GULLIVER'S TRAVELS.
The winter of 1713-14 passed by Swift in England was full of anxiety and
vexation. He found time, however, to join in a remarkable literary
association. The so-called Scriblerus Club does not appear, indeed, to
have had any definite organization. The rising young wits, Pope and Gay,
both of them born in 1688, were already becoming famous, and were taken up
by Swift, still in the zenith of his political power. Parnell, a few years
their senior, had been introduced by Swift to Oxford as a convert from
Whiggism. All three became intimate with Swift and Arbuthnot, the most
learned and amiable of the whole circle of Swift's friends. Swift declared
him to have every quality that could make a man amiable and useful with
but one defect--he had "a sort of slouch in his walk;" he was loved and
respected by every one, and was one of the most distinguished of the
Brothers. Swift and Arbuthnot and their three juniors discussed literary
plans in the midst of the growing political excitement. Even Oxford used,
as Pope tells us, to amuse himself during the very crisis of his fate by
scribbling verses and talking nonsense with the members of this informal
Club, and some doggerel lines exchanged with him remain as a specimen--a
poor one it is to be hoped--of their intercourse. The familiarity thus
begun continued through the life of the members. Swift can have seen very
little of Pope. He hardly made his acquaintance till the latter part of
1713; they parted in the summer of 1714; and never met again except in
Swift's two visits to England in 1726-27. Yet their correspondence shows
an affection which was no doubt heightened by the consciousness of each
that the friendship of his most famous contemporary author was creditable;
but which, upon Swift's side at least, was thoroughly sincere and cordial,
and strengthened with advancing years.
The final cause of the Club was supposed to be the composition of a
joint-stock satire. We learn from an interesting letter[74] that Pope
formed the original design; though Swift thought that Arbuthnot was the
only one capable of carrying it out. The scheme was to write the memoirs
of an imaginary pedant, who had dabbled with equal wrong-headedness in all
kinds of knowledge; and thus recalls Swift's early performances--the
_Battle of the Books_ and the _Tale of a Tub_. Arbuthnot begs Swift to
work upon it during his melancholy retirement at Letcombe. Swift had other
things to occupy his mind; and upon the dispersion of the party the Club
fell into abeyance. Fragments of the original plan were carried out by
Pope and Arbuthnot, and form part of the _Miscellanies_, to which Swift
contributed a number of poetical scraps, published under Pope's direction
in 1726-27. It seems probable that _Gulliver_ originated in Swift's mind
in the course of his meditations upon Scriblerus. The composition of
_Gulliver_ was one of the occupations by which he amused himself after
recovering from the great shock of his "exile." He worked, as he seems
always to have done, slowly and intermittently. Part of Brobdingnag at
least, as we learn from a letter of Vanessa's, was in existence by 1722.
Swift brought the whole manuscript to England in 1726, and it was
published anonymously in the following winter. The success was
instantaneous and overwhelming. "I will make over all my profits" (in a
work then being published) "to you," writes Arbuthnot, "for the property
of _Gulliver's Travels_, which, I believe, will have as great a run as
John Bunyan." The anticipation was amply fulfilled. _Gulliver's Travels_
is one of the very few books some knowledge of which may be fairly assumed
in any one who reads anything. Yet something must be said of the secret of
the astonishing success of this unique performance.
One remark is obvious. _Gulliver's Travels_ (omitting certain passages) is
almost the most delightful children's book ever written. Yet it has been
equally valued as an unrivalled satire. Old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough,
was "in raptures with it," says Gay, "and can dream of nothing else." She
forgives his bitter attacks upon her party in consideration of his assault
upon human nature. He gives, she declares, "the most accurate" (that is,
of course, the most scornful) "account of kings, ministers, bishops, and
courts of justice, that is possible to be writ." Another curious testimony
may be noticed. Godwin, when tracing all evils to the baneful effects of
government, declares that the author of _Gulliver_ showed a "more profound
insight into the true principles of political justice than any preceding
or contemporary author." The playful form was unfortunate, thinks this
grave philosopher, as blinding mankind to the "inestimable wisdom" of the
work. This double triumph is remarkable. We may not share the opinions of
the cynics of the day, or of the revolutionists of a later generation; but
it is strange that they should be fascinated by a work which is studied
with delight, without the faintest suspicion of any ulterior meaning, by
the infantile mind.
The charm of Gulliver for the young depends upon an obvious quality, which
is indicated in Swift's report of the criticism by an Irish bishop, who
said that "the book was full of improbable lies, and for his part he
hardly believed a word of it." There is something pleasant in the intense
gravity of the narrative, which recalls and may have been partly suggested
by _Robinson Crusoe_, though it came naturally to Swift. I have already
spoken of his delight in mystification, and the detailed realization of
pure fiction seems to have been delightful in itself. The Partridge
pamphlets and its various practical jokes are illustrations of a tendency
which fell in with the spirit of the time, and of which _Gulliver_ may be
regarded as the highest manifestation. Swift's peculiarity is in the
curious sobriety of fancy, which leads him to keep in his most daring
flights upon the confines of the possible. In the imaginary travels of
Lucian and Rabelais, to which _Gulliver_ is generally compared, we frankly
take leave of the real world altogether. We are treated with arbitrary and
monstrous combinations which may be amusing, but which do not challenge
even a semblance of belief. In _Gulliver_ this is so little the case that
it can hardly be said in strictness that the fundamental assumptions are
even impossible. Why should there not be creatures in human form with whom
as in Lilliput, one of our inches represents a foot, or, as in
Brobdingnag, one of our feet represents an inch? The assumption is so
modest that we are presented--it may be said--with a definite and soluble
problem. We have not, as in other fictitious worlds, to deal with a state
of things in which the imagination is bewildered, but with one in which it
is agreeably stimulated. We have certainly to consider an extreme and
exceptional case; but one to which all the ordinary laws of human nature
are still strictly applicable. In Voltaire's trifle, _Micromegas_, we are
presented to beings eight leagues in height and endowed with seventy-two
senses. For Voltaire's purpose the stupendous exaggeration is necessary;
for he wishes to insist upon the minuteness of human capacities. But the
assumption of course disqualifies us from taking any intelligent interest
in a region where no precedent is available for our guidance. We are in
the air; anything and everything is possible. But Swift modestly varies
only one element in the problem. Imagine giants and dwarfs as tall as a
house or as low as a footstool, and let us see what comes of it. That is a
plain, almost a mathematical problem; and we can therefore judge his
success, and receive pleasure from the ingenuity and verisimilitude of his
creations.
"When you have once thought of big men and little men," said Johnson,
perversely enough, "it is easy to do the rest." The first step might
perhaps seem in this case to be the easiest; yet nobody ever thought of it
before Swift; and nobody has ever had similar good fortune since. There is
no other fictitious world the denizens of which have become so real for
us, and which has supplied so many images familiar to every educated mind.
But the apparent ease is due to the extreme consistency and sound judgment
of Swift's realization. The conclusions follow so inevitably from the
primary data that when they are once drawn we agree that they could not
have been otherwise; and infer, rashly, that anybody else could have
drawn them. It is as easy as lying; but everybody who has seriously tried
the experiment knows that even lying is by no means so easy as it appears
at first sight. In fact, Swift's success is something unique. The charming
plausibility of every incident, throughout the two first parts, commends
itself to children, who enjoy definite concrete images, and are fascinated
by a world which is at once full of marvels, surpassing Jack the Giant
Killer and the wonders seen by Sinbad, and yet as obviously and undeniably
true as the adventures of Robinson Crusoe himself. Nobody who has read the
book can ever forget it; and we may add that besides the childlike
pleasure which arises from a distinct realization of a strange world of
fancy, the two first books are sufficiently good-humoured. Swift seems to
be amused as well as amusing. They were probably written during the least
intolerable part of his exile. The period of composition includes the
years of the Vanessa tragedy and of the war of Wood's halfpence; it was
finished when Stella's illness was becoming constantly more threatening,
and published little more than a year before her death. The last books
show Swift's most savage temper; but we may hope that in spite of disease,
disappointments, and a growing alienation from mankind, Swift could still
enjoy an occasional piece of spontaneous, unadulterated fun. He could
still forget his cares, and throw the reins on the neck of his fancy. At
times there is a certain charm even in the characters. Every one has a
liking for the giant maid of all work, Glumdalelitch, whose affection for
her plaything is a quaint inversion of the ordinary relations between
Swift and his feminine adorers. The grave, stern, irascible man can relax
after a sort, though his strange idiosyncrasy comes out as distinctly in
his relaxation as in his passions.
I will not dwell upon this aspect of _Gulliver_, which is obvious to every
one. There is another question which we are forced to ask, and which is
not very easy to answer. What does _Gulliver_ mean? It is clearly a
satire--but who and what are its objects? Swift states his own view very
unequivocally. "I heartily hate and detest that animal called man," he
says,[75] "although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth." He
declares that man is not an _animal rationale_, but only _rationis capax_:
and he then adds, "Upon this great foundation of misanthropy ... the whole
building of my travels is erected." "If the world had but a dozen
Arbuthnots in it," he says in the same letter, "I would burn my travels."
He indulges in a similar reflection to Sheridan.[76] "Expect no more from
man," he says, "than such an animal is capable of, and you will every day
find my description of Yahoos more resembling. You should think and deal
with every man as a villain, without calling him so, or flying from him or
valuing him less. This is an old true lesson." In spite of these avowals,
of a kind which, in Swift, must not be taken too literally, we find it
rather hard to admit that the essence of _Gulliver_ can be an expression
of this doctrine. The tone becomes morose and sombre, and even ferocious;
but it has been disputed whether in any case it can be regarded simply as
an utterance of misanthropy.
_Gulliver's Travels_ belongs to a literary genus full of grotesque and
anomalous forms. Its form is derived from some of the imaginary travels of
which Lucian's _True History_--itself a burlesque of some early
travellers' tales--is the first example. But it has an affinity also to
such books as Bacon's _Atlantis_, and More's _Utopia_; and, again, to
later philosophical romances like _Candide_ and _Rasselas_; and not least,
perhaps, to the ancient fables, such as _Reynard the Fox_, to which Swift
refers in the _Tale of a Tub_. It may be compared, again, to the
_Pilgrim's Progress_, and the whole family of allegories. The full-blown
allegory resembles the game of chess said to have been played by some
ancient monarch, in which the pieces were replaced by real human beings.
The movements of the actors were not determined by the passions proper to
their character, but by the external set of rules imposed upon them by the
game. The allegory is a kind of picture-writing, popular, like
picture-writing at a certain stage of development, but wearisome at more
cultivated periods, when we prefer to have abstract theories conveyed in
abstract language, and limit the artist to the intrinsic meanings of the
images in which he deals. The whole class of more or less allegorical
writing has thus the peculiarity that something more is meant than meets
the ear. Part of its meaning depends upon a tacit convention in virtue of
which a beautiful woman, for example, is not simply a beautiful woman, but
also a representative of Justice and Charity. And as any such convention
is more or less arbitrary, we are often in perplexity to interpret the
author's meaning, and also to judge of the propriety of the symbols. The
allegorical intention, again, may be more or less present: and such a book
as Gulliver must be regarded as lying somewhere between the allegory and
the direct revelation of truth, which is more or less implied in the work
of every genuine artist. Its true purpose has thus rather puzzled critics.
Hazlitt[77] urges, for example, with his usual brilliancy, that Swift's
purpose was to "strip empty pride and grandeur of the imposing air which
external circumstances throw around them." Swift accordingly varies the
scale, so as to show the insignificance or the grossness of our self-love.
He does this with "mathematical precision;" he tries an experiment upon
human nature; and with the result that "nothing solid, nothing valuable is
left in his system but wisdom and virtue." So Gulliver's carrying off the
fleet of Blefuscu is "a mortifying stroke, aimed at national glory."
"After that, we have only to consider which of the contending parties was
in the right."
Hazlitt naturally can see nothing misanthropical or innocent in such a
conclusion. The mask of imposture is torn off the world, and only
imposture can complain. This view, which has no doubt its truth, suggests
some obvious doubts. We are not invited, as a matter of fact, to attend to
the question of right and wrong, as between Lilliput and Blefuscu. The
real sentiment in Swift is that a war between these miserable pygmies is,
in itself, contemptible; and therefore, as he infers, war between men six
feet high is equally contemptible. The truth is that, although Swift's
solution of the problem may be called mathematically precise, the
precision does not extend to the supposed argument. If we insist upon
treating the question as one of strict logic, the only conclusion which
could be drawn from Gulliver is the very safe one that the interest of the
human drama does not depend upon the size of the actors. A pygmy or a
giant endowed with all our functions and thoughts would be exactly as
interesting as a being of the normal stature. It does not require a
journey to imaginary regions to teach us so much. And if we say that Swift
has shown us in his pictures the real essence of human life, we only say
for him what might be said with equal force of Shakspeare or Balzac, or
any great artist. The bare proof that the essence is not dependent upon
the external condition of size is superfluous and irrelevant; and we must
admit that Swift's method is childish, or that it does not adhere to this
strict logical canon.
Hazlitt, however, comes nearer the truth, as I think, when he says that
Swift takes a view of human nature such as might be taken by a being of a
higher sphere. That, at least, is his purpose; only, as I think, he
pursues it by a neglect of "scientific reasoning." The use of the
machinery is simply to bring us into a congenial frame of mind. He strikes
the key-note of contempt by his imagery of dwarfs and giants. We despise
the petty quarrels of beings six inches high; and therefore we are
prepared to despise the wars carried on by a Marlborough and a Eugene. We
transfer the contempt based upon mere size, to the motives, which are the
same in big men and little. The argument, if argument there be, is a
fallacy; but it is equally efficacious for the feelings. You see the
pettiness and cruelty of the Lilliputians, who want to conquer an empire
defended by toy-ships; and you are tacitly invited to consider whether the
bigness of French men-of-war makes an attack upon them more respectable.
The force of the satire depends ultimately upon the vigour with which
Swift has described the real passions of human beings, big or little. He
really means to express a bitter contempt for statesmen and warriors, and
seduces us to his side, for the moment, by asking us to look at a
diminutive representation of the same beings. The quarrels which depend
upon the difference between the high-boots and the low-heeled shoes; or
upon breaking eggs at the big or little end; the party intrigues which
are settled by cutting capers on the tight-rope, are meant, of course, in
ridicule of political and religious parties; and its force depends upon
our previous conviction that the party-quarrels between our fellows are,
in fact, equally contemptible. Swift's satire is congenial to the mental
attitude of all who have persuaded themselves that men are, in fact, a set
of contemptible fools and knaves, in whose quarrels and mutual
slaughterings the wise and good could not persuade themselves to take a
serious interest. He "proves" nothing, mathematically or otherwise. If you
do not share his sentiments, there is nothing in the mere alteration of
the scale to convince you that they are right; you may say, with Hazlitt,
that heroism is as admirable in a Lilliputian as in a Brobdingnagian, and
believe that war calls forth patriotism, and often advances civilization.
What Swift has really done is to provide for the man who despises his
species a number of exceedingly effective symbols for the utterance of his
contempt. A child is simply amused with Bigendians and Littleendians; a
philosopher thinks that the questions really at the bottom of church
quarrels are in reality of more serious import: but the cynic who has
learnt to disbelieve in the nobility or wisdom of the great mass of his
species finds a most convenient metaphor for expressing his disbelief. In
this way _Gulliver's Travels_ contains a whole gallery of caricatures
thoroughly congenial to the despisers of humanity.
In Brobdingnag Swift is generally said to be looking, as Scott expresses
it, through the other end of the telescope. He wishes to show the
grossness of men's passions, as before he has shown their pettiness. Some
of the incidents are devised in this sense; but we may notice that in
Brobdingnag he recurs to the Lilliput view. He gives such an application
to his fable as may be convenient, without bothering himself as to logical
consistency. He points out indeed the disgusting appearances which would
be presented by a magnified human body; but the King of Brobdingnag looks
down upon Gulliver, just as Gulliver looked down upon the Lilliputians.
The monarch sums up his view emphatically enough by saying, after
listening to Gulliver's version of modern history, that "the bulk of your
natives appear to me to be the most pernicious race of little odious
vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the face of the earth." In
Lilliput and Brobdingnag, however, the satire scarcely goes beyond
pardonable limits. The details are often simply amusing, such as
Gulliver's fear when he gets home, of trampling upon the pygmies whom he
sees around him. And even the severest satire may be taken without offence
by every one who believes that petty motives, folly and selfishness, play
a large enough part in human life to justify some indignant exaggerations.
It is in the later parts that the ferocity of the man utters itself more
fully. The ridicule of the inventors in the third book is, as Arbuthnot
said at once, the least successful part of the whole; not only because
Swift was getting beyond his knowledge, and beyond the range of his
strongest antipathies, but also because there is no longer the ingenious
plausibility of the earlier books. The voyage to the Houyhnhnms, which
forms the best part, is more powerful, but more painful and repulsive.
A word must here be said of the most unpleasant part of Swift's character.
A morbid interest in the physically disgusting is shown in several of his
writings. Some minor pieces, which ought to have been burnt, simply make
the gorge rise. Mrs. Pilkington tells us, and we can for once believe her,
that one "poem" actually made her mother sick. It is idle to excuse this
on the ground of contemporary freedom of speech. His contemporaries were
heartily disgusted. Indeed, though it is true that they revealed certain
propensities more openly, I see no reason to think that such propensities
were really stronger in them than in their descendants. The objection to
Swift is not that he spoke plainly, but that he brooded over filth
unnecessarily. No parallel can be found for his tendency even in writers,
for example, like Smollett and Fielding, who can be coarse enough when
they please, but whose freedom of speech reveals none of Swift's morbid
tendency. His indulgence in revolting images is to some extent an
indication of a diseased condition of his mind, perhaps of actual mental
decay. Delany says that it grew upon him in his later years, and, very
gratuitously, attributes it to Pope's influence. The peculiarity is the
more remarkable, because Swift was a man of the most scrupulous personal
cleanliness. He was always enforcing this virtue with special emphasis. He
was rigorously observant of decency in ordinary conversation. Delany once
saw him "fall into a furious resentment" with Stella for "a very small
failure of delicacy." So far from being habitually coarse, he pushed
fastidiousness to the verge of prudery. It is one of the superficial
paradoxes of Swift's character that this very shrinking from filth became
perverted into an apparently opposite tendency. In truth, his intense
repugnance to certain images led him to use them as the only adequate
expression of his savage contempt. Instances might be given in some early
satires, and in the attack upon dissenters in the _Tale of a Tub_. His
intensity of loathing leads him to besmear his antagonists with filth. He
becomes disgusting in the effort to express his disgust. As his
misanthropy deepened, he applied the same method to mankind at large. He
tears aside the veil of decency to show the bestial elements of human
nature; and his characteristic irony makes him preserve an apparent
calmness during the revolting exhibition. His state of mind is strictly
analogous to that of some religious ascetics, who stimulate their contempt
for the flesh by fixing their gaze upon decaying bodies. They seek to
check the love of beauty by showing us beauty in the grave. The cynic in
Mr. Tennyson's poem tells us that every face, however full--
Padded round with flesh and blood,
Is but moulded on a skull.
Swift--a practised self-tormentor, though not in the ordinary ascetic
sense--mortifies any disposition to admire his fellows by dwelling upon
the physical necessities which seem to lower and degrade human pride.
Beauty is but skin deep; beneath it is a vile carcase. He always sees the
"flayed woman" of the _Tale of a Tub_. The thought is hideous, hateful,
horrible, and therefore it fascinates him. He loves to dwell upon the
hateful, because it justifies his hate. He nurses his misanthropy, as he
might tear his flesh to keep his mortality before his eyes.
The Yahoo is the embodiment of the bestial element in man; and Swift in
his wrath takes the bestial for the predominating element. The hideous,
filthy, lustful monster yet asserts its relationship to him in the most
humiliating fashion: and he traces in its conduct the resemblance to all
the main activities of the human being. Like the human being it fights and
squabbles for the satisfaction of its lust, or to gain certain shiny
yellow stones; it befouls the weak and fawns upon the strong with
loathsome compliance; shows a strange love of dirt, and incurs diseases by
laziness and gluttony. Gulliver gives an account of his own breed of
Yahoos, from which it seems that they differ from the subjects of the
Houyhnhnms only by showing the same propensities on a larger scale; and
justifies his master's remark that all their institutions are owing to
"gross defects in reason and by consequence in virtue." The Houyhnhnms
meanwhile represent Swift's Utopia; they prosper and are happy, truthful
and virtuous, and therefore able to dispense with lawyers, physicians,
ministers and all the other apparatus of an effete civilization. It is in
this doctrine, as I may observe in passing, that Swift falls in with
Godwin and the revolutionists, though they believed in human
perfectibility, whilst they traced every existing evil to the impostures
and corruptions essential to all systems of government. Swift's view of
human nature, is too black to admit of any hopes of their millennium.
The full wrath of Swift against his species shows itself in this ghastly
caricature. It is lamentable and painful, though even here we recognize
the morbid perversion of a noble wrath against oppression. One other
portrait in Swift's gallery demands a moment's notice. No poetic picture
in Dante or Milton can exceed the strange power of his prose description
of the Struldbrugs--those hideous immortals who are damned to an
everlasting life of drivelling incompetence. It is a translation of the
affecting myth of Tithonus into the repulsive details of downright prose.
It is idle to seek for any particular moral from these hideous phantoms of
Swift's dismal _Inferno_. They embody the terror which was haunting his
imagination as old age was drawing upon him. The sight, he says himself,
should reconcile a man to death. The mode of reconciliation is terribly
characteristic. Life is but a weary business at best; but, at least, we
cannot wish to drain so repulsive a cup to the dregs, when even the
illusions which cheered us at moments have been ruthlessly destroyed.
Swift was but too clearly prophesying the melancholy decay into which he
was himself to sink.
The later books of _Gulliver_ have been in some sense excised from the
popular editions of the Travels. The Yahoos, and Houyhnhnms, and
Struldbrugs, are indeed known by name almost as well as the inhabitants of
Lilliput and Brobdingnag; but this part of the book is certainly not
reading for babes. It was probably written during the years when he was
attacking public corruption, and when his private happiness was being
destroyed, when therefore his wrath against mankind and against his own
fate was stimulated to the highest pitch. Readers who wish to indulge in a
harmless play of fancy will do well to omit the last two voyages; for the
strain of misanthropy which breathes in them is simply oppressive. They
are probably the sources from which the popular impression of Swift's
character is often derived. It is important, therefore, to remember that
they were wrung from him in later years, after a life tormented by
constant disappointment and disease. Most people hate the misanthropist
even if they are forced to admire his power. Yet we must not be carried
too far by the words. Swift's misanthropy was not all ignoble. We
generally prefer flattery even to sympathy. We like the man who is blind
to our faults better than the man who sees them and yet pities our
distresses. We have the same kind of feeling for the race as we have in
our own case. We are attracted by the kindly optimist who assures us that
good predominates in everything and everybody, and believes that a speedy
advent of the millennium must reward our manifold excellence. We cannot
forgive those who hold men to be "mostly fools," or, as Swift would
assert, mere brutes in disguise, and even carry out that disagreeable
opinion in detail. There is something uncomfortable and therefore
repellent of sympathy in the mood which dwells upon the darker side of
society, even though with wrathful indignation against the irremovable
evils. Swift's hatred of oppression, burning and genuine as it was, is no
apology with most readers for his perseverance in asserting its existence.
"Speak comfortable things to us" is the cry of men to the prophet in all
ages; and he who would assault abuses must count upon offending many who
do not approve them, but who would therefore prefer not to believe in
them. Swift, too, mixed an amount of egoism with his virtuous indignation,
which clearly lowers his moral dignity. He really hates wrongs to his
race; but his sensitiveness is roused when they are injuries to himself,
and committed by his enemies. The indomitable spirit which made him
incapable even of yielding to necessity, which makes him beat incessantly
against the bars which it was hopeless to break, and therefore waste
powers which might have done good service by aiming at the unattainable,
and nursing grudges against inexorable necessity, limits our sympathy with
his better nature. Yet some of us may take a different view, and rather
pity than condemn the wounded spirit so tortured and perverted, in
consideration of the real philanthropy which underlies the misanthropy,
and the righteous hatred of brutality and oppression which is but the
seamy side of a generous sympathy. At least we should be rather awed than
repelled by this spectacle of a nature of magnificent power struck down,
bruised and crushed under fortune, and yet fronting all antagonists with
increasing pride, and comforting itself with scorn even when it can no
longer injure its adversaries.