred sempstresses were employed to make
me shirts, and linen for my bed and table, all of the strongest and
coarsest kind they could get; which, however, they were forced to quilt
together in several folds, for the thickest was some degrees finer than
lawn. Their linen is usually three inches wide, and three feet
make a piece. The sempstresses took my measure as I lay on the
ground, one standing at my neck, and another at my mid-leg, with a
strong cord extended, that each held by the end, while a third measured
the length of the cord with a rule of an inch long. Then they
measured my right thumb, and desired no more; for by a mathematical
computation, that twice round the thumb is once round the wrist, and so
on to the neck and the waist, and by the help of my old shirt, which I
displayed on the ground before them for a pattern, they fitted me
exactly. Three hundred tailors were employed in the same manner to
make me clothes; but they had another contrivance for taking my measure.
I kneeled down, and they raised a ladder from the ground to my neck;
upon this ladder one of them mounted, and let fall a plumb-line from my
collar to the floor, which just answered the length of my coat: but my
waist and arms I measured myself. When my clothes were finished,
which was done in my house (for the largest of theirs would not have
been able to hold them), they looked like the patch-work made by the
ladies in England, only that mine were all of a colour.
I had three hundred cooks to dress my victuals, in little convenient
huts built about my house, where they and their families lived, and
prepared me two dishes a-piece. I took up twenty waiters in my
hand, and placed them on the table: a hundred more attended below on the
ground, some with dishes of meat, and some with barrels of wine and
other liquors slung on their shoulders; all which the waiters above drew
up, as I wanted, in a very ingenious manner, by certain cords, as we
draw the bucket up a well in Europe. A dish of their meat was a
good mouthful, and a barrel of their liquor a reasonable draught.
Their mutton yields to ours, but their beef is excellent. I have
had a sirloin so large, that I have been forced to make three bites of
it; but this is rare. My servants were astonished to see me eat
it, bones and all, as in our country we do the leg of a lark.
Their geese and turkeys I usually ate at a mouthful, and I confess they
far exceed ours. Of their smaller fowl I could take up twenty or
thirty at the end of my knife.
One day his imperial majesty, being informed of my way of living,
desired “that himself and his royal consort, with the young princes of
the blood of both sexes, might have the happiness,” as he was pleased
to call it, “of dining with me.” They came accordingly, and I
placed them in chairs of state, upon my table, just over against me,
with their guards about them. Flimnap, the lord high treasurer,
attended there likewise with his white staff; and I observed he often
looked on me with a sour countenance, which I would not seem to regard,
but ate more than usual, in honour to my dear country, as well as to
fill the court with admiration. I have some private reasons to
believe, that this visit from his majesty gave Flimnap an opportunity of
doing me ill offices to his master. That minister had always been
my secret enemy, though he outwardly caressed me more than was usual to
the moroseness of his nature. He represented to the emperor “the
low condition of his treasury; that he was forced to take up money at a
great discount; that exchequer bills would not circulate under nine per
cent. below par; that I had cost his majesty above a million and a half
of sprugs” (their greatest gold coin, about the bigness of a
spangle) “and, upon the whole, that it would be advisable in the
emperor to take the first fair occasion of dismissing me.”
I am here obliged to vindicate the reputation of an excellent lady, who
was an innocent sufferer upon my account. The treasurer took a
fancy to be jealous of his wife, from the malice of some evil tongues,
who informed him that her grace had taken a violent affection for my
person; and the court scandal ran for some time, that she once came
privately to my lodging. This I solemnly declare to be a most
infamous falsehood, without any grounds, further than that her grace was
pleased to treat me with all innocent marks of freedom and friendship.
I own she came often to my house, but always publicly, nor ever without
three more in the coach, who were usually her sister and young daughter,
and some particular acquaintance; but this was common to many other
ladies of the court. And I still appeal to my servants round,
whether they at any time saw a coach at my door, without knowing what
persons were in it. On those occasions, when a servant had given
me notice, my custom was to go immediately to the door, and, after
paying my respects, to take up the coach and two horses very carefully
in my hands (for, if there were six horses, the postillion always
unharnessed four,) and place them on a table, where I had fixed a
movable rim quite round, of five inches high, to prevent accidents.
And I have often had four coaches and horses at once on my table, full
of company, while I sat in my chair, leaning my face towards them; and
when I was engaged with one set, the coachmen would gently drive the
others round my table. I have passed many an afternoon very
agreeably in these conversations. But I defy the treasurer, or his
two informers (I will name them, and let them make the best of it)
Clustril and Drunlo, to prove that any person ever came to me incognito,
except the secretary Reldresal, who was sent by express command of his
imperial majesty, as I have before related. I should not have
dwelt so long upon this particular, if it had not been a point wherein
the reputation of a great lady is so nearly concerned, to say nothing of
my own; though I then had the honour to be a nardac, which the
treasurer himself is not; for all the world knows, that he is only a glumglum,
a title inferior by one degree, as that of a marquis is to a duke in
England; yet I allow he preceded me in right of his post. These
false informations, which I afterwards came to the knowledge of by an
accident not proper to mention, made the treasurer show his lady for
some time an ill countenance, and me a worse; and although he was at
last undeceived and reconciled to her, yet I lost all credit with him,
and found my interest decline very fast with the emperor himself, who
was, indeed, too much governed by that favourite.
CHAPTER VII.
[The author, being informed of a design to accuse him of high-treason,
makes his escape to Blefuscu. His reception there.]
Before I proceed to give an account of my leaving this kingdom, it may
be proper to inform the reader of a private intrigue which had been for
two months forming against me.
I had been hitherto, all my life, a stranger to courts, for which I was
unqualified by the meanness of my condition. I had indeed heard
and read enough of the dispositions of great princes and ministers, but
never expected to have found such terrible effects of them, in so remote
a country, governed, as I thought, by very different maxims from those
in Europe.
When I was just preparing to pay my attendance on the emperor of
Blefuscu, a considerable person at court (to whom I had been very
serviceable, at a time when he lay under the highest displeasure of his
imperial majesty) came to my house very privately at night, in a close
chair, and, without sending his name, desired admittance. The
chairmen were dismissed; I put the chair, with his lordship in it, into
my coat-pocket: and, giving orders to a trusty servant, to say I was
indisposed and gone to sleep, I fastened the door of my house, placed
the chair on the table, according to my usual custom, and sat down by
it. After the common salutations were over, observing his
lordship’s countenance full of concern, and inquiring into the reason,
he desired “I would hear him with patience, in a matter that highly
concerned my honour and my life.” His speech was to the
following effect, for I took notes of it as soon as he left me:-
“You are to know,” said he, “that several committees of council
have been lately called, in the most private manner, on your account;
and it is but two days since his majesty came to a full resolution.
“You are very sensible that Skyresh Bolgolam” (galbet, or
high-admiral) “has been your mortal enemy, almost ever since your
arrival. His original reasons I know not; but his hatred is
increased since your great success against Blefuscu, by which his glory
as admiral is much obscured. This lord, in conjunction with
Flimnap the high-treasurer, whose enmity against you is notorious on
account of his lady, Limtoc the general, Lalcon the chamberlain, and
Balmuff the grand justiciary, have prepared articles of impeachment
against you, for treason and other capital crimes.”
This preface made me so impatient, being conscious of my own merits and
innocence, that I was going to interrupt him; when he entreated me to be
silent, and thus proceeded:-
“Out of gratitude for the favours you have done me, I procured
information of the whole proceedings, and a copy of the articles;
wherein I venture my head for your service.
“‘Articles of Impeachment against QUINBUS FLESTRIN, (the
Man-Mountain.)
ARTICLE I.
“‘Whereas, by a statute made in the reign of his imperial majesty
Calin Deffar Plune, it is enacted, that, whoever shall make water within
the precincts of the royal palace, shall be liable to the pains and
penalties of high-treason; notwithstanding, the said Quinbus Flestrin,
in open breach of the said law, under colour of extinguishing the fire
kindled in the apartment of his majesty’s most dear imperial consort,
did maliciously, traitorously, and devilishly, by discharge of his
urine, put out the said fire kindled in the said apartment, lying and
being within the precincts of the said royal palace, against the statute
in that case provided, etc. against the duty, etc.
ARTICLE II.
“‘That the said Quinbus Flestrin, having brought the imperial fleet
of Blefuscu into the royal port, and being afterwards commanded by his
imperial majesty to seize all the other ships of the said empire of
Blefuscu, and reduce that empire to a province, to be governed by a
viceroy from hence, and to destroy and put to death, not only all the
Big-endian exiles, but likewise all the people of that empire who would
not immediately forsake the Big-endian heresy, he, the said Flestrin,
like a false traitor against his most auspicious, serene, imperial
majesty, did petition to be excused from the said service, upon pretence
of unwillingness to force the consciences, or destroy the liberties and
lives of an innocent people.
ARTICLE III.
“‘That, whereas certain ambassadors arrived from the Court of
Blefuscu, to sue for peace in his majesty’s court, he, the said
Flestrin, did, like a false traitor, aid, abet, comfort, and divert, the
said ambassadors, although he knew them to be servants to a prince who
was lately an open enemy to his imperial majesty, and in an open war
against his said majesty.
ARTICLE IV.
“‘That the said Quinbus Flestrin, contrary to the duty of a faithful
subject, is now preparing to make a voyage to the court and empire of
Blefuscu, for which he has received only verbal license from his
imperial majesty; and, under colour of the said license, does falsely
and traitorously intend to take the said voyage, and thereby to aid,
comfort, and abet the emperor of Blefuscu, so lately an enemy, and in
open war with his imperial majesty aforesaid.’
“There are some other articles; but these are the most important, of
which I have read you an abstract.
“In the several debates upon this impeachment, it must be confessed
that his majesty gave many marks of his great lenity; often urging the
services you had done him, and endeavouring to extenuate your crimes.
The treasurer and admiral insisted that you should be put to the most
painful and ignominious death, by setting fire to your house at night,
and the general was to attend with twenty thousand men, armed with
poisoned arrows, to shoot you on the face and hands. Some of your
servants were to have private orders to strew a poisonous juice on your
shirts and sheets, which would soon make you tear your own flesh, and
die in the utmost torture. The general came into the same opinion;
so that for a long time there was a majority against you; but his
majesty resolving, if possible, to spare your life, at last brought off
the chamberlain.
“Upon this incident, Reldresal, principal secretary for private
affairs, who always approved himself your true friend, was commanded by
the emperor to deliver his opinion, which he accordingly did; and
therein justified the good thoughts you have of him. He allowed
your crimes to be great, but that still there was room for mercy, the
most commendable virtue in a prince, and for which his majesty was so
justly celebrated. He said, the friendship between you and him was
so well known to the world, that perhaps the most honourable board might
think him partial; however, in obedience to the command he had received,
he would freely offer his sentiments. That if his majesty, in
consideration of your services, and pursuant to his own merciful
disposition, would please to spare your life, and only give orders to
put out both your eyes, he humbly conceived, that by this expedient
justice might in some measure be satisfied, and all the world would
applaud the lenity of the emperor, as well as the fair and generous
proceedings of those who have the honour to be his counsellors.
That the loss of your eyes would be no impediment to your bodily
strength, by which you might still be useful to his majesty; that
blindness is an addition to courage, by concealing dangers from us; that
the fear you had for your eyes, was the greatest difficulty in bringing
over the enemy’s fleet, and it would be sufficient for you to see by
the eyes of the ministers, since the greatest princes do no more.
“This proposal was received with the utmost disapprobation by the
whole board. Bolgolam, the admiral, could not preserve his temper,
but, rising up in fury, said, he wondered how the secretary durst
presume to give his opinion for preserving the life of a traitor; that
the services you had performed were, by all true reasons of state, the
great aggravation of your crimes; that you, who were able to extinguish
the fire by discharge of urine in her majesty’s apartment (which he
mentioned with horror), might, at another time, raise an inundation by
the same means, to drown the whole palace; and the same strength which
enabled you to bring over the enemy’s fleet, might serve, upon the
first discontent, to carry it back; that he had good reasons to think
you were a Big-endian in your heart; and, as treason begins in the
heart, before it appears in overt-acts, so he accused you as a traitor
on that account, and therefore insisted you should be put to death.
“The treasurer was of the same opinion: he showed to what straits his
majesty’s revenue was reduced, by the charge of maintaining you, which
would soon grow insupportable; that the secretary’s expedient of
putting out your eyes, was so far from being a remedy against this evil,
that it would probably increase it, as is manifest from the common
practice of blinding some kind of fowls, after which they fed the
faster, and grew sooner fat; that his sacred majesty and the council,
who are your judges, were, in their own consciences, fully convinced of
your guilt, which was a sufficient argument to condemn you to death,
without the formal proofs required by the strict letter of the law.
“But his imperial majesty, fully determined against capital
punishment, was graciously pleased to say, that since the council
thought the loss of your eyes too easy a censure, some other way may be
inflicted hereafter. And your friend the secretary, humbly
desiring to be heard again, in answer to what the treasurer had
objected, concerning the great charge his majesty was at in maintaining
you, said, that his excellency, who had the sole disposal of the
emperor’s revenue, might easily provide against that evil, by
gradually lessening your establishment; by which, for want of sufficient
for you would grow weak and faint, and lose your appetite, and
consequently, decay, and consume in a few months; neither would the
stench of your carcass be then so dangerous, when it should become more
than half diminished; and immediately upon your death five or six
thousand of his majesty’s subjects might, in two or three days, cut
your flesh from your bones, take it away by cart-loads, and bury it in
distant parts, to prevent infection, leaving the skeleton as a monument
of admiration to posterity.
“Thus, by the great friendship of the secretary, the whole affair was
compromised. It was strictly enjoined, that the project of
starving you by degrees should be kept a secret; but the sentence of
putting out your eyes was entered on the books; none dissenting, except
Bolgolam the admiral, who, being a creature of the empress, was
perpetually instigated by her majesty to insist upon your death, she
having borne perpetual malice against you, on account of that infamous
and illegal method you took to extinguish the fire in her apartment.
“In three days your friend the secretary will be directed to come to
your house, and read before you the articles of impeachment; and then to
signify the great lenity and favour of his majesty and council, whereby
you are only condemned to the loss of your eyes, which his majesty does
not question you will gratefully and humbly submit to; and twenty of his
majesty’s surgeons will attend, in order to see the operation well
performed, by discharging very sharp-pointed arrows into the balls of
your eyes, as you lie on the ground.
“I leave to your prudence what measures you will take; and to avoid
suspicion, I must immediately return in as private a manner as I
came.”
His lordship did so; and I remained alone, under many doubts and
perplexities of mind.
It was a custom introduced by this prince and his ministry (very
different, as I have been assured, from the practice of former times,)
that after the court had decreed any cruel execution, either to gratify
the monarch’s resentment, or the malice of a favourite, the emperor
always made a speech to his whole council, expressing his great lenity
and tenderness, as qualities known and confessed by all the world.
This speech was immediately published throughout the kingdom; nor did
any thing terrify the people so much as those encomiums on his
majesty’s mercy; because it was observed, that the more these praises
were enlarged and insisted on, the more inhuman was the punishment, and
the sufferer more innocent. Yet, as to myself, I must confess,
having never been designed for a courtier, either by my birth or
education, I was so ill a judge of things, that I could not discover the
lenity and favour of this sentence, but conceived it (perhaps
erroneously) rather to be rigorous than gentle. I sometimes
thought of standing my trial, for, although I could not deny the facts
alleged in the several articles, yet I hoped they would admit of some
extenuation. But having in my life perused many state-trials,
which I ever observed to terminate as the judges thought fit to direct,
I durst not rely on so dangerous a decision, in so critical a juncture,
and against such powerful enemies. Once I was strongly bent upon
resistance, for, while I had liberty the whole strength of that empire
could hardly subdue me, and I might easily with stones pelt the
metropolis to pieces; but I soon rejected that project with horror, by
remembering the oath I had made to the emperor, the favours I received
from him, and the high title of nardac he conferred upon me.
Neither had I so soon learned the gratitude of courtiers, to persuade
myself, that his majesty’s present seventies acquitted me of all past
obligations.
At last, I fixed upon a resolution, for which it is probable I may incur
some censure, and not unjustly; for I confess I owe the preserving of
mine eyes, and consequently my liberty, to my own great rashness and
want of experience; because, if I had then known the nature of princes
and ministers, which I have since observed in many other courts, and
their methods of treating criminals less obnoxious than myself, I
should, with great alacrity and readiness, have submitted to so easy a
punishment. But hurried on by the precipitancy of youth, and
having his imperial majesty’s license to pay my attendance upon the
emperor of Blefuscu, I took this opportunity, before the three days were
elapsed, to send a letter to my friend the secretary, signifying my
resolution of setting out that morning for Blefuscu, pursuant to the
leave I had got; and, without waiting for an answer, I went to that side
of the island where our fleet lay. I seized a large man of war,
tied a cable to the prow, and, lifting up the anchors, I stripped
myself, put my clothes (together with my coverlet, which I carried under
my arm) into the vessel, and, drawing it after me, between wading and
swimming arrived at the royal port of Blefuscu, where the people had
long expected me: they lent me two guides to direct me to the capital
city, which is of the same name. I held them in my hands, till I
came within two hundred yards of the gate, and desired them “to
signify my arrival to one of the secretaries, and let him know, I there
waited his majesty’s command.” I had an answer in about an
hour, “that his majesty, attended by the royal family, and great
officers of the court, was coming out to receive me.” I advanced
a hundred yards. The emperor and his train alighted from their
horses, the empress and ladies from their coaches, and I did not
perceive they were in any fright or concern. I lay on the ground
to kiss his majesty’s and the empress’s hands. I told his
majesty, “that I was come according to my promise, and with the
license of the emperor my master, to have the honour of seeing so mighty
a monarch, and to offer him any service in my power, consistent with my
duty to my own prince;” not mentioning a word of my disgrace, because
I had hitherto no regular information of it, and might suppose myself
wholly ignorant of any such design; neither could I reasonably conceive
that the emperor would discover the secret, while I was out of his
power; wherein, however, it soon appeared I was deceived.
I shall not trouble the reader with the particular account of my
reception at this court, which was suitable to the generosity of so
great a prince; nor of the difficulties I was in for want of a house and
bed, being forced to lie on the ground, wrapped up in my coverlet.
CHAPTER VIII.
[The author, by a lucky accident, finds means to leave Blefuscu; and,
after some difficulties, returns safe to his native country.]
Three days after my arrival, walking out of curiosity to the north-east
coast of the island, I observed, about half a league off in the sea,
somewhat that looked like a boat overturned. I pulled off my shoes
and stockings, and, wailing two or three hundred yards, I found the
object to approach nearer by force of the tide; and then plainly saw it
to be a real boat, which I supposed might by some tempest have been
driven from a ship. Whereupon, I returned immediately towards the
city, and desired his imperial majesty to lend me twenty of the tallest
vessels he had left, after the loss of his fleet, and three thousand
seamen, under the command of his vice-admiral. This fleet sailed
round, while I went back the shortest way to the coast, where I first
discovered the boat. I found the tide had driven it still nearer.
The seamen were all provided with cordage, which I had beforehand
twisted to a sufficient strength. When the ships came up, I
stripped myself, and waded till I came within a hundred yards off the
boat, after which I was forced to swim till I got up to it. The
seamen threw me the end of the cord, which I fastened to a hole in the
fore-part of the boat, and the other end to a man of war; but I found
all my labour to little purpose; for, being out of my depth, I was not
able to work. In this necessity I was forced to swim behind, and
push the boat forward, as often as I could, with one of my hands; and
the tide favouring me, I advanced so far that I could just hold up my
chin and feel the ground. I rested two or three minutes, and then
gave the boat another shove, and so on, till the sea was no higher than
my arm-pits; and now, the most laborious part being over, I took out my
other cables, which were stowed in one of the ships, and fastened them
first to the boat, and then to nine of the vessels which attended me;
the wind being favourable, the seamen towed, and I shoved, until we
arrived within forty yards of the shore; and, waiting till the tide was
out, I got dry to the boat, and by the assistance of two thousand men,
with ropes and engines, I made a shift to turn it on its bottom, and
found it was but little damaged.
I shall not trouble the reader with the difficulties I was under, by the
help of certain paddles, which cost me ten days making, to get my boat
to the royal port of Blefuscu, where a mighty concourse of people
appeared upon my arrival, full of wonder at the sight of so prodigious a
vessel. I told the emperor “that my good fortune had thrown this
boat in my way, to carry me to some place whence I might return into my
native country; and begged his majesty’s orders for getting materials
to fit it up, together with his license to depart;” which, after some
kind expostulations, he was pleased to grant.
I did very much wonder, in all this time, not to have heard of any
express relating to me from our emperor to the court of Blefuscu.
But I was afterward given privately to understand, that his imperial
majesty, never imagining I had the least notice of his designs, believed
I was only gone to Blefuscu in performance of my promise, according to
the license he had given me, which was well known at our court, and
would return in a few days, when the ceremony was ended. But he
was at last in pain at my long absence; and after consulting with the
treasurer and the rest of that cabal, a person of quality was dispatched
with the copy of the articles against me. This envoy had
instructions to represent to the monarch of Blefuscu, “the great
lenity of his master, who was content to punish me no farther than with
the loss of mine eyes; that I had fled from justice; and if I did not
return in two hours, I should be deprived of my title of nardac,
and declared a traitor.” The envoy further added, “that in
order to maintain the peace and amity between both empires, his master
expected that his brother of Blefuscu would give orders to have me sent
back to Lilliput, bound hand and foot, to be punished as a traitor.”
The emperor of Blefuscu, having taken three days to consult, returned an
answer consisting of many civilities and excuses. He said, “that
as for sending me bound, his brother knew it was impossible; that,
although I had deprived him of his fleet, yet he owed great obligations
to me for many good offices I had done him in making the peace.
That, however, both their majesties would soon be made easy; for I had
found a prodigious vessel on the shore, able to carry me on the sea,
which he had given orders to fit up, with my own assistance and
direction; and he hoped, in a few weeks, both empires would be freed
from so insupportable an encumbrance.”
With this answer the envoy returned to Lilliput; and the monarch of
Blefuscu related to me all that had passed; offering me at the same time
(but under the strictest confidence) his gracious protection, if I would
continue in his service; wherein, although I believed him sincere, yet I
resolved never more to put any confidence in princes or ministers, where
I could possibly avoid it; and therefore, with all due acknowledgments
for his favourable intentions, I humbly begged to be excused. I
told him, “that since fortune, whether good or evil, had thrown a
vessel in my way, I was resolved to venture myself on the ocean, rather
than be an occasion of difference between two such mighty monarchs.”
Neither did I find the emperor at all displeased; and I discovered, by a
certain accident, that he was very glad of my resolution, and so were
most of his ministers.
These considerations moved me to hasten my departure somewhat sooner
than I intended; to which the court, impatient to have me gone, very
readily contributed. Five hundred workmen were employed to make
two sails to my boat, according to my directions, by quilting thirteen
folds of their strongest linen together. I was at the pains of
making ropes and cables, by twisting ten, twenty, or thirty of the
thickest and strongest of theirs. A great stone that I happened to
find, after a long search, by the sea-shore, served me for an anchor.
I had the tallow of three hundred cows, for greasing my boat, and other
uses. I was at incredible pains in cutting down some of the
largest timber-trees, for oars and masts, wherein I was, however, much
assisted by his majesty’s ship-carpenters, who helped me in smoothing
them, after I had done the rough work.
In about a month, when all was prepared, I sent to receive his
majesty’s commands, and to take my leave. The emperor and royal
family came out of the palace; I lay down on my face to kiss his hand,
which he very graciously gave me: so did the empress and young princes
of the blood. His majesty presented me with fifty purses of two
hundred sprugs a-piece, together with his picture at full length,
which I put immediately into one of my gloves, to keep it from being
hurt. The ceremonies at my departure were too many to trouble the
reader with at this time.
I stored the boat with the carcases of a hundred oxen, and three hundred
sheep, with bread and drink proportionable, and as much meat ready
dressed as four hundred cooks could provide. I took with me six
cows and two bulls alive, with as many ewes and rams, intending to carry
them into my own country, and propagate the breed. And to feed
them on board, I had a good bundle of hay, and a bag of corn. I
would gladly have taken a dozen of the natives, but this was a thing the
emperor would by no means permit; and, besides a diligent search into my
pockets, his majesty engaged my honour “not to carry away any of his
subjects, although with their own consent and desire.”
Having thus prepared all things as well as I was able, I set sail on the
twenty-fourth day of September 1701, at six in the morning; and when I
had gone about four-leagues to the northward, the wind being at
south-east, at six in the evening I descried a small island, about half
a league to the north-west. I advanced forward, and cast anchor on
the lee-side of the island, which seemed to be uninhabited. I then
took some refreshment, and went to my rest. I slept well, and as I
conjectured at least six hours, for I found the day broke in two hours
after I awaked. It was a clear night. I ate my breakfast
before the sun was up; and heaving anchor, the wind being favourable, I
steered the same course that I had done the day before, wherein I was
directed by my pocket compass. My intention was to reach, if
possible, one of those islands. which I had reason to believe lay to the
north-east of Van Diemen’s Land. I discovered nothing all that
day; but upon the next, about three in the afternoon, when I had by my
computation made twenty-four leagues from Blefuscu, I descried a sail
steering to the south-east; my course was due east. I hailed her,
but could get no answer; yet I found I gained upon her, for the wind
slackened. I made all the sail I could, and in half an hour she
spied me, then hung out her ancient, and discharged a gun. It is
not easy to express the joy I was in, upon the unexpected hope of once
more seeing my beloved country, and the dear pledges I left in it.
The ship slackened her sails, and I came up with her between five and
six in the evening, September 26th; but my heart leaped within me to see
her English colours. I put my cows and sheep into my coat-pockets,
and got on board with all my little cargo of provisions. The
vessel was an English merchantman, returning from Japan by the North and
South seas; the captain, Mr. John Biddel, of Deptford, a very civil man,
and an excellent sailor.
We were now in the latitude of 30 degrees south; there were about fifty
men in the ship; and here I met an old comrade of mine, one Peter
Williams, who gave me a good character to the captain. This
gentleman treated me with kindness, and desired I would let him know
what place I came from last, and whither I was bound; which I did in a
few words, but he thought I was raving, and that the dangers I underwent
had disturbed my head; whereupon I took my black cattle and sheep out of
my pocket, which, after great astonishment, clearly convinced him of my
veracity. I then showed him the gold given me by the emperor of
Blefuscu, together with his majesty’s picture at full length, and some
other rarities of that country. I gave him two purses of two
hundreds sprugs each, and promised, when we arrived in England,
to make him a present of a cow and a sheep big with young.
I shall not trouble the reader with a particular account of this voyage,
which was very prosperous for the most part. We arrived in the
Downs on the 13th of April, 1702. I had only one misfortune, that
the rats on board carried away one of my sheep; I found her bones in a
hole, picked clean from the flesh. The rest of my cattle I got
safe ashore, and set them a-grazing in a bowling-green at Greenwich,
where the fineness of the grass made them feed very heartily, though I
had always feared the contrary: neither could I possibly have preserved
them in so long a voyage, if the captain had not allowed me some of his
best biscuit, which, rubbed to powder, and mingled with water, was their
constant food. The short time I continued in England, I made a
considerable profit by showing my cattle to many persons of quality and
others: and before I began my second voyage, I sold them for six hundred
pounds. Since my last return I find the breed is considerably
increased, especially the sheep, which I hope will prove much to the
advantage of the woollen manufacture, by the fineness of the fleeces.
I stayed but two months with my wife and family, for my insatiable
desire of seeing foreign countries, would suffer me to continue no
longer. I left fifteen hundred pounds with my wife, and fixed her
in a good house at Redriff. My remaining stock I carried with me,
part in money and part in goods, in hopes to improve my fortunes.
My eldest uncle John had left me an estate in land, near Epping, of
about thirty pounds a-year; and I had a long lease of the Black Bull in
Fetter-Lane, which yielded me as much more; so that I was not in any
danger of leaving my family upon the parish. My son Johnny, named
so after his uncle, was at the grammar-school, and a towardly child.
My daughter Betty (who is now well married, and has children) was then
at her needle-work. I took leave of my wife, and boy and girl,
with tears on both sides, and went on board the Adventure, a merchant
ship of three hundred tons, bound for Surat, captain John Nicholas, of
Liverpool, commander. But my account of this voyage must be
referred to the Second Part of my Travels.
PART II. A VOYAGE TO BROBDINGNAG.
CHAPTER I.
[A great storm described; the long boat sent to fetch water; the author
goes with it to discover the country. He is left on shore, is
seized by one of the natives, and carried to a farmer’s house.
His reception, with several accidents that happened there. A
description of the inhabitants.]
Having been condemned, by nature and fortune, to active and restless
life, in two months after my return, I again left my native country, and
took shipping in the Downs, on the 20th day of June, 1702, in the
Adventure, Captain John Nicholas, a Cornish man, commander, bound for
Surat. We had a very prosperous gale, till we arrived at the Cape
of Good Hope, where we landed for fresh water; but discovering a leak,
we unshipped our goods and wintered there; for the captain falling sick
of an ague, we could not leave the Cape till the end of March. We
then set sail, and had a good voyage till we passed the Straits of
Madagascar; but having got northward of that island, and to about five
degrees south latitude, the winds, which in those seas are observed to
blow a constant equal gale between the north and west, from the
beginning of December to the beginning of May, on the 19th of April
began to blow with much greater violence, and more westerly than usual,
continuing so for twenty days together: during which time, we were
driven a little to the east of the Molucca Islands, and about three
degrees northward of the line, as our captain found by an observation he
took the 2nd of May, at which time the wind ceased, and it was a perfect
calm, whereat I was not a little rejoiced. But he, being a man
well experienced in the navigation of those seas, bid us all prepare
against a storm, which accordingly happened the day following: for the
southern wind, called the southern monsoon, began to set in.
Finding it was likely to overblow, we took in our sprit-sail, and stood
by to hand the fore-sail; but making foul weather, we looked the guns
were all fast, and handed the mizen. The ship lay very broad off,
so we thought it better spooning before the sea, than trying or hulling.
We reefed the fore-sail and set him, and hauled aft the fore-sheet; the
helm was hard a-weather. The ship wore bravely. We belayed
the fore down-haul; but the sail was split, and we hauled down the yard,
and got the sail into the ship, and unbound all the things clear of it.
It was a very fierce storm; the sea broke strange and dangerous.
We hauled off upon the laniard of the whip-staff, and helped the man at
the helm. We would not get down our topmast, but let all stand,
because she scudded before the sea very well, and we knew that the
top-mast being aloft, the ship was the wholesomer, and made better way
through the sea, seeing we had sea-room. When the storm was over,
we set fore-sail and main-sail, and brought the ship to. Then we
set the mizen, main-top-sail, and the fore-top-sail. Our course
was east-north-east, the wind was at south-west. We got the
starboard tacks aboard, we cast off our weather-braces and lifts; we set
in the lee-braces, and hauled forward by the weather-bowlings, and
hauled them tight, and belayed them, and hauled over the mizen tack to
windward, and kept her full and by as near as she would lie.
During this storm, which was followed by a strong wind west-south-west,
we were carried, by my computation, about five hundred leagues to the
east, so that the oldest sailor on board could not tell in what part of
the world we were. Our provisions held out well, our ship was
staunch, and our crew all in good health; but we lay in the utmost
distress for water. We thought it best to hold on the same course,
rather than turn more northerly, which might have brought us to the
north-west part of Great Tartary, and into the Frozen Sea.
On the 16th day of June, 1703, a boy on the top-mast discovered land.
On the 17th, we came in full view of a great island, or continent (for
we knew not whether;) on the south side whereof was a small neck of land
jutting out into the sea, and a creek too shallow to hold a ship of
above one hundred tons. We cast anchor within a league of this
creek, and our captain sent a dozen of his men well armed in the
long-boat, with vessels for water, if any could be found. I
desired his leave to go with them, that I might see the country, and
make what discoveries I could. When we came to land we saw no
river or spring, nor any sign of inhabitants. Our men therefore
wandered on the shore to find out some fresh water near the sea, and I
walked alone about a mile on the other side, where I observed the
country all barren and rocky. I now began to be weary, and seeing
nothing to entertain my curiosity, I returned gently down towards the
creek; and the sea being full in my view, I saw our men already got into
the boat, and rowing for life to the ship. I was going to holla
after them, although it had been to little purpose, when I observed a
huge creature walking after them in the sea, as fast as he could: he
waded not much deeper than his knees, and took prodigious strides: but
our men had the start of him half a league, and, the sea thereabouts
being full of sharp-pointed rocks, the monster was not able to overtake
the boat. This I was afterwards told, for I durst not stay to see
the issue of the adventure; but ran as fast as I could the way I first
went, and then climbed up a steep hill, which gave me some prospect of
the country. I found it fully cultivated; but that which first
surprised me was the length of the grass, which, in those grounds that
seemed to be kept for hay, was about twenty feet high.
I fell into a high road, for so I took it to be, though it served to the
inhabitants only as a foot-path through a field of barley. Here I
walked on for some time, but could see little on either side, it being
now near harvest, and the corn rising at least forty feet. I was
an hour walking to the end of this field, which was fenced in with a
hedge of at least one hundred and twenty feet high, and the trees so
lofty that I could make no computation of their altitude. There
was a stile to pass from this field into the next. It had four
steps, and a stone to cross over when you came to the uppermost.
It was impossible for me to climb this stile, because every step was
six-feet high, and the upper stone about twenty. I was
endeavouring to find some gap in the hedge, when I discovered one of the
inhabitants in the next field, advancing towards the stile, of the same
size with him whom I saw in the sea pursuing our boat. He appeared
as tall as an ordinary spire steeple, and took about ten yards at every
stride, as near as I could guess. I was struck with the utmost
fear and astonishment, and ran to hide myself in the corn, whence I saw
him at the top of the stile looking back into the next field on the
right hand, and heard him call in a voice many degrees louder than a
speaking-trumpet: but the noise was so high in the air, that at first I
certainly thought it was thunder. Whereupon seven monsters, like
himself, came towards him with reaping-hooks in their hands, each hook
about the largeness of six scythes. These people were not so well
clad as the first, whose servants or labourers they seemed to be; for,
upon some words he spoke, they went to reap the corn in the field where
I lay. I kept from them at as great a distance as I could, but was
forced to move with extreme difficulty, for the stalks of the corn were
sometimes not above a foot distant, so that I could hardly squeeze my
body betwixt them. However, I made a shift to go forward, till I
came to a part of the field where the corn had been laid by the rain and
wind. Here it was impossible for me to advance a step; for the
stalks were so interwoven, that I could not creep through, and the
beards of the fallen ears so strong and pointed, that they pierced
through my clothes into my flesh. At the same time I heard the
reapers not a hundred yards behind me. Being quite dispirited with
toil, and wholly overcome by grief and dispair, I lay down between two
ridges, and heartily wished I might there end my days. I bemoaned
my desolate widow and fatherless children. I lamented my own folly
and wilfulness, in attempting a second voyage, against the advice of all
my friends and relations. In this terrible agitation of mind, I
could not forbear thinking of Lilliput, whose inhabitants looked upon me
as the greatest prodigy that ever appeared in the world; where I was
able to draw an imperial fleet in my hand, and perform those other
actions, which will be recorded for ever in the chronicles of that
empire, while posterity shall hardly believe them, although attested by
millions. I reflected what a mortification it must prove to me, to
appear as inconsiderable in this nation, as one single Lilliputian would
be among us. But this I conceived was to be the least of my
misfortunes; for, as human creatures are observed to be more savage and
cruel in proportion to their bulk, what could I expect but to be a
morsel in the mouth of the first among these enormous barbarians that
should happen to seize me? Undoubtedly philosophers are in the
right, when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than
by comparison. It might have pleased fortune, to have let the
Lilliputians find some nation, where the people were as diminutive with
respect to them, as they were to me. And who knows but that even
this prodigious race of mortals might be equally overmatched in some
distant part of the world, whereof we have yet no discovery.
Scared and confounded as I was, I could not forbear going on with these
reflections, when one of the reapers, approaching within ten yards of
the ridge where I lay, made me apprehend that with the next step I
should be squashed to death under his foot, or cut in two with his
reaping-hook. And therefore, when he was again about to move, I
screamed as loud as fear could make me: whereupon the huge creature trod
short, and, looking round about under him for some time, at last espied
me as I lay on the ground. He considered awhile, with the caution
of one who endeavours to lay hold on a small dangerous animal in such a
manner that it shall not be able either to scratch or bite him, as I
myself have sometimes done with a weasel in England. At length he
ventured to take me behind, by the middle, between his fore-finger and
thumb, and brought me within three yards of his eyes, that he might
behold my shape more perfectly. I guessed his meaning, and my good
fortune gave me so much presence of mind, that I resolved not to
struggle in the least as he held me in the air above sixty feet from the
ground, although he grievously pinched my sides, for fear I should slip
through his fingers. All I ventured was to raise mine eyes towards
the sun, and place my hands together in a supplicating posture, and to
speak some words in a humble melancholy tone, suitable to the condition
I then was in: for I apprehended every moment that he would dash me
against the ground, as we usually do any little hateful animal, which we
have a mind to destroy. But my good star would have it, that he
appeared pleased with my voice and gestures, and began to look upon me
as a curiosity, much wondering to hear me pronounce articulate words,
although he could not understand them. In the mean time I was not
able to forbear groaning and shedding tears, and turning my head towards
my sides; letting him know, as well as I could, how cruelly I was hurt
by the pressure of his thumb and finger. He seemed to apprehend my
meaning; for, lifting up the lappet of his coat, he put me gently into
it, and immediately ran along with me to his master, who was a
substantial farmer, and the same person I had first seen in the field.
The farmer having (as I suppose by their talk) received such an account
of me as his servant could give him, took a piece of a small straw,
about the size of a walking-staff, and therewith lifted up the lappets
of my coat; which it seems he thought to be some kind of covering that
nature had given me. He blew my hairs aside to take a better view
of my face. He called his hinds about him, and asked them, as I
afterwards learned, whether they had ever seen in the fields any little
creature that resembled me. He then placed me softly on the ground
upon all fours, but I got immediately up, and walked slowly backward and
forward, to let those people see I had no intent to run away. They
all sat down in a circle about me, the better to observe my motions.
I pulled off my hat, and made a low bow towards the farmer. I fell
on my knees, and lifted up my hands and eyes, and spoke several words as
loud as I could: I took a purse of gold out of my pocket, and humbly
presented it to him. He received it on the palm of his hand, then
applied it close to his eye to see what it was, and afterwards turned it
several times with the point of a pin (which he took out of his sleeve,)
but could make nothing of it. Whereupon I made a sign that he
should place his hand on the ground. I then took the purse, and,
opening it, poured all the gold into his palm. There were six
Spanish pieces of four pistoles each, beside twenty or thirty smaller
coins. I saw him wet the tip of his little finger upon his tongue,
and take up one of my largest pieces, and then another; but he seemed to
be wholly ignorant what they were. He made me a sign to put them
again into my purse, and the purse again into my pocket, which, after
offering it to him several times, I thought it best to do.
The farmer, by this time, was convinced I must be a rational creature.
He spoke often to me; but the sound of his voice pierced my ears like
that of a water-mill, yet his words were articulate enough. I
answered as loud as I could in several languages, and he often laid his
ear within two yards of me: but all in vain, for we were wholly
unintelligible to each other. He then sent his servants to their
work, and taking his handkerchief out of his pocket, he doubled and
spread it on his left hand, which he placed flat on the ground with the
palm upward, making me a sign to step into it, as I could easily do, for
it was not above a foot in thickness. I thought it my part to
obey, and, for fear of falling, laid myself at full length upon the
handkerchief, with the remainder of which he lapped me up to the head
for further security, and in this manner carried me home to his house.
There he called his wife, and showed me to her; but she screamed and ran
back, as women in England do at the sight of a toad or a spider.
However, when she had a while seen my behaviour, and how well I observed
the signs her husband made, she was soon reconciled, and by degrees grew
extremely tender of me.
It was about twelve at noon, and a servant brought in dinner. It
was only one substantial dish of meat (fit for the plain condition of a
husbandman,) in a dish of about four-and-twenty feet diameter. The
company were, the farmer and his wife, three children, and an old
grandmother. When they were sat down, the farmer placed me at some
distance from him on the table, which was thirty feet high from the
floor. I was in a terrible fright, and kept as far as I could from
the edge, for fear of falling. The wife minced a bit of meat, then
crumbled some bread on a trencher, and placed it before me. I made
her a low bow, took out my knife and fork, and fell to eat, which gave
them exceeding delight. The mistress sent her maid for a small
dram cup, which held about two gallons, and filled it with drink; I took
up the vessel with much difficulty in both hands, and in a most
respectful manner drank to her ladyship’s health, expressing the words
as loud as I could in English, which made the company laugh so heartily,
that I was almost deafened with the noise. This liquor tasted like
a small cider, and was not unpleasant. Then the master made me a
sign to come to his trencher side; but as I walked on the table, being
in great surprise all the time, as the indulgent reader will easily
conceive and excuse, I happened to stumble against a crust, and fell
flat on my face, but received no hurt. I got up immediately, and
observing the good people to be in much concern, I took my hat (which I
held under my arm out of good manners,) and waving it over my head, made
three huzzas, to show I had got no mischief by my fall. But
advancing forward towards my master (as I shall henceforth call him,)
his youngest son, who sat next to him, an arch boy of about ten years
old, took me up by the legs, and held me so high in the air, that I
trembled every limb: but his father snatched me from him, and at the
same time gave him such a box on the left ear, as would have felled an
European troop of horse to the earth, ordering him to be taken from the
table. But being afraid the boy might owe me a spite, and well
remembering how mischievous all children among us naturally are to
sparrows, rabbits, young kittens, and puppy dogs, I fell on my knees,
and pointing to the boy, made my master to understand, as well as I
could, that I desired his son might be pardoned. The father
complied, and the lad took his seat again, whereupon I went to him, and
kissed his hand, which my master took, and made him stroke me gently
with it.
In the midst of dinner, my mistress’s favourite cat leaped into her
lap. I heard a noise behind me like that of a dozen
stocking-weavers at work; and turning my head, I found it proceeded from
the purring of that animal, who seemed to be three times larger than an
ox, as I computed by the view of her head, and one of her paws, while
her mistress was feeding and stroking her. The fierceness of this
creature’s countenance altogether discomposed me; though I stood at
the farther end of the table, above fifty feet off; and although my
mistress held her fast, for fear she might give a spring, and seize me
in her talons. But it happened there was no danger, for the cat
took not the least notice of me when my master placed me within three
yards of her. And as I have been always told, and found true by
experience in my travels, that flying or discovering fear before a
fierce animal, is a certain way to make it pursue or attack you, so I
resolved, in this dangerous juncture, to show no manner of concern.
I walked with intrepidity five or six times before the very head of the
cat, and came within half a yard of her; whereupon she drew herself
back, as if she were more afraid of me: I had less apprehension
concerning the dogs, whereof three or four came into the room, as it is
usual in farmers’ houses; one of which was a mastiff, equal in bulk to
four elephants, and another a greyhound, somewhat taller than the
mastiff, but not so large.
When dinner was almost done, the nurse came in with a child of a year
old in her arms, who immediately spied me, and began a squall that you
might have heard from London-Bridge to Chelsea, after the usual oratory
of infants, to get me for a plaything. The mother, out of pure
indulgence, took me up, and put me towards the child, who presently
seized me by the middle, and got my head into his mouth, where I roared
so loud that the urchin was frighted, and let me drop, and I should
infallibly have broke my neck, if the mother had not held her apron
under me. The nurse, to quiet her babe, made use of a rattle which
was a kind of hollow vessel filled with great stones, and fastened by a
cable to the child’s waist: but all in vain; so that she was forced to
apply the last remedy by giving it suck. I must confess no object
ever disgusted me so much as the sight of her monstrous breast, which I
cannot tell what to compare with, so as to give the curious reader an
idea of its bulk, shape, and colour. It stood prominent six feet,
and could not be less than sixteen in circumference. The nipple
was about half the bigness of my head, and the hue both of that and the
dug, so varied with spots, pimples, and freckles, that nothing could
appear more nauseous: for I had a near sight of her, she sitting down,
the more conveniently to give suck, and I standing on the table.
This made me reflect upon the fair skins of our English ladies, who
appear so beautiful to us, only because they are of our own size, and
their defects not to be seen but through a magnifying glass; where we
find by experiment that the smoothest and whitest skins look rough, and
coarse, and ill-coloured.
I remember when I was at Lilliput, the complexion of those diminutive
people appeared to me the fairest in the world; and talking upon this
subject with a person of learning there, who was an intimate friend of
mine, he said that my face appeared much fairer and smoother when he
looked on me from the ground, than it did upon a nearer view, when I
took him up in my hand, and brought him close, which he confessed was at
first a very shocking sight. He said, “he could discover great
holes in my skin; that the stumps of my beard were ten times stronger
than the bristles of a boar, and my complexion made up of several
colours altogether disagreeable:” although I must beg leave to say for
myself, that I am as fair as most of my sex and country, and very little
sunburnt by all my travels. On the other side, discoursing of the
ladies in that emperor’s court, he used to tell me, “one had
freckles; another too wide a mouth; a third too large a nose;” nothing
of which I was able to distinguish. I confess this reflection was
obvious enough; which, however, I could not forbear, lest the reader
might think those vast creatures were actually deformed: for I must do
them the justice to say, they are a comely race of people, and
particularly the features of my master’s countenance, although he was
but a farmer, when I beheld him from the height of sixty feet, appeared
very well proportioned.
When dinner was done, my master went out to his labourers, and, as I
could discover by his voice and gesture, gave his wife strict charge to
take care of me. I was very much tired, and disposed to sleep,
which my mistress perceiving, she put me on her own bed, and covered me
with a clean white handkerchief, but larger and coarser than the
mainsail of a man-of-war.
I slept about two hours, and dreamt I was at home with my wife and
children, which aggravated my sorrows when I awaked, and found myself
alone in a vast room, between two and three hundred feet wide, and above
two hundred high, lying in a bed twenty yards wide. My mistress
was gone about her household affairs, and had locked me in. The
bed was eight yards from the floor. Some natural necessities
required me to get down; I durst not presume to call; and if I had, it
would have been in vain, with such a voice as mine, at so great a
distance from the room where I lay to the kitchen where the family kept.
While I was under these circumstances, two rats crept up the curtains,
and ran smelling backwards and forwards on the bed. One of them
came up almost to my face, whereupon I rose in a fright, and drew out my
hanger to defend myself. These horrible animals had the boldness
to attack me on both sides, and one of them held his fore-feet at my
collar; but I had the good fortune to rip up his belly before he could
do me any mischief. He fell down at my feet; and the other, seeing
the fate of his comrade, made his escape, but not without one good wound
on the back, which I gave him as he fled, and made the blood run
trickling from him. After this exploit, I walked gently to and fro
on the bed, to recover my breath and loss of spirits. These
creatures were of the size of a large mastiff, but infinitely more
nimble and fierce; so that if I had taken off my belt before I went to
sleep, I must have infallibly been torn to pieces and devoured. I
measured the tail of the dead rat, and found it to be two yards long,
wanting an inch; but it went against my stomach to drag the carcass off
the bed, where it lay still bleeding; I observed it had yet some life,
but with a strong slash across the neck, I thoroughly despatched it.
Soon after my mistress came into the room, who seeing me all bloody, ran
and took me up in her hand. I pointed to the dead rat, smiling,
and making other signs to show I was not hurt; whereat she was extremely
rejoiced, calling the maid to take up the dead rat with a pair of tongs,
and throw it out of the window. Then she set me on a table, where
I showed her my hanger all bloody, and wiping it on the lappet of my
coat, returned it to the scabbard. I was pressed to do more than
one thing which another could not do for me, and therefore endeavoured
to make my mistress understand, that I desired to be set down on the
floor; which after she had done, my bashfulness would not suffer me to
express myself farther, than by pointing to the door, and bowing several
times. The good woman, with much difficulty, at last perceived
what I would be at, and taking me up again in her hand, walked into the
garden, where she set me down. I went on one side about two
hundred yards, and beckoning to her not to look or to follow me, I hid
myself between two leaves of sorrel, and there discharged the
necessities of nature.
I hope the gentle reader will excuse me for dwelling on these and the
like particulars, which, however insignificant they may appear to
groveling vulgar minds, yet will certainly help a philosopher to enlarge
his thoughts and imagination, and apply them to the benefit of public as
well as private life, which was my sole design in presenting this and
other accounts of my travels to the world; wherein I have been chiefly
studious of truth, without affecting any ornaments of learning or of
style. But the whole scene of this voyage made so strong an
impression on my mind, and is so deeply fixed in my memory, that, in
committing it to paper I did not omit one material circumstance:
however, upon a strict review, I blotted out several passages. Of
less moment which were in my first copy, for fear of being censured as
tedious and trifling, whereof travellers are often, perhaps not without
justice, accused.
CHAPTER II.
[A description of the farmer’s daughter. The author carried to a
market-town, and then to the metropolis. The particulars of his
journey.]
My mistress had a daughter of nine years old, a child of towardly parts
for her age, very dexterous at her needle, and skilful in dressing her
baby. Her mother and she contrived to fit up the baby’s cradle
for me against night: the cradle was put into a small drawer of a
cabinet, and the drawer placed upon a hanging shelf for fear of the
rats. This was my bed all the time I staid with those people,
though made more convenient by degrees, as I began to learn their
language and make my wants known. This young girl was so handy,
that after I had once or twice pulled off my clothes before her, she was
able to dress and undress me, though I never gave her that trouble when
she would let me do either myself. She made me seven shirts, and
some other linen, of as fine cloth as could be got, which indeed was
coarser than sackcloth; and these she constantly washed for me with her
own hands. She was likewise my school-mistress, to teach me the
language: when I pointed to any thing, she told me the name of it in her
own tongue, so that in a few days I was able to call for whatever I had
a mind to. She was very good-natured, and not above forty feet
high, being little for her age. She gave me the name of Grildrig,
which the family took up, and afterwards the whole kingdom. The
word imports what the Latins call nanunculus, the Italians homunceletino,
and the English mannikin. To her I chiefly owe my
preservation in that country: we never parted while I was there; I
called her my Glumdalclitch, or little nurse; and should be
guilty of great ingratitude, if I omitted this honourable mention of her
care and affection towards me, which I heartily wish it lay in my power
to requite as she deserves, instead of being the innocent, but unhappy
instrument of her disgrace, as I have too much reason to fear.
It now began to be known and talked of in the neighbourhood, that my
master had found a strange animal in the field, about the bigness of a splacnuck,
but exactly shaped in every part like a human creature; which it
likewise imitated in all its actions; seemed to speak in a little
language of its own, had already learned several words of theirs, went
erect upon two legs, was tame and gentle, would come when it was called,
do whatever it was bid, had the finest limbs in the world, and a
complexion fairer than a nobleman’s daughter of three years old.
Another farmer, who lived hard by, and was a particular friend of my
master, came on a visit on purpose to inquire into the truth of this
story. I was immediately produced, and placed upon a table, where
I walked as I was commanded, drew my hanger, put it up again, made my
reverence to my master’s guest, asked him in his own language how he
did, and told him he was welcome, just as my little nurse had
instructed me. This man, who was old and dim-sighted, put on his
spectacles to behold me better; at which I could not forbear laughing
very heartily, for his eyes appeared like the full moon shining into a
chamber at two windows. Our people, who discovered the cause of my
mirth, bore me company in laughing, at which the old fellow was fool
enough to be angry and out of countenance. He had the character of
a great miser; and, to my misfortune, he well deserved it, by the cursed
advice he gave my master, to show me as a sight upon a market-day in the
next town, which was half an hour’s riding, about two-and-twenty miles
from our house. I guessed there was some mischief when I observed
my master and his friend whispering together, sometimes pointing at me;
and my fears made me fancy that I overheard and understood some of their
words. But the next morning Glumdalclitch, my little nurse, told
me the whole matter, which she had cunningly picked out from her mother.
The poor girl laid me on her bosom, and fell a weeping with shame and
grief. She apprehended some mischief would happen to me from rude
vulgar folks, who might squeeze me to death, or break one of my limbs by
taking me in their hands. She had also observed how modest I was
in my nature, how nicely I regarded my honour, and what an indignity I
should conceive it, to be exposed for money as a public spectacle, to
the meanest of the people. She said, her papa and mamma had
promised that Grildrig should be hers; but now she found they meant to
serve her as they did last year, when they pretended to give her a lamb,
and yet, as soon as it was fat, sold it to a butcher. For my own
part, I may truly affirm, that I was less concerned than my nurse.
I had a strong hope, which never left me, that I should one day recover
my liberty: and as to the ignominy of being carried about for a monster,
I considered myself to be a perfect stranger in the country, and that
such a misfortune could never be charged upon me as a reproach, if ever
I should return to England, since the king of Great Britain himself, in
my condition, must have undergone the same distress.
My master, pursuant to the advice of his friend, carried me in a box the
next market-day to the neighbouring town, and took along with him his
little daughter, my nurse, upon a pillion behind him. The box was
close on every side, with a little door for me to go in and out, and a
few gimlet holes to let in air. The girl had been so careful as to
put the quilt of her baby’s bed into it, for me to lie down on.
However, I was terribly shaken and discomposed in this journey, though
it was but of half an hour: for the horse went about forty feet at every
step and trotted so high, that the agitation was equal to the rising and
falling of a ship in a great storm, but much more frequent. Our
journey was somewhat farther than from London to St. Alban’s. My
master alighted at an inn which he used to frequent; and after
consulting awhile with the inn-keeper, and making some necessary
preparations, he hired the grultrud, or crier, to give notice
through the town of a strange creature to be seen at the sign of the
Green Eagle, not so big as a splacnuck (an animal in that country
very finely shaped, about six feet long,) and in every part of the body
resembling a human creature, could speak several words, and perform a
hundred diverting tricks.
I was placed upon a table in the largest room of the inn, which might be
near three hundred feet square. My little nurse stood on a low
stool close to the table, to take care of me, and direct what I should
do. My master, to avoid a crowd, would suffer only thirty people
at a time to see me. I walked about on the table as the girl
commanded; she asked me questions, as far as she knew my understanding
of the language reached, and I answered them as loud as I could. I
turned about several times to the company, paid my humble respects, said
they were welcome, and used some other speeches I had been
taught. I took up a thimble filled with liquor, which
Glumdalclitch had given me for a cup, and drank their health, I drew out
my hanger, and flourished with it after the manner of fencers in
England. My nurse gave me a part of a straw, which I exercised as
a pike, having learnt the art in my youth. I was that day shown to
twelve sets of company, and as often forced to act over again the same
fopperies, till I was half dead with weariness and vexation; for those
who had seen me made such wonderful reports, that the people were ready
to break down the doors to come in. My master, for his own
interest, would not suffer any one to touch me except my nurse; and to
prevent danger, benches were set round the table at such a distance as
to put me out of every body’s reach. However, an unlucky
school-boy aimed a hazel nut directly at my head, which very narrowly
missed me; otherwise it came with so much violence, that it would have
infallibly knocked out my brains, for it was almost as large as a small
pumpkin, but I had the satisfaction to see the young rogue well beaten,
and turned out of the room.
My master gave public notice that he would show me again the next
market-day; and in the meantime he prepared a convenient vehicle for me,
which he had reason enough to do; for I was so tired with my first
journey, and with entertaining company for eight hours together, that I
could hardly stand upon my legs, or speak a word. It was at least
three days before I recovered my strength; and that I might have no rest
at home, all the neighbouring gentlemen from a hundred miles round,
hearing of my fame, came to see me at my master’s own house.
There could not be fewer than thirty persons with their wives and
children (for the country is very populous;) and my master demanded the
rate of a full room whenever he showed me at home, although it were only
to a single family; so that for some time I had but little ease every
day of the week (except Wednesday, which is their Sabbath,) although I
were not carried to the town.
My master, finding how profitable I was likely to be, resolved to carry
me to the most considerable cities of the kingdom. Having
therefore provided himself with all things necessary for a long journey,
and settled his affairs at home, he took leave of his wife, and upon the
17th of August, 1703, about two months after my arrival, we set out for
the metropolis, situate near the middle of that empire, and about three
thousand miles distance from our house. My master made his
daughter Glumdalclitch ride behind him. She carried me on her lap,
in a box tied about her waist. The girl had lined it on all sides
with the softest cloth she could get, well quilted underneath, furnished
it with her baby’s bed, provided me with linen and other necessaries,
and made everything as convenient as she could. We had no other
company but a boy of the house, who rode after us with the luggage.
My master’s design was to show me in all the towns by the way, and to
step out of the road for fifty or a hundred miles, to any village, or
person of quality’s house, where he might expect custom. We made
easy journeys, of not above seven or eight score miles a-day; for
Glumdalclitch, on purpose to spare me, complained she was tired with the
trotting of the horse. She often took me out of my box, at my own
desire, to give me air, and show me the country, but always held me fast
by a leading-string. We passed over five or six rivers, many
degrees broader and deeper than the Nile or the Ganges: and there was
hardly a rivulet so small as the Thames at London-bridge. We were
ten weeks in our journey, and I was shown in eighteen large towns,
besides many villages, and private families.
On the 26th day of October we arrived at the metropolis, called in their
language Lorbrulgrud, or Pride of the Universe. My master
took a lodging in the principal street of the city, not far from the
royal palace, and put out bills in the usual form, containing an exact
description of my person and parts. He hired a large room between
three and four hundred feet wide. He provided a table sixty feet
in diameter, upon which I was to act my part, and pallisadoed it round
three feet from the edge, and as many high, to prevent my falling over.
I was shown ten times a-day, to the wonder and satisfaction of all
people. I could now speak the language tolerably well, and
perfectly understood every word, that was spoken to me. Besides, I
had learnt their alphabet, and could make a shift to explain a sentence
here and there; for Glumdalclitch had been my instructor while we were
at home, and at leisure hours during our journey. She carried a
little book in her pocket, not much larger than a Sanson’s Atlas; it
was a common treatise for the use of young girls, giving a short account
of their religion: out of this she taught me my letters, and interpreted
the words.
CHAPTER III.
[The author sent for to court. The queen buys him of his master
the farmer, and presents him to the king. He disputes with his
majesty’s great scholars. An apartment at court provided for the
author. He is in high favour with the queen. He stands up
for the honour of his own country. His quarrels with the queen’s
dwarf.]
The frequent labours I underwent every day, made, in a few weeks, a very
considerable change in my health: the more my master got by me, the more
insatiable he grew. I had quite lost my stomach, and was almost
reduced to a skeleton. The farmer observed it, and concluding I
must soon die, resolved to make as good a hand of me as he could.
While he was thus reasoning and resolving with himself, a sardral,
or gentleman-usher, came from court, commanding my master to carry me
immediately thither for the diversion of the queen and her ladies.
Some of the latter had already been to see me, and reported strange
things of my beauty, behaviour, and good sense. Her majesty, and
those who attended her, were beyond measure delighted with my demeanour.
I fell on my knees, and begged the honour of kissing her imperial foot;
but this gracious princess held out her little finger towards me, after
I was set on the table, which I embraced in both my arms, and put the
tip of it with the utmost respect to my lip. She made me some
general questions about my country and my travels, which I answered as
distinctly, and in as few words as I could. She asked, “whether
I could be content to live at court?” I bowed down to the board
of the table, and humbly answered “that I was my master’s slave:
but, if I were at my own disposal, I should be proud to devote my life
to her majesty’s service.” She then asked my master,
“whether he was willing to sell me at a good price?” He, who
apprehended I could not live a month, was ready enough to part with me,
and demanded a thousand pieces of gold, which were ordered him on the
spot, each piece being about the bigness of eight hundred moidores; but
allowing for the proportion of all things between that country and
Europe, and the high price of gold among them, was hardly so great a sum
as a thousand guineas would be in England. I then said to the
queen, “since I was now her majesty’s most humble creature and
vassal, I must beg the favour, that Glumdalclitch, who had always tended
me with so much care and kindness, and understood to do it so well,
might be admitted into her service, and continue to be my nurse and
instructor.”
Her majesty agreed to my petition, and easily got the farmer’s
consent, who was glad enough to have his daughter preferred at court,
and the poor girl herself was not able to hide her joy. My late
master withdrew, bidding me farewell, and saying he had left me in a
good service; to which I replied not a word, only making him a slight
bow.
The queen observed my coldness; and, when the farmer was gone out of the
apartment, asked me the reason. I made bold to tell her majesty,
“that I owed no other obligation to my late master, than his not
dashing out the brains of a poor harmless creature, found by chance in
his fields: which obligation was amply recompensed, by the gain he had
made in showing me through half the kingdom, and the price he had now
sold me for. That the life I had since led was laborious enough to
kill an animal of ten times my strength. That my health was much
impaired, by the continual drudgery of entertaining the rabble every
hour of the day; and that, if my master had not thought my life in
danger, her majesty would not have got so cheap a bargain. But as
I was out of all fear of being ill-treated under the protection of so
great and good an empress, the ornament of nature, the darling of the
world, the delight of her subjects, the phoenix of the creation, so I
hoped my late master’s apprehensions would appear to be groundless;
for I already found my spirits revive, by the influence of her most
august presence.”
This was the sum of my speech, delivered with great improprieties and
hesitation. The latter part was altogether framed in the style
peculiar to that people, whereof I learned some phrases from
Glumdalclitch, while she was carrying me to court.
The queen, giving great allowance for my defectiveness in speaking, was,
however, surprised at so much wit and good sense in so diminutive an
animal. She took me in her own hand, and carried me to the king,
who was then retired to his cabinet. His majesty, a prince of much
gravity and austere countenance, not well observing my shape at first
view, asked the queen after a cold manner “how long it was since she
grew fond of a splacnuck?” for such it seems he took me to be,
as I lay upon my breast in her majesty’s right hand. But this
princess, who has an infinite deal of wit and humour, set me gently on
my feet upon the scrutoire, and commanded me to give his majesty an
account of myself, which I did in a very few words: and Glumdalclitch
who attended at the cabinet door, and could not endure I should be out
of her sight, being admitted, confirmed all that had passed from my
arrival at her father’s house.
The king, although he be as learned a person as any in his dominions,
had been educated in the study of philosophy, and particularly
mathematics; yet when he observed my shape exactly, and saw me walk
erect, before I began to speak, conceived I might be a piece of
clock-work (which is in that country arrived to a very great perfection)
contrived by some ingenious artist. But when he heard my voice,
and found what I delivered to be regular and rational, he could not
conceal his astonishment. He was by no means satisfied with the
relation I gave him of the manner I came into his kingdom, but thought
it a story concerted between Glumdalclitch and her father, who had
taught me a set of words to make me sell at a better price. Upon
this imagination, he put several other questions to me, and still
received rational answers: no otherwise defective than by a foreign
accent, and an imperfect knowledge in the language, with some rustic
phrases which I had learned at the farmer’s house, and did not suit
the polite style of a court.
His majesty sent for three great scholars, who were then in their weekly
waiting, according to the custom in that country. These gentlemen,
after they had a while examined my shape with much nicety, were of
different opinions concerning me. They all agreed that I could not
be produced according to the regular laws of nature, because I was not
framed with a capacity of preserving my life, either by swiftness, or
climbing of trees, or digging holes in the earth. They observed by
my teeth, which they viewed with great exactness, that I was a
carnivorous animal; yet most quadrupeds being an overmatch for me, and
field mice, with some others, too nimble, they could not imagine how I
should be able to support myself, unless I fed upon snails and other
insects, which they offered, by many learned arguments, to evince that I
could not possibly do. One of these virtuosi seemed to think that
I might be an embryo, or abortive birth. But this opinion was
rejected by the other two, who observed my limbs to be perfect and
finished; and that I had lived several years, as it was manifest from my
beard, the stumps whereof they plainly discovered through a magnifying
glass. They would not allow me to be a dwarf, because my
littleness was beyond all degrees of comparison; for the queen’s
favourite dwarf, the smallest ever known in that kingdom, was near
thirty feet high. After much debate, they concluded unanimously,
that I was only relplum scalcath, which is interpreted
literally lusus naturae; a determination exactly agreeable to the
modern philosophy of Europe, whose professors, disdaining the old
evasion of occult causes, whereby the followers of Aristotle endeavoured
in vain to disguise their ignorance, have invented this wonderful
solution of all difficulties, to the unspeakable advancement of human
knowledge.
After this decisive conclusion, I entreated to be heard a word or two.
I applied myself to the king, and assured his majesty, “that I came
from a country which abounded with several millions of both sexes, and
of my own stature; where the animals, trees, and houses, were all in
proportion, and where, by consequence, I might be as able to defend
myself, and to find sustenance, as any of his majesty’s subjects could
do here; which I took for a full answer to those gentlemen’s
arguments.” To this they only replied with a smile of contempt,
saying, “that the farmer had instructed me very well in my lesson.”
The king, who had a much better understanding, dismissing his learned
men, sent for the farmer, who by good fortune was not yet gone out of
town. Having therefore first examined him privately, and then
confronted him with me and the young girl, his majesty began to think
that what we told him might possibly be true. He desired the queen to
order that a particular care should be taken of me; and was of opinion
that Glumdalclitch should still continue in her office of tending me,
because he observed we had a great affection for each other. A
convenient apartment was provided for her at court: she had a sort of
governess appointed to take care of her education, a maid to dress her,
and two other servants for menial offices; but the care of me was wholly
appropriated to herself. The queen commanded her own cabinet-maker
to contrive a box, that might serve me for a bedchamber, after the model
that Glumdalclitch and I should agree upon. This man was a most
ingenious artist, and according to my direction, in three weeks finished
for me a wooden chamber of sixteen feet square, and twelve high, with
sash-windows, a door, and two closets, like a London bed-chamber.
The board, that made the ceiling, was to be lifted up and down by two
hinges, to put in a bed ready furnished by her majesty’s upholsterer,
which Glumdalclitch took out every day to air, made it with her own
hands, and letting it down at night, locked up the roof over me. A
nice workman, who was famous for little curiosities, undertook to make
me two chairs, with backs and frames, of a substance not unlike ivory,
and two tables, with a cabinet to put my things in. The room was
quilted on all sides, as well as the floor and the ceiling, to prevent
any accident from the carelessness of those who carried me, and to break
the force of a jolt, when I went in a coach. I desired a lock for
my door, to prevent rats and mice from coming in. The smith, after
several attempts, made the smallest that ever was seen among them, for I
have known a larger at the gate of a gentleman’s house in England.
I made a shift to keep the key in a pocket of my own, fearing
Glumdalclitch might lose it. The queen likewise ordered the
thinnest silks that could be gotten, to make me clothes, not much
thicker than an English blanket, very cumbersome till I was accustomed
to them. They were after the fashion of the kingdom, partly
resembling the Persian, and partly the Chinese, and are a very grave and
decent habit.
The queen became so fond of my company, that she could not dine without
me. I had a table placed upon the same at which her majesty ate,
just at her left elbow, and a chair to sit on. Glumdalclitch stood
on a stool on the floor near my table, to assist and take care of me.
I had an entire set of silver dishes and plates, and other necessaries,
which, in proportion to those of the queen, were not much bigger than
what I have seen in a London toy-shop for the furniture of a baby-house:
these my little nurse kept in her pocket in a silver box, and gave me at
meals as I wanted them, always cleaning them herself. No person
dined with the queen but the two princesses royal, the eldest sixteen
years old, and the younger at that time thirteen and a month. Her
majesty used to put a bit of meat upon one of my dishes, out of which I
carved for myself, and her diversion was to see me eat in miniature: for
the queen (who had indeed but a weak stomach) took up, at one mouthful,
as much as a dozen English farmers could eat at a meal, which to me was
for some time a very nauseous sight. She would craunch the wing of
a lark, bones and all, between her teeth, although it were nine times as
large as that of a full-grown turkey; and put a bit of bread into her
mouth as big as two twelve-penny loaves. She drank out of a golden
cup, above a hogshead at a draught. Her knives were twice as long
as a scythe, set straight upon the handle. The spoons, forks, and
other instruments, were all in the same proportion. I remember
when Glumdalclitch carried me, out of curiosity, to see some of the
tables at court, where ten or a dozen of those enormous knives and forks
were lifted up together, I thought I had never till then beheld so
terrible a sight.
It is the custom, that every Wednesday (which, as I have observed, is
their Sabbath) the king and queen, with the royal issue of both sexes,
dine together in the apartment of his majesty, to whom I was now become
a great favourite; and at these times, my little chair and table were
placed at his left hand, before one of the salt-cellars. This
prince took a pleasure in conversing with me, inquiring into the
manners, religion, laws, government, and learning of Europe; wherein I
gave him the best account I was able. His apprehension was so
clear, and his judgment so exact, that he made very wise reflections and
observations upon all I said. But I confess, that, after I had
been a little too copious in talking of my own beloved country, of our
trade and wars by sea and land, of our schisms in religion, and parties
in the state; the prejudices of his education prevailed so far, that he
could not forbear taking me up in his right hand, and stroking me gently
with the other, after a hearty fit of laughing, asked me, “whether I
was a whig or tory?” Then turning to his first minister, who
waited behind him with a white staff, near as tall as the mainmast of
the Royal Sovereign, he observed “how contemptible a thing was human
grandeur, which could be mimicked by such diminutive insects as I: and
yet,” says he, “I dare engage these creatures have their titles and
distinctions of honour; they contrive little nests and burrows, that
they call houses and cities; they make a figure in dress and equipage;
they love, they fight, they dispute, they cheat, they betray!”
And thus he continued on, while my colour came and went several times,
with indignation, to hear our noble country, the mistress of arts and
arms, the scourge of France, the arbitress of Europe, the seat of
virtue, piety, honour, and truth, the pride and envy of the world, so
contemptuously treated.
But as I was not in a condition to resent injuries, so upon mature
thoughts I began to doubt whether I was injured or no. For, after
having been accustomed several months to the sight and converse of this
people, and observed every object upon which I cast mine eyes to be of
proportionable magnitude, the horror I had at first conceived from their
bulk and aspect was so far worn off, that if I had then beheld a company
of English lords and ladies in their finery and birth-day clothes,
acting their several parts in the most courtly manner of strutting, and
bowing, and prating, to say the truth, I should have been strongly
tempted to laugh as much at them as the king and his grandees did at me.
Neither, indeed, could I forbear smiling at myself, when the queen used
to place me upon her hand towards a looking-glass, by which both our
persons appeared before me in full view together; and there could be
nothing more ridiculous than the comparison; so that I really began to
imagine myself dwindled many degrees below my usual size.
Nothing angered and mortified me so much as the queen’s dwarf; who
being of the lowest stature that was ever in that country (for I verily
think he was not full thirty feet high), became so insolent at seeing a
creature so much beneath him, that he would always affect to swagger and
look big as he passed by me in the queen’s antechamber, while I was
standing on some table talking with the lords or ladies of the court,
and he seldom failed of a smart word or two upon my littleness; against
which I could only revenge myself by calling him brother, challenging
him to wrestle, and such repartees as are usually in the mouths of court
pages. One day, at dinner, this malicious little cub was so
nettled with something I had said to him, that, raising himself upon the
frame of her majesty’s chair, he took me up by the middle, as I was
sitting down, not thinking any harm, and let me drop into a large silver
bowl of cream, and then ran away as fast as he could. I fell over
head and ears, and, if I had not been a good swimmer, it might have gone
very hard with me; for Glumdalclitch in that instant happened to be at
the other end of the room, and the queen was in such a fright, that she
wanted presence of mind to assist me. But my little nurse ran to
my relief, and took me out, after I had swallowed above a quart of
cream. I was put to bed: however, I received no other damage than
the loss of a suit of clothes, which was utterly spoiled. The
dwarf was soundly whipt, and as a farther punishment, forced to drink up
the bowl of cream into which he had thrown me: neither was he ever
restored to favour; for soon after the queen bestowed him on a lady of
high quality, so that I saw him no more, to my very great satisfaction;
for I could not tell to what extremities such a malicious urchin might
have carried his resentment.
He had before served me a scurvy trick, which set the queen a-laughing,
although at the same time she was heartily vexed, and would have
immediately cashiered him, if I had not been so generous as to
intercede. Her majesty had taken a marrow-bone upon her plate,
and, after knocking out the marrow, placed the bone again in the dish
erect, as it stood before; the dwarf, watching his opportunity, while
Glumdalclitch was gone to the side-board, mounted the stool that she
stood on to take care of me at meals, took me up in both hands, and
squeezing my legs together, wedged them into the marrow bone above my
waist, where I stuck for some time, and made a very ridiculous figure.
I believe it was near a minute before any one knew what was become of
me; for I thought it below me to cry out. But, as princes seldom
get their meat hot, my legs were not scalded, only my stockings and
breeches in a sad condition. The dwarf, at my entreaty, had no
other punishment than a sound whipping.
I was frequently rallied by the queen upon account of my fearfulness;
and she used to ask me whether the people of my country were as great
cowards as myself? The occasion was this: the kingdom is much
pestered with flies in summer; and these odious insects, each of them as
big as a Dunstable lark, hardly gave me any rest while I sat at dinner,
with their continual humming and buzzing about mine ears. They
would sometimes alight upon my victuals, and leave their loathsome
excrement, or spawn behind, which to me was very visible, though not to
the natives of that country, whose large optics were not so acute as
mine, in viewing smaller objects. Sometimes they would fix upon my
nose, or forehead, where they stung me to the quick, smelling very
offensively; and I could easily trace that viscous matter, which, our
naturalists tell us, enables those creatures to walk with their feet
upwards upon a ceiling. I had much ado to defend myself against
these detestable animals, and could not forbear starting when they came
on my face. It was the common practice of the dwarf, to catch a
number of these insects in his hand, as schoolboys do among us, and let
them out suddenly under my nose, on purpose to frighten me, and divert
the queen. My remedy was to cut them in pieces with my knife, as
they flew in the air, wherein my dexterity was much admired.
I remember, one morning, when Glumdalclitch had set me in a box upon a
window, as she usually did in fair days to give me air (for I durst not
venture to let the box be hung on a nail out of the window, as we do
with cages in England), after I had lifted up one of my sashes, and sat
down at my table to eat a piece of sweet cake for my breakfast, above
twenty wasps, allured by the smell, came flying into the room, humming
louder than the drones of as many bagpipes. Some of them seized my
cake, and carried it piecemeal away; others flew about my head and face,
confounding me with the noise, and putting me in the utmost terror of
their stings. However, I had the courage to rise and draw my
hanger, and attack them in the air. I dispatched four of them, but
the rest got away, and I presently shut my window. These insects
were as large as partridges: I took out their stings, found them an inch
and a half long, and as sharp as needles. I carefully preserved
them all; and having since shown them, with some other curiosities, in
several parts of Europe, upon my return to England I gave three of them
to Gresham College, and kept the fourth for myself.
CHAPTER IV.
[The country described. A proposal for correcting modern maps.
The king’s palace; and some account of the metropolis. The
author’s way of travelling. The chief temple described.]
I now intend to give the reader a short description of this country, as
far as I travelled in it, which was not above two thousand miles round
Lorbrulgrud, the metropolis. For the queen, whom I always
attended, never went farther when she accompanied the king in his
progresses, and there staid till his majesty returned from viewing his
frontiers. The whole extent of this prince’s dominions reaches
about six thousand miles in length, and from three to five in breadth:
whence I cannot but conclude, that our geographers of Europe are in a
great error, by supposing nothing but sea between Japan and California;
for it was ever my opinion, that there must be a balance of earth to
counterpoise the great continent of Tartary; and therefore they ought to
correct their maps and charts, by joining this vast tract of land to the
north-west parts of America, wherein I shall be ready to lend them my
assistance.
The kingdom is a peninsula, terminated to the north-east by a ridge of
mountains thirty miles high, which are altogether impassable, by reason
of the volcanoes upon the tops: neither do the most learned know what
sort of mortals inhabit beyond those mountains, or whether they be
inhabited at all. On the three other sides, it is bounded by the
ocean. There is not one seaport in the whole kingdom: and those
parts of the coasts into which the rivers issue, are so full of pointed
rocks, and the sea generally so rough, that there is no venturing with
the smallest of their boats; so that these people are wholly excluded
from any commerce with the rest of the world. But the large rivers
are full of vessels, and abound with excellent fish; for they seldom get
any from the sea, because the sea fish are of the same size with those
in Europe, and consequently not worth catching; whereby it is manifest,
that nature, in the production of plants and animals of so extraordinary
a bulk, is wholly confined to this continent, of which I leave the
reasons to be determined by philosophers. However, now and then
they take a whale that happens to be dashed against the rocks, which the
common people feed on heartily. These whales I have known so
large, that a man could hardly carry one upon his shoulders; and
sometimes, for curiosity, they are brought in hampers to Lorbrulgrud; I
saw one of them in a dish at the king’s table, which passed for a
rarity, but I did not observe he was fond of it; for I think, indeed,
the bigness disgusted him, although I have seen one somewhat larger in
Greenland.
The country is well inhabited, for it contains fifty-one cities, near a
hundred walled towns, and a great number of villages. To satisfy
my curious reader, it may be sufficient to describe Lorbrulgrud.
This city stands upon almost two equal parts, on each side the river
that passes through. It contains above eighty thousand houses, and
about six hundred thousand inhabitants. It is in length three glomglungs
(which make about fifty-four English miles,) and two and a half in
breadth; as I measured it myself in the royal map made by the king’s
order, which was laid on the ground on purpose for me, and extended a
hundred feet: I paced the diameter and circumference several times
barefoot, and, computing by the scale, measured it pretty exactly.
The king’s palace is no regular edifice, but a heap of buildings,
about seven miles round: the chief rooms are generally two hundred and
forty feet high, and broad and long in proportion. A coach was
allowed to Glumdalclitch and me, wherein her governess frequently took
her out to see the town, or go among the shops; and I was always of the
party, carried in my box; although the girl, at my own desire, would
often take me out, and hold me in her hand, that I might more
conveniently view the houses and the people, as we passed along the
streets. I reckoned our coach to be about a square of
Westminster-hall, but not altogether so high: however, I cannot be very
exact. One day the governess ordered our coachman to stop at
several shops, where the beggars, watching their opportunity, crowded to
the sides of the coach, and gave me the most horrible spectacle that
ever a European eye beheld. There was a woman with a cancer in her
breast, swelled to a monstrous size, full of holes, in two or three of
which I could have easily crept, and covered my whole body. There
was a fellow with a wen in his neck, larger than five wool-packs; and
another, with a couple of wooden legs, each about twenty feet high.
But the most hateful sight of all, was the lice crawling on their
clothes. I could see distinctly the limbs of these vermin with my
naked eye, much better than those of a European louse through a
microscope, and their snouts with which they rooted like swine.
They were the first I had ever beheld, and I should have been curious
enough to dissect one of them, if I had had proper instruments, which I
unluckily left behind me in the ship, although, indeed, the sight was so
nauseous, that it perfectly turned my stomach.
Besides the large box in which I was usually carried, the queen ordered
a smaller one to be made for me, of about twelve feet square, and ten
high, for the convenience of travelling; because the other was somewhat
too large for Glumdalclitch’s lap, and cumbersome in the coach; it was
made by the same artist, whom I directed in the whole contrivance.
This travelling-closet was an exact square, with a window in the middle
of three of the squares, and each window was latticed with iron wire on
the outside, to prevent accidents in long journeys. On the fourth
side, which had no window, two strong staples were fixed, through which
the person that carried me, when I had a mind to be on horseback, put a
leathern belt, and buckled it about his waist. This was always the
office of some grave trusty servant, in whom I could confide, whether I
attended the king and queen in their progresses, or were disposed to see
the gardens, or pay a visit to some great lady or minister of state in
the court, when Glumdalclitch happened to be out of order; for I soon
began to be known and esteemed among the greatest officers, I suppose
more upon account of their majesties’ favour, than any merit of my
own. In journeys, when I was weary of the coach, a servant on
horseback would buckle on my box, and place it upon a cushion before
him; and there I had a full prospect of the country on three sides, from
my three windows. I had, in this closet, a field-bed and a
hammock, hung from the ceiling, two chairs and a table, neatly screwed
to the floor, to prevent being tossed about by the agitation of the
horse or the coach. And having been long used to sea-voyages,
those motions, although sometimes very violent, did not much discompose
me.
Whenever I had a mind to see the town, it was always in my travelling-closet;
which Glumdalclitch held in her lap in a kind of open sedan, after the
fashion of the country, borne by four men, and attended by two others in
the queen’s livery. The people, who had often heard of me, were
very curious to crowd about the sedan, and the girl was complaisant
enough to make the bearers stop, and to take me in her hand, that I
might be more conveniently seen.
I was very desirous to see the chief temple, and particularly the tower
belonging to it, which is reckoned the highest in the kingdom.
Accordingly one day my nurse carried me thither, but I may truly say I
came back disappointed; for the height is not above three thousand feet,
reckoning from the ground to the highest pinnacle top; which, allowing
for the difference between the size of those people and us in Europe, is
no great matter for admiration, nor at all equal in proportion (if I
rightly remember) to Salisbury steeple. But, not to detract from a
nation, to which, during my life, I shall acknowledge myself extremely
obliged, it must be allowed, that whatever this famous tower wants in
height, is amply made up in beauty and strength: for the walls are near
a hundred feet thick, built of hewn stone, whereof each is about forty
feet square, and adorned on all sides with statues of gods and emperors,
cut in marble, larger than the life, placed in their several niches.
I measured a little finger which had fallen down from one of these
statues, and lay unperceived among some rubbish, and found it exactly
four feet and an inch in length. Glumdalclitch wrapped it up in
her handkerchief, and carried it home in her pocket, to keep among other
trinkets, of which the girl was very fond, as children at her age
usually are.
The king’s kitchen is indeed a noble building, vaulted at top, and
about six hundred feet high. The great oven is not so wide, by ten
paces, as the cupola at St. Paul’s: for I measured the latter on
purpose, after my return. But if I should describe the kitchen
grate, the prodigious pots and kettles, the joints of meat turning on
the spits, with many other particulars, perhaps I should be hardly
believed; at least a severe critic would be apt to think I enlarged a
little, as travellers are often suspected to do. To avoid which
censure I fear I have run too much into the other extreme; and that if
this treatise should happen to be translated into the language of
Brobdingnag (which is the general name of that kingdom,) and transmitted
thither, the king and his people would have reason to complain that I
had done them an injury, by a false and diminutive representation.
His majesty seldom keeps above six hundred horses in his stables: they
are generally from fifty-four to sixty feet high. But, when he
goes abroad on solemn days, he is attended, for state, by a military
guard of five hundred horse, which, indeed, I thought was the most
splendid sight that could be ever beheld, till I saw part of his army in
battalia, whereof I shall find another occasion to speak.
CHAPTER V.
[Several adventurers that happened to the author. The execution of
a criminal. The author shows his skill in navigation.]
I should have lived happy enough in that country, if my littleness had
not exposed me to several ridiculous and troublesome accidents; some of
which I shall venture to relate. Glumdalclitch often carried me
into the gardens of the court in my smaller box, and would sometimes
take me out of it, and hold me in her hand, or set me down to walk.
I remember, before the dwarf left the queen, he followed us one day into
those gardens, and my nurse having set me down, he and I being close
together, near some dwarf apple trees, I must needs show my wit, by a
silly allusion between him and the trees, which happens to hold in their
language as it does in ours. Whereupon, the malicious rogue,
watching his opportunity, when I was walking under one of them, shook it
directly over my head, by which a dozen apples, each of them near as
large as a Bristol barrel, came tumbling about my ears; one of them hit
me on the back as I chanced to stoop, and knocked me down flat on my
face; but I received no other hurt, and the dwarf was pardoned at my
desire, because I had given the provocation.
Another day, Glumdalclitch left me on a smooth grass-plot to divert
myself, while she walked at some distance with her governess. In
the meantime, there suddenly fell such a violent shower of hail, that I
was immediately by the force of it, struck to the ground: and when I was
down, the hailstones gave me such cruel bangs all over the body, as if I
had been pelted with tennis-balls; however, I made a shift to creep on
all fours, and shelter myself, by lying flat on my face, on the lee-side
of a border of lemon-thyme, but so bruised from head to foot, that I
could not go abroad in ten days. Neither is this at all to be
wondered at, because nature, in that country, observing the same
proportion through all her operations, a hailstone is near eighteen
hundred times as large as one in Europe; which I can assert upon
experience, having been so curious as to weigh and measure them.
But a more dangerous accident happened to me in the same garden, when my
little nurse, believing she had put me in a secure place (which I often
entreated her to do, that I might enjoy my own thoughts,) and having
left my box at home, to avoid the trouble of carrying it, went to
another part of the garden with her governess and some ladies of her
acquaintance. While she was absent, and out of hearing, a small
white spaniel that belonged to one of the chief gardeners, having got by
accident into the garden, happened to range near the place where I lay:
the dog, following the scent, came directly up, and taking me in his
mouth, ran straight to his master wagging his tail, and set me gently on
the ground. By good fortune he had been so well taught, that I was
carried between his teeth without the least hurt, or even tearing my
clothes. But the poor gardener, who knew me well, and had a great
kindness for me, was in a terrible fright: he gently took me up in both
his hands, and asked me how I did? but I was so amazed and out of
breath, that I could not speak a word. In a few minutes I came to
myself, and he carried me safe to my little nurse, who, by this time,
had returned to the place where she left me, and was in cruel agonies
when I did not appear, nor answer when she called. She severely
reprimanded the gardener on account of his dog. But the thing was
hushed up, and never known at court, for the girl was afraid of the
queen’s anger; and truly, as to myself, I thought it would not be for
my reputation, that such a story should go about.
This accident absolutely determined Glumdalclitch never to trust me
abroad for the future out of her sight. I had been long afraid of
this resolution, and therefore concealed from her some little unlucky
adventures, that happened in those times when I was left by myself.
Once a kite, hovering over the garden, made a stoop at me, and if I had
not resolutely drawn my hanger, and run under a thick espalier, he would
have certainly carried me away in his talons. Another time,
walking to the top of a fresh mole-hill, I fell to my neck in the hole,
through which that animal had cast up the earth, and coined some lie,
not worth remembering, to excuse myself for spoiling my clothes. I
likewise broke my right shin against the shell of a snail, which I
happened to stumble over, as I was walking alone and thinking on poor
England.
I cannot tell whether I were more pleased or mortified to observe, in
those solitary walks, that the smaller birds did not appear to be at all
afraid of me, but would hop about within a yard’s distance, looking
for worms and other food, with as much indifference and security as if
no creature at all were near them. I remember, a thrush had the
confidence to snatch out of my hand, with his bill, a of cake that
Glumdalclitch had just given me for my breakfast. When I attempted
to catch any of these birds, they would boldly turn against me,
endeavouring to peck my fingers, which I durst not venture within their
reach; and then they would hop back unconcerned, to hunt for worms or
snails, as they did before. But one day, I took a thick cudgel,
and threw it with all my strength so luckily, at a linnet, that I
knocked him down, and seizing him by the neck with both my hands, ran
with him in triumph to my nurse. However, the bird, who had only
been stunned, recovering himself gave me so many boxes with his wings,
on both sides of my head and body, though I held him at arm’s-length,
and was out of the reach of his claws, that I was twenty times thinking
to let him go. But I was soon relieved by one of our servants, who
wrung off the bird’s neck, and I had him next day for dinner, by the
queen’s command. This linnet, as near as I can remember, seemed
to be somewhat larger than an English swan.
The maids of honour often invited Glumdalclitch to their apartments, and
desired she would bring me along with her, on purpose to have the
pleasure of seeing and touching me. They would often strip me
naked from top to toe, and lay me at full length in their bosoms;
wherewith I was much disgusted because, to say the truth, a very
offensive smell came from their skins; which I do not mention, or
intend, to the disadvantage of those excellent ladies, for whom I have
all manner of respect; but I conceive that my sense was more acute in
proportion to my littleness, and that those illustrious persons were no
more disagreeable to their lovers, or to each other, than people of the
same quality are with us in England. And, after all, I found their
natural smell was much more supportable, than when they used perfumes,
under which I immediately swooned away. I cannot forget, that an
intimate friend of mine in Lilliput, took the freedom in a warm day,
when I had used a good deal of exercise, to complain of a strong smell
about me, although I am as little faulty that way, as most of my sex:
but I suppose his faculty of smelling was as nice with regard to me, as
mine was to that of this people. Upon this point, I cannot forbear
doing justice to the queen my mistress, and Glumdalclitch my nurse,
whose persons were as sweet as those of any lady in England.
That which gave me most uneasiness among these maids of honour (when my
nurse carried me to visit then) was, to see them use me without any
manner of ceremony, like a creature who had no sort of consequence: for
they would strip themselves to the skin, and put on their smocks in my
presence, while I was placed on their toilet, directly before their
naked bodies, which I am sure to me was very far from being a tempting
sight, or from giving me any other emotions than those of horror and
disgust: their skins appeared so coarse and uneven, so variously
coloured, when I saw them near, with a mole here and there as broad as a
trencher, and hairs hanging from it thicker than packthreads, to say
nothing farther concerning the rest of their persons. Neither did
they at all scruple, while I was by, to discharge what they had drank,
to the quantity of at least two hogsheads, in a vessel that held above
three tuns. The handsomest among these maids of honour, a
pleasant, frolicsome girl of sixteen, would sometimes set me astride
upon one of her nipples, with many other tricks, wherein the reader will
excuse me for not being over particular. But I was so much
displeased, that I entreated Glumdalclitch to contrive some excuse for
not seeing that young lady any more.
One day, a young gentleman, who was nephew to my nurse’s governess,
came and pressed them both to see an execution. It was of a man,
who had murdered one of that gentleman’s intimate acquaintance.
Glumdalclitch was prevailed on to be of the company, very much against
her inclination, for she was naturally tender-hearted: and, as for
myself, although I abhorred such kind of spectacles, yet my curiosity
tempted me to see something that I thought must be extraordinary.
The malefactor was fixed in a chair upon a scaffold erected for that
purpose, and his head cut off at one blow, with a sword of about forty
feet long. The veins and arteries spouted up such a prodigious
quantity of blood, and so high in the air, that the great jet d’eau
at Versailles was not equal to it for the time it lasted: and the head,
when it fell on the scaffold floor, gave such a bounce as made me start,
although I was at least half an English mile distant.
The queen, who often used to hear me talk of my sea-voyages, and took
all occasions to divert me when I was melancholy, asked me whether I
understood how to handle a sail or an oar, and whether a little exercise
of rowing might not be convenient for my health? I answered, that
I understood both very well: for although my proper employment had been
to be surgeon or doctor to the ship, yet often, upon a pinch, I was
forced to work like a common mariner. But I could not see how this
could be done in their country, where the smallest wherry was equal to a
first-rate man of war among us; and such a boat as I could manage would
never live in any of their rivers. Her majesty said, if I would
contrive a boat, her own joiner should make it, and she would provide a
place for me to sail in. The fellow was an ingenious workman, and
by my instructions, in ten days, finished a pleasure-boat with all its
tackling, able conveniently to hold eight Europeans. When it was
finished, the queen was so delighted, that she ran with it in her lap to
the king, who ordered it to be put into a cistern full of water, with me
in it, by way of trial, where I could not manage my two sculls, or
little oars, for want of room. But the queen had before contrived
another project. She ordered the joiner to make a wooden trough of
three hundred feet long, fifty broad, and eight deep; which, being well
pitched, to prevent leaking, was placed on the floor, along the wall, in
an outer room of the palace. It had a cock near the bottom to let
out the water, when it began to grow stale; and two servants could
easily fill it in half an hour. Here I often used to row for my
own diversion, as well as that of the queen and her ladies, who thought
themselves well entertained with my skill and agility. Sometimes I
would put up my sail, and then my business was only to steer, while the
ladies gave me a gale with their fans; and, when they were weary, some
of their pages would blow my sail forward with their breath, while I
showed my art by steering starboard or larboard as I pleased. When
I had done, Glumdalclitch always carried back my boat into her closet,
and hung it on a nail to dry.
In this exercise I once met an accident, which had like to have cost me
my life; for, one of the pages having put my boat into the trough, the
governess who attended Glumdalclitch very officiously lifted me up, to
place me in the boat: but I happened to slip through her fingers, and
should infallibly have fallen down forty feet upon the floor, if, by the
luckiest chance in the world, I had not been stopped by a corking-pin
that stuck in the good gentlewoman’s stomacher; the head of the pin
passing between my shirt and the waistband of my breeches, and thus I
was held by the middle in the air, till Glumdalclitch ran to my relief.
Another time, one of the servants, whose office it was to fill my trough
every third day with fresh water, was so careless as to let a huge frog
(not perceiving it) slip out of his pail. The frog lay concealed
till I was put into my boat, but then, seeing a resting-place, climbed
up, and made it lean so much on one side, that I was forced to balance
it with all my weight on the other, to prevent overturning. When
the frog was got in, it hopped at once half the length of the boat, and
then over my head, backward and forward, daubing my face and clothes
with its odious slime. The largeness of its features made it
appear the most deformed animal that can be conceived. However, I
desired Glumdalclitch to let me deal with it alone. I banged it a
good while with one of my sculls, and at last forced it to leap out of
the boat.
But the greatest danger I ever underwent in that kingdom, was from a
monkey, who belonged to one of the clerks of the kitchen.
Glumdalclitch had locked me up in her closet, while she went somewhere
upon business, or a visit. The weather being very warm, the
closet-window was left open, as well as the windows and the door of my
bigger box, in which I usually lived, because of its largeness and
conveniency. As I sat quietly meditating at my table, I heard
something bounce in at the closet-window, and skip about from one side
to the other: whereat, although I was much alarmed, yet I ventured to
look out, but not stirring from my seat; and then I saw this frolicsome
animal frisking and leaping up and down, till at last he came to my box,
which he seemed to view with great pleasure and curiosity, peeping in at
the door and every window. I retreated to the farther corner of my
room; or box; but the monkey looking in at every side, put me in such a
fright, that I wanted presence of mind to conceal myself under the bed,
as I might easily have done. After some time spent in peeping,
grinning, and chattering, he at last espied me; and reaching one of his
paws in at the door, as a cat does when she plays with a mouse, although
I often shifted place to avoid him, he at length seized the lappet of my
coat (which being made of that country silk, was very thick and strong),
and dragged me out. He took me up in his right fore-foot and held
me as a nurse does a child she is going to suckle, just as I have seen
the same sort of creature do with a kitten in Europe; and when I offered
to struggle he squeezed me so hard, that I thought it more prudent to
submit. I have good reason to believe, that he took me for a young
one of his own species, by his often stroking my face very gently with
his other paw. In these diversions he was interrupted by a noise
at the closet door, as if somebody were opening it: whereupon he
suddenly leaped up to the window at which he had come in, and thence
upon the leads and gutters, walking upon three legs, and holding me in
the fourth, till he clambered up to a roof that was next to ours.
I heard Glumdalclitch give a shriek at the moment he was carrying me
out. The poor girl was almost distracted: that quarter of the
palace was all in an uproar; the servants ran for ladders; the monkey
was seen by hundreds in the court, sitting upon the ridge of a building,
holding me like a baby in one of his forepaws, and feeding me with the
other, by cramming into my mouth some victuals he had squeezed out of
the bag on one side of his chaps, and patting me when I would not eat;
whereat many of the rabble below could not forbear laughing; neither do
I think they justly ought to be blamed, for, without question, the sight
was ridiculous enough to every body but myself. Some of the people
threw up stones, hoping to drive the monkey down; but this was strictly
forbidden, or else, very probably, my brains had been dashed out.
The ladders were now applied, and mounted by several men; which the
monkey observing, and finding himself almost encompassed, not being able
to make speed enough with his three legs, let me drop on a ridge tile,
and made his escape. Here I sat for some time, five hundred yards
from the ground, expecting every moment to be blown down by the wind, or
to fall by my own giddiness, and come tumbling over and over from the
ridge to the eaves; but an honest lad, one of my nurse’s footmen,
climbed up, and putting me into his breeches pocket, brought me down
safe.
I was almost choked with the filthy stuff the monkey had crammed down my
throat: but my dear little nurse picked it out of my mouth with a small
needle, and then I fell a-vomiting, which gave me great relief.
Yet I was so weak and bruised in the sides with the squeezes given me by
this odious animal, that I was forced to keep my bed a fortnight.
The king, queen, and all the court, sent every day to inquire after my
health; and her majesty made me several visits during my sickness.
The monkey was killed, and an order made, that no such animal should be
kept about the palace.
When I attended the king after my recovery, to return him thanks for his
favours, he was pleased to rally me a good deal upon this adventure.
He asked me, “what my thoughts and speculations were, while I lay in
the monkey’s paw; how I liked the victuals he gave me; his manner of
feeding; and whether the fresh air on the roof had sharpened my
stomach.” He desired to know, “what I would have done upon
such an occasion in my own country.” I told his majesty, “that
in Europe we had no monkeys, except such as were brought for curiosity
from other places, and so small, that I could deal with a dozen of them
together, if they presumed to attack me. And as for that monstrous
animal with whom I was so lately engaged (it was indeed as large as an
elephant), if my fears had suffered me to think so far as to make use of
my hanger,” (looking fiercely, and clapping my hand on the hilt, as I
spoke) “when he poked his paw into my chamber, perhaps I should have
given him such a wound, as would have made him glad to withdraw it with
more haste than he put it in.” This I delivered in a firm tone,
like a person who was jealous lest his courage should be called in
question. However, my speech produced nothing else beside a laud
laughter, which all the respect due to his majesty from those about him
could not make them contain. This made me reflect, how vain an
attempt it is for a man to endeavour to do himself honour among those
who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him. And
yet I have seen the moral of my own behaviour very frequent in England
since my return; where a little contemptible varlet, without the least
title to birth, person, wit, or common sense, shall presume to look with
importance, and put himself upon a foot with the greatest persons of the
kingdom.
I was every day furnishing the court with some ridiculous story: and
Glumdalclitch, although she loved me to excess, yet was arch enough to
inform the queen, whenever I committed any folly that she thought would
be diverting to her majesty. The girl, who had been out of order,
was carried by her governess to take the air about an hour’s distance,
or thirty miles from town. They alighted out of the coach near a
small foot-path in a field, and Glumdalclitch setting down my travelling
box, I went out of it to walk. There was a cow-dung in the path,
and I must need try my activity by attempting to leap over it. I
took a run, but unfortunately jumped short, and found myself just in the
middle up to my knees. I waded through with some difficulty, and
one of the footmen wiped me as clean as he could with his handkerchief,
for I was filthily bemired; and my nurse confined me to my box, till we
returned home; where the queen was soon informed of what had passed, and
the footmen spread it about the court: so that all the mirth for some
days was at my expense.
CHAPTER VI.
[Several contrivances of the author to please the king and queen.
He shows his skill in music. The king inquires into the state of
England, which the author relates to him. The king’s
observations thereon.]
I used to attend the king’s levee once or twice a week, and had often
seen him under the barber’s hand, which indeed was at first very
terrible to behold; for the razor was almost twice as long as an
ordinary scythe. His majesty, according to the custom of the
country, was only shaved twice a-week. I once prevailed on the
barber to give me some of the suds or lather, out of which I picked
forty or fifty of the strongest stumps of hair. I then took a
piece of fine wood, and cut it like the back of a comb, making several
holes in it at equal distances with as small a needle as I could get
from Glumdalclitch. I fixed in the stumps so artificially,
scraping and sloping them with my knife toward the points, that I made a
very tolerable comb; which was a seasonable supply, my own being so much
broken in the teeth, that it was almost useless: neither did I know any
artist in that country so nice and exact, as would undertake to make me
another.
And this puts me in mind of an amusement, wherein I spent many of my
leisure hours. I desired the queen’s woman to save for me the
combings of her majesty’s hair, whereof in time I got a good quantity;
and consulting with my friend the cabinet-maker, who had received
general orders to do little jobs for me, I directed him to make two
chair-frames, no larger than those I had in my box, and to bore little
holes with a fine awl, round those parts where I designed the backs and
seats; through these holes I wove the strongest hairs I could pick out,
just after the manner of cane chairs in England. When they were
finished, I made a present of them to her majesty; who kept them in her
cabinet, and used to show them for curiosities, as indeed they were the
wonder of every one that beheld them. The queen would have me sit
upon one of these chairs, but I absolutely refused to obey her,
protesting I would rather die than place a dishonourable part of my body
on those precious hairs, that once adorned her majesty’s head.
Of these hairs (as I had always a mechanical genius) I likewise made a
neat little purse, about five feet long, with her majesty’s name
deciphered in gold letters, which I gave to Glumdalclitch, by the
queen’s consent. To say the truth, it was more for show than
use, being not of strength to bear the weight of the larger coins, and
therefore she kept nothing in it but some little toys that girls are
fond of.
The king, who delighted in music, had frequent concerts at court, to
which I was sometimes carried, and set in my box on a table to hear
them: but the noise was so great that I could hardly distinguish the
tunes. I am confident that all the drums and trumpets of a royal
army, beating and sounding together just at your ears, could not equal
it. My practice was to have my box removed from the place where
the performers sat, as far as I could, then to shut the doors and
windows of it, and draw the window curtains; after which I found their
music not disagreeable.
I had learned in my youth to play a little upon the spinet.
Glumdalclitch kept one in her chamber, and a master attended twice
a-week to teach her: I called it a spinet, because it somewhat resembled
that instrument, and was played upon in the same manner. A fancy
came into my head, that I would entertain the king and queen with an
English tune upon this instrument. But this appeared extremely
difficult: for the spinet was near sixty feet long, each key being
almost a foot wide, so that with my arms extended I could not reach to
above five keys, and to press them down required a good smart stroke
with my fist, which would be too great a labour, and to no purpose.
The method I contrived was this: I prepared two round sticks, about the
bigness of common cudgels; they were thicker at one end than the other,
and I covered the thicker ends with pieces of a mouse’s skin, that by
rapping on them I might neither damage the tops of the keys nor
interrupt the sound. Before the spinet a bench was placed, about
four feet below the keys, and I was put upon the bench. I ran
sideling upon it, that way and this, as fast as I could, banging the
proper keys with my two sticks, and made a shift to play a jig, to the
great satisfaction of both their majesties; but it was the most violent
exercise I ever underwent; and yet I could not strike above sixteen
keys, nor consequently play the bass and treble together, as other
artists do; which was a great disadvantage to my performance.
The king, who, as I before observed, was a prince of excellent
understanding, would frequently order that I should be brought in my
box, and set upon the table in his closet: he would then command me to
bring one of my chairs out of the box, and sit down within three yards
distance upon the top of the cabinet, which brought me almost to a level
with his face. In this manner I had several conversations with
him. I one day took the freedom to tell his majesty, “that the
contempt he discovered towards Europe, and the rest of the world, did
not seem answerable to those excellent qualities of mind that he was
master of; that reason did not extend itself with the bulk of the body;
on the contrary, we observed in our country, that the tallest persons
were usually the least provided with it; that among other animals, bees
and ants had the reputation of more industry, art, and sagacity, than
many of the larger kinds; and that, as inconsiderable as he took me to
be, I hoped I might live to do his majesty some signal service.”
The king heard me with attention, and began to conceive a much better
opinion of me than he had ever before. He desired “I would give
him as exact an account of the government of England as I possibly
could; because, as fond as princes commonly are of their own customs
(for so he conjectured of other monarchs, by my former discourses), he
should be glad to hear of any thing that might deserve imitation.”
Imagine with thyself, courteous reader, how often I then wished for the
tongue of Demosthenes or Cicero, that might have enabled me to celebrate
the praise of my own dear native country in a style equal to its merits
and felicity.
I began my discourse by informing his majesty, that our dominions
consisted of two islands, which composed three mighty kingdoms, under
one sovereign, beside our plantations in America. I dwelt long
upon the fertility of our soil, and the temperature of our climate.
I then spoke at large upon the constitution of an English parliament;
partly made up of an illustrious body called the House of Peers; persons
of the noblest blood, and of the most ancient and ample patrimonies.
I described that extraordinary care always taken of their education in
arts and arms, to qualify them for being counsellors both to the king
and kingdom; to have a share in the legislature; to be members of the
highest court of judicature, whence there can be no appeal; and to be
champions always ready for the defence of their prince and country, by
their valour, conduct, and fidelity. That these were the ornament
and bulwark of the kingdom, worthy followers of their most renowned
ancestors, whose honour had been the reward of their virtue, from which
their posterity were never once known to degenerate. To these were
joined several holy persons, as part of that assembly, under the title
of bishops, whose peculiar business is to take care of religion, and of
those who instruct the people therein. These were searched and
sought out through the whole nation, by the prince and his wisest
counsellors, among such of the priesthood as were most deservedly
distinguished by the sanctity of their lives, and the depth of their
erudition; who were indeed the spiritual fathers of the clergy and the
people.
That the other part of the parliament consisted of an assembly called
the House of Commons, who were all principal gentlemen, freely picked
and culled out by the people themselves, for their great abilities and
love of their country, to represent the wisdom of the whole nation.
And that these two bodies made up the most august assembly in Europe; to
whom, in conjunction with the prince, the whole legislature is
committed.
I then descended to the courts of justice; over which the judges, those
venerable sages and interpreters of the law, presided, for determining
the disputed rights and properties of men, as well as for the punishment
of vice and protection of innocence. I mentioned the prudent
management of our treasury; the valour and achievements of our forces,
by sea and land. I computed the number of our people, by reckoning
how many millions there might be of each religious sect, or political
party among us. I did not omit even our sports and pastimes, or
any other particular which I thought might redound to the honour of my
country. And I finished all with a brief historical account of
affairs and events in England for about a hundred years past.
This conversation was not ended under five audiences, each of several
hours; and the king heard the whole with great attention, frequently
taking notes of what I spoke, as well as memorandums of what questions
he intended to ask me.
When I had put an end to these long discources, his majesty, in a sixth
audience, consulting his notes, proposed many doubts, queries, and
objections, upon every article. He asked, “What methods were
used to cultivate the minds and bodies of our young nobility, and in
what kind of business they commonly spent the first and teachable parts
of their lives? What course was taken to supply that assembly,
when any noble family became extinct? What qualifications were
necessary in those who are to be created new lords: whether the humour
of the prince, a sum of money to a court lady, or a design of
strengthening a party opposite to the public interest, ever happened to
be the motive in those advancements? What share of knowledge these
lords had in the laws of their country, and how they came by it, so as
to enable them to decide the properties of their fellow-subjects in the
last resort? Whether they were always so free from avarice,
partialities, or want, that a bribe, or some other sinister view, could
have no place among them? Whether those holy lords I spoke of were
always promoted to that rank upon account of their knowledge in
religious matters, and the sanctity of their lives; had never been
compliers with the times, while they were common priests; or slavish
prostitute chaplains to some nobleman, whose opinions they continued
servilely to follow, after they were admitted into that assembly?”
He then desired to know, “What arts were practised in electing those
whom I called commoners: whether a stranger, with a strong purse, might
not influence the vulgar voters to choose him before their own landlord,
or the most considerable gentleman in the neighbourhood? How it
came to pass, that people were so violently bent upon getting into this
assembly, which I allowed to be a great trouble and expense, often to
the ruin of their families, without any salary or pension? because this
appeared such an exalted strain of virtue and public spirit, that his
majesty seemed to doubt it might possibly not be always sincere.”
And he desired to know, “Whether such zealous gentlemen could have any
views of refunding themselves for the charges and trouble they were at
by sacrificing the public good to the designs of a weak and vicious
prince, in conjunction with a corrupted ministry?” He multiplied
his questions, and sifted me thoroughly upon every part of this head,
proposing numberless inquiries and objections, which I think it not
prudent or convenient to repeat.
Upon what I said in relation to our courts of justice, his majesty
desired to be satisfied in several points: and this I was the better
able to do, having been formerly almost ruined by a long suit in
chancery, which was decreed for me with costs. He asked, “What
time was usually spent in determining between right and wrong, and what
degree of expense? Whether advocates and orators had liberty to
plead in causes manifestly known to be unjust, vexatious, or oppressive?
Whether party, in religion or politics, were observed to be of any
weight in the scale of justice? Whether those pleading orators
were persons educated in the general knowledge of equity, or only in
provincial, national, and other local customs? Whether they or
their judges had any part in penning those laws, which they assumed the
liberty of interpreting, and glossing upon at their pleasure?
Whether they had ever, at different times, pleaded for and against the
same cause, and cited precedents to prove contrary opinions?
Whether they were a rich or a poor corporation? Whether they
received any pecuniary reward for pleading, or delivering their
opinions? And particularly, whether they were ever admitted as
members in the lower senate?”
He fell next upon the management of our treasury; and said, “he
thought my memory had failed me, because I computed our taxes at about
five or six millions a-year, and when I came to mention the issues, he
found they sometimes amounted to more than double; for the notes he had
taken were very particular in this point, because he hoped, as he told
me, that the knowledge of our conduct might be useful to him, and he
could not be deceived in his calculations. But, if what I told him
were true, he was still at a loss how a kingdom could run out of its
estate, like a private person.” He asked me, “who were our
creditors; and where we found money to pay them?” He wondered to
hear me talk of such chargeable and expensive wars; “that certainly we
must be a quarrelsome people, or live among very bad neighbours, and
that our generals must needs be richer than our kings.” He
asked, what business we had out of our own islands, unless upon the
score of trade, or treaty, or to defend the coasts with our fleet?”
Above all, he was amazed to hear me talk of a mercenary standing army,
in the midst of peace, and among a free people. He said, “if we
were governed by our own consent, in the persons of our representatives,
he could not imagine of whom we were afraid, or against whom we were to
fight; and would hear my opinion, whether a private man’s house might
not be better defended by himself, his children, and family, than by
half-a-dozen rascals, picked up at a venture in the streets for small
wages, who might get a hundred times more by cutting their throats?”
He laughed at my “odd kind of arithmetic,” as he was pleased to call
it, “in reckoning the numbers of our people, by a computation drawn
from the several sects among us, in religion and politics.” He
said, “he knew no reason why those, who entertain opinions prejudicial
to the public, should be obliged to change, or should not be obliged to
conceal them. And as it was tyranny in any government to require
the first, so it was weakness not to enforce the second: for a man may
be allowed to keep poisons in his closet, but not to vend them about for
cordials.”
He observed, “that among the diversions of our nobility and gentry, I
had mentioned gaming: he desired to know at what age this entertainment
was usually taken up, and when it was laid down; how much of their time
it employed; whether it ever went so high as to affect their fortunes;
whether mean, vicious people, by their dexterity in that art, might not
arrive at great riches, and sometimes keep our very nobles in
dependence, as well as habituate them to vile companions, wholly take
them from the improvement of their minds, and force them, by the losses
they received, to learn and practise that infamous dexterity upon
others?”
He was perfectly astonished with the historical account gave him of our
affairs during the last century; protesting “it was only a heap of
conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments,
the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness,
cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, could
produce.”
His majesty, in another audience, was at the pains to recapitulate the
sum of all I had spoken; compared the questions he made with the answers
I had given; then taking me into his hands, and stroking me gently,
delivered himself in these words, which I shall never forget, nor the
manner he spoke them in: “My little friend Grildrig, you have made a
most admirable panegyric upon your country; you have clearly proved,
that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for
qualifying a legislator; that laws are best explained, interpreted, and
applied, by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting,
confounding, and eluding them. I observe among you some lines of
an institution, which, in its original, might have been tolerable, but
these half erased, and the rest wholly blurred and blotted by
corruptions. It does not appear, from all you have said, how any
one perfection is required toward the procurement of any one station
among you; much less, that men are ennobled on account of their virtue;
that priests are advanced for their piety or learning; soldiers, for
their conduct or valour; judges, for their integrity; senators, for the
love of their country; or counsellors for their wisdom. As for
yourself,” continued the king, “who have spent the greatest part of
your life in travelling, I am well disposed to hope you may hitherto
have escaped many vices of your country. But by what I have
gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains
wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your
natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that
nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”
CHAPTER VII.
[The author’s love of his country. He makes a proposal of much
advantage to the king, which is rejected. The king’s great
ignorance in politics. The learning of that country very imperfect
and confined. The laws, and military affairs, and parties in the
state.]
Nothing but an extreme love of truth could have hindered me from
concealing this part of my story. It was in vain to discover my
resentments, which were always turned into ridicule; and I was forced to
rest with patience, while my noble and beloved country was so
injuriously treated. I am as heartily sorry as any of my readers
can possibly be, that such an occasion was given: but this prince
happened to be so curious and inquisitive upon every particular, that it
could not consist either with gratitude or good manners, to refuse
giving him what satisfaction I was able. Yet thus much I may be
allowed to say in my own vindication, that I artfully eluded many of his
questions, and gave to every point a more favourable turn, by many
degrees, than the strictness of truth would allow. For I have
always borne that laudable partiality to my own country, which Dionysius
Halicarnassensis, with so much justice, recommends to an historian: I
would hide the frailties and deformities of my political mother, and
place her virtues and beauties in the most advantageous light.
This was my sincere endeavour in those many discourses I had with that
monarch, although it unfortunately failed of success.
But great allowances should be given to a king, who lives wholly
secluded from the rest of the world, and must therefore be altogether
unacquainted with the manners and customs that most prevail in other
nations: the want of which knowledge will ever produce many prejudices,
and a certain narrowness of thinking, from which we, and the politer
countries of Europe, are wholly exempted. And it would be hard
indeed, if so remote a prince’s notions of virtue and vice were to be
offered as a standard for all mankind.
To confirm what I have now said, and further to show the miserable
effects of a confined education, I shall here insert a passage, which
will hardly obtain belief. In hopes to ingratiate myself further
into his majesty’s favour, I told him of “an invention, discovered
between three and four hundred years ago, to make a certain powder, into
a heap of which, the smallest spark of fire falling, would kindle the
whole in a moment, although it were as big as a mountain, and make it
all fly up in the air together, with a noise and agitation greater than
thunder. That a proper quantity of this powder rammed into a
hollow tube of brass or iron, according to its bigness, would drive a
ball of iron or lead, with such violence and speed, as nothing was able
to sustain its force. That the largest balls thus discharged,
would not only destroy whole ranks of an army at once, but batter the
strongest walls to the ground, sink down ships, with a thousand men in
each, to the bottom of the sea, and when linked together by a chain,
would cut through masts and rigging, divide hundreds of bodies in the
middle, and lay all waste before them. That we often put this
powder into large hollow balls of iron, and discharged them by an engine
into some city we were besieging, which would rip up the pavements, tear
the houses to pieces, burst and throw splinters on every side, dashing
out the brains of all who came near. That I knew the ingredients
very well, which were cheap and common; I understood the manner of
compounding them, and could direct his workmen how to make those tubes,
of a size proportionable to all other things in his majesty’s kingdom,
and the largest need not be above a hundred feet long; twenty or thirty
of which tubes, charged with the proper quantity of powder and balls,
would batter down the walls of the strongest town in his dominions in a
few hours, or destroy the whole metropolis, if ever it should pretend to
dispute his absolute commands.” This I humbly offered to his
majesty, as a small tribute of acknowledgment, in turn for so many marks
that I had received, of his royal favour and protection.
The king was struck with horror at the description I had given of those
terrible engines, and the proposal I had made. “He was amazed,
how so impotent and grovelling an insect as I” (these were his
expressions) “could entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a
manner, as to appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of blood and
desolation which I had painted as the common effects of those
destructive machines; whereof,” he said, “some evil genius, enemy to
mankind, must have been the first contriver. As for himself, he
protested, that although few things delighted him so much as new
discoveries in art or in nature, yet he would rather lose half his
kingdom, than be privy to such a secret; which he commanded me, as I
valued any life, never to mention any more.”
A strange effect of narrow principles and views! that a prince possessed
of every quality which procures veneration, love, and esteem; of strong
parts, great wisdom, and profound learning, endowed with admirable
talents, and almost adored by his subjects, should, from a nice,
unnecessary scruple, whereof in Europe we can have no conception, let
slip an opportunity put into his hands that would have made him absolute
master of the lives, the liberties, and the fortunes of his people!
Neither do I say this, with the least intention to detract from the many
virtues of that excellent king, whose character, I am sensible, will, on
this account, be very much lessened in the opinion of an English reader:
but I take this defect among them to have risen from their ignorance, by
not having hitherto reduced politics into a science, as the more acute
wits of Europe have done. For, I remember very well, in a
discourse one day with the king, when I happened to say, “there were
several thousand books among us written upon the art of government,”
it gave him (directly contrary to my intention) a very mean opinion of
our understandings. He professed both to abominate and despise all
mystery, refinement, and intrigue, either in a prince or a minister.
He could not tell what I meant by secrets of state, where an enemy, or
some rival nation, were not in the case. He confined the knowledge
of governing within very narrow bounds, to common sense and reason, to
justice and lenity, to the speedy determination of civil and criminal
causes; with some other obvious topics, which are not worth considering.
And he gave it for his opinion, “that whoever could make two ears of
corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only
one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential
service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put
together.”
The learning of this people is very defective, consisting only in
morality, history, poetry, and mathematics, wherein they must be allowed
to excel. But the last of these is wholly applied to what may be
useful in life, to the improvement of agriculture, and all mechanical
arts; so that among us, it would be little esteemed. And as to
ideas, entities, abstractions, and transcendentals, I could never drive
the least conception into their heads.
No law in that country must exceed in words the number of letters in
their alphabet, which consists only of two and twenty. But indeed
few of them extend even to that length. They are expressed in the
most plain and simple terms, wherein those people are not mercurial
enough to discover above one interpretation: and to write a comment upon
any law, is a capital crime. As to the decision of civil causes,
or proceedings against criminals, their precedents are so few, that they
have little reason to boast of any extraordinary skill in either.
They have had the art of printing, as well as the Chinese, time out of
mind: but their libraries are not very large; for that of the king,
which is reckoned the largest, does not amount to above a thousand
volumes, placed in a gallery of twelve hundred feet long, whence I had
liberty to borrow what books I pleased. The queen’s joiner had
contrived in one of Glumdalclitch’s rooms, a kind of wooden machine
five-and-twenty feet high, formed like a standing ladder; the steps were
each fifty feet long. It was indeed a moveable pair of stairs, the
lowest end placed at ten feet distance from the wall of the chamber.
The book I had a mind to read, was put up leaning against the wall: I
first mounted to the upper step of the ladder, and turning my face
towards the book, began at the top of the page, and so walking to the
right and left about eight or ten paces, according to the length of the
lines, till I had gotten a little below the level of mine eyes, and then
descending gradually till I came to the bottom: after which I mounted
again, and began the other page in the same manner, and so turned over
the leaf, which I could easily do with both my hands, for it was as
thick and stiff as a pasteboard, and in the largest folios not above
eighteen or twenty feet long.
Their style is clear, masculine, and smooth, but not florid; for they
avoid nothing more than multiplying unnecessary words, or using various
expressions. I have perused many of their books, especially those
in history and morality. Among the rest, I was much diverted with
a little old treatise, which always lay in Glumdalclitch’s bed
chamber, and belonged to her governess, a grave elderly gentlewoman, who
dealt in writings of morality and devotion. The book treats of the
weakness of human kind, and is in little esteem, except among the women
and the vulgar. However, I was curious to see what an author of
that country could say upon such a subject. This writer went
through all the usual topics of European moralists, showing “how
diminutive, contemptible, and helpless an animal was man in his own
nature; how unable to defend himself from inclemencies of the air, or
the fury of wild beasts: how much he was excelled by one creature in
strength, by another in speed, by a third in foresight, by a fourth in
industry.” He added, “that nature was degenerated in these
latter declining ages of the world, and could now produce only small
abortive births, in comparison of those in ancient times.” He
said “it was very reasonable to think, not only that the species of
men were originally much larger, but also that there must have been
giants in former ages; which, as it is asserted by history and
tradition, so it has been confirmed by huge bones and skulls, casually
dug up in several parts of the kingdom, far exceeding the common
dwindled race of men in our days.” He argued, “that the very
laws of nature absolutely required we should have been made, in the
beginning of a size more large and robust; not so liable to destruction
from every little accident, of a tile falling from a house, or a stone
cast from the hand of a boy, or being drowned in a little brook.”
From this way of reasoning, the author drew several moral applications,
useful in the conduct of life, but needless here to repeat. For my
own part, I could not avoid reflecting how universally this talent was
spread, of drawing lectures in morality, or indeed rather matter of
discontent and repining, from the quarrels we raise with nature.
And I believe, upon a strict inquiry, those quarrels might be shown as
ill-grounded among us as they are among that people.
As to their military affairs, they boast that the king’s army consists
of a hundred and seventy-six thousand foot, and thirty-two thousand
horse: if that may be called an army, which is made up of tradesmen in
the several cities, and farmers in the country, whose commanders are
only the nobility and gentry, without pay or reward. They are
indeed perfect enough in their exercises, and under very good
discipline, wherein I saw no great merit; for how should it be
otherwise, where every farmer is under the command of his own landlord,
and every citizen under that of the principal men in his own city,
chosen after the manner of Venice, by ballot?
I have often seen the militia of Lorbrulgrud drawn out to exercise, in a
great field near the city of twenty miles square. They were in all
not above twenty-five thousand foot, and six thousand horse; but it was
impossible for me to compute their number, considering the space of
ground they took up. A cavalier, mounted on a large steed, might
be about ninety feet high. I have seen this whole body of horse,
upon a word of command, draw their swords at once, and brandish them in
the air. Imagination can figure nothing so grand, so surprising,
and so astonishing! it looked as if ten thousand flashes of lightning
were darting at the same time from every quarter of the sky.
I was curious to know how this prince, to whose dominions there is no
access from any other country, came to think of armies, or to teach his
people the practice of military discipline. But I was soon
informed, both by conversation and reading their histories; for, in the
course of many ages, they have been troubled with the same disease to
which the whole race of mankind is subject; the nobility often
contending for power, the people for liberty, and the king for absolute
dominion. All which, however happily tempered by the laws of that
kingdom, have been sometimes violated by each of the three parties, and
have more than once occasioned civil wars; the last whereof was happily
put an end to by this prince’s grand-father, in a general composition;
and the militia, then settled with common consent, has been ever since
kept in the strictest duty.
CHAPTER VIII.
[The king and queen make a progress to the frontiers. The author
attends them. The manner in which he leaves the country very
particularly related. He returns to England.]
I had always a strong impulse that I should some time recover my
liberty, though it was impossible to conjecture by what means, or to
form any project with the least hope of succeeding. The ship in
which I sailed, was the first ever known to be driven within sight of
that coast, and the king had given strict orders, that if at any time
another appeared, it should be taken ashore, and with all its crew and
passengers brought in a tumbril to Lorbrulgrud. He was strongly
bent to get me a woman of my own size, by whom I might propagate the
breed: but I think I should rather have died than undergone the disgrace
of leaving a posterity to be kept in cages, like tame canary-birds, and
perhaps, in time, sold about the kingdom, to persons of quality, for
curiosities. I was indeed treated with much kindness: I was the
favourite of a great king and queen, and the delight of the whole court;
but it was upon such a foot as ill became the dignity of humankind.
I could never forget those domestic pledges I had left behind me.
I wanted to be among people, with whom I could converse upon even terms,
and walk about the streets and fields without being afraid of being trod
to death like a frog or a young puppy. But my deliverance came
sooner than I expected, and in a manner not very common; the whole story
and circumstances of which I shall faithfully relate.
I had now been two years in this country; and about the beginning of the
third, Glumdalclitch and I attended the king and queen, in a progress to
the south coast of the kingdom. I was carried, as usual, in my
travelling-box, which as I have already described, was a very convenient
closet, of twelve feet wide. And I had ordered a hammock to be
fixed, by silken ropes from the four corners at the top, to break the
jolts, when a servant carried me before him on horseback, as I sometimes
desired; and would often sleep in my hammock, while we were upon the
road. On the roof of my closet, not directly over the middle of
the hammock, I ordered the joiner to cut out a hole of a foot square, to
give me air in hot weather, as I slept; which hole I shut at pleasure
with a board that drew backward and forward through a groove.
When we came to our journey’s end, the king thought proper to pass a
few days at a palace he has near Flanflasnic, a city within eighteen
English miles of the seaside. Glumdalclitch and I were much
fatigued: I had gotten a small cold, but the poor girl was so ill as to
be confined to her chamber. I longed to see the ocean, which must
be the only scene of my escape, if ever it should happen. I
pretended to be worse than I really was, and desired leave to take the
fresh air of the sea, with a page, whom I was very fond of, and who had
sometimes been trusted with me. I shall never forget with what
unwillingness Glumdalclitch consented, nor the strict charge she gave
the page to be careful of me, bursting at the same time into a flood of
tears, as if she had some forboding of what was to happen. The boy
took me out in my box, about half an hours walk from the palace, towards
the rocks on the sea-shore. I ordered him to set me down, and
lifting up one of my sashes, cast many a wistful melancholy look towards
the sea. I found myself not very well, and told the page that I
had a mind to take a nap in my hammock, which I hoped would do me good.
I got in, and the boy shut the window close down, to keep out the cold.
I soon fell asleep, and all I can conjecture is, while I slept, the
page, thinking no danger could happen, went among the rocks to look for
birds’ eggs, having before observed him from my window searching
about, and picking up one or two in the clefts. Be that as it
will, I found myself suddenly awaked with a violent pull upon the ring,
which was fastened at the top of my box for the conveniency of carriage.
I felt my box raised very high in the air, and then borne forward with
prodigious speed. The first jolt had like to have shaken me out of
my hammock, but afterward the motion was easy enough. I called out
several times, as loud as I could raise my voice, but all to no purpose.
I looked towards my windows, and could see nothing but the clouds and
sky. I heard a noise just over my head, like the clapping of
wings, and then began to perceive the woful condition I was in; that
some eagle had got the ring of my box in his beak, with an intent to let
it fall on a rock, like a tortoise in a shell, and then pick out my
body, and devour it: for the sagacity and smell of this bird enables him
to discover his quarry at a great distance, though better concealed than
I could be within a two-inch board.
In a little time, I observed the noise and flutter of wings to increase
very fast, and my box was tossed up and down, like a sign in a windy
day. I heard several bangs or buffets, as I thought given to the
eagle (for such I am certain it must have been that held the ring of my
box in his beak), and then, all on a sudden, felt myself falling
perpendicularly down, for above a minute, but with such incredible
swiftness, that I almost lost my breath. My fall was stopped by a
terrible squash, that sounded louder to my ears than the cataract of
Niagara; after which, I was quite in the dark for another minute, and
then my box began to rise so high, that I could see light from the tops
of the windows. I now perceived I was fallen into the sea.
My box, by the weight of my body, the goods that were in, and the broad
plates of iron fixed for strength at the four corners of the top and
bottom, floated about five feet deep in water. I did then, and do
now suppose, that the eagle which flew away with my box was pursued by
two or three others, and forced to let me drop, while he defended
himself against the rest, who hoped to share in the prey. The
plates of iron fastened at the bottom of the box (for those were the
strongest) preserved the balance while it fell, and hindered it from
being broken on the surface of the water. Every joint of it was well
grooved; and the door did not move on hinges, but up and down like a
sash, which kept my closet so tight that very little water came in.
I got with much difficulty out of my hammock, having first ventured to
draw back the slip-board on the roof already mentioned, contrived on
purpose to let in air, for want of which I found myself almost stifled.
How often did I then wish myself with my dear Glumdalclitch, from whom
one single hour had so far divided me! And I may say with truth,
that in the midst of my own misfortunes I could not forbear lamenting my
poor nurse, the grief she would suffer for my loss, the displeasure of
the queen, and the ruin of her fortune. Perhaps many travellers
have not been under greater difficulties and distress than I was at this
juncture, expecting every moment to see my box dashed to pieces, or at
least overset by the first violent blast, or rising wave. A breach
in one single pane of glass would have been immediate death: nor could
any thing have preserved the windows, but the strong lattice wires
placed on the outside, against accidents in travelling. I saw the
water ooze in at several crannies, although the leaks were not
considerable, and I endeavoured to stop them as well as I could. I
was not able to lift up the roof of my closet, which otherwise I
certainly should have done, and sat on the top of it; where I might at
least preserve myself some hours longer, than by being shut up (as I may
call it) in the hold. Or if I escaped these dangers for a day or
two, what could I expect but a miserable death of cold and hunger?
I was four hours under these circumstances, expecting, and indeed
wishing, every moment to be my last.
I have already told the reader that there were two strong staples fixed
upon that side of my box which had no window, and into which the
servant, who used to carry me on horseback, would put a leathern belt,
and buckle it about his waist. Being in this disconsolate state, I
heard, or at least thought I heard, some kind of grating noise on that
side of my box where the staples were fixed; and soon after I began to
fancy that the box was pulled or towed along the sea; for I now and then
felt a sort of tugging, which made the waves rise near the tops of my
windows, leaving me almost in the dark. This gave me some faint
hopes of relief, although I was not able to imagine how it could be
brought about. I ventured to unscrew one of my chairs, which were
always fastened to the floor; and having made a hard shift to screw it
down again, directly under the slipping-board that I had lately opened,
I mounted on the chair, and putting my mouth as near as I could to the
hole, I called for help in a loud voice, and in all the languages I
understood. I then fastened my handkerchief to a stick I usually
carried, and thrusting it up the hole, waved it several times in the
air, that if any boat or ship were near, the seamen might conjecture
some unhappy mortal to be shut up in the box.
I found no effect from all I could do, but plainly perceived my closet
to be moved along; and in the space of an hour, or better, that side of
the box where the staples were, and had no windows, struck against
something that was hard. I apprehended it to be a rock, and found
myself tossed more than ever. I plainly heard a noise upon the
cover of my closet, like that of a cable, and the grating of it as it
passed through the ring. I then found myself hoisted up, by
degrees, at least three feet higher than I was before. Whereupon I
again thrust up my stick and handkerchief, calling for help till I was
almost hoarse. In return to which, I heard a great shout repeated
three times, giving me such transports of joy as are not to be conceived
but by those who feel them. I now heard a trampling over my head,
and somebody calling through the hole with a loud voice, in the English
tongue, “If there be any body below, let them speak.” I
answered, “I was an Englishman, drawn by ill fortune into the greatest
calamity that ever any creature underwent, and begged, by all that was
moving, to be delivered out of the dungeon I was in.” The voice
replied, “I was safe, for my box was fastened to their ship; and the
carpenter should immediately come and saw a hole in the cover, large
enough to pull me out.” I answered, “that was needless, and
would take up too much time; for there was no more to be done, but let
one of the crew put his finger into the ring, and take the box out of
the sea into the ship, and so into the captain’s cabin.” Some
of them, upon hearing me talk so wildly, thought I was mad: others
laughed; for indeed it never came into my head, that I was now got among
people of my own stature and strength. The carpenter came, and in
a few minutes sawed a passage about four feet square, then let down a
small ladder, upon which I mounted, and thence was taken into the ship
in a very weak condition.
The sailors were all in amazement, and asked me a thousand questions,
which I had no inclination to answer. I was equally confounded at
the sight of so many pigmies, for such I took them to be, after having
so long accustomed mine eyes to the monstrous objects I had left.
But the captain, Mr. Thomas Wilcocks, an honest worthy Shropshire man,
observing I was ready to faint, took me into his cabin, gave me a
cordial to comfort me, and made me turn in upon his own bed, advising me
to take a little rest, of which I had great need. Before I went to
sleep, I gave him to understand that I had some valuable furniture in my
box, too good to be lost: a fine hammock, a handsome field-bed, two
chairs, a table, and a cabinet; that my closet was hung on all sides, or
rather quilted, with silk and cotton; that if he would let one of the
crew bring my closet into his cabin, I would open it there before him,
and show him my goods. The captain, hearing me utter these
absurdities, concluded I was raving; however (I suppose to pacify me) he
promised to give order as I desired, and going upon deck, sent some of
his men down into my closet, whence (as I afterwards found) they drew up
all my goods, and stripped off the quilting; but the chairs, cabinet,
and bedstead, being screwed to the floor, were much damaged by the
ignorance of the seamen, who tore them up by force. Then they
knocked off some of the boards for the use of the ship, and when they
had got all they had a mind for, let the hull drop into the sea, which
by reason of many breaches made in the bottom and sides, sunk to rights.
And, indeed, I was glad not to have been a spectator of the havoc they
made, because I am confident it would have sensibly touched me, by
bringing former passages into my mind, which I would rather have forgot.
I slept some hours, but perpetually disturbed with dreams of the place I
had left, and the dangers I had escaped. However, upon waking, I
found myself much recovered. It was now about eight o’clock at
night, and the captain ordered supper immediately, thinking I had
already fasted too long. He entertained me with great kindness,
observing me not to look wildly, or talk inconsistently: and, when we
were left alone, desired I would give him a relation of my travels, and
by what accident I came to be set adrift, in that monstrous wooden
chest. He said “that about twelve o’clock at noon, as he was
looking through his glass, he spied it at a distance, and thought it was
a sail, which he had a mind to make, being not much out of his course,
in hopes of buying some biscuit, his own beginning to fall short.
That upon coming nearer, and finding his error, he sent out his
long-boat to discover what it was; that his men came back in a fright,
swearing they had seen a swimming house. That he laughed at their
folly, and went himself in the boat, ordering his men to take a strong
cable along with them. That the weather being calm, he rowed round
me several times, observed my windows and wire lattices that defended
them. That he discovered two staples upon one side, which was all
of boards, without any passage for light. He then commanded his
men to row up to that side, and fastening a cable to one of the staples,
ordered them to tow my chest, as they called it, toward the ship.
When it was there, he gave directions to fasten another cable to the
ring fixed in the cover, and to raise up my chest with pulleys, which
all the sailors were not able to do above two or three feet.” He
said, “they saw my stick and handkerchief thrust out of the hole, and
concluded that some unhappy man must be shut up in the cavity.”
I asked, “whether he or the crew had seen any prodigious birds in the
air, about the time he first discovered me.” To which he
answered, that discoursing this matter with the sailors while I was
asleep, one of them said, he had observed three eagles flying towards
the north, but remarked nothing of their being larger than the usual
size:” which I suppose must be imputed to the great height they were
at; and he could not guess the reason of my question. I then asked
the captain, “how far he reckoned we might be from land?” He
said, “by the best computation he could make, we were at least a
hundred leagues.” I assured him, “that he must be mistaken by
almost half, for I had not left the country whence I came above two
hours before I dropped into the sea.” Whereupon he began again
to think that my brain was disturbed, of which he gave me a hint, and
advised me to go to bed in a cabin he had provided. I assured him,
“I was well refreshed with his good entertainment and company, and as
much in my senses as ever I was in my life.” He then grew
serious, and desired to ask me freely, “whether I were not troubled in
my mind by the consciousness of some enormous crime, for which I was
punished, at the command of some prince, by exposing me in that chest;
as great criminals, in other countries, have been forced to sea in a
leaky vessel, without provisions: for although he should be sorry to
have taken so ill a man into his ship, yet he would engage his word to
set me safe ashore, in the first port where we arrived.” He
added, “that his suspicions were much increased by some very absurd
speeches I had delivered at first to his sailors, and afterwards to
himself, in relation to my closet or chest, as well as by my odd looks
and behaviour while I was at supper.”
I begged his patience to hear me tell my story, which I faithfully did,
from the last time I left England, to the moment he first discovered me.
And, as truth always forces its way into rational minds, so this honest
worthy gentleman, who had some tincture of learning, and very good
sense, was immediately convinced of my candour and veracity. But
further to confirm all I had said, I entreated him to give order that my
cabinet should be brought, of which I had the key in my pocket; for he
had already informed me how the seamen disposed of my closet. I
opened it in his own presence, and showed him the small collection of
rarities I made in the country from which I had been so strangely
delivered. There was the comb I had contrived out of the stumps of
the king’s beard, and another of the same materials, but fixed into a
paring of her majesty’s thumb-nail, which served for the back.
There was a collection of needles and pins, from a foot to half a yard
long; four wasp stings, like joiner’s tacks; some combings of the
queen’s hair; a gold ring, which one day she made me a present of, in
a most obliging manner, taking it from her little finger, and throwing
it over my head like a collar. I desired the captain would please
to accept this ring in return for his civilities; which he absolutely
refused. I showed him a corn that I had cut off with my own hand,
from a maid of honour’s toe; it was about the bigness of Kentish
pippin, and grown so hard, that when I returned England, I got it
hollowed into a cup, and set in silver. Lastly, I desired him to
see the breeches I had then on, which were made of a mouse’s skin.
I could force nothing on him but a footman’s tooth, which I observed
him to examine with great curiosity, and found he had a fancy for it.
He received it with abundance of thanks, more than such a trifle could
deserve. It was drawn by an unskilful surgeon, in a mistake, from
one of Glumdalclitch’s men, who was afflicted with the tooth-ache, but
it was as sound as any in his head. I got it cleaned, and put it
into my cabinet. It was about a foot long, and four inches in
diameter.
The captain was very well satisfied with this plain relation I had given
him, and said, “he hoped, when we returned to England, I would oblige
the world by putting it on paper, and making it public.” My
answer was, “that we were overstocked with books of travels: that
nothing could now pass which was not extraordinary; wherein I doubted
some authors less consulted truth, than their own vanity, or interest,
or the diversion of ignorant readers; that my story could contain little
beside common events, without those ornamental descriptions of strange
plants, trees, birds, and other animals; or of the barbarous customs and
idolatry of savage people, with which most writers abound.
However, I thanked him for his good opinion, and promised to take the
matter into my thoughts.”
He said “he wondered at one thing very much, which was, to hear me
speak so loud;” asking me “whether the king or queen of that country
were thick of hearing?” I told him, “it was what I had been
used to for above two years past, and that I admired as much at the
voices of him and his men, who seemed to me only to whisper, and yet I
could hear them well enough. But, when I spoke in that country, it
was like a man talking in the streets, to another looking out from the
top of a steeple, unless when I was placed on a table, or held in any
person’s hand.” I told him, “I had likewise observed another
thing, that, when I first got into the ship, and the sailors stood all
about me, I thought they were the most little contemptible creatures I
had ever beheld.” For indeed, while I was in that prince’s
country, I could never endure to look in a glass, after mine eyes had
been accustomed to such prodigious objects, because the comparison gave
me so despicable a conceit of myself. The captain said, “that
while we were at supper, he observed me to look at every thing with a
sort of wonder, and that I often seemed hardly able to contain my
laughter, which he knew not well how to take, but imputed it to some
disorder in my brain.” I answered, “it was very true; and I
wondered how I could forbear, when I saw his dishes of the size of a
silver three-pence, a leg of pork hardly a mouthful, a cup not so big as
a nut-shell;” and so I went on, describing the rest of his
household-stuff and provisions, after the same manner. For,
although he queen had ordered a little equipage of all things necessary
for me, while I was in her service, yet my ideas were wholly taken up
with what I saw on every side of me, and I winked at my own littleness,
as people do at their own faults. The captain understood my
raillery very well, and merrily replied with the old English proverb,
“that he doubted mine eyes were bigger than my belly, for he did not
observe my stomach so good, although I had fasted all day;” and,
continuing in his mirth, protested “he would have gladly given a
hundred pounds, to have seen my closet in the eagle’s bill, and
afterwards in its fall from so great a height into the sea; which would
certainly have been a most astonishing object, worthy to have the
description of it transmitted to future ages:” and the comparison of
Phaëton was so obvious, that he could not forbear applying it, although
I did not much admire the conceit.
The captain having been at Tonquin, was, in his return to England,
driven north-eastward to the latitude of 44 degrees, and longitude of
143. But meeting a trade-wind two days after I came on board him,
we sailed southward a long time, and coasting New Holland, kept our
course west-south-west, and then south-south-west, till we doubled the
Cape of Good Hope. Our voyage was very prosperous, but I shall not
trouble the reader with a journal of it. The captain called in at
one or two ports, and sent in his long-boat for provisions and fresh
water; but I never went out of the ship till we came into the Downs,
which was on the third day of June, 1706, about nine months after my
escape. I offered to leave my goods in security for payment of my
freight: but the captain protested he would not receive one farthing.
We took a kind leave of each other, and I made him promise he would come
to see me at my house in Redriff. I hired a horse and guide for
five shillings, which I borrowed of the captain.
As I was on the road, observing the littleness of the houses, the trees,
the cattle, and the people, I began to think myself in Lilliput. I
was afraid of trampling on every traveller I met, and often called aloud
to have them stand out of the way, so that I had like to have gotten one
or two broken heads for my impertinence.
When I came to my own house, for which I was forced to inquire, one of
the servants opening the door, I bent down to go in, (like a goose under
a gate,) for fear of striking my head. My wife run out to embrace
me, but I stooped lower than her knees, thinking she could otherwise
never be able to reach my mouth. My daughter kneeled to ask my
blessing, but I could not see her till she arose, having been so long
used to stand with my head and eyes erect to above sixty feet; and then
I went to take her up with one hand by the waist. I looked down
upon the servants, and one or two friends who were in the house, as if
they had been pigmies and I a giant. I told my wife, “she had
been too thrifty, for I found she had starved herself and her daughter
to nothing.” In short, I behaved myself so unaccountably, that
they were all of the captain’s opinion when he first saw me, and
concluded I had lost my wits. This I mention as an instance of the
great power of habit and prejudice.
In a little time, I and my family and friends came to a right
understanding: but my wife protested “I should never go to sea any
more;” although my evil destiny so ordered, that she had not power to
hinder me, as the reader may know hereafter. In the mean time, I
here conclude the second part of my unfortunate voyages.
PART III. A VOYAGE TO LAPUTA, BALNIBARBI, LUGGNAGG, GLUBBDUBDRIB,
AND JAPAN.
CHAPTER I.
[The author sets out on his third voyage. Is taken by pirates.
The malice of a Dutchman. His arrival at an island. He is
received into Laputa.]
I had not been at home above ten days, when Captain William Robinson, a
Cornish man, commander of the Hopewell, a stout ship of three hundred
tons, came to my house. I had formerly been surgeon of another
ship where he was master, and a fourth part owner, in a voyage to the
Levant. He had always treated me more like a brother, than an
inferior officer; and, hearing of my arrival, made me a visit, as I
apprehended only out of friendship, for nothing passed more than what is
usual after long absences. But repeating his visits often,
expressing his joy to find I me in good health, asking, “whether I
were now settled for life?” adding, “that he intended a voyage to
the East Indies in two months,” at last he plainly invited me, though
with some apologies, to be surgeon of the ship; “that I should have
another surgeon under me, beside our two mates; that my salary should be
double to the usual pay; and that having experienced my knowledge in
sea-affairs to be at least equal to his, he would enter into any
engagement to follow my advice, as much as if I had shared in the
command.”
He said so many other obliging things, and I knew him to be so honest a
man, that I could not reject this proposal; the thirst I had of seeing
the world, notwithstanding my past misfortunes, continuing as violent as
ever. The only difficulty that remained, was to persuade my wife,
whose consent however I at last obtained, by the prospect of advantage
she proposed to her children.
We set out the 5th day of August, 1706, and arrived at Fort St. George
the 11th of April, 1707. We staid there three weeks to refresh our
crew, many of whom were sick. From thence we went to Tonquin,
where the captain resolved to continue some time, because many of the
goods he intended to buy were not ready, nor could he expect to be
dispatched in several months. Therefore, in hopes to defray some
of the charges he must be at, he bought a sloop, loaded it with several
sorts of goods, wherewith the Tonquinese usually trade to the
neighbouring islands, and putting fourteen men on board, whereof three
were of the country, he appointed me master of the sloop, and gave me
power to traffic, while he transacted his affairs at Tonquin.
We had not sailed above three days, when a great storm arising, we were
driven five days to the north-north-east, and then to the east: after
which we had fair weather, but still with a pretty strong gale from the
west. Upon the tenth day we were chased by two pirates, who soon
overtook us; for my sloop was so deep laden, that she sailed very slow,
neither were we in a condition to defend ourselves.
We were boarded about the same time by both the pirates, who entered
furiously at the head of their men; but finding us all prostrate upon
our faces (for so I gave order), they pinioned us with strong ropes, and
setting guard upon us, went to search the sloop.
I observed among them a Dutchman, who seemed to be of some authority,
though he was not commander of either ship. He knew us by our
countenances to be Englishmen, and jabbering to us in his own language,
swore we should be tied back to back and thrown into the sea. I
spoken Dutch tolerably well; I told him who we were, and begged him, in
consideration of our being Christians and Protestants, of neighbouring
countries in strict alliance, that he would move the captains to take
some pity on us. This inflamed his rage; he repeated his
threatenings, and turning to his companions, spoke with great vehemence
in the Japanese language, as I suppose, often using the word Christianos.
The largest of the two pirate ships was commanded by a Japanese
captain, who spoke a little Dutch, but very imperfectly. He came
up to me, and after several questions, which I answered in great
humility, he said, “we should not die.” I made the captain a
very low bow, and then, turning to the Dutchman, said, “I was sorry to
find more mercy in a heathen, than in a brother christian.” But
I had soon reason to repent those foolish words: for that malicious
reprobate, having often endeavoured in vain to persuade both the
captains that I might be thrown into the sea (which they would not yield
to, after the promise made me that I should not die), however, prevailed
so far, as to have a punishment inflicted on me, worse, in all human
appearance, than death itself. My men were sent by an equal
division into both the pirate ships, and my sloop new manned. As
to myself, it was determined that I should be set adrift in a small
canoe, with paddles and a sail, and four days’ provisions; which last,
the Japanese captain was so kind to double out of his own stores, and
would permit no man to search me. I got down into the canoe, while
the Dutchman, standing upon the deck, loaded me with all the curses and
injurious terms his language could afford.
About an hour before we saw the pirates I had taken an observation, and
found we were in the latitude of 46 N. and longitude of 183. When
I was at some distance from the pirates, I discovered, by my
pocket-glass, several islands to the south-east. I set up my sail,
the wind being fair, with a design to reach the nearest of those
islands, which I made a shift to do, in about three hours. It was
all rocky: however I got many birds’ eggs; and, striking fire, I
kindled some heath and dry sea-weed, by which I roasted my eggs. I
ate no other supper, being resolved to spare my provisions as much as I
could. I passed the night under the shelter of a rock, strewing
some heath under me, and slept pretty well.
The next day I sailed to another island, and thence to a third and
fourth, sometimes using my sail, and sometimes my paddles. But,
not to trouble the reader with a particular account of my distresses,
let it suffice, that on the fifth day I arrived at the last island in my
sight, which lay south-south-east to the former.
This island was at a greater distance than I expected, and I did not
reach it in less than five hours. I encompassed it almost round,
before I could find a convenient place to land in; which was a small
creek, about three times the wideness of my canoe. I found the
island to be all rocky, only a little intermingled with tufts of grass,
and sweet-smelling herbs. I took out my small provisions and after
having refreshed myself, I secured the remainder in a cave, whereof
there were great numbers; I gathered plenty of eggs upon the rocks, and
got a quantity of dry sea-weed, and parched grass, which I designed to
kindle the next day, and roast my eggs as well as I could, for I had
about me my flint, steel, match, and burning-glass. I lay all
night in the cave where I had lodged my provisions. My bed was the
same dry grass and sea-weed which I intended for fuel. I slept
very little, for the disquiets of my mind prevailed over my weariness,
and kept me awake. I considered how impossible it was to preserve
my life in so desolate a place, and how miserable my end must be: yet
found myself so listless and desponding, that I had not the heart to
rise; and before I could get spirits enough to creep out of my cave, the
day was far advanced. I walked awhile among the rocks: the sky was
perfectly clear, and the sun so hot, that I was forced to turn my face
from it: when all on a sudden it became obscure, as I thought, in a
manner very different from what happens by the interposition of a cloud.
I turned back, and perceived a vast opaque body between me and the sun
moving forwards towards the island: it seemed to be about two miles
high, and hid the sun six or seven minutes; but I did not observe the
air to be much colder, or the sky more darkened, than if I had stood
under the shade of a mountain. As it approached nearer over the
place where I was, it appeared to be a firm substance, the bottom flat,
smooth, and shining very bright, from the reflection of the sea below.
I stood upon a height about two hundred yards from the shore, and saw
this vast body descending almost to a parallel with me, at less than an
English mile distance. I took out my pocket perspective, and could
plainly discover numbers of people moving up and down the sides of it,
which appeared to be sloping; but what those people where doing I was
not able to distinguish.
The natural love of life gave me some inward motion of joy, and I was
ready to entertain a hope that this adventure might, some way or other,
help to deliver me from the desolate place and condition I was in.
But at the same time the reader can hardly conceive my astonishment, to
behold an island in the air, inhabited by men, who were able (as it
should seem) to raise or sink, or put it into progressive motion, as
they pleased. But not being at that time in a disposition to
philosophise upon this phenomenon, I rather chose to observe what course
the island would take, because it seemed for awhile to stand still.
Yet soon after, it advanced nearer, and I could see the sides of it
encompassed with several gradations of galleries, and stairs, at certain
intervals, to descend from one to the other. In the lowest
gallery, I beheld some people fishing with long angling rods, and others
looking on. I waved my cap (for my hat was long since worn out)
and my handkerchief toward the island; and upon its nearer approach, I
called and shouted with the utmost strength of my voice; and then
looking circumspectly, I beheld a crowd gather to that side which was
most in my view. I found by their pointing towards me and to each
other, that they plainly discovered me, although they made no return to
my shouting. But I could see four or five men running in great
haste, up the stairs, to the top of the island, who then disappeared.
I happened rightly to conjecture, that these were sent for orders to
some person in authority upon this occasion.
The number of people increased, and, in less than half all hour, the
island was moved and raised in such a manner, that the lowest gallery
appeared in a parallel of less then a hundred yards distance from the
height where I stood. I then put myself in the most supplicating
posture, and spoke in the humblest accent, but received no answer.
Those who stood nearest over against me, seemed to be persons of
distinction, as I supposed by their habit. They conferred
earnestly with each other, looking often upon me. At length one of
them called out in a clear, polite, smooth dialect, not unlike in sound
to the Italian: and therefore I returned an answer in that language,
hoping at least that the cadence might be more agreeable to his ears.
Although neither of us understood the other, yet my meaning was easily
known, for the people saw the distress I was in.
They made signs for me to come down from the rock, and go towards the
shore, which I accordingly did; and the flying island being raised to a
convenient height, the verge directly over me, a chain was let down from
the lowest gallery, with a seat fastened to the bottom, to which I fixed
myself, and was drawn up by pulleys.
CHAPTER II.
[The humours and dispositions of the Laputians described. An
account of their learning. Of the king and his court. The
author’s reception there. The inhabitants subject to fear and
disquietudes. An account of the women.]
At my alighting, I was surrounded with a crowd of people, but those who
stood nearest seemed to be of better quality. They beheld me with
all the marks and circumstances of wonder; neither indeed was I much in
their debt, having never till then seen a race of mortals so singular in
their shapes, habits, and countenances. Their heads were all
reclined, either to the right, or the left; one of their eyes turned
inward, and the other directly up to the zenith. Their outward
garments were adorned with the figures of suns, moons, and stars;
interwoven with those of fiddles, flutes, harps, trumpets, guitars,
harpsichords, and many other instruments of music, unknown to us in
Europe. I observed, here and there, many in the habit of servants,
with a blown bladder, fastened like a flail to the end of a stick, which
they carried in their hands. In each bladder was a small quantity
of dried peas, or little pebbles, as I was afterwards informed.
With these bladders, they now and then flapped the mouths and ears of
those who stood near them, of which practice I could not then conceive
the meaning. It seems the minds of these people are so taken up
with intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to
the discourses of others, without being roused by some external taction
upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason, those persons
who are able to afford it always keep a flapper (the original is climenole)
in their family, as one of their domestics; nor ever walk abroad, or
make visits, without him. And the business of this officer is,
when two, three, or more persons are in company, gently to strike with
his bladder the mouth of him who is to speak, and the right ear of him
or them to whom the speaker addresses himself. This flapper is
likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and upon
occasion to give him a soft flap on his eyes; because he is always so
wrapped up in cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of falling down
every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post; and in the
streets, of justling others, or being justled himself into the kennel.
It was necessary to give the reader this information, without which he
would be at the same loss with me to understand the proceedings of these
people, as they conducted me up the stairs to the top of the island, and
from thence to the royal palace. While we were ascending, they
forgot several times what they were about, and left me to myself, till
their memories were again roused by their flappers; for they appeared
altogether unmoved by the sight of my foreign habit and countenance, and
by the shouts of the vulgar, whose thoughts and minds were more
disengaged.
At last we entered the palace, and proceeded into the chamber of
presence, where I saw the king seated on his throne, attended on each
side by persons of prime quality. Before the throne, was a large
table filled with globes and spheres, and mathematical instruments of
all kinds. His majesty took not the least notice of us, although
our entrance was not without sufficient noise, by the concourse of all
persons belonging to the court. But he was then deep in a problem;
and we attended at least an hour, before he could solve it. There
stood by him, on each side, a young page with flaps in their hands, and
when they saw he was at leisure, one of them gently struck his mouth,
and the other his right ear; at which he startled like one awaked on the
sudden, and looking towards me and the company I was in, recollected the
occasion of our coming, whereof he had been informed before. He
spoke some words, whereupon immediately a young man with a flap came up
to my side, and flapped me gently on the right ear; but I made signs, as
well as I could, that I had no occasion for such an instrument; which,
as I afterwards found, gave his majesty, and the whole court, a very
mean opinion of my understanding. The king, as far as I could
conjecture, asked me several questions, and I addressed myself to him in
all the languages I had. When it was found I could neither
understand nor be understood, I was conducted by his order to an
apartment in his palace (this prince being distinguished above all his
predecessors for his hospitality to strangers), where two servants were
appointed to attend me. My dinner was brought, and four persons of
quality, whom I remembered to have seen very near the king’s person,
did me the honour to dine with me. We had two courses, of three
dishes each. In the first course, there was a shoulder of mutton
cut into an equilateral triangle, a piece of beef into a rhomboides, and
a pudding into a cycloid. The second course was two ducks trussed
up in the form of fiddles; sausages and puddings resembling flutes and
hautboys, and a breast of veal in the shape of a harp. The
servants cut our bread into cones, cylinders, parallelograms, and
several other mathematical figures.
While we were at dinner, I made bold to ask the names of several things
in their language, and those noble persons, by the assistance of their
flappers, delighted to give me answers, hoping to raise my admiration of
their great abilities if I could be brought to converse with them.
I was soon able to call for bread and drink, or whatever else I wanted.
After dinner my company withdrew, and a person was sent to me by the
king’s order, attended by a flapper. He brought with him pen,
ink, and paper, and three or four books, giving me to understand by
signs, that he was sent to teach me the language. We sat together
four hours, in which time I wrote down a great number of words in
columns, with the translations over against them; I likewise made a
shift to learn several short sentences; for my tutor would order one of
my servants to fetch something, to turn about, to make a bow, to sit, or
to stand, or walk, and the like. Then I took down the sentence in
writing. He showed me also, in one of his books, the figures of
the sun, moon, and stars, the zodiac, the tropics, and polar circles,
together with the denominations of many plains and solids. He gave
me the names and descriptions of all the musical instruments, and the
general terms of art in playing on each of them. After he had left
me, I placed all my words, with their interpretations, in alphabetical
order. And thus, in a few days, by the help of a very faithful
memory, I got some insight into their language. The word, which I
interpret the flying or floating island, is in the original Laputa,
whereof I could never learn the true etymology. Lap, in the
old obsolete language, signifies high; and untuh, a governor;
from which they say, by corruption, was derived Laputa, from Lapuntuh.
But I do not approve of this derivation, which seems to be a little
strained. I ventured to offer to the learned among them a
conjecture of my own, that Laputa was quasi lap outed; lap,
signifying properly, the dancing of the sunbeams in the sea, and outed,
a wing; which, however, I shall not obtrude, but submit to the judicious
reader.
Those to whom the king had entrusted me, observing how ill I was clad,
ordered a tailor to come next morning, and take measure for a suit of
clothes. This operator did his office after a different manner
from those of his trade in Europe. He first took my altitude by a
quadrant, and then, with a rule and compasses, described the dimensions
and outlines of my whole body, all which he entered upon paper; and in
six days brought my clothes very ill made, and quite out of shape, by
happening to mistake a figure in the calculation. But my comfort
was, that I observed such accidents very frequent, and little regarded.
During my confinement for want of clothes, and by an indisposition that
held me some days longer, I much enlarged my dictionary; and when I went
next to court, was able to understand many things the king spoke, and to
return him some kind of answers. His majesty had given orders,
that the island should move north-east and by east, to the vertical
point over Lagado, the metropolis of the whole kingdom below, upon the
firm earth. It was about ninety leagues distant, and our voyage
lasted four days and a half. I was not in the least sensible of
the progressive motion made in the air by the island. On the
second morning, about eleven o’clock, the king himself in person,
attended by his nobility, courtiers, and officers, having prepared all
their musical instruments, played on them for three hours without
intermission, so that I was quite stunned with the noise; neither could
I possibly guess the meaning, till my tutor informed me. He said
that, the people of their island had their ears adapted to hear “the
music of the spheres, which always played at certain periods, and the
court was now prepared to bear their part, in whatever instrument they
most excelled.”
In our journey towards Lagado, the capital city, his majesty ordered
that the island should stop over certain towns and villages, from whence
he might receive the petitions of his subjects. And to this
purpose, several packthreads were let down, with small weights at the
bottom. On these packthreads the people strung their petitions,
which mounted up directly, like the scraps of paper fastened by school
boys at the end of the string that holds their kite. Sometimes we
received wine and victuals from below, which were drawn up by pulleys.
The knowledge I had in mathematics, gave me great assistance in
acquiring their phraseology, which depended much upon that science, and
music; and in the latter I was not unskilled. Their ideas are
perpetually conversant in lines and figures. If they would, for
example, praise the beauty of a woman, or any other animal, they
describe it by rhombs, circles, parallelograms, ellipses, and other
geometrical terms, or by words of art drawn from music, needless here to
repeat. I observed in the king’s kitchen all sorts of
mathematical and musical instruments, after the figures of which they
cut up the joints that were served to his majesty’s table.
Their houses are very ill built, the walls bevil, without one right
angle in any apartment; and this defect arises from the contempt they
bear to practical geometry, which they despise as vulgar and mechanic;
those instructions they give being too refined for the intellects of
their workmen, which occasions perpetual mistakes. And although
they are dexterous enough upon a piece of paper, in the management of
the rule, the pencil, and the divider, yet in the common actions and
behaviour of life, I have not seen a more clumsy, awkward, and unhandy
people, nor so slow and perplexed in their conceptions upon all other
subjects, except those of mathematics and music. They are very bad
reasoners, and vehemently given to opposition, unless when they happen
to be of the right opinion, which is seldom their case.
Imagination, fancy, and invention, they are wholly strangers to, nor
have any words in their language, by which those ideas can be expressed;
the whole compass of their thoughts and mind being shut up within the
two forementioned sciences.
Most of them, and especially those who deal in the astronomical part,
have great faith in judicial astrology, although they are ashamed to own
it publicly. But what I chiefly admired, and thought altogether
unaccountable, was the strong disposition I observed in them towards
news and politics, perpetually inquiring into public affairs, giving
their judgments in matters of state, and passionately disputing every
inch of a party opinion. I have indeed observed the same
disposition among most of the mathematicians I have known in Europe,
although I could never discover the least analogy between the two
sciences; unless those people suppose, that because the smallest circle
has as many degrees as the largest, therefore the regulation and
management of the world require no more abilities than the handling and
turning of a globe; but I rather take this quality to spring from a very
common infirmity of human nature, inclining us to be most curious and
conceited in matters where we have least concern, and for which we are
least adapted by study or nature.
These people are under continual disquietudes, never enjoying a minutes
peace of mind; and their disturbances proceed from causes which very
little affect the rest of mortals. Their apprehensions arise from
several changes they dread in the celestial bodies: for instance, that
the earth, by the continual approaches of the sun towards it, must, in
course of time, be absorbed, or swallowed up; that the face of the sun,
will, by degrees, be encrusted with its own effluvia, and give no more
light to the world; that the earth very narrowly escaped a brush from
the tail of the last comet, which would have infallibly reduced it to
ashes; and that the next, which they have calculated for one-and-thirty
years hence, will probably destroy us. For if, in its perihelion,
it should approach within a certain degree of the sun (as by their
calculations they have reason to dread) it will receive a degree of heat
ten thousand times more intense than that of red hot glowing iron, and
in its absence from the sun, carry a blazing tail ten hundred thousand
and fourteen miles long, through which, if the earth should pass at the
distance of one hundred thousand miles from the nucleus, or main body of
the comet, it must in its passage be set on fire, and reduced to ashes:
that the sun, daily spending its rays without any nutriment to supply
them, will at last be wholly consumed and annihilated; which must be
attended with the destruction of this earth, and of all the planets that
receive their light from it.
They are so perpetually alarmed with the apprehensions of these, and the
like impending dangers, that they can neither sleep quietly in their
beds, nor have any relish for the common pleasures and amusements of
life. When they meet an acquaintance in the morning, the first
question is about the sun’s health, how he looked at his setting and
rising, and what hopes they have to avoid the stroke of the approaching
comet. This conversation they are apt to run into with the same
temper that boys discover in delighting to hear terrible stories of
spirits and hobgoblins, which they greedily listen to, and dare not go
to bed for fear.
The women of the island have abundance of vivacity: they, contemn their
husbands, and are exceedingly fond of strangers, whereof there is always
a considerable number from the continent below, attending at court,
either upon affairs of the several towns and corporations, or their own
particular occasions, but are much despised, because they want the same
endowments. Among these the ladies choose their gallants: but the
vexation is, that they act with too much ease and security; for the
husband is always so rapt in speculation, that the mistress and lover
may proceed to the greatest familiarities before his face, if he be but
provided with paper and implements, and without his flapper at his side.
The wives and daughters lament their confinement to the island, although
I think it the most delicious spot of ground in the world; and although
they live here in the greatest plenty and magnificence, and are allowed
to do whatever they please, they long to see the world, and take the
diversions of the metropolis, which they are not allowed to do without a
particular license from the king; and this is not easy to be obtained,
because the people of quality have found, by frequent experience, how
hard it is to persuade their women to return from below. I was
told that a great court lady, who had several children, - is married to
the prime minister, the richest subject in the kingdom, a very graceful
person, extremely fond of her, and lives in the finest palace of the
island, - went down to Lagado on the pretence of health, there hid
herself for several months, till the king sent a warrant to search for
her; and she was found in an obscure eating-house all in rags, having
pawned her clothes to maintain an old deformed footman, who beat her
every day, and in whose company she was taken, much against her will.
And although her husband received her with all possible kindness, and
without the least reproach, she soon after contrived to steal down
again, with all her jewels, to the same gallant, and has not been heard
of since.
This may perhaps pass with the reader rather for an European or English
story, than for one of a country so remote. But he may please to
consider, that the caprices of womankind are not limited by any climate
or nation, and that they are much more uniform, than can be easily
imagined.
In about a month’s time, I had made a tolerable proficiency in their
language, and was able to answer most of the king’s questions, when I
had the honour to attend him. His majesty discovered not the least
curiosity to inquire into the laws, government, history, religion, or
manners of the countries where I had been; but confined his questions to
the state of mathematics, and received the account I gave him with great
contempt and indifference, though often roused by his flapper on each
side.
CHAPTER III.
[A phenomenon solved by modern philosophy and astronomy. The
Laputians’ great improvements in the latter. The king’s method
of suppressing insurrections.]
I desired leave of this prince to see the curiosities of the island,
which he was graciously pleased to grant, and ordered my tutor to attend
me. I chiefly wanted to know, to what cause, in art or in nature,
it owed its several motions, whereof I will now give a philosophical
account to the reader.
The flying or floating island is exactly circular, its diameter 7837
yards, or about four miles and a half, and consequently contains ten
thousand acres. It is three hundred yards thick. The bottom,
or under surface, which appears to those who view it below, is one even
regular plate of adamant, shooting up to the height of about two hundred
yards. Above it lie the several minerals in their usual order, and
over all is a coat of rich mould, ten or twelve feet deep. The
declivity of the upper surface, from the circumference to the centre, is
the natural cause why all the dews and rains, which fall upon the
island, are conveyed in small rivulets toward the middle, where they are
emptied into four large basins, each of about half a mile in circuit,
and two hundred yards distant from the centre. From these basins
the water is continually exhaled by the sun in the daytime, which
effectually prevents their overflowing. Besides, as it is in the
power of the monarch to raise the island above the region of clouds and
vapours, he can prevent the falling of dews and rain whenever he
pleases. For the highest clouds cannot rise above two miles, as
naturalists agree, at least they were never known to do so in that
country.
At the centre of the island there is a chasm about fifty yards in
diameter, whence the astronomers descend into a large dome, which is
therefore called flandona gagnole, or the astronomer’s
cave, situated at the depth of a hundred yards beneath the upper surface
of the adamant. In this cave are twenty lamps continually burning,
which, from the reflection of the adamant, cast a strong light into
every part. The place is stored with great variety of sextants,
quadrants, telescopes, astrolabes, and other astronomical instruments.
But the greatest curiosity, upon which the fate of the island depends,
is a loadstone of a prodigious size, in shape resembling a weaver’s
shuttle. It is in length six yards, and in the thickest part at
least three yards over. This magnet is sustained by a very strong
axle of adamant passing through its middle, upon which it plays, and is
poised so exactly that the weakest hand can turn it. It is hooped
round with a hollow cylinder of adamant, four feet yards in diameter,
placed horizontally, and supported by eight adamantine feet, each six
yards high. In the middle of the concave side, there is a groove
twelve inches deep, in which the extremities of the axle are lodged, and
turned round as there is occasion.
The stone cannot be removed from its place by any force, because the
hoop and its feet are one continued piece with that body of adamant
which constitutes the bottom of the island.
By means of this loadstone, the island is made to rise and fall, and
move from one place to another. For, with respect to that part of
the earth over which the monarch presides, the stone is endued at one of
its sides with an attractive power, and at the other with a repulsive.
Upon placing the magnet erect, with its attracting end towards the
earth, the island descends; but when the repelling extremity points
downwards, the island mounts directly upwards. When the position
of the stone is oblique, the motion of the island is so too: for in this
magnet, the forces always act in lines parallel to its direction.
By this oblique motion, the island is conveyed to different parts of the
monarch’s dominions. To explain the manner of its progress, let A
B represent a line drawn across the dominions of Balnibarbi, let the
line c d represent the loadstone, of which let d be the
repelling end, and c the attracting end, the island being over C:
let the stone be placed in position c d, with its repelling end
downwards; then the island will be driven upwards obliquely towards D.
When it is arrived at D, let the stone be turned upon its axle,
till its attracting end points towards E, and then the island
will be carried obliquely towards E; where, if the stone be again
turned upon its axle till it stands in the position E F, with its
repelling point downwards, the island will rise obliquely towards F,
where, by directing the attracting end towards G, the island may
be carried to G, and from G to H, by turning the
stone, so as to make its repelling extremity to point directly downward.
And thus, by changing the situation of the stone, as often as there is
occasion, the island is made to rise and fall by turns in an oblique
direction, and by those alternate risings and fallings (the obliquity
being not considerable) is conveyed from one part of the dominions to
the other.
But it must be observed, that this island cannot move beyond the extent
of the dominions below, nor can it rise above the height of four miles.
For which the astronomers (who have written large systems concerning the
stone) assign the following reason: that the magnetic virtue does not
extend beyond the distance of four miles, and that the mineral, which
acts upon the stone in the bowels of the earth, and in the sea about six
leagues distant from the shore, is not diffused through the whole globe,
but terminated with the limits of the king’s dominions; and it was
easy, from the great advantage of such a superior situation, for a
prince to bring under his obedience whatever country lay within the
attraction of that magnet.
When the stone is put parallel to the plane of the horizon, the island
stands still; for in that case the extremities of it, being at equal
distance from the earth, act with equal force, the one in drawing
downwards, the other in pushing upwards, and consequently no motion can
ensue.
This loadstone is under the care of certain astronomers, who, from time
to time, give it such positions as the monarch directs. They spend
the greatest part of their lives in observing the celestial bodies,
which they do by the assistance of glasses, far excelling ours in
goodness. For, although their largest telescopes do not exceed
three feet, they magnify much more than those of a hundred with us, and
show the stars with greater clearness. This advantage has enabled
them to extend their discoveries much further than our astronomers in
Europe; for they have made a catalogue of ten thousand fixed stars,
whereas the largest of ours do not contain above one third part of that
number. They have likewise discovered two lesser stars, or
satellites, which revolve about Mars; whereof the innermost is distant
from the centre of the primary planet exactly three of his diameters,
and the outermost, five; the former revolves in the space of ten hours,
and the latter in twenty-one and a half; so that the squares of their
periodical times are very near in the same proportion with the cubes of
their distance from the centre of Mars; which evidently shows them to be
governed by the same law of gravitation that influences the other
heavenly bodies.
They have observed ninety-three different comets, and settled their
periods with great exactness. If this be true (and they affirm it
with great confidence) it is much to be wished, that their observations
were made public, whereby the theory of comets, which at present is very
lame and defective, might be brought to the same perfection with other
arts of astronomy.
The king would be the most absolute prince in the universe, if he could
but prevail on a ministry to join with him; but these having their
estates below on the continent, and considering that the office of a
favourite has a very uncertain tenure, would never consent to the
enslaving of their country.
If any town should engage in rebellion or mutiny, fall into violent
factions, or refuse to pay the usual tribute, the king has two methods
of reducing them to obedience. The first and the mildest course
is, by keeping the island hovering over such a town, and the lands about
it, whereby he can deprive them of the benefit of the sun and the rain,
and consequently afflict the inhabitants with dearth and diseases: and
if the crime deserve it, they are at the same time pelted from above
with great stones, against which they have no defence but by creeping
into cellars or caves, while the roofs of their houses are beaten to
pieces. But if they still continue obstinate, or offer to raise
insurrections, he proceeds to the last remedy, by letting the island
drop directly upon their heads, which makes a universal destruction both
of houses and men. However, this is an extremity to which the
prince is seldom driven, neither indeed is he willing to put it in
execution; nor dare his ministers advise him to an action, which, as it
would render them odious to the people, so it would be a great damage to
their own estates, which all lie below; for the island is the king’s
demesne.
But there is still indeed a more weighty reason, why the kings of this
country have been always averse from executing so terrible an action,
unless upon the utmost necessity. For, if the town intended to be
destroyed should have in it any tall rocks, as it generally falls out in
the larger cities, a situation probably chosen at first with a view to
prevent such a catastrophe; or if it abound in high spires, or pillars
of stone, a sudden fall might endanger the bottom or under surface of
the island, which, although it consist, as I have said, of one entire
adamant, two hundred yards thick, might happen to crack by too great a
shock, or burst by approaching too near the fires from the houses below,
as the backs, both of iron and stone, will often do in our chimneys.
Of all this the people are well apprised, and understand how far to
carry their obstinacy, where their liberty or property is concerned.
And the king, when he is highest provoked, and most determined to press
a city to rubbish, orders the island to descend with great gentleness,
out of a pretence of tenderness to his people, but, indeed, for fear of
breaking the adamantine bottom; in which case, it is the opinion of all
their philosophers, that the loadstone could no longer hold it up, and
the whole mass would fall to the ground.
By a fundamental law of this realm, neither the king, nor either of his
two eldest sons, are permitted to leave the island; nor the queen, till
she is past child-bearing.
CHAPTER IV.
[The author leaves Laputa; is conveyed to Balnibarbi; arrives at the
metropolis. A description of the metropolis, and the country
adjoining. The author hospitably received by a great lord.
His conversation with that lord.]
Although I cannot say that I was ill treated in this island, yet I must
confess I thought myself too much neglected, not without some degree of
contempt; for neither prince nor people appeared to be curious in any
part of knowledge, except mathematics and music, wherein I was far their
inferior, and upon that account very little regarded.
On the other side, after having seen all the curiosities of the island,
I was very desirous to leave it, being heartily weary of those people.
They were indeed excellent in two sciences for which I have great
esteem, and wherein I am not unversed; but, at the same time, so
abstracted and involved in speculation, that I never met with such
disagreeable companions. I conversed only with women, tradesmen,
flappers, and court-pages, during two months of my abode there; by
which, at last, I rendered myself extremely contemptible; yet these were
the only people from whom I could ever receive a reasonable answer.
I had obtained, by hard study, a good degree of knowledge in their
language: I was weary of being confined to an island where I received so
little countenance, and resolved to leave it with the first opportunity.
There was a great lord at court, nearly related to the king, and for
that reason alone used with respect. He was universally reckoned
the most ignorant and stupid person among them. He had performed
many eminent services for the crown, had great natural and acquired
parts, adorned with integrity and honour; but so ill an ear for music,
that his detractors reported, “he had been often known to beat time in
the wrong place;” neither could his tutors, without extreme
difficulty, teach him to demonstrate the most easy proposition in the
mathematics. He was pleased to show me many marks of favour, often
did me the honour of a visit, desired to be informed in the affairs of
Europe, the laws and customs, the manners and learning of the several
countries where I had travelled. He listened to me with great
attention, and made very wise observations on all I spoke. He had
two flappers attending him for state, but never made use of them, except
at court and in visits of ceremony, and would always command them to
withdraw, when we were alone together.
I entreated this illustrious person, to intercede in my behalf with his
majesty, for leave to depart; which he accordingly did, as he was
pleased to tell me, with regret: for indeed he had made me several
offers very advantageous, which, however, I refused, with expressions of
the highest acknowledgment.
On the 16th of February I took leave of his majesty and the court.
The king made me a present to the value of about two hundred pounds
English, and my protector, his kinsman, as much more, together with a
letter of recommendation to a friend of his in Lagado, the metropolis.
The island being then hovering over a mountain about two miles from it,
I was let down from the lowest gallery, in the same manner as I had been
taken up.
The continent, as far as it is subject to the monarch of the flying
island, passes under the general name of Balnibarbi; and the
metropolis, as I said before, is called Lagado. I felt some
little satisfaction in finding myself on firm ground. I walked to
the city without any concern, being clad like one of the natives, and
sufficiently instructed to converse with them. I soon found out
the person’s house to whom I was recommended, presented my letter from
his friend the grandee in the island, and was received with much
kindness. This great lord, whose name was Munodi, ordered me an
apartment in his own house, where I continued during my stay, and was
entertained in a most hospitable manner.
The next morning after my arrival, he took me in his chariot to see the
town, which is about half the bigness of London; but the houses very
strangely built, and most of them out of repair. The people in the
streets walked fast, looked wild, their eyes fixed, and were generally
in rags. We passed through one of the town gates, and went about
three miles into the country, where I saw many labourers working with
several sorts of tools in the ground, but was not able to conjecture
what they were about: neither did observe any expectation either of corn
or grass, although the soil appeared to be excellent. I could not
forbear admiring at these odd appearances, both in town and country; and
I made bold to desire my conductor, that he would be pleased to explain
to me, what could be meant by so many busy heads, hands, and faces, both
in the streets and the fields, because I did not discover any good
effects they produced; but, on the contrary, I never knew a soil so
unhappily cultivated, houses so ill contrived and so ruinous, or a
people whose countenances and habit expressed so much misery and want.
This lord Munodi was a person of the first rank, and had been some years
governor of Lagado; but, by a cabal of ministers, was discharged for
insufficiency. However, the king treated him with tenderness, as a
well-meaning man, but of a low contemptible understanding.
When I gave that free censure of the country and its inhabitants, he
made no further answer than by telling me, “that I had not been long
enough among them to form a judgment; and that the different nations of
the world had different customs;” with other common topics to the same
purpose. But, when we returned to his palace, he asked me “how I
liked the building, what absurdities I observed, and what quarrel I had
with the dress or looks of his domestics?” This he might safely
do; because every thing about him was magnificent, regular, and polite.
I answered, “that his excellency’s prudence, quality, and fortune,
had exempted him from those defects, which folly and beggary had
produced in others.” He said, “if I would go with him to his
country-house, about twenty miles distant, where his estate lay, there
would be more leisure for this kind of conversation.” I told his
excellency “that I was entirely at his disposal;” and accordingly we
set out next morning.
During our journey he made me observe the several methods used by
farmers in managing their lands, which to me were wholly unaccountable;
for, except in some very few places, I could not discover one ear of
corn or blade of grass. But, in three hours travelling, the scene
was wholly altered; we came into a most beautiful country; farmers’
houses, at small distances, neatly built; the fields enclosed,
containing vineyards, corn-grounds, and meadows. Neither do I
remember to have seen a more delightful prospect. His excellency
observed my countenance to clear up; he told me, with a sigh, “that
there his estate began, and would continue the same, till we should come
to his house: that his countrymen ridiculed and despised him, for
managing his affairs no better, and for setting so ill an example to the
kingdom; which, however, was followed by very few, such as were old, and
wilful, and weak like himself.”
We came at length to the house, which was indeed a noble structure,
built according to the best rules of ancient architecture. The
fountains, gardens, walks, avenues, and groves, were all disposed with
exact judgment and taste. I gave due praises to every thing I saw,
whereof his excellency took not the least notice till after supper;
when, there being no third companion, he told me with a very melancholy
air “that he doubted he must throw down his houses in town and
country, to rebuild them after the present mode; destroy all his
plantations, and cast others into such a form as modern usage required,
and give the same directions to all his tenants, unless he would submit
to incur the censure of pride, singularity, affectation, ignorance,
caprice, and perhaps increase his majesty’s displeasure; that the
admiration I appeared to be under would cease or diminish, when he had
informed me of some particulars which, probably, I never heard of at
court, the people there being too much taken up in their own
speculations, to have regard to what passed here below.”
The sum of his discourse was to this effect: “That about forty years
ago, certain persons went up to Laputa, either upon business or
diversion, and, after five months continuance, came back with a very
little smattering in mathematics, but full of volatile spirits acquired
in that airy region: that these persons, upon their return, began to
dislike the management of every thing below, and fell into schemes of
putting all arts, sciences, languages, and mechanics, upon a new foot.
To this end, they procured a royal patent for erecting an academy of
projectors in Lagado; and the humour prevailed so strongly among the
people, that there is not a town of any consequence in the kingdom
without such an academy. In these colleges the professors contrive
new rules and methods of agriculture and building, and new instruments,
and tools for all trades and manufactures; whereby, as they undertake,
one man shall do the work of ten; a palace may be built in a week, of
materials so durable as to last for ever without repairing. All
the fruits of the earth shall come to maturity at whatever season we
think fit to choose, and increase a hundred fold more than they do at
present; with innumerable other happy proposals. The only
inconvenience is, that none of these projects are yet brought to
perfection; and in the mean time, the whole country lies miserably
waste, the houses in ruins, and the people without food or clothes.
By all which, instead of being discouraged, they are fifty times more
violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope
and despair: that as for himself, being not of an enterprising spirit,
he was content to go on in the old forms, to live in the houses his
ancestors had built, and act as they did, in every part of life, without
innovation: that some few other persons of quality and gentry had done
the same, but were looked on with an eye of contempt and ill-will, as
enemies to art, ignorant, and ill common-wealth’s men, preferring
their own ease and sloth before the general improvement of their
country.”
His lordship added, “That he would not, by any further particulars,
prevent the pleasure I should certainly take in viewing the grand
academy, whither he was resolved I should go.” He only desired
me to observe a ruined building, upon the side of a mountain about three
miles distant, of which he gave me this account: “That he had a very
convenient mill within half a mile of his house, turned by a current
from a large river, and sufficient for his own family, as well as a
great number of his tenants; that about seven years ago, a club of those
projectors came to him with proposals to destroy this mill, and build
another on the side of that mountain, on the long ridge whereof a long
canal must be cut, for a repository of water, to be conveyed up by pipes
and engines to supply the mill, because the wind and air upon a height
agitated the water, and thereby made it fitter for motion, and because
the water, descending down a declivity, would turn the mill with half
the current of a river whose course is more upon a level.” He
said, “that being then not very well with the court, and pressed by
many of his friends, he complied with the proposal; and after employing
a hundred men for two years, the work miscarried, the projectors went
off, laying the blame entirely upon him, railing at him ever since, and
putting others upon the same experiment, with equal assurance of
success, as well as equal disappointment.”
In a few days we came back to town; and his excellency, considering the
bad character he had in the academy, would not go with me himself, but
recommended me to a friend of his, to bear me company thither. My
lord was pleased to represent me as a great admirer of projects, and a
person of much curiosity and easy belief; which, indeed, was not without
truth; for I had myself been a sort of projector in my younger days.
CHAPTER V.
[The author permitted to see the grand academy of Lagado. The
academy largely described. The arts wherein the professors employ
themselves.]
This academy is not an entire single building, but a continuation of
several houses on both sides of a street, which growing waste, was
purchased and applied to that use.
I was received very kindly by the warden, and went for many days to the
academy. Every room has in it one or more projectors; and I
believe I could not be in fewer than five hundred rooms.
The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face,
his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places. His
clothes, shirt, and skin, were all of the same colour. He has been
eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers,
which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm
the air in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt,
that, in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governor’s
gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable rate: but he complained that his
stock was low, and entreated me “to give him something as an
encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear
season for cucumbers.” I made him a small present, for my lord
had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice
of begging from all who go to see them.
I went into another chamber, but was ready to hasten back, being almost
overcome with a horrible stink. My conductor pressed me forward,
conjuring me in a whisper “to give no offence, which would be highly
resented;” and therefore I durst not so much as stop my nose.
The projector of this cell was the most ancient student of the academy;
his face and beard were of a pale yellow; his hands and clothes daubed
over with filth. When I was presented to him, he gave me a close
embrace, a compliment I could well have excused. His employment,
from his first coming into the academy, was an operation to reduce human
excrement to its original food, by separating the several parts,
removing the tincture which it receives from the gall, making the odour
exhale, and scumming off the saliva. He had a weekly allowance,
from the society, of a vessel filled with human ordure, about the
bigness of a Bristol barrel.
I saw another at work to calcine ice into gunpowder; who likewise showed
me a treatise he had written concerning the malleability of fire, which
he intended to publish.
There was a most ingenious architect, who had contrived a new method for
building houses, by beginning at the roof, and working downward to the
foundation; which he justified to me, by the like practice of those two
prudent insects, the bee and the spider.
There was a man born blind, who had several apprentices in his own
condition: their employment was to mix colours for painters, which their
master taught them to distinguish by feeling and smelling. It was
indeed my misfortune to find them at that time not very perfect in their
lessons, and the professor himself happened to be generally mistaken.
This artist is much encouraged and esteemed by the whole fraternity.
In another apartment I was highly pleased with a projector who had found
a device of ploughing the ground with hogs, to save the charges of
ploughs, cattle, and labour. The method is this: in an acre of
ground you bury, at six inches distance and eight deep, a quantity of
acorns, dates, chestnuts, and other mast or vegetables, whereof these
animals are fondest; then you drive six hundred or more of them into the
field, where, in a few days, they will root up the whole ground in
search of their food, and make it fit for sowing, at the same time
manuring it with their dung: it is true, upon experiment, they found the
charge and trouble very great, and they had little or no crop.
However it is not doubted, that this invention may be capable of great
improvement.
I went into another room, where the walls and ceiling were all hung
round with cobwebs, except a narrow passage for the artist to go in and
out. At my entrance, he called aloud to me, “not to disturb his
webs.” He lamented “the fatal mistake the world had been so
long in, of using silkworms, while we had such plenty of domestic
insects who infinitely excelled the former, because they understood how
to weave, as well as spin.” And he proposed further, “that by
employing spiders, the charge of dyeing silks should be wholly saved;”
whereof I was fully convinced, when he showed me a vast number of flies
most beautifully coloured, wherewith he fed his spiders, assuring us
“that the webs would take a tincture from them; and as he had them of
all hues, he hoped to fit everybody’s fancy, as soon as he could find
proper food for the flies, of certain gums, oils, and other glutinous
matter, to give a strength and consistence to the threads.”
There was an astronomer, who had undertaken to place a sun-dial upon the
great weathercock on the town-house, by adjusting the annual and diurnal
motions of the earth and sun, so as to answer and coincide with all
accidental turnings of the wind.
I was complaining of a small fit of the colic, upon which my conductor
led me into a room where a great physician resided, who was famous for
curing that disease, by contrary operations from the same instrument.
He had a large pair of bellows, with a long slender muzzle of ivory:
this he conveyed eight inches up the anus, and drawing in the wind, he
affirmed he could make the guts as lank as a dried bladder. But
when the disease was more stubborn and violent, he let in the muzzle
while the bellows were full of wind, which he discharged into the body
of the patient; then withdrew the instrument to replenish it, clapping
his thumb strongly against the orifice of then fundament; and this being
repeated three or four times, the adventitious wind would rush out,
bringing the noxious along with it, (like water put into a pump), and
the patient recovered. I saw him try both experiments upon a dog,
but could not discern any effect from the former. After the latter
the animal was ready to burst, and made so violent a discharge as was
very offensive to me and my companion. The dog died on the spot,
and we left the doctor endeavouring to recover him, by the same
operation.
I visited many other apartments, but shall not trouble my reader with
all the curiosities I observed, being studious of brevity.
I had hitherto seen only one side of the academy, the other being
appropriated to the advancers of speculative learning, of whom I shall
say something, when I have mentioned one illustrious person more, who is
called among them “the universal artist.” He told us “he had
been thirty years employing his thoughts for the improvement of human
life.” He had two large rooms full of wonderful curiosities, and
fifty men at work. Some were condensing air into a dry tangible
substance, by extracting the nitre, and letting the aqueous or fluid
particles percolate; others softening marble, for pillows and
pin-cushions; others petrifying the hoofs of a living horse, to preserve
them from foundering. The artist himself was at that time busy
upon two great designs; the first, to sow land with chaff, wherein he
affirmed the true seminal virtue to be contained, as he demonstrated by
several experiments, which I was not skilful enough to comprehend.
The other was, by a certain composition of gums, minerals, and
vegetables, outwardly applied, to prevent the growth of wool upon two
young lambs; and he hoped, in a reasonable time to propagate the breed
of naked sheep, all over the kingdom.
We crossed a walk to the other part of the academy, where, as I have
already said, the projectors in speculative learning resided.
The first professor I saw, was in a very large room, with forty pupils
about him. After salutation, observing me to look earnestly upon a
frame, which took up the greatest part of both the length and breadth of
the room, he said, “Perhaps I might wonder to see him employed in a
project for improving speculative knowledge, by practical and mechanical
operations. But the world would soon be sensible of its
usefulness; and he flattered himself, that a more noble, exalted thought
never sprang in any other man’s head. Every one knew how
laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences;
whereas, by his contrivance, the most ignorant person, at a reasonable
charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in
philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without
the least assistance from genius or study.” He then led me to
the frame, about the sides, whereof all his pupils stood in ranks.
It was twenty feet square, placed in the middle of the room. The
superfices was composed of several bits of wood, about the bigness of a
die, but some larger than others. They were all linked together by
slender wires. These bits of wood were covered, on every square,
with paper pasted on them; and on these papers were written all the
words of their language, in their several moods, tenses, and
declensions; but without any order. The professor then desired me
“to observe; for he was going to set his engine at work.” The
pupils, at his command, took each of them hold of an iron handle,
whereof there were forty fixed round the edges of the frame; and giving
them a sudden turn, the whole disposition of the words was entirely
changed. He then commanded six-and-thirty of the lads, to read the
several lines softly, as they appeared upon the frame; and where they
found three or four words together that might make part of a sentence,
they dictated to the four remaining boys, who were scribes. This
work was repeated three or four times, and at every turn, the engine was
so contrived, that the words shifted into new places, as the square bits
of wood moved upside down.
Six hours a day the young students were employed in this labour; and the
professor showed me several volumes in large folio, already collected,
of broken sentences, which he intended to piece together, and out of
those rich materials, to give the world a complete body of all arts and
sciences; which, however, might be still improved, and much expedited,
if the public would raise a fund for making and employing five hundred
such frames in Lagado, and oblige the managers to contribute in common
their several collections.
He assured me “that this invention had employed all his thoughts from
his youth; that he had emptied the whole vocabulary into his frame, and
made the strictest computation of the general proportion there is in
books between the numbers of particles, nouns, and verbs, and other
parts of speech.”
I made my humblest acknowledgment to this illustrious person, for his
great communicativeness; and promised, “if ever I had the good fortune
to return to my native country, that I would do him justice, as the sole
inventor of this wonderful machine;” the form and contrivance of which
I desired leave to delineate on paper, as in the figure here annexed.
I told him, “although it were the custom of our learned in Europe to
steal inventions from each other, who had thereby at least this
advantage, that it became a controversy which was the right owner; yet I
would take such caution, that he should have the honour entire, without
a rival.”
We next went to the school of languages, where three professors sat in
consultation upon improving that of their own country.
The first project was, to shorten discourse, by cutting polysyllables
into one, and leaving out verbs and participles, because, in reality,
all things imaginable are but norms.
The other project was, a scheme for entirely abolishing all words
whatsoever; and this was urged as a great advantage in point of health,
as well as brevity. For it is plain, that every word we speak is,
in some degree, a diminution of our lunge by corrosion, and,
consequently, contributes to the shortening of our lives. An
expedient was therefore offered, “that since words are only names for
things, it would be more convenient for all men to carry about them such
things as were necessary to express a particular business they are to
discourse on.” And this invention would certainly have taken
place, to the great ease as well as health of the subject, if the women,
in conjunction with the vulgar and illiterate, had not threatened to
raise a rebellion unless they might be allowed the liberty to speak with
their tongues, after the manner of their forefathers; such constant
irreconcilable enemies to science are the common people. However,
many of the most learned and wise adhere to the new scheme of expressing
themselves by things; which has only this inconvenience attending it,
that if a man’s business be very great, and of various kinds, he must
be obliged, in proportion, to carry a greater bundle of things upon his
back, unless he can afford one or two strong servants to attend him.
I have often beheld two of those sages almost sinking under the weight
of their packs, like pedlars among us, who, when they met in the street,
would lay down their loads, open their sacks, and hold conversation for
an hour together; then put up their implements, help each other to
resume their burdens, and take their leave.
But for short conversations, a man may carry implements in his pockets,
and under his arms, enough to supply him; and in his house, he cannot be
at a loss. Therefore the room where company meet who practise this
art, is full of all things, ready at hand, requisite to furnish matter
for this kind of artificial converse.
Another great advantage proposed by this invention was, that it would
serve as a universal language, to be understood in all civilised
nations, whose goods and utensils are generally of the same kind, or
nearly resembling, so that their uses might easily be comprehended.
And thus ambassadors would be qualified to treat with foreign princes,
or ministers of state, to whose tongues they were utter strangers.
I was at the mathematical school, where the master taught his pupils
after a method scarce imaginable to us in Europe. The proposition,
and demonstration, were fairly written on a thin wafer, with ink
composed of a cephalic tincture. This, the student was to swallow
upon a fasting stomach, and for three days following, eat nothing but
bread and water. As the wafer digested, the tincture mounted to
his brain, bearing the proposition along with it. But the success
has not hitherto been answerable, partly by some error in the quantum
or composition, and partly by the perverseness of lads, to whom this
bolus is so nauseous, that they generally steal aside, and discharge it
upwards, before it can operate; neither have they been yet persuaded to
use so long an abstinence, as the prescription requires.
CHAPTER VI.
[A further account of the academy. The author proposes some
improvements, which are honourably received.]
In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained; the
professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses, which
is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy
people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose
favourites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of
teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great
abilities, eminent services; of instructing princes to know their true
interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their
people; of choosing for employments persons qualified to exercise them,
with many other wild, impossible chimeras, that never entered before
into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old
observation, “that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational,
which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.”
But, however, I shall so far do justice to this part of the Academy, as
to acknowledge that all of them were not so visionary. There was a
most ingenious doctor, who seemed to be perfectly versed in the whole
nature and system of government. This illustrious person had very
usefully employed his studies, in finding out effectual remedies for all
diseases and corruptions to which the several kinds of public
administration are subject, by the vices or infirmities of those who
govern, as well as by the licentiousness of those who are to obey.
For instance: whereas all writers and reasoners have agreed, that there
is a strict universal resemblance between the natural and the political
body; can there be any thing more evident, than that the health of both
must be preserved, and the diseases cured, by the same prescriptions?
It is allowed, that senates and great councils are often troubled with
redundant, ebullient, and other peccant humours; with many diseases of
the head, and more of the heart; with strong convulsions, with grievous
contractions of the nerves and sinews in both hands, but especially the
right; with spleen, flatus, vertigos, and deliriums; with scrofulous
tumours, full of fetid purulent matter; with sour frothy ructations:
with canine appetites, and crudeness of digestion, besides many others,
needless to mention. This doctor therefore proposed, “that upon
the meeting of the senate, certain physicians should attend it the three
first days of their sitting, and at the close of each day’s debate
feel the pulses of every senator; after which, having maturely
considered and consulted upon the nature of the several maladies, and
the methods of cure, they should on the fourth day return to the senate
house, attended by their apothecaries stored with proper medicines; and
before the members sat, administer to each of them lenitives, aperitives,
abstersives, corrosives, restringents, palliatives, laxatives,
cephalalgics, icterics, apophlegmatics, acoustics, as their several
cases required; and, according as these medicines should operate,
repeat, alter, or omit them, at the next meeting.”
This project could not be of any great expense to the public; and might
in my poor opinion, be of much use for the despatch of business, in
those countries where senates have any share in the legislative power;
beget unanimity, shorten debates, open a few mouths which are now
closed, and close many more which are now open; curb the petulancy of
the young, and correct the positiveness of the old; rouse the stupid,
and damp the pert.
Again: because it is a general complaint, that the favourites of princes
are troubled with short and weak memories; the same doctor proposed,
“that whoever attended a first minister, after having told his
business, with the utmost brevity and in the plainest words, should, at
his departure, give the said minister a tweak by the nose, or a kick in
the belly, or tread on his corns, or lug him thrice by both ears, or run
a pin into his breech; or pinch his arm black and blue, to prevent
forgetfulness; and at every levee day, repeat the same operation, till
the business were done, or absolutely refused.”
He likewise directed, “that every senator in the great council of a
nation, after he had delivered his opinion, and argued in the defence of
it, should be obliged to give his vote directly contrary; because if
that were done, the result would infallibly terminate in the good of the
public.”
When parties in a state are violent, he offered a wonderful contrivance
to reconcile them. The method is this: You take a hundred leaders
of each party; you dispose them into couples of such whose heads are
nearest of a size; then let two nice operators saw off the occiput of
each couple at the same time, in such a manner that the brain may be
equally divided. Let the occiputs, thus cut off, be interchanged,
applying each to the head of his opposite party-man. It seems
indeed to be a work that requires some exactness, but the professor
assured us, “that if it were dexterously performed, the cure would be
infallible.” For he argued thus: “that the two half brains
being left to debate the matter between themselves within the space of
one skull, would soon come to a good understanding, and produce that
moderation, as well as regularity of thinking, so much to be wished for
in the heads of those, who imagine they come into the world only to
watch and govern its motion: and as to the difference of brains, in
quantity or quality, among those who are directors in faction, the
doctor assured us, from his own knowledge, that “it was a perfect
trifle.”
I heard a very warm debate between two professors, about the most
commodious and effectual ways and means of raising money, without
grieving the subject. The first affirmed, “the justest method
would be, to lay a certain tax upon vices and folly; and the sum fixed
upon every man to be rated, after the fairest manner, by a jury of his
neighbours.” The second was of an opinion directly contrary;
“to tax those qualities of body and mind, for which men chiefly value
themselves; the rate to be more or less, according to the degrees of
excelling; the decision whereof should be left entirely to their own
breast.” The highest tax was upon men who are the greatest
favourites of the other sex, and the assessments, according to the
number and nature of the favours they have received; for which, they are
allowed to be their own vouchers. Wit, valour, and politeness,
were likewise proposed to be largely taxed, and collected in the same
manner, by every person’s giving his own word for the quantum of what
he possessed. But as to honour, justice, wisdom, and learning,
they should not be taxed at all; because they are qualifications of so
singular a kind, that no man will either allow them in his neighbour or
value them in himself.
The women were proposed to be taxed according to their beauty and skill
in dressing, wherein they had the same privilege with the men, to be
determined by their own judgment. But constancy, chastity, good
sense, and good nature, were not rated, because they would not bear the
charge of collecting.
To keep senators in the interest of the crown, it was proposed that the
members should raffle for employment; every man first taking an oath,
and giving security, that he would vote for the court, whether he won or
not; after which, the losers had, in their turn, the liberty of raffling
upon the next vacancy. Thus, hope and expectation would be kept
alive; none would complain of broken promises, but impute their
disappointments wholly to fortune, whose shoulders are broader and
stronger than those of a ministry.
Another professor showed me a large paper of instructions for
discovering plots and conspiracies against the government. He
advised great statesmen to examine into the diet of all suspected
persons; their times of eating; upon which side they lay in bed; with
which hand they wipe their posteriors; take a strict view of their
excrements, and, from the colour, the odour, the taste, the consistence,
the crudeness or maturity of digestion, form a judgment of their
thoughts and designs; because men are never so serious, thoughtful, and
intent, as when they are at stool, which he found by frequent
experiment; for, in such conjunctures, when he used, merely as a trial,
to consider which was the best way of murdering the king, his ordure
would have a tincture of green; but quite different, when he thought
only of raising an insurrection, or burning the metropolis.
The whole discourse was written with great acuteness, containing many
observations, both curious and useful for politicians; but, as I
conceived, not altogether complete. This I ventured to tell the
author, and offered, if he pleased, to supply him with some additions.
He received my proposition with more compliance than is usual among
writers, especially those of the projecting species, professing “he
would be glad to receive further information.”
I told him, “that in the kingdom of Tribnia, {3}
by the natives called Langdon, {4}
where I had sojourned some time in my travels, the bulk of the people
consist in a manner wholly of discoverers, witnesses, informers,
accusers, prosecutors, evidences, swearers, together with their several
subservient and subaltern instruments, all under the colours, the
conduct, and the pay of ministers of state, and their deputies.
The plots, in that kingdom, are usually the workmanship of those persons
who desire to raise their own characters of profound politicians; to
restore new vigour to a crazy administration; to stifle or divert
general discontents; to fill their coffers with forfeitures; and raise,
or sink the opinion of public credit, as either shall best answer their
private advantage. It is first agreed and settled among them, what
suspected persons shall be accused of a plot; then, effectual care is
taken to secure all their letters and papers, and put the owners in
chains. These papers are delivered to a set of artists, very
dexterous in finding out the mysterious meanings of words, syllables,
and letters: for instance, they can discover a close stool, to signify a
privy council; a flock of geese, a senate; a lame dog, an invader; the
plague, a standing army; a buzzard, a prime minister; the gout, a high
priest; a gibbet, a secretary of state; a chamber pot, a committee of
grandees; a sieve, a court lady; a broom, a revolution; a mouse-trap, an
employment; a bottomless pit, a treasury; a sink, a court; a cap and
bells, a favourite; a broken reed, a court of justice; an empty tun, a
general; a running sore, the administration. {5}
“When this method fails, they have two others more effectual, which
the learned among them call acrostics and anagrams. First, they
can decipher all initial letters into political meanings. Thus N,
shall signify a plot; B, a regiment of horse; L, a fleet
at sea; or, secondly, by transposing the letters of the alphabet in any
suspected paper, they can lay open the deepest designs of a discontented
party. So, for example, if I should say, in a letter to a friend,
‘Our brother Tom has just got the piles,’ a skilful decipherer would
discover, that the same letters which compose that sentence, may be
analysed into the following words, ‘Resist -, a plot is brought home -
The tour.’ And this is the anagrammatic method.”
The professor made me great acknowledgments for communicating these
observations, and promised to make honourable mention of me in his
treatise.
I saw nothing in this country that could invite me to a longer
continuance, and began to think of returning home to England.
CHAPTER VII.
[The author leaves Lagado: arrives at Maldonada. No ship ready.
He takes a short voyage to Glubbdubdrib. His reception by the
governor.]
The continent, of which this kingdom is apart, extends itself, as I have
reason to believe, eastward, to that unknown tract of America westward
of California; and north, to the Pacific Ocean, which is not above a
hundred and fifty miles from Lagado; where there is a good port, and
much commerce with the great island of Luggnagg, situated to the
north-west about 29 degrees north latitude, and 140 longitude.
This island of Luggnagg stands south-eastward of Japan, about a hundred
leagues distant. There is a strict alliance between the Japanese
emperor and the king of Luggnagg; which affords frequent opportunities
of sailing from one island to the other. I determined therefore to
direct my course this way, in order to my return to Europe. I
hired two mules, with a guide, to show me the way, and carry my small
baggage. I took leave of my noble protector, who had shown me so
much favour, and made me a generous present at my departure.
My journey was without any accident or adventure worth relating.
When I arrived at the port of Maldonada (for so it is called) there was
no ship in the harbour bound for Luggnagg, nor likely to be in some
time. The town is about as large as Portsmouth. I soon fell
into some acquaintance, and was very hospitably received. A
gentleman of distinction said to me, “that since the ships bound for
Luggnagg could not be ready in less than a month, it might be no
disagreeable amusement for me to take a trip to the little island of
Glubbdubdrib, about five leagues off to the south-west.” He
offered himself and a friend to accompany me, and that I should be
provided with a small convenient bark for the voyage.
Glubbdubdrib, as nearly as I can interpret the word, signifies the
island of sorcerers or magicians. It is about one third as large
as the Isle of Wight, and extremely fruitful: it is governed by the head
of a certain tribe, who are all magicians. This tribe marries only
among each other, and the eldest in succession is prince or governor.
He has a noble palace, and a park of about three thousand acres,
surrounded by a wall of hewn stone twenty feet high. In this park
are several small enclosures for cattle, corn, and gardening.
The governor and his family are served and attended by domestics of a
kind somewhat unusual. By his skill in necromancy he has a power
of calling whom he pleases from the dead, and commanding their service
for twenty-four hours, but no longer; nor can he call the same persons
up again in less than three months, except upon very extraordinary
occasions.
When we arrived at the island, which was about eleven in the morning,
one of the gentlemen who accompanied me went to the governor, and
desired admittance for a stranger, who came on purpose to have the
honour of attending on his highness. This was immediately granted,
and we all three entered the gate of the palace between two rows of
guards, armed and dressed after a very antic manner, and with something
in their countenances that made my flesh creep with a horror I cannot
express. We passed through several apartments, between servants of
the same sort, ranked on each side as before, till we came to the
chamber of presence; where, after three profound obeisances, and a few
general questions, we were permitted to sit on three stools, near the
lowest step of his highness’s throne. He understood the language
of Balnibarbi, although it was different from that of this island.
He desired me to give him some account of my travels; and, to let me see
that I should be treated without ceremony, he dismissed all his
attendants with a turn of his finger; at which, to my great
astonishment, they vanished in an instant, like visions in a dream when
we awake on a sudden. I could not recover myself in some time,
till the governor assured me, “that I should receive no hurt:” and
observing my two companions to be under no concern, who had been often
entertained in the same manner, I began to take courage, and related to
his highness a short history of my several adventures; yet not without
some hesitation, and frequently looking behind me to the place where I
had seen those domestic spectres. I had the honour to dine with
the governor, where a new set of ghosts served up the meat, and waited
at table. I now observed myself to be less terrified than I had
been in the morning. I stayed till sunset, but humbly desired his
highness to excuse me for not accepting his invitation of lodging in the
palace. My two friends and I lay at a private house in the town
adjoining, which is the capital of this little island; and the next
morning we returned to pay our duty to the governor, as he was pleased
to command us.
After this manner we continued in the island for ten days, most part of
every day with the governor, and at night in our lodging. I soon
grew so familiarized to the sight of spirits, that after the third or
fourth time they gave me no emotion at all: or, if I had any
apprehensions left, my curiosity prevailed over them. For his
highness the governor ordered me “to call up whatever persons I would
choose to name, and in whatever numbers, among all the dead from the
beginning of the world to the present time, and command them to answer
any questions I should think fit to ask; with this condition, that my
questions must be confined within the compass of the times they lived
in. And one thing I might depend upon, that they would certainly
tell me the truth, for lying was a talent of no use in the lower
world.”
I made my humble acknowledgments to his highness for so great a favour.
We were in a chamber, from whence there was a fair prospect into the
park. And because my first inclination was to be entertained with
scenes of pomp and magnificence, I desired to see Alexander the Great at
the head of his army, just after the battle of Arbela: which, upon a
motion of the governor’s finger, immediately appeared in a large
field, under the window where we stood. Alexander was called up
into the room: it was with great difficulty that I understood his Greek,
and had but little of my own. He assured me upon his honour
“that he was not poisoned, but died of a bad fever by excessive
drinking.”
Next, I saw Hannibal passing the Alps, who told me “he had not a drop
of vinegar in his camp.”
I saw Caesar and Pompey at the head of their troops, just ready to
engage. I saw the former, in his last great triumph. I
desired that the senate of Rome might appear before me, in one large
chamber, and an assembly of somewhat a later age in counterview, in
another. The first seemed to be an assembly of heroes and
demigods; the other, a knot of pedlars, pick-pockets, highwayman, and
bullies.
The governor, at my request, gave the sign for Caesar and Brutus to
advance towards us. I was struck with a profound veneration at the
sight of Brutus, and could easily discover the most consummate virtue,
the greatest intrepidity and firmness of mind, the truest love of his
country, and general benevolence for mankind, in every lineament of his
countenance. I observed, with much pleasure, that these two
persons were in good intelligence with each other; and Caesar freely
confessed to me, “that the greatest actions of his own life were not
equal, by many degrees, to the glory of taking it away.” I had
the honour to have much conversation with Brutus; and was told, “that
his ancestor Junius, Socrates, Epaminondas, Cato the younger, Sir Thomas
More, and himself were perpetually together:” a sextumvirate, to which
all the ages of the world cannot add a seventh.
It would be tedious to trouble the reader with relating what vast
numbers of illustrious persons were called up to gratify that insatiable
desire I had to see the world in every period of antiquity placed before
me. I chiefly fed mine eyes with beholding the destroyers of
tyrants and usurpers, and the restorers of liberty to oppressed and
injured nations. But it is impossible to express the satisfaction
I received in my own mind, after such a manner as to make it a suitable
entertainment to the reader.
CHAPTER VIII.
[A further account of Glubbdubdrib. Ancient and modern history
corrected.]
Having a desire to see those ancients who were most renowned for wit and
learning, I set apart one day on purpose. I proposed that Homer
and Aristotle might appear at the head of all their commentators; but
these were so numerous, that some hundreds were forced to attend in the
court, and outward rooms of the palace. I knew, and could
distinguish those two heroes, at first sight, not only from the crowd,
but from each other. Homer was the taller and comelier person of
the two, walked very erect for one of his age, and his eyes were the
most quick and piercing I ever beheld. Aristotle stooped much, and
made use of a staff. His visage was meagre, his hair lank and
thin, and his voice hollow. I soon discovered that both of them
were perfect strangers to the rest of the company, and had never seen or
heard of them before; and I had a whisper from a ghost who shall be
nameless, “that these commentators always kept in the most distant
quarters from their principals, in the lower world, through a
consciousness of shame and guilt, because they had so horribly
misrepresented the meaning of those authors to posterity.” I
introduced Didymus and Eustathius to Homer, and prevailed on him to
treat them better than perhaps they deserved, for he soon found they
wanted a genius to enter into the spirit of a poet. But Aristotle
was out of all patience with the account I gave him of Scotus and Ramus,
as I presented them to him; and he asked them, “whether the rest of
the tribe were as great dunces as themselves?”
I then desired the governor to call up Descartes and Gassendi, with whom
I prevailed to explain their systems to Aristotle. This great
philosopher freely acknowledged his own mistakes in natural philosophy,
because he proceeded in many things upon conjecture, as all men must do;
and he found that Gassendi, who had made the doctrine of Epicurus as
palatable as he could, and the vortices of Descartes, were equally to be
exploded. He predicted the same fate to attraction, whereof
the present learned are such zealous asserters. He said, “that
new systems of nature were but new fashions, which would vary in every
age; and even those, who pretend to demonstrate them from mathematical
principles, would flourish but a short period of time, and be out of
vogue when that was determined.”
I spent five days in conversing with many others of the ancient learned.
I saw most of the first Roman emperors. I prevailed on the
governor to call up Heliogabalus’s cooks to dress us a dinner, but
they could not show us much of their skill, for want of materials.
A helot of Agesilaus made us a dish of Spartan broth, but I was not able
to get down a second spoonful.
The two gentlemen, who conducted me to the island, were pressed by their
private affairs to return in three days, which I employed in seeing some
of the modern dead, who had made the greatest figure, for two or three
hundred years past, in our own and other countries of Europe; and having
been always a great admirer of old illustrious families, I desired the
governor would call up a dozen or two of kings, with their ancestors in
order for eight or nine generations. But my disappointment was
grievous and unexpected. For, instead of a long train with royal
diadems, I saw in one family two fiddlers, three spruce courtiers, and
an Italian prelate. In another, a barber, an abbot, and two
cardinals. I have too great a veneration for crowned heads, to
dwell any longer on so nice a subject. But as to counts,
marquises, dukes, earls, and the like, I was not so scrupulous.
And I confess, it was not without some pleasure, that I found myself
able to trace the particular features, by which certain families are
distinguished, up to their originals. I could plainly discover
whence one family derives a long chin; why a second has abounded with
knaves for two generations, and fools for two more; why a third happened
to be crack-brained, and a fourth to be sharpers; whence it came, what
Polydore Virgil says of a certain great house, Nec vir fortis, nec
foemina casta; how cruelty, falsehood, and cowardice, grew to be
characteristics by which certain families are distinguished as much as
by their coats of arms; who first brought the pox into a noble house,
which has lineally descended scrofulous tumours to their posterity.
Neither could I wonder at all this, when I saw such an interruption of
lineages, by pages, lackeys, valets, coachmen, gamesters, fiddlers,
players, captains, and pickpockets.
I was chiefly disgusted with modern history. For having strictly
examined all the persons of greatest name in the courts of princes, for
a hundred years past, I found how the world had been misled by
prostitute writers, to ascribe the greatest exploits in war, to cowards;
the wisest counsel, to fools; sincerity, to flatterers; Roman virtue, to
betrayers of their country; piety, to atheists; chastity, to sodomites;
truth, to informers: how many innocent and excellent persons had been
condemned to death or banishment by the practising of great ministers
upon the corruption of judges, and the malice of factions: how many
villains had been exalted to the highest places of trust, power,
dignity, and profit: how great a share in the motions and events of
courts, councils, and senates might be challenged by bawds, whores,
pimps, parasites, and buffoons. How low an opinion I had of human
wisdom and integrity, when I was truly informed of the springs and
motives of great enterprises and revolutions in the world, and of the
contemptible accidents to which they owed their success.
Here I discovered the roguery and ignorance of those who pretend to
write anecdotes, or secret history; who send so many kings to their
graves with a cup of poison; will repeat the discourse between a prince
and chief minister, where no witness was by; unlock the thoughts and
cabinets of ambassadors and secretaries of state; and have the perpetual
misfortune to be mistaken. Here I discovered the true causes of
many great events that have surprised the world; how a whore can govern
the back-stairs, the back-stairs a council, and the council a senate.
A general confessed, in my presence, “that he got a victory purely by
the force of cowardice and ill conduct;” and an admiral, “that, for
want of proper intelligence, he beat the enemy, to whom he intended to
betray the fleet.” Three kings protested to me, “that in their
whole reigns they never did once prefer any person of merit, unless by
mistake, or treachery of some minister in whom they confided; neither
would they do it if they were to live again:” and they showed, with
great strength of reason, “that the royal throne could not be
supported without corruption, because that positive, confident, restiff
temper, which virtue infused into a man, was a perpetual clog to public
business.”
I had the curiosity to inquire in a particular manner, by what methods
great numbers had procured to themselves high titles of honour, and
prodigious estates; and I confined my inquiry to a very modern period:
however, without grating upon present times, because I would be sure to
give no offence even to foreigners (for I hope the reader need not be
told, that I do not in the least intend my own country, in what I say
upon this occasion,) a great number of persons concerned were called up;
and, upon a very slight examination, discovered such a scene of infamy,
that I cannot reflect upon it without some seriousness. Perjury,
oppression, subornation, fraud, pandarism, and the like infirmities,
were among the most excusable arts they had to mention; and for these I
gave, as it was reasonable, great allowance. But when some
confessed they owed their greatness and wealth to sodomy, or incest;
others, to the prostituting of their own wives and daughters; others, to
the betraying of their country or their prince; some, to poisoning; more
to the perverting of justice, in order to destroy the innocent, I hope I
may be pardoned, if these discoveries inclined me a little to abate of
that profound veneration, which I am naturally apt to pay to persons of
high rank, who ought to be treated with the utmost respect due to their
sublime dignity, by us their inferiors.
I had often read of some great services done to princes and states, and
desired to see the persons by whom those services were performed.
Upon inquiry I was told, “that their names were to be found on no
record, except a few of them, whom history has represented as the vilest
of rogues and traitors.” As to the rest, I had never once heard
of them. They all appeared with dejected looks, and in the meanest
habit; most of them telling me, “they died in poverty and disgrace,
and the rest on a scaffold or a gibbet.”
Among others, there was one person, whose case appeared a little
singular. He had a youth about eighteen years old standing by his
side. He told me, “he had for many years been commander of a
ship; and in the sea fight at Actium had the good fortune to break
through the enemy’s great line of battle, sink three of their capital
ships, and take a fourth, which was the sole cause of Antony’s flight,
and of the victory that ensued; that the youth standing by him, his only
son, was killed in the action.” He added, “that upon the
confidence of some merit, the war being at an end, he went to Rome, and
solicited at the court of Augustus to be preferred to a greater ship,
whose commander had been killed; but, without any regard to his
pretensions, it was given to a boy who had never seen the sea, the son
of Libertina, who waited on one of the emperor’s mistresses.
Returning back to his own vessel, he was charged with neglect of duty,
and the ship given to a favourite page of Publicola, the vice-admiral;
whereupon he retired to a poor farm at a great distance from Rome, and
there ended his life.” I was so curious to know the truth of
this story, that I desired Agrippa might be called, who was admiral in
that fight. He appeared, and confirmed the whole account: but with
much more advantage to the captain, whose modesty had extenuated or
concealed a great part of his merit.
I was surprised to find corruption grown so high and so quick in that
empire, by the force of luxury so lately introduced; which made me less
wonder at many parallel cases in other countries, where vices of all
kinds have reigned so much longer, and where the whole praise, as well
as pillage, has been engrossed by the chief commander, who perhaps had
the least title to either.
As every person called up made exactly the same appearance he had done
in the world, it gave me melancholy reflections to observe how much the
race of human kind was degenerated among us within these hundred years
past; how the pox, under all its consequences and denominations had
altered every lineament of an English countenance; shortened the size of
bodies, unbraced the nerves, relaxed the sinews and muscles, introduced
a sallow complexion, and rendered the flesh loose and rancid.
I descended so low, as to desire some English yeoman of the old stamp
might be summoned to appear; once so famous for the simplicity of their
manners, diet, and dress; for justice in their dealings; for their true
spirit of liberty; for their valour, and love of their country.
Neither could I be wholly unmoved, after comparing the living with the
dead, when I considered how all these pure native virtues were
prostituted for a piece of money by their grand-children; who, in
selling their votes and managing at elections, have acquired every vice
and corruption that can possibly be learned in a court.
CHAPTER IX.
[The author returns to Maldonada. Sails to the kingdom of Luggnagg.
The author confined. He is sent for to court. The manner of
his admittance. The king’s great lenity to his subjects.]
The day of our departure being come, I took leave of his highness, the
Governor of Glubbdubdrib, and returned with my two companions to
Maldonada, where, after a fortnight’s waiting, a ship was ready to
sail for Luggnagg. The two gentlemen, and some others, were so
generous and kind as to furnish me with provisions, and see me on board.
I was a month in this voyage. We had one violent storm, and were
under a necessity of steering westward to get into the trade wind, which
holds for above sixty leagues. On the 21st of April, 1708, we
sailed into the river of Clumegnig, which is a seaport town, at the
south-east point of Luggnagg. We cast anchor within a league of
the town, and made a signal for a pilot. Two of them came on board
in less than half an hour, by whom we were guided between certain shoals
and rocks, which are very dangerous in the passage, to a large basin,
where a fleet may ride in safety within a cable’s length of the
town-wall.
Some of our sailors, whether out of treachery or inadvertence, had
informed the pilots “that I was a stranger, and great traveller;”
whereof these gave notice to a custom-house officer, by whom I was
examined very strictly upon my landing. This officer spoke to me
in the language of Balnibarbi, which, by the force of much commerce, is
generally understood in that town, especially by seamen and those
employed in the customs. I gave him a short account of some
particulars, and made my story as plausible and consistent as I could;
but I thought it necessary to disguise my country, and call myself a
Hollander; because my intentions were for Japan, and I knew the Dutch
were the only Europeans permitted to enter into that kingdom. I
therefore told the officer, “that having been shipwrecked on the coast
of Balnibarbi, and cast on a rock, I was received up into Laputa, or the
flying island (of which he had often heard), and was now endeavouring to
get to Japan, whence I might find a convenience of returning to my own
country.” The officer said, “I must be confined till he could
receive orders from court, for which he would write immediately, and
hoped to receive an answer in a fortnight.” I was carried to a
convenient lodging with a sentry placed at the door; however, I had the
liberty of a large garden, and was treated with humanity enough, being
maintained all the time at the king’s charge. I was invited by
several persons, chiefly out of curiosity, because it was reported that
I came from countries very remote, of which they had never heard.
I hired a young man, who came in the same ship, to be an interpreter; he
was a native of Luggnagg, but had lived some years at Maldonada, and was
a perfect master of both languages. By his assistance, I was able
to hold a conversation with those who came to visit me; but this
consisted only of their questions, and my answers.
The despatch came from court about the time we expected. It
contained a warrant for conducting me and my retinue to Traldragdubh,
or Trildrogdrib (for it is pronounced both ways as near as I can
remember), by a party of ten horse. All my retinue was that poor
lad for an interpreter, whom I persuaded into my service, and, at my
humble request, we had each of us a mule to ride on. A messenger
was despatched half a day’s journey before us, to give the king notice
of my approach, and to desire, “that his majesty would please to
appoint a day and hour, when it would by his gracious pleasure that I
might have the honour to lick the dust before his footstool.”
This is the court style, and I found it to be more than matter of form:
for, upon my admittance two days after my arrival, I was commanded to
crawl upon my belly, and lick the floor as I advanced; but, on account
of my being a stranger, care was taken to have it made so clean, that
the dust was not offensive. However, this was a peculiar grace,
not allowed to any but persons of the highest rank, when they desire an
admittance. Nay, sometimes the floor is strewed with dust on
purpose, when the person to be admitted happens to have powerful enemies
at court; and I have seen a great lord with his mouth so crammed, that
when he had crept to the proper distance from the throne; he was not
able to speak a word. Neither is there any remedy; because it is
capital for those, who receive an audience to spit or wipe their mouths
in his majesty’s presence. There is indeed another custom, which
I cannot altogether approve of: when the king has a mind to put any of
his nobles to death in a gentle indulgent manner, he commands the floor
to be strewed with a certain brown powder of a deadly composition, which
being licked up, infallibly kills him in twenty-four hours. But in
justice to this prince’s great clemency, and the care he has of his
subjects’ lives (wherein it were much to be wished that the Monarchs
of Europe would imitate him), it must be mentioned for his honour, that
strict orders are given to have the infected parts of the floor well
washed after every such execution, which, if his domestics neglect, they
are in danger of incurring his royal displeasure. I myself heard
him give directions, that one of his pages should be whipped, whose turn
it was to give notice about washing the floor after an execution, but
maliciously had omitted it; by which neglect a young lord of great
hopes, coming to an audience, was unfortunately poisoned, although the
king at that time had no design against his life. But this good
prince was so gracious as to forgive the poor page his whipping, upon
promise that he would do so no more, without special orders.
To return from this digression. When I had crept within four yards
of the throne, I raised myself gently upon my knees, and then striking
my forehead seven times against the ground, I pronounced the following
words, as they had been taught me the night before, Inckpling
gloffthrobb squut serummblhiop mlashnalt zwin tnodbalkuffh slhiophad
gurdlubh asht. This is the compliment, established by the laws
of the land, for all persons admitted to the king’s presence. It
may be rendered into English thus: “May your celestial majesty outlive
the sun, eleven moons and a half!” To this the king returned
some answer, which, although I could not understand, yet I replied as I
had been directed: Fluft drin yalerick dwuldom prastrad mirpush, which
properly signifies, “My tongue is in the mouth of my friend;” and by
this expression was meant, that I desired leave to bring my interpreter;
whereupon the young man already mentioned was accordingly introduced, by
whose intervention I answered as many questions as his majesty could put
in above an hour. I spoke in the Balnibarbian tongue, and my
interpreter delivered my meaning in that of Luggnagg.
The king was much delighted with my company, and ordered his bliffmarklub,
or high-chamberlain, to appoint a lodging in the court for me and my
interpreter; with a daily allowance for my table, and a large purse of
gold for my common expenses.
I staid three months in this country, out of perfect obedience to his
majesty; who was pleased highly to favour me, and made me very
honourable offers. But I thought it more consistent with prudence
and justice to pass the remainder of my days with my wife and family.
CHAPTER X.
[The Luggnaggians commended. A particular description of the
Struldbrugs, with many conversations between the author and some eminent
persons upon that subject.]
The Luggnaggians are a polite and generous people; and although they are
not without some share of that pride which is peculiar to all Eastern
countries, yet they show themselves courteous to strangers, especially
such who are countenanced by the court. I had many acquaintance,
and among persons of the best fashion; and being always attended by my
interpreter, the conversation we had was not disagreeable.
One day, in much good company, 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 in 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 colour; for at twelve years old it became green, so continued till
five and twenty, then turned to a deep blue: at five and forty it grew
coal black, and as large as an English shilling; but never admitted any
further alteration.” He said, “these births were so rare, that
he did not believe there could be above eleven hundred struldbrugs, of
both sexes, in the whole kingdom; of which he computed about fifty in
the metropolis, and, among the rest, a young girl born; about three
years ago: that these productions were not peculiar to any family, but a
mere effect of chance; and the children of the struldbrugs themselves
were equally mortal with the rest of the people.”
I freely own myself to have been struck with inexpressible delight, upon
hearing this account: and the person who gave it me happening to
understand the Balnibarbian language, which I spoke very well, I could
not forbear breaking out into expressions, perhaps a little too
extravagant. I cried out, as in a rapture, “Happy nation, where
every child hath at least a chance for being immortal! Happy
people, who enjoy so many living examples of ancient virtue, and have
masters ready to instruct them in the wisdom of all former ages! but
happiest, beyond all comparison, are those excellent struldbrugs, who,
being born exempt from that universal calamity of human nature, have
their minds free and disengaged, without the weight and depression of
spirits caused by the continual apprehensions of death!” I
discovered my admiration that I had not observed any of these
illustrious persons at court; the black spot on the forehead being so
remarkable a distinction, that I could not have easily overlooked it:
and it was impossible that his majesty, a most judicious prince, should
not provide himself with a good number of such wise and able counsellors.
Yet perhaps the virtue of those reverend sages was too strict for the
corrupt and libertine manners of a court: and we often find by
experience, that young men are too opinionated and volatile to be guided
by the sober dictates of their seniors. However, since the king
was pleased to allow me access to his royal person, I was resolved, upon
the very first occasion, to deliver my opinion to him on this matter
freely and at large, by the help of my interpreter; and whether he would
please to take my advice or not, yet in one thing I was determined, that
his majesty having frequently offered me an establishment in this
country, I would, with great thankfulness, accept the favour, and pass
my life here in the conversation of those superior beings the struldbrugs,
if they would please to admit me.”
The gentleman to whom I addressed my discourse, because (as I have
already observed) he spoke the language of Balnibarbi, said to me, with
a sort of a smile which usually arises from pity to the ignorant,
“that he was glad of any occasion to keep me among them, and desired
my permission to explain to the company what I had spoke.” He
did so, and they talked together for some time in their own language,
whereof I understood not a syllable, neither could I observe by their
countenances, what impression my discourse had made on them. After
a short silence, the same person told me, “that his friends and mine
(so he thought fit to express himself) were very much pleased with the
judicious remarks I had made on the great happiness and advantages of
immortal life, and they were desirous to know, in a particular manner,
what scheme of living I should have formed to myself, if it had fallen
to my lot to have been born a struldbrug.”
I answered, “it was easy to be eloquent on so copious and delightful a
subject, especially to me, who had been often apt to amuse myself with
visions of what I should do, if I were a king, a general, or a great
lord: and upon this very case, I had frequently run over the whole
system how I should employ myself, and pass the time, if I were sure to
live for ever.
“That, if it had been my good fortune to come into the world a struldbrug,
as soon as I could discover my own happiness, by understanding the
difference between life and death, I would first resolve, by all arts
and methods, whatsoever, to procure myself riches. In the pursuit
of which, by thrift and management, I might reasonably expect, in about
two hundred years, to be the wealthiest man in the kingdom. In the
second place, I would, from my earliest youth, apply myself to the study
of arts and sciences, by which I should arrive in time to excel all
others in learning. Lastly, I would carefully record every action
and event of consequence, that happened in the public, impartially draw
the characters of the several successions of princes and great ministers
of state, with my own observations on every point. I would exactly
set down the several changes in customs, language, fashions of dress,
diet, and diversions. By all which acquirements, I should be a
living treasure of knowledge and wisdom, and certainly become the oracle
of the nation.
“I would never marry after threescore, but live in a hospitable
manner, yet still on the saving side. I would entertain myself in
forming and directing the minds of hopeful young men, by convincing
them, from my own remembrance, experience, and observation, fortified by
numerous examples, of the usefulness of virtue in public and private
life. But my choice and constant companions should be a set of my
own immortal brotherhood; among whom, I would elect a dozen from the
most ancient, down to my own contemporaries. Where any of these
wanted fortunes, I would provide them with convenient lodges round my
own estate, and have some of them always at my table; only mingling a
few of the most valuable among you mortals, whom length of time would
harden me to lose with little or no reluctance, and treat your posterity
after the same manner; just as a man diverts himself with the annual
succession of pinks and tulips in his garden, without regretting the
loss of those which withered the preceding year.
“These struldbrugs and I would mutually communicate our
observations and memorials, through the course of time; remark the
several gradations by which corruption steals into the world, and oppose
it in every step, by giving perpetual warning and instruction to
mankind; which, added to the strong influence of our own example, would
probably prevent that continual degeneracy of human nature so justly
complained of in all ages.
“Add to this, the pleasure of seeing the various revolutions of states
and empires; the changes in the lower and upper world; ancient cities in
ruins, and obscure villages become the seats of kings; famous rivers
lessening into shallow brooks; the ocean leaving one coast dry, and
overwhelming another; the discovery of many countries yet unknown;
barbarity overrunning the politest nations, and the most barbarous
become civilized. I should then see the discovery of the
longitude, the perpetual motion, the universal medicine, and many other
great inventions, brought to the utmost perfection.
“What wonderful discoveries should we make in astronomy, by outliving
and confirming our own predictions; by observing the progress and return
of comets, with the changes of motion in the sun, moon, and stars!”
I enlarged upon many other topics, which the natural desire of endless
life, and sublunary happiness, could easily furnish me with. When
I had ended, and the sum of my discourse had been interpreted, as
before, to the rest of the company, there was a good deal of talk among
them in the language of the country, not without some laughter at my
expense. At last, the same gentleman who had been my interpreter,
said, “he was desired by the rest to set me right in a few mistakes,
which I had fallen into through the common imbecility of human nature,
and upon that allowance was less answerable for them. That this
breed of struldbrugs was peculiar to their country, for there
were no such people either in Balnibarbi or Japan, where he had the
honour to be ambassador from his majesty, and found the natives in both
those kingdoms very hard to believe that the fact was possible: and it
appeared from my astonishment when he first mentioned the matter to me,
that I received it as a thing wholly new, and scarcely to be credited.
That in the two kingdoms above mentioned, where, during his residence,
he had conversed very much, he observed long life to be the universal
desire and wish of mankind. That whoever had one foot in the grave
was sure to hold back the other as strongly as he could. That the
oldest had still hopes of living one day longer, and looked on death as
the greatest evil, from which nature always prompted him to retreat.
Only in this island of Luggnagg the appetite for living was not so
eager, from the continual example of the struldbrugs before their
eyes.
“That the system of living contrived by me, was unreasonable and
unjust; because it supposed a perpetuity of youth, health, and vigour,
which no man could be so foolish to hope, however extravagant he may be
in his wishes. That the question therefore was not, whether a man
would choose to be always in the prime of youth, attended with
prosperity and health; but how he would pass a perpetual life under all
the usual disadvantages which old age brings along with it. For
although few men will avow their desires of being immortal, upon such
hard conditions, yet in the two kingdoms before mentioned, of Balnibarbi
and Japan, he observed that every man desired to put off death some time
longer, let it approach ever so late: and he rarely heard of any man who
died willingly, except he were incited by the extremity of grief or
torture. And he appealed to me, whether in those countries I had
travelled, as well as my own, I had not observed the same general
disposition.”
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 opinionative, 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 have gone to a harbour
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.
“If a struldbrug happen to marry one of his own kind, the
marriage is dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon
as the younger of the two comes to be fourscore; for the law thinks it a
reasonable indulgence, that those who are condemned, without any fault
of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have
their misery doubled by the load of a wife.
“As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are
looked on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their
estates; only a small pittance is reserved for their support; and the
poor ones are maintained at the public charge. After that period,
they are held incapable of any employment of trust or profit; they
cannot purchase lands, or take leases; neither are they allowed to be
witnesses in any cause, either civil or criminal, not even for the
decision of meers and bounds.
“At ninety, they lose their teeth and hair; they have at that age no
distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get, without
relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to still
continue, without increasing or diminishing. In talking, they
forget the common appellation of things, and the names of persons, even
of those who are their nearest friends and relations. For the same
reason, they never can amuse themselves with reading, because their
memory will not serve to carry them from the beginning of a sentence to
the end; and by this defect, they are deprived of the only entertainment
whereof they might otherwise be capable.
The language of this country being always upon the flux, the struldbrugs
of one age do not understand those of another; neither are they
able, after two hundred years, to hold any conversation (farther than by
a few general words) with their neighbours the mortals; and thus they
lie under the disadvantage of living like foreigners in their own
country.”
This was the account given me of the struldbrugs, as near as I
can remember. I afterwards saw five or six of different ages, the
youngest not above two hundred years old, who were brought to me at
several times by some of my friends; but although they were told,
“that I was a great traveller, and had seen all the world,” they had
not the least curiosity to ask me a question; only desired “I would
give them slumskudask,” or a token of remembrance; which is a
modest way of begging, to avoid the law, that strictly forbids it,
because they are provided for by the public, although indeed with a very
scanty allowance.
They are despised and hated by all sorts of people. When one of
them is born, it is reckoned ominous, and their birth is recorded very
particularly so that you may know their age by consulting the register,
which, however, has not been kept above a thousand years past, or at
least has been destroyed by time or public disturbances. But the
usual way of computing how old they are, is by asking them what kings or
great persons they can remember, and then consulting history; for
infallibly the last prince in their mind did not begin his reign after
they were fourscore years old.
They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld; and the women more
horrible than the men. Besides the usual deformities in extreme
old age, they acquired an additional ghastliness, in proportion to their
number of years, which is not to be described; and among half a dozen, I
soon distinguished which was the eldest, although there was not above a
century or two between them.
The reader will easily believe, that from what I had hear and seen, my
keen appetite for perpetuity of life was much abated. I grew
heartily ashamed of the pleasing visions I had formed; and thought no
tyrant could invent a death into which I would not run with pleasure,
from such a life. The king heard of all that had passed between me
and my friends upon this occasion, and rallied me very pleasantly;
wishing I could send a couple of struldbrugs to my own country,
to arm our people against the fear of death; but this, it seems, is
forbidden by the fundamental laws of the kingdom, or else I should have
been well content with the trouble and expense of transporting them.
I could not but agree, that the laws of this kingdom relative to the struldbrugs
were founded upon the strongest reasons, and such as any other country
would be under the necessity of enacting, in the like circumstances.
Otherwise, as avarice is the necessary consequence of old age, those
immortals would in time become proprietors of the whole nation, and
engross the civil power, which, for want of abilities to manage, must
end in the ruin of the public.
CHAPTER XI.
[The author leaves Luggnagg, and sails to Japan. From thence he
returns in a Dutch ship to Amsterdam, and from Amsterdam to England.]
I thought this account of the struldbrugs might be some
entertainment to the reader, because it seems to be a little out of the
common way; at least I do not remember to have met the like in any book
of travels that has come to my hands: and if I am deceived, my excuse
must be, that it is necessary for travellers who describe the same
country, very often to agree in dwelling on the same particulars,
without deserving the censure of having borrowed or transcribed from
those who wrote before them.
There is indeed a perpetual commerce between this kingdom and the great
empire of Japan; and it is very probable, that the Japanese authors may
have given some account of the struldbrugs; but my stay in Japan
was so short, and I was so entirely a stranger to the language, that I
was not qualified to make any inquiries. But I hope the Dutch,
upon this notice, will be curious and able enough to supply my defects.
His majesty having often pressed me to accept some employment in his
court, and finding me absolutely determined to return to my native
country, was pleased to give me his license to depart; and honoured me
with a letter of recommendation, under his own hand, to the Emperor of
Japan. He likewise presented me with four hundred and forty-four
large pieces of gold (this nation delighting in even numbers), and a red
diamond, which I sold in England for eleven hundred pounds.
On the 6th of May, 1709, I took a solemn leave of his majesty, and all
my friends. This prince was so gracious as to order a guard to
conduct me to Glanguenstald, which is a royal port to the south-west
part of the island. In six days I found a vessel ready to carry me
to Japan, and spent fifteen days in the voyage. We landed at a
small port-town called Xamoschi, situated on the south-east part of
Japan; the town lies on the western point, where there is a narrow
strait leading northward into along arm of the sea, upon the north-west
part of which, Yedo, the metropolis, stands. At landing, I showed
the custom-house officers my letter from the king of Luggnagg to his
imperial majesty. They knew the seal perfectly well; it was as
broad as the palm of my hand. The impression was, A king
lifting up a lame beggar from the earth. The magistrates of
the town, hearing of my letter, received me as a public minister.
They provided me with carriages and servants, and bore my charges to
Yedo; where I was admitted to an audience, and delivered my letter,
which was opened with great ceremony, and explained to the Emperor by an
interpreter, who then gave me notice, by his majesty’s order, “that
I should signify my request, and, whatever it were, it should be
granted, for the sake of his royal brother of Luggnagg.” This
interpreter was a person employed to transact affairs with the
Hollanders. He soon conjectured, by my countenance, that I was a
European, and therefore repeated his majesty’s commands in Low Dutch,
which he spoke perfectly well. I answered, as I had before
determined, “that I was a Dutch merchant, shipwrecked in a very remote
country, whence I had travelled by sea and land to Luggnagg, and then
took shipping for Japan; where I knew my countrymen often traded, and
with some of these I hoped to get an opportunity of returning into
Europe: I therefore most humbly entreated his royal favour, to give
order that I should be conducted in safety to Nangasac.” To this
I added another petition, “that for the sake of my patron the king of
Luggnagg, his majesty would condescend to excuse my performing the
ceremony imposed on my countrymen, of trampling upon the crucifix:
because I had been thrown into his kingdom by my misfortunes, without
any intention of trading.” When this latter petition was
interpreted to the Emperor, he seemed a little surprised; and said,
“he believed I was the first of my countrymen who ever made any
scruple in this point; and that he began to doubt, whether I was a real
Hollander, or not; but rather suspected I must be a Christian.
However, for the reasons I had offered, but chiefly to gratify the king
of Luggnagg by an uncommon mark of his favour, he would comply with the
singularity of my humour; but the affair must be managed with dexterity,
and his officers should be commanded to let me pass, as it were by
forgetfulness. For he assured me, that if the secret should be
discovered by my countrymen the Dutch, they would cut my throat in the
voyage.” I returned my thanks, by the interpreter, for so
unusual a favour; and some troops being at that time on their march to
Nangasac, the commanding officer had orders to convey me safe thither,
with particular instructions about the business of the crucifix.
On the 9th day of June, 1709, I arrived at Nangasac, after a very long
and troublesome journey. I soon fell into the company of some
Dutch sailors belonging to the Amboyna, of Amsterdam, a stout ship of
450 tons. I had lived long in Holland, pursuing my studies at
Leyden, and I spoke Dutch well. The seamen soon knew whence I came
last: they were curious to inquire into my voyages and course of life.
I made up a story as short and probable as I could, but concealed the
greatest part. I knew many persons in Holland. I was able to
invent names for my parents, whom I pretended to be obscure people in
the province of Gelderland. I would have given the captain (one
Theodorus Vangrult) what he pleased to ask for my voyage to Holland; but
understanding I was a surgeon, he was contented to take half the usual
rate, on condition that I would serve him in the way of my calling.
Before we took shipping, I was often asked by some of the crew, whether
I had performed the ceremony above mentioned? I evaded the
question by general answers; “that I had satisfied the Emperor and
court in all particulars.” However, a malicious rogue of a
skipper went to an officer, and pointing to me, told him, “I had not
yet trampled on the crucifix;” but the other, who had received
instructions to let me pass, gave the rascal twenty strokes on the
shoulders with a bamboo; after which I was no more troubled with such
questions.
Nothing happened worth mentioning in this voyage. We sailed with a
fair wind to the Cape of Good Hope, where we staid only to take in fresh
water. On the 10th of April, 1710, we arrived safe at Amsterdam,
having lost only three men by sickness in the voyage, and a fourth, who
fell from the foremast into the sea, not far from the coast of Guinea.
From Amsterdam I soon after set sail for England, in a small vessel
belonging to that city.
On the 16th of April we put in at the Downs. I landed next
morning, and saw once more my native country, after an absence of five
years and six months complete. I went straight to Redriff, where I
arrived the same day at two in the afternoon, and found my wife and
family in good health.
PART IV - A VOYAGE TO THE COUNTRY OF THE HOUYHNHNMS.
CHAPTER I.
[The author sets out as captain of a ship. His men conspire
against him, confine him a long time to his cabin, and set him on shore
in an unknown land. He travels up into the country. The
Yahoos, a strange sort of animal, described. The author meets two
Houyhnhnms.]
I continued at home with my wife and children about five months, in a
very happy condition, if I could have learned the lesson of knowing when
I was well. I left my poor wife big with child, and accepted an
advantageous offer made me to be captain of the Adventurer, a stout
merchantman of 350 tons: for I understood navigation well, and being
grown weary of a surgeon’s employment at sea, which, however, I could
exercise upon occasion, I took a skilful young man of that calling, one
Robert Purefoy, into my ship. We set sail from Portsmouth upon the
7th day of September, 1710; on the 14th we met with Captain Pocock, of
Bristol, at Teneriffe, who was going to the bay of Campechy to cut
logwood. On the 16th, he was parted from us by a storm; I heard
since my return, that his ship foundered, and none escaped but one cabin
boy. He was an honest man, and a good sailor, but a little too
positive in his own opinions, which was the cause of his destruction, as
it has been with several others; for if he had followed my advice, he
might have been safe at home with his family at this time, as well as
myself.
I had several men who died in my ship of calentures, so that I was
forced to get recruits out of Barbadoes and the Leeward Islands, where I
touched, by the direction of the merchants who employed me; which I had
soon too much cause to repent: for I found afterwards, that most of them
had been buccaneers. I had fifty hands onboard; and my orders
were, that I should trade with the Indians in the South-Sea, and make
what discoveries I could. These rogues, whom I had picked up,
debauched my other men, and they all formed a conspiracy to seize the
ship, and secure me; which they did one morning, rushing into my cabin,
and binding me hand and foot, threatening to throw me overboard, if I
offered to stir. I told them, “I was their prisoner, and would
submit.” This they made me swear to do, and then they unbound
me, only fastening one of my legs with a chain, near my bed, and placed
a sentry at my door with his piece charged, who was commanded to shoot
me dead if I attempted my liberty. They sent me own victuals and
drink, and took the government of the ship to themselves. Their
design was to turn pirates and, plunder the Spaniards, which they could
not do till they got more men. But first they resolved to sell the
goods the ship, and then go to Madagascar for recruits, several among
them having died since my confinement. They sailed many weeks, and
traded with the Indians; but I knew not what course they took, being
kept a close prisoner in my cabin, and expecting nothing less than to be
murdered, as they often threatened me.
Upon the 9th day of May, 1711, one James Welch came down to my cabin,
and said, “he had orders from the captain to set me ashore.” I
expostulated with him, but in vain; neither would he so much as tell me
who their new captain was. They forced me into the long-boat,
letting me put on my best suit of clothes, which were as good as new,
and take a small bundle of linen, but no arms, except my hanger; and
they were so civil as not to search my pockets, into which I conveyed
what money I had, with some other little necessaries. They rowed
about a league, and then set me down on a strand. I desired them
to tell me what country it was. They all swore, “they knew no
more than myself;” but said, “that the captain” (as they called
him) “was resolved, after they had sold the lading, to get rid of me
in the first place where they could discover land.” They pushed
off immediately, advising me to make haste for fear of being overtaken
by the tide, and so bade me farewell.
In this desolate condition I advanced forward, and soon got upon firm
ground, where I sat down on a bank to rest myself, and consider what I
had best do. When I was a little refreshed, I went up into the
country, resolving to deliver myself to the first savages I should meet,
and purchase my life from them by some bracelets, glass rings, and other
toys, which sailors usually provide themselves with in those voyages,
and whereof I had some about me. The land was divided by long rows
of trees, not regularly planted, but naturally growing; there was great
plenty of grass, and several fields of oats. I walked very
circumspectly, for fear of being surprised, or suddenly shot with an
arrow from behind, or on either side. I fell into a beaten road,
where I saw many tracts of human feet, and some of cows, but most of
horses. At last I beheld several animals in a field, and one or
two of the same kind sitting in trees. Their shape was very
singular and deformed, which a little discomposed me, so that I lay down
behind a thicket to observe them better. Some of them coming
forward near the place where I lay, gave me an opportunity of distinctly
marking their form. Their heads and breasts were covered with a
thick hair, some frizzled, and others lank; they had beards like goats,
and a long ridge of hair down their backs, and the fore parts of their
legs and feet; but the rest of their bodies was bare, so that I might
see their skins, which were of a brown buff colour. They had no
tails, nor any hair at all on their buttocks, except about the anus,
which, I presume, nature had placed there to defend them as they sat on
the ground, for this posture they used, as well as lying down, and often
stood on their hind feet. They climbed high trees as nimbly as a
squirrel, for they had strong extended claws before and behind,
terminating in sharp points, and hooked. They would often spring,
and bound, and leap, with prodigious agility. The females were not
so large as the males; they had long lank hair on their heads, but none
on their faces, nor any thing more than a sort of down on the rest of
their bodies, except about the anus and pudenda. The dugs hung
between their fore feet, and often reached almost to the ground as they
walked. The hair of both sexes was of several colours, brown, red,
black, and yellow. Upon the whole, I never beheld, in all my
travels, so disagreeable an |
