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THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



GREAT BOOKS. 



XI. GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. 



THAT must be an extraordinary work of which we can say that 

 its fancy and invention (as presented in abridged and expur- 

 gated forms) are the delight of children, while its depth of 

 meaning and profound satire on the folly and vices of human 

 nature appeal to the intellect of the wisest and most experienced 

 men. Yet this is what may be truly written of " Gulliver's 

 Travels." Lilliput and Brobdingnag, Laputa and Glubbdub- 

 drib, the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms all are familiar to us 

 in youth, as places and creatures belonging to the great domain 

 of Wonderland ; bufy as we grow older, we see the grave, 

 thoughtful face of a melancholy observer of human nature look- 

 ing out from behind the mask of wild imagination, and Swift 

 the cynic starts up beside Swift the story-teller. The work 

 known as " Gulliver's Travels " though that is only an epitome 

 of the real title was first published in 1726, at a period when 

 Sir Robert Walpole was at the head of affairs, to the great 

 dissatisfaction of Swift, who hated his politics and his methods 

 of government. Lilliput, the country of little men and women, 

 is intended to represent England under the sway of George I., 

 and the Premier Flimnap is a type of the great Whig Minister 

 who had fallen under the displeasure of the Dean. The High 

 Heels and the Low Heels two factions into which the court 

 of the Lilliputian king was divided signify the Whig and 

 Tory parties ; while by the Big-Endians and Little-Endians, 

 who quarrelled with deadly bitterness over the question 

 whether they should break their eggs at the larger or the 

 smaller end, Swift meant to describe the Roman Catholics and 

 the Protestants. 



The satire contained in the voyage to Brobdingnag has refer- 

 ence rather to political conditions generally, and to moral 

 considerations, than to the misdoings of Sir Robert Walpole and 

 the Whigs. In the people of the giants' country we are bidden 

 to behold a race devoted to the application of philosophical 

 principles to the art of government, and indignant at the cor- 

 ruptions and iniquities revealed by Gulliver in his description 

 of his own land. The king, says the imaginary narrator, " 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, revolu- 

 tions, banishments the very worst effects that avarice, faction, 

 hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, 

 malice, and ambition could produce." Such was the view taken 

 by Swift of the history of England from the accession of 

 Charles I. to the time at which he was writing. He could not 

 recognise what had been done for the enlargement and security 

 of popular rights ; he could only see the darker elements of 

 violence and intrigue. But Swift was a misanthrope the 

 result partly of disappointment, and partly of ill-health ; and, 

 though truly benevolent in his dealings with individuals, was 

 never tired of railing against mankind in general, and his 

 countrymen in particular. " As for yourself," says the King of 

 Brobdingnag, addressing Gulliver, " 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 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." This looks 

 like good impartial hatred ; yet one cannot help thinking that, 

 had Bolingbroke been in power instead of Sir Robert Walpole, 

 poor human nature would not have been so severely lashed. 



In the flying island of Laputa we have a piece of elaborate 

 irony on the vain speculations and fruitless ingenuity of the 

 pseudo-scientific. The inhabitants of the island, and of the 

 subjacent territory, are philosophers devoted to mathematics 

 and music, and to the pursuit of chimerical schemes for effect- 

 ing a number of wonderful results by mechanical agencies. It 

 can hardly be doubted that, in composing this burlesque, Swift 

 had in his mind the multiplicity of bubble companies, formed 

 1 with objects scarcely less fanciful, which distinguished the era 

 i of the South Sea Company. But he was also influenced by a 

 dislike of mathematics, the professors of which he regarded as 

 j men of narrow and profitless ideas. By the self-absorbed 

 philosophers who required the services of a " flapper " to 

 awaken them every iiow and then to a sense of realities with a 



