his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places. His
clothes, shirt, and skin were all of the same color. He had been eight
years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which
were to be put into phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm
the air in raw inclement summers. He told me he did not doubt in eight
years more that 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 practise of begging from
all who go to see them.
I saw another at work to calcine ice into gunpowder, who likewise
shewed 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 downwards
to the foundation; which he justified to me by the like practise of
those two prudent insects, the bee and the spider.
There was an astronomer who had undertaken to place a sun-dial upon
the great weather-cock 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 turning of the winds.
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 labor, may write books in philosophy,
poetry, politics, law, 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 superficies 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 fixt 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 labor; and the professor shewed me
several volumes in large folio, already collected of broken sentences,
which he intended to piece together, and out of those rich materials
give the world a complete body of all arts and sciences.
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 nouns. The other 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
lungs 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 the
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.
Another great advantage proposed by this invention was, that it would
serve as a universal language to be understood in all civilized
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 hath 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 upward before it can
operate; neither have they been yet persuaded to use so long an
abstinence as the prescription requires.
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
favorites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity and virtue; of
teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit,
great abilities, and 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.
II
ON THE HOSPITALITY OF THE VULGAR[111]
Those inferior duties of life which the French call _les petites
morales_, or the smaller morals, are with us distinguished by the name
of good manners or breeding. This I look upon, in the general notion
of it, to be a sort of artificial good sense, adapted to the meanest
capacities, and introduced to make mankind easy in their commerce with
each other. Low and little understandings, without some rules of this
kind, would be perpetually wandering into a thousand indecencies and
irregularities in behavior; and in their ordinary conversation, fall
into the same boisterous familiarities that one observeth amongst them
when a debauch hath quite taken away the use of their reason. In other
instances, it is odd to consider, that for want of common discretion,
the very end of good breeding is wholly perverted; and civility,
intended to make us easy, is employed in laying chains and fetters
upon us, in debarring us of our wishes, and in crossing our most
reasonable desires and inclinations.
This abuse reigneth chiefly in the country, as I found to my vexation,
when I was last there, in a visit I made to a neighbor about two miles
from my cousin. As soon as I entered the parlor, they put me into the
great chair that stood close by a huge fire, and kept me there by
force until I was almost stifled. Then a boy came in great hurry to
pull off my boots, which I in vain opposed, urging that I must return
soon after dinner. In the meantime, the good lady whispered her eldest
daughter, and slipt a key into her hand. The girl returned instantly
with a beer-glass half full of _aqua mirabilis_ and syrup of
gillyflowers. I took as much as I had a mind for; but madam vowed I
should drink it off--for she was sure it would do me good, after
coming out of the cold air--and I was forced to obey; which absolutely
took away my stomach. When dinner came in, I had a mind to sit at a
distance from the fire; but they told me it was as much as my life was
worth, and set me with my back just against it. Altho my appetite was
quite gone, I resolved to force down as much as I could; and desired
the leg of a pullet. "Indeed, Mr. Bickerstaff," says the lady, "you
must eat a wing to oblige me"; and so put a couple upon my plate. I
was persecuted at this rate during the whole meal. As often as I
called for small beer, the master tipped the wink, and the servant
brought me a brimmer of October. Some time after dinner, I ordered my
cousin's man, who came with me, to get ready the horses, but it was
resolved I should not stir that night; and when I seemed pretty much
bent upon going, they ordered the stable door to be locked; and the
children hid my cloak and boots. The next question was, what I would
have for supper, I said I never ate anything at night; but was at
last, in my own defense, obliged to name the first thing that came
into my head. After three hours spent chiefly in apologies for my
entertainment, insinuating to me, "that this was the worst time of the
year for provisions; that they were at a great distance from any
market; that they were afraid I should be starved; and that they knew
they kept me to my loss," the lady went and left me to her
husband--for they took special care I should never be alone. As soon
as her back was turned, the little misses ran backward and forward
every moment; and constantly as they came in or went out, made a
courtesy directly at me, which in good manners I was forced to return
with a bow, and, "Your humble servant, pretty miss." Exactly at eight
the mother came up, and discovered by the redness of her face that
supper was not far off.
It was twice as large as the dinner, and my persecution doubled in
proportion. I desired at my usual hour to go to my repose, and was
conducted to my chamber by the gentleman, his lady, and the whole
train of children. They importuned me to drink something before I went
to bed; and upon my refusing, at last left a bottle of stingo, as they
called it, for fear I should wake and be thirsty in the night. I was
forced in the morning to rise and dress myself in the dark, because
they would not suffer my kinsman's servant to disturb me at the hour I
desired to be called. I was now resolved to break through all measures
to get away; and after sitting down to a monstrous breakfast of cold
beef, mutton, neats'-tongues, venison-pasty, and stale beer, took
leave of the family. But the gentleman would needs see me part of my
way, and carry me a short-cut through his own grounds, which he told
me would save half a mile's riding. This last piece of civility had
like to have cost me dear, being once or twice in danger of my neck,
by leaping over his ditches, and at last forced to alight in the dirt;
when my horse, having slipt his bridle, ran away and took us up more
than an hour to recover him again. It is evident that none of the
absurdities I met with in this visit proceeded from an ill intention,
but from a wrong judgment of complaisance, and a misapplication in the
rules of it.
III
THE ART OF LYING IN POLITICS[112]
I am prevailed on, through the importunity of friends, to interrupt
the scheme I had begun in my last paper, by an essay upon the Art of
Political Lying. We are told the devil is the father of lies, and was
a liar from the beginning; so that, beyond contradiction, the
invention is old: and, which is more, his first essay of it was
purely political, employed in undermining the authority of his prince,
and seducing a third part of the subjects from their obedience: for
which he was driven down from heaven, where (as Milton expresses it)
he had been viceroy of a great western province; and forced to
exercise his talent in inferior regions among other fallen spirits,
poor or deluded men, whom he still daily tempts to his own sin, and
will ever do so, till he be chained in the bottomless pit.
But altho the devil be the father of lies, he seems, like other great
inventors, to have lost much of his reputation, by the continual
improvements that have been made upon him.
Who first reduced lying into an art, and adapted it to politics, is
not so clear from history, altho I have made some diligent inquiries.
I shall therefore consider it only according to the modern system, as
it has been cultivated these twenty years past in the southern part of
our own island.
The poets tell us, that after the giants were overthrown by the gods,
the earth in revenge produced her last offspring', which was Fame. And
the fable is thus interpreted: that when tumults and seditions are
quieted, rumors and false reports are plentifully spread through a
nation. So that, by this account, lying is the last relief of a
routed, earth-born, rebellious party in a state. But here the Moderns
have made great additions, applying this art to the gaining of power
and preserving it, as well as revenging themselves after they have
lost it; as the same instruments are made use of by animals to feed
themselves when they are hungry, and to bite those that tread upon
them.
But the same genealogy can not always be admitted for political lying;
I shall therefore desire to refine upon it, by adding some
circumstances of its birth and parents. A political lie is sometimes
born out of a discarded statesman's head, and thence delivered to be
nursed and dandled by the rabble. Sometimes it is produced a monster,
and licked into shape; at other times it comes into the world
completely formed, and is spoiled in the licking. It is often born an
infant in the regular way, and requires time to mature it; and often
it sees the light in its full growth, but dwindles away by degrees.
Sometimes it is of noble birth; and sometimes the spawn of a
stockjobber. Here it screams aloud at the opening of the womb; and
there it is delivered with a whisper. I know a lie that now disturbs
half the kingdom with its noise, which, altho too proud and great at
present to own its parents, I can remember its whisperhood. To
conclude the nativity of this monster; when it comes into the world
without a sting, it is stillborn; and whenever it loses its sting, it
dies.
No wonder if an infant so miraculous in its birth should be destined
for great adventures; and accordingly we see it hath been the guardian
spirit of a prevailing party for almost twenty years. It can conquer
kingdoms without fighting, and sometimes with the loss of a battle. It
gives and resumes employments; can sink a mountain to a molehill, and
raise a molehill to a mountain; hath presided for many years at
committees of elections; can wash a blackamoor white; make a saint of
an atheist, and a patriot of a profligate; can furnish foreign
ministers with intelligence and raise or let fall the credit of the
nation. This goddess flies with a huge looking-glass in her hands, to
dazzle the crowd, and make them see, according as she turns it, their
ruin in their interest, and their interest in their ruin. In this
glass you will behold your best friends, clad in coats powdered with
fleurs-de-lis, and triple crowns; their girdles hung round with
chains, and beads, and wooden shoes; and your worst enemies adorned
with the ensigns of liberty, property, indulgence, moderation, and a
cornucopia in their hands. Her large wings, like those of a flying
fish, are of no use but while they are moist; she therefore dips them
in mud, and soaring aloft scatters it in the eyes of the multitude,
flying with great swiftness; but at every turn is forced to stoop in
dirty ways for new supplies.
I have been sometimes thinking, if a man had the art of the second
sight for seeing lies, as they have in Scotland for seeing spirits,
how admirably he might entertain himself in this town by observing the
different shapes, sizes, and colors of those swarms of lies which buzz
about the heads of some people, like flies about a horses' ears in
summer; or those legions hovering every afternoon in Exchange alley,
enough to darken the air; or over a club of discontented grandees, and
thence sent down in cargoes to be scattered at elections.
IV
A MEDITATION UPON A BROOMSTICK[113]
This single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that
neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest. It
was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs; but now in vain
does the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by tying that
withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk; it is now at best but
the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside down, the branches on
the earth, and the root in the air; it is now handled by every dirty
wench, condemned to do her drudgery, and, by a capricious kind of
fate, destined to make other things clean, and be nasty itself; at
length, worn to the stumps in the service of the maids, it is either
thrown out-of-doors, or condemned to the last use of kindling a fire.
When I beheld this I sighed, and said within myself, "Surely mortal
man is a broomstick!" Nature sent him into the world strong and lusty,
in a thriving condition, wearing his own hair on his head, the proper
branches of this reasoning vegetable, till the ax of intemperance has
lopped off his green boughs, and left him a withered trunk; he then
flies to art, and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural
bundle of hairs, all covered with powder, that never grew on his head;
but now should this our broomstick pretend to enter the scene, proud
of those birchen spoils it never bore, and all covered with dust,
through the sweepings of the finest lady's chamber, we should be apt
to ridicule and despise its vanity. Partial judges that we are of our
own excellences, and other men's defaults!
But a broomstick, perhaps you will say, is an emblem of a tree
standing on its head; and pray what is a man but a topsy-turvy
creature, his animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational,
his head where his heels should be, groveling on the earth? And yet,
with all his faults, he sets up to be a universal reformer and
corrector of abuses, a remover of grievances; rakes into every slut's
corner of nature, bringing hidden corruptions to the light; and raises
a mighty dust where there was none before, sharing deeply all the
while in the very same pollutions he pretends to sweep away. His last
days are spent in slavery to women, and generally the least deserving;
till, worn to the stumps, like his brother besom, he is either kicked
out-of-doors, or made use of to kindle flames for others to warm
themselves by.
V
GULLIVER AMONG THE GIANTS[114]
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 stayed with those people; tho
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; tho 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 schoolmistress, to teach me the language: when I
pointed to anything, 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 _homunculus_, 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 honorable mention of her care and
affection toward 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 neighborhood 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 contriving
when I observed my master and his friend whispering long 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 honor, 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 mama 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.