He was perfectly astonished with the historical account I 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. He laughed at my "odd kind of arith- | practise that infamous dexterity upon othmetic," as he was pleased to call it, "in reck-ers ?" oning 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."* His majesty, in another audience, was at the pains to recapitulate the sum of all I had spoken; compared the questions he made He observed "that among the diversions with the answers I had given; then taking of our nobility and gentry I had mentioned me into his hands, and, stroking me gently, gaming; he desired to know at what age this delivered himself in these words, which I entertainment was usually taken up, and shall never forget, nor the manner he spoke when it was laid down; how much of their them in: "My little friend Grildrig, you time it employed whether it ever went so have made a most admirable panegyric upon high as to affect their fortunes; whether your country; you have clearly proved that mean, vicious people, by their dexterity in ignorance, idleness, and vice are the proper that art, might not arrive at great riches, and ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that sometimes keep our very nobles in depend-laws are best explained, interpreted, and apence, as well as habituate them to vile com- plied by those whose interest and abilities panions; wholly take from them the im- lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding provement of their minds, and force them, them. I observe among you some lines of by the losses they received,† to learn and an institution which in its original might language that he was committed to the Tower. have been tolerable, but these half erased, The Tories, both on this question and on the Debt, and the rest wholly blurred and blotted by had a decided advantage in argument over their ad- corruptions. It does not appear, from all versaries, especially as they could appeal to a par- you have said, how any one perfection is reliamentary resolution in the reign of Charles II., quired toward the procurement of any one which declared, "That the continuance of standing station among you; much less that men are forces in this nation, other than the militia, is illegal, and a great grievance and vexation to the ennobled on account of their virtue; that people." Mr. Shippen, in his speech, perplexed priests are advanced for their piety or learnthe Whigs by referring to their own recorded prin- ing, soldiers for their conduct or valor, ciples. "It is," said he, "every year declared in judges for their integrity, senators for the the Act of Mutiny and Desertion, that the keeping love of their country, or counsellors for up a standing army in time of peace is against law; and as the freeing us from it was one of the ends their wisdom. As for yourself," continued of the Revolution, so, no doubt, the preserving us the king, "who have spent the greatest part forever from an attempt of the like nature was one of your life in travelling, I am well disposed of those innumerable glorious advantages proposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped many by the Act of Succession." vices of your country. But by what I have gathered from your own relation and the answers I have with much pains wringed * 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." *It is not easy to reconcile these intolerant sentiments with the opinions on toleration already noticed in the Voyage to Lilliput. There was at this time reason to fear that the Presbyterians would obtain the ascendancy in the Irish Parliament, and abolish Episcopacy; hence probably arises Swift's bitterness against sectaries, which is very strongly manifested here and in his celebrated Letter on the Sacramental Test. + Receiving a loss is certainly not a good expression; it should be, "the losses they have sustained." Sheridan. * Instead of "wringed," it should have been "wrung."-Sheridan. CHAPTER VII. THE AUTHOR'S LOVE OF HIS COUNTRY. HE which will hardly obtain belief. In hopes to ingratiate myself further into his majesty's favor, 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 into the air together with a noise and agitation greater than thunder. LOVE of truth could alone have hindered That a proper quantity of this powder me from concealing this part of my story. rammed into a hollow tube of brass or It was in vain to discover my resentments, iron, according to its bigness, would drive which were always turned into ridicule; and a ball of iron or lead with such violence and I was forced to rest with patience while my speed as nothing was able to sustain its force. noble and beloved country was so injuriously That the largest balls thus discharged would treated. I am as heartily sorry as any of my not only destroy whole ranks of an army readers can possibly be, that such an occasion at once, but batter the strongest walls to was given; but this prince happened to be the ground; sink down ships, with a thouso curious and inquisitive upon every partic-sand men in each, to the bottom of the ular, that it could not consist either with sea; and when linked together by a chain gratitude or good manners to refuse giving would cut through masts and rigging, divide him what satisfaction I was able. Yet thus hundreds of bodies in the middle, and lay all much I may be allowed to say in my own waste before them. That we often put this vindication, that I artfully eluded many of powder into large hollow balls of iron, and his questions, and gave to every point a more discharged them by an engine into some city favorable turn, by many degrees, than the we were besieging, which would rip up the strictness of truth would allow. For I have pavements, tear the houses to pieces, burst always borne that laudable partiality to my and throw splinters on every side, dashing own country which Dionysius Halicarnas-out the brains of all who came near. That sensis, with so much justice, recommends to I knew the ingredients very well, which an historian; I would hide the frailties and were cheap and common; I understood the deformities of my political mother, and place manner of compounding them, and could her virtues and beauties in the most advan-direct his workmen how to make those tubes, tageous light. This was my sincere endeavor of a size proportionable to all other things in in those many discourses I had with that monarch, although it unfortunately failed of success. 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 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 return of so many marks that I had received of his royal favor and protection." But great allowances should be given to a king who lives wholly secluded from the rest of the world, and must therefore be alto-in his dominions in a few hours, or destroy gether 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 The king was struck with horror at the description I had given of these terrible en"He gines and the proposal I had made. 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 "* 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. unmoved at all the scenes of blood and deso- | government," it gave him (directly contrary lation which I had painted, as the com- to my intention) a very mean opinion of our mon effects of those destructive machines; understandings. He professed both to abomwhereof," he said, "some evil genius, enemy inate and despise all mystery, refinement, to mankind, must have been the first con- and intrigue, either in a prince or a minister. triver. As for himself, he protested that He could not tell what I meant by secrets of although few things delighted him so much state, where an enemy, or some rival nation, as new discoveries in art or in nature, yet he were not in the case. He confined the would rather lose half his kingdom than be knowledge of governing within very narrow privy to such a secret; which he commanded bounds, to common-sense and reason, to jusme, as I valued my life, never to mention tice and lenity, to the speedy determination any more.' of civil and criminal causes, with some A strange effect of narrow principles and other obvious topics, which are not worth views that a prince possessed of every considering. And he gave it for his opinion, quality which procures veneration, love," that whoever could make two ears of corn, and esteem; of strong parts, great wis- or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot dom, 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 the 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 * It is scarcely necessary to expose the fallacious reasoning of this passage; everybody knows that wars have been far less sanguinary since the invention of gunpowder than they were before, and that been followed by a saving of human life. Swift, As to the decision of civil causes or proceedhowever, knew that the glories of Marlborough's ings against criminals, their precedents are campaigns were the chief source of the popularity so few that they have little reason to boast of the Whigs, and, as he could not deny the military of any extraordinary skill in either. merits of these victories, he hoped to weaken their influence by declaiming against wars in general. + It was more than hinted by the Tories that the House of Brunswick intended to make use of the standing army to subvert British liberty. Mr. Shippen, in the speech to which allusion has been already made, said "that the second paragraph of the king's speech seemed rather to be calculated for the meridian of Germany than Great Britain; and that the king was a stranger to our language and constitution." It was for these expressions that he was committed to the Tower. every improvement in the arts of destruction has No law of 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. 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, *The Tories were always anxious to identify themselves with the agricultural interest, to which Swift consequently loses no opportunity of paying a compliment. 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 movable 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. 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. Their style is clear, masculine, and smooth, but not florid; for they avoid nothing more than multiplying unnecessary words or using As to their military affairs, they boast that various expressions. I have perused many the king's army consists of a hundred and of their books, especially those in history or seventy-six thousand foot, and thirty-two morality. Among the rest, I was much thousand horse; if that may be called an diverted with a little old treatise which army, which is made up of tradesmen in the always lay in Glumdalclitch's bedchamber, 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 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 | treated with much kindness; I was the 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 grandfather, in a general composition, and the militia, then settled with common consent, has been ever since kept in the strictest duty. CHAPTER VIII. favorite 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 human kind. 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 the 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 THE KING AND QUEEN MAKE A PROGRESS TO middle of the hammock, I ordered the joiner THE FRONTIERS. -THE AUTHOR ATTENDS THEM. THE MANNER IN WHICH HE to cut 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 JUNCTURES of perilous circumstances from king thought proper to pass a few days at a which I had already escaped inspired me with palace he has near Flanflasnic, a city within a strong impulse that I should some time eighteen English miles of the seaside. Glumrecover my liberty, though it was impossible dalelitch and I were much fatigued; I had to conjecture by what means, or to form any gotten a small cold, but the poor girl was so project with the least hope of succeeding. ill as to be confined to her chamber. I The ship in which I sailed was the first longed to see the ocean, which must be the known to be driven within sight of that only scene of my escape, if ever it should coast, and the king had given strict orders happen. I pretended to be worse than I "that if at any time another appeared, it really was, and desired leave to take the should be taken ashore, and, with all its fresh air of the sea, with a page, whom I was crew and passengers, brought in a tumbril very fond of, and who had sometimes been to Lorbrulgrud." He was strongly bent to trusted with me. I shall never forget with get me a woman of my own size, by whom what unwillingness Glumdalelitch consented, I might propagate the breed; but I think I nor the strict charge she gave the page to be should rather have died than undergone the careful of me, bursting at the same time into disgrace of leaving a posterity to be kept in a flood of tears, as if she had some foreboding cages, like tame canary-birds, and perhaps of what was to happen. The boy took me in time sold about the kingdom to persons out in my box, about half an hour's walk of quality for curiosities. I was indeed from the palace, towards the rocks on the |