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THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



of the subject, would bo of small value ; ifc is neither learned 

 nor critical. But as a squib, as a mere piece of abuse anc 

 ridicule of antagonists, it is in Swift's best style. 



The " Tale of a Tub " is one of the most extraordinary satires 

 ever written. Its object is to ridicule extremes in religion, anc 

 exalt what in Swift's view was the happy medium of the High 

 Church Anglican party. But few can, we think, read the " Tale 

 of a Tub " without feeling that from the audacious levity with 

 which the whole subject is handled, the coarse ridicule which is 

 thrown over everything, the effect of this great work is not less 

 hostile to religion itself than to the follies or eccentricities ol 

 any particular sect. The book tells us the adventures of three 

 brothers, Peter, Martin, and Jack representing the Roman 

 Catholic, the Lutheran or moderate Protestant, and the Presby- 

 terian bodies left by their father with his written will to 

 guide them," and professing, each of them, to govern their con- 

 duct by that will in every particular. That will stands for the 

 New Testament ; and the manner in which, in ordering his coat 

 (his system of doctrine and practice) to suit his own taste and 

 temper, each manages to find in the words or letters, or in the 

 omissions of that will, authority for every ornament that ho 

 adds to, or every rent that he makes in the coat, is inexpressibly 

 ludicrous. The book, too, is full of digressions, which show 

 Swift's quaint, grotesque humour, and his infinite ingenuity of 

 conception, in the strongest light. The " Tale of a Tub " is a 

 masterpiece ; but it is not difficult to understand that it may 

 have stood, as it is said to have done, in the way of its author's 

 promotion to a bishopric. 



The most popular, however, and deservedly so, of Swift's 

 works is the " Travels of Gulliver." It is one of the most com- 

 prehensive of satires. Swift, though one of the most original 

 of thinkers, never hesitated to borrow from his predecessors, 

 to several of whom he is largely indebted. But his chief master 

 in satire was Eabelais, from whom he has derived not only 

 much of his manner and style, but even many of his minutest 

 details. " Gulliver," however, is wider on the whole in its scope 

 than the great romance of Rabelais ; it is less a satire upon 

 particular classes, and more a satire upon human nature. The 

 form which Swift chooses for his satire is one which had been 

 adopted by others before, and has been since that of imaginary 

 travels through strange regions. Lemuel Gulliver, a doctor by 

 trade, and a traveller by taste of whose previous life and cir- 

 cumstances we are told just enough to give naturalness to the 

 whole account is shipwrecked, and escapes with bare life on 

 an unknown shore, which turns out to be the kingdom of 

 Lilliput, inhabited by a pigmy raee not above six inches high. 

 The description of Gulliver's adventures in Lilliput forms the 

 first part of the work. With that peculiar power which Swift 

 possessed of rendering every scene life-like by means of minute 

 accuracy of detail, making everything which he sees in Lilliput 

 relatively correct in size, he presents us with the most vivid 

 picture of the world, with its kings and ministers, its courts, 

 its politics, wars and intrigues, its pomp and splendour, all 

 in miniature, and so all exposed in their utmost absurdity. 

 Nothing can be more ludicrous, and at the same time more 

 effective as satire, than the hereditary war between the Big- 

 endians and the Sinallendians those who broke their eggs at 

 the large end, and those who broke them at the small end ; the 

 two parties in the state, the High Heels and the Low Heels ; 

 the war with the neighbouring empire of Blefuscu, in which 

 <Julliver himself, the Man Mountain, secures the victory by 

 carrying off the whole of the enemy's fleet tied by. pieces 

 of packthread ; the pomp, vanity, and dignity of the little 

 emperor ; his reviews of his little army, and his pride in his 

 little palace, the work of so many generations of Lilliputians. 

 In such ways the author shows us the absurdity of our own 

 world, simply by letting us see it all enacted on a smaller scale. 

 In this part, too, it is pretty clear that Swift intended perpetual 

 reference to contemporary events. Lilliput and Blefuscu stand 

 for England and France ; the High Heels and Low Heels for 

 Whig and Tory. Bolingbroke and Walpole are frequently in- 

 troduced in a manner that at the time must have been unmis- 

 takably plain. 



In the second part Gulliver, having escaped home from the 

 Lilliputian kingdoms, again sets out on his travels, and again is 

 accidentally left on a strange coast, which proves to be that of 

 Brobdingnag, a land peopled by beings as much larger than 

 Gulliver as he had been than those of Lilliput. Here Swift has 



j fresh opportunities for satire, the principal method which he 

 adopts in this part being to show the ordinary affairs of life, 

 such as Gulliver relates to the Giant King, in a ludicrous light, 

 by placing them in contrast with another system social and 

 political, incomparably grander in scale, and far simpler and 

 purer. Thus, after Gulliver has with great pains and no little 

 pride given the king a minute account of the state of England, 

 we read that, " 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 

 mo 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 in- 

 gredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best ex- 

 plained, 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 corruption. It does 

 not appear, from all you have said, how any one perfection 

 is required towards 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 councillors, for their 

 wisdom. As for yourself,' continued the king, ' who have 

 spent the greatest part of your life in travelling, I am well dis- 

 posed 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.' " In 

 another place, the same king having heard from Gulliver a full 

 history of the politics and state-craft of Europe, and the many 

 books that have been written on the art of government, is filled 

 with astonishment. " 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 third part of the book is chiefly taken up by Gulliver's 

 visit to Laputa. And as the first two parts were especially 

 directed against statesmen and politicians, this is mainly directed 

 against philosophers and men of science. In the same part, 

 bowever, he visits several other strange places, among others 

 Luggnagg, where we meet one of the most powerful and fearful 

 pictures that even Swift has ever drawn, in his account of the 

 " Struldbrugs," or " Immortals," beings endowed with perpetual 

 life, but not with perpetual youth or vigour. 



But it is in the fourth part of the " Travels" that the bitter, 

 almost savage spirit of the author, and his contempt for his 

 dnd, show themselves in their full strength. Gulliver there 

 visits the land of the Houyhnhnins, a land in which the ruling 

 race are horses, horses raised to a more than human standard of 

 intelligence and cultivation, living in a state of purity, inno- 

 :ence, and simplicity ; and having under subjection a race of 

 men turned into brutes, termed Yahoos. In the description of 

 ;hese hideous creatures we can nowhere fail to recognise the 

 luman lineaments ; but it is humanity with every spark of the 

 ligher nature eliminated ; every base, low, and sordid passion, 

 labit, or tendency developed without restraint; even the human 

 'orm rendered repulsive and disgusting. We are shown man 

 degraded below the level of the lowest of the brute creation, 

 and placed in deserved subjection to brutes infinitely nobler 

 ;han himself. And throughout all we cannot but see that 

 Swift intended this not as a mere freak of the fancy, but as a 

 )icture of his fellow-creaturea. 



