66

the little animal as "dropped from its dam," advising that the mother should let it suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render it plump and fat for a good table! "A child," says his Reverence; will make two dishes at an entertainment for 5 friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish," and so on; and the subject being so delightful that he can't leave it, he proceeds to recommend, in place of venison for squires' tables, "the bodies of young ro lads and maidens not exceeding fourteen or under twelve." Amiable humourist! laughing castigator of morals! There was a process well known and practised in the Dean's gay days; when a lout entered the coffee-house, the wags proceeded to what 15 they called "roasting" him. This is roasting a subject with a vengeance. The Dean had a native genius for it. As the "Almanach des Gourmands' says, "On nait rôtisseur."

And it was not merely by the sarcastic method 20 that Swift exposed the unreasonableness of loving and having children. In "Gulliver," the folly of love and marriage is urged by graver arguments and advice. In the famous Lilliputian kingdom, Swift speaks with approval of the practice of in-25 stantly removing children from their parents and educating them by the State; and amongst his favourite horses, a pair of foals are stated to be the very utmost a well-regulated equine couple would permit themselves. In fact, our great satirist was 30 of opinion that conjugal love was unadvisable, and illustrated the theory by his own practice and ex

ample-God help him!-which made him about the most wretched being in God's world.*

The grave and logical conduct of an absurd proposition, as exemplified in the cannibal pro5 posal just mentioned, is our author's constant method through all his works of humour. Given a country of people six inches or sixty feet high, and by the mere process of the logic, a thousand wonderful absurdities are evolved, at so many stages of Io the calculation. Turning to the First Minister who waited behind him with a white staff near as tall as the mainmast of the Royal Sovereign, the King of Brobdingnag observes how contemptible a thing human grandeur is, as represented by such a con15 temptible little creature as Gulliver. 'The Emperor of Lilliput's features are strong and masculine" (what a surprising humour there is in this description!)" The Emperor's features," Gulliver says, are strong and masculine, with an Austrian 20 lip, an arched nose, his complexion olive, his countenance erect, his body and limbs well proportioned, and his deportment majestic. He is taller by the breadth of my nail than any of his Court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into beholders."

25

66

What a surprising humour there is in these descriptions! How noble the satire is here! how just and honest! How perfect the image! Mr. Macaulay has quoted the charming lines of the poet where the king of the pigmies is measured by the same 30 standard. We have all read in Milton of the spear

"My health is somewhat mended, but at best I have an ill head and an aching heart."-In May 1719.

that was like the mast of some great ammiral; but these images are surely likely to come to the comic poet originally. The subject is before him. He is turning it in a thousand ways. He is full of it. The figure suggests itself naturally to him, and 5 comes out of his subject, as in that wonderful passage, when Gulliver's box having been dropped by the eagle into the sea, and Gulliver having been received into the ship's cabin, he calls upon the crew to bring the box into the cabin, and put it on the ro table, the cabin being only a quarter the size of the box. It is the veracity of the blunder which is so admirable. Had a man come from such a country as Brobdingnag, he would have blundered so.

But the best stroke of humour, if there be a best 15 in that abounding book, is that where Gulliver, in the unpronounceable country, describes his parting from his master the horse.*

* Perhaps the most melancholy satire in the whole of the dreadful book is the description of the very old people in the "Voyage to 20 Laputa." At Lugnag, Gulliver hears of some persons who never die, called the Struldbrugs, and expressing a wish to become acquainted with men who must have so much learning and experience, his colloquist describes the Struldbrugs to him.

"He said: They commonly acted like mortals, till about thirty 25 years old, after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession: for otherwise there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they came to fourscore 30 years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more, which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affec- 35 tion, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the

"I took," he says, a second leave of my master, but as I was going to prostrate myself to kiss his hoof, he did me the honour to raise it gently to my mouth. I am not ignorant how much I have 5 been censured for mentioning this last particular. Detractors are pleased to think it improbable that so illustrious a person should descend to give so great a mark of distinction to a creature so inferior as I. Neither have I forgotten how apt some trav10 ellers are to boast of extraordinary favours they

former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament, and repine that others are gone to a harbour of rest, to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what 15 they learned and observed in their youth and middle age, and even that is very imperfect. And for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition than upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet 20 with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in others.

"If a Struldbrug happen to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger of the two comes to be four score. For the law 25 thinks it a reasonable indulgence that those who are condemned, without any fault of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife. "As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are looked on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to 30 their estates, only a small pittance is reserved for their support; and the poor ones are maintained at the public charge. After that period they are held incapable of any employment of trust or profit, they cannot purchase lands or take leases, neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any cause, either civil or criminal, not even for 35 the decision of meers and bounds.

66

At ninety they lose their teeth and hair; they have at that age no distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get without relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to still continue, without increasing or diminishing. In talking, they for40 get the common appellation of things, and the names of persons, even of those who are their nearest friends and relations. For the same reason, they can never amuse themselves with reading, because their memory will not serve to carry them from the begin

have received. But if these censurers were better acquainted with the noble and courteous disposition of the Houyhnhnms they would soon change their opinion."

The surprise here, the audacity of circumstantial 5 evidence, the astounding gravity of the speaker, who is not ignorant how much he has been censured, the nature of the favour conferred, and the respectful exultation at the receipt of it, are surely complete: it is truth topsy-turvy, entirely logical and absurd.

ΤΟ

As for the humour and conduct of this famous ning of a sentence to the end; and by this defect they are deprived of the only entertainment whereof they might otherwise be capable. "The language of this country being always upon the flux, the Struldbrugs of one age do not understand those of another; neither 15 are they able, after two hundred years, to hold any conversation (further than by a few general words) with their neighbours, the mortals; and thus they lie under the disadvantage of living like foreigners in their own country.

"This was the account given me of the Struldbrugs, as near as I 20 can remember. I afterwards saw five or six of different ages, the youngest not above two hundred years old, who were brought to me at several times by some of my friends; but although they were told 'that I was a great traveller, and had seen all the world,' they had not the least curiosity to ask me a question; only desired 125 would give them slumskudask, or a token of remembrance; which is a modest way of begging, to avoid the law, that strictly forbids it, because they are provided for by the public, although indeed with a very scanty allowance.

They are despised and hated by all sorts of people; when one 30 of them is born, it is reckoned ominous, and their birth is recorded very particularly; so that you may know their age by consulting the register, which, however, has not been kept above a thousand years past, or at least has been destroyed by time or public disturbances. But the usual way of computing how old they are, is by 35 asking them what kings or great persons they can remember, and then consulting history; for infallibly the last prince in their mind did not begin his reign after they were fourscore years old.

"They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld, and the women more horrible than the men; besides the usual deformities 40 in extreme old age, they acquired an additional ghastliness, in proportion to their number of years, which is not to be described; and among half-a-dozen, I soon distinguished which was the eldest, although there was not above a century or two between them."Gulliver's Travels.

45