THE NEW SCIENCE AND PROSE 161 



tail of a comet has brushed the earth, and the sun is losing its 

 heat. The motions of the island are guided by means of a great 

 magnet located at its centre. As~a consequence of all their specu 

 lations these people are "dexterous enough upon a piece of paper", 

 but are clumsy, awkward and unhandy "in the common actions 

 and behaviours of life". 54 At the "Grand Academy of Lagado" 

 are found the projectors, who have discovered the means of drawing 

 sunbeams out of cucumbers, who have conceived the idea of plough 

 ing with hogs and of using spiders to weave silk, who write books 

 by machinery in an universal language. The whole passage, 

 though imitated in form from Rabelais, has for its substance the 

 recent projects of the Royal Society. 



Swift seemed to find himself a misfit among the new ideas, as 

 elsewhere. So thoroughly has the satiric mood colored all his 

 thought, so successfully does he screen his real self behind ironical 

 raillery, that one is never sure of knowing what his mind truly is. 

 His manner of dealing with the new science is well expressed in 

 Gulliver 's Travels (II), where Gulliver finds the ladies among the 

 Brobdignagians so ugly. By ^applying a magnifying glass, he 

 says, "the smoothest and whitest skins look rough, and coarse, and 

 ill-coloured". 55 Swift has applied his satiric magnifying glass, 

 to the work of the new philosophers. "I confess I value the opin 

 ion of the judicious few", he has written in what appears to be a 



serious manner, " but for the rest, to give my judgment 



at once, I think the long dispute among the philosophers about a 

 vacuum, may be determined in the affirmative that is to be found in 

 the Cri tick's head." 58 And, again, when Glubbdrubdrib has called 

 up the spirit of Artistotle, that philosopher is made to say of the 

 new scientific beliefs, "New systems of nature were but new 

 fashions, which would vary in every age ; and even those who pre 

 tend to demonstrate them from mathematical principles, would 

 flourish but a short period of time, and be out of vogue when that 

 was determined". 57 In his defense of Temple, he pretended to 

 ridicule only the absurdities that clung to the new science, but he 



"Swift's Works, vol. XI, p. 198. 



68 Swift, W ks. vol. XI, p. 112. 



68 A Tritical Essay, vol. IX, pp. 128-9. 



OT Gulliver's Travels, III, vol. XI, p. 241. 



