Gulliver

“ It seems strange that the striking absurdity of such an assumption has not struck every mind possessing the power to reflect or investigate. The thought of his looking after the affairs and happiness of fourteen hundred millions of human beings at a time, besides running several thousand millions of worlds, far excels any of the astounding feats of the evil genii of Gulliver. In the sublimity of its absurdity and impossibility, it stands without a rival. It expands beyond the utmost stretch of human credulity. ”

“ Pierce, with his better knowledge of the Turf, had ably advised and seconded him.
In so many instances they had come near to victory—that was the heart-rending part of it all. Success had seemed within their grasp, only to be snatched away at the last moment.
The Cesarewitch—that had perhaps been the greatest disappointment of all. A horse like Gulliver, with his pedigree and his record, hot favourite, too, as he had been made—Mostyn and Pierce had indeed been justified in their belief that with Gulliver their great object would be achieved. ”

“ The author of these Travels, Mr. Lemuel Gulliver, is my ancient and intimate friend; there is likewise some relation between us on the mother’s side. About three years ago, Mr. Gulliver growing weary of the concourse of curious people coming to him at his house in Redriff, made a small purchase of land, with a convenient house, near Newark, in Nottinghamshire, his native country; where he now lives retired, yet in good esteem among his neighbours. ”

“ Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand—when I turned over its leaves, and sought in its marvellous pictures the charm I had, till now, never failed to find—all was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions. ”

“ It is probable that few boys care for Gulliver beyond his adventures in Lilliput and Brobdignag, but they devour that much, together with Robinson Crusoe, with just as much avidity now as they did a century ago. Your clear-headed, healthy boy is the first best critic of what constitutes the very liver and lights of a novel. Nothing but the primitive problems of courage meeting peril, virtue meeting vice, love, hatred, ambition for power and glory, will go down with him. ”

“ Among lady critics, some have found out that Mr. Gulliver had a particular malice to maids of honour. Those of them who frequent the church, say his design is impious, and that it is depreciating the works of the Creator.
Notwithstanding, I am told the princess has read it with great pleasure. As to other critics, they think the flying island is the least entertaining; and so great an opinion the town have of the impossibility of Gulliver's writing at all below himself, it is agreed that part was not writ by the same hand, though this has its defenders too. ”

“ After the King had gone away the people of the city crowded round, and some of them began to behave very badly, one man even going so far as to shoot an arrow at Gulliver which was not far from putting out one of his eyes. But the officer in command of the soldiers who were on guard ordered his men to bind and push six of the worst behaved of the crowd within reach of Gulliver, who at once seized five of them and put them in his coat pocket. ”

“ Mr Gulliver could not help wondering at the intrepidity of these diminutive mortals who ventured to walk and mount upon his body, while one of his hands was at liberty, without trembling at the very sight of so prodigious a creature as he must appear to them After some time an ambassador from the King appeared before him, who producing credentials under the royal seal, spoke about ten minutes without any sign of anger, and yet with great resolution ”

“ 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.” ”

“ It is the reciprocity of these appearances that each party should think the other has contracted that is so difficult to realise. Here is a paradox beyond even the imagination of Dean Swift. Gulliver regarded the Lilliputians as a race of dwarfs; and the Lilliputians regarded Gulliver as a giant. That is natural, If the Lilliputians had appeared dwarfs to Gulliver, and Gulliver had appeared a dwarf to the Lilliputians—but no! that is too absurd for fiction, and is an idea only to be found in the sober pages of science. ”

“ Soon after, one of them cried aloud, Tolgo Phonac; when instantly Mr Gulliver perceived some hundreds of arrows discharged upon his hands and face which pricked him like so many needles, and gave him so much pain, that he strove again to get loose Some of them attempted to stab him in the side with their spears, but they could not pierce his buff waistcoat. When the people observed that he lay quiet, they discharged no more arrows. He saw them buy erecting a stage, at a little distance, about a foot and a half high, which they had no sooner finished than four of them ascended it by a ladder. ”

“ Gulliver told his tale in as few words as possible. The captain stared with wonder, and would not believe his story. But Gulliver then took from his pockets the black cattle and the sheep, which of course clearly showed that he had been speaking truth. He also showed gold coins which the Emperor of Blefuscu had given him, some of which he presented to the captain.
The vessel did not arrive at the port of London till April, 1702, but there was no loss of the live stock, excepting that the rats on board carried off and ate one of the sheep. ”

“ The city of Utgard is of incredible size, the city walls, the houses, the trees, the furniture, all are gigantic. Our travellers could easily pass between the legs of the little children they met in the streets, as we modern people pass under the triumphal arches of the ancients. You see, now we are no longer in Lilliput, we have reached the island of the giants with Gulliver. Gulliver might very well be the offspring of some Scandinavian legend.
The king received Thor and, his friends, laughing heartily at their small size, and the seats they are offered are three times as high as they are. ”

“ Could we expect that Gulliver should be ever reconciled to the rat against whom he was obliged to draw his sword? Many animals are, to children, what the wasp and the rat were to Gulliver. Put bodily fear out of the case, it required all uncle Toby's benevolence to bear the buzzing of a gnat while he was eating his dinner. Children, even when they have no cause to be afraid of animals, are sometimes in situations to be provoked by them ”

“ When Gulliver cried with pain in Brobdingnag, the giants laughed. In a microscopic creature the agony of death must be microscopically small.
Mirelle looked on the drowning pigmies, quite unable to realise the awfulness of the event, her sympathy stirred by her reason, not by her heart, for the appeal was not such as could move the sympathy save through the brain.
The first to sink was the mate. We will fly over the water with the gulls, instead of straining our eyes from the cliffs. Are the gulls about us screaming or laughing? ”

“ As to the style of Swift, Mr. Schlosser shows himself without sensibility in his objections, as the often hackneyed English reader shows himself without philosophic knowledge of style in his applause. Schlosser thinks the style of Gulliver 'somewhat dull.' This shows Schlosser's presumption in speaking upon a point where he wanted, 1st, original delicacy of tact; and, 2dly, familiar knowledge of English. Gulliver's style is purposely touched slightly with that dulness of circumstantiality which besets the excellent, but 'somewhat dull' race of men—old sea captains. ”

“ Every man, like Gulliver in Liliput, is fastened to some spot of earth by the thousand small threads which habit and association are continually stealing over him. Of these, perhaps, one of the strongest is here alluded to. ”

“ In the first two stories Gulliver's satire is amusing, but the picture of the old people in Laputa who cannot die and of the Yahoos, who have every detestable vice, are so bitter that they repel any except morbid readers. Yet the style never lacks clearness, simplicity and force, and one feels in reading these tales that he is listening to the voice of a master of the English tongue. ”

“ Gulliver is in every body's hands. Lord Scarborough, who is no inventor of stories, told me, that he fell in company with a master of a ship, who told him, that he was very well acquainted with Gulliver ”

“ We remember how Gulliver envied them, accounting them the happiest of human beings, since they had obtained in perpetuity the blessing of life, for which all men struggle so hard that whoever has one foot in the grave is sure to hold back the other as strongly as he can. ”

“ He had endured greatly and in patience, but now he was unconsciously yielding to the temptation of assailing an abstract code in a fashion which her troubled judgment might translate into attacks upon her father. Out of that attitude was born for her a hard dilemma [Pg 66] of conflicting loyalties. It was all a fabric woven of gossamer threads, but Gulliver was bound into helplessness by just such Lilliputian fetters. ”

“ There is an unearthly air about these men whom God has forgotten. They are like those Prussian soldiers of Frederick who continued to stand after swords and bullets had gone through them and required the services of some one to go about the field and push them over so that they might be decently buried. There were men like that in one of the lands which Gulliver visited. They never died and probably they played a sharp game of tennis and later in the clubhouse they were accustomed to sit around and say how much better the actors used to be fifty years ago. ”

“ There is an air of truth apparent through the whole; and indeed the author was so distinguished for his veracity, that it became a sort of proverb among his neighbours at Redriff, when any one affirmed a thing, to say, it was as true as if Mr. Gulliver had spoken it. ”

“ The people of Holmstrup dressed a dinner for him, and brought it to him in large brewing vessels, much as the good people of Lilliput did with Gulliver. This reminds us of Holger Danske, who once wanted a new suit of clothes. Twelve tailors were employed: they set ladders to his back and shoulders, as was done to Gulliver, and they measured away; but the man that was highest on the right side ladder chanced, as he was cutting a mark in the measure, to clip Holger's ear. ”

“ This person had a long and serious talk with Gulliver about the state of the country.
He said that though to the outward eye things in Lilliput seemed very settled and prosperous, yet in reality there were troubles, both internal and external, that threatened the safety of the kingdom.
There had been in Lilliput for a very long time two parties at bitter enmity with each other, so bitter that they would neither eat, drink, nor talk together, and what one party did, the other would always try to undo. Each professed to believe that nothing good could come from the other. ”

“ 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 [Pg 172] 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. ”

“ Although Mr. Gulliver was born in Nottinghamshire, where his father dwelt, yet I have heard him say, his family came from Oxfordshire; to confirm which, I have observed in the church yard at Banbury in that county, several tombs and monuments of the Gullivers. ”

“ He was a quick fellow, and when hot from play, would toss himself in a corner, and in five minutes be deep in any sort of book that he could lay his hands on: if it were Rasselas or Gulliver, so much the better, but Bailey's Dictionary would do, or the Bible with the Apocrypha in it. Something he must read, when he was not riding the pony, or running and hunting, or listening to the talk of men. All this was true of him at ten years of age; ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now the moral is that only tall Elzevirs are beautiful, only tall Elzevirs preserve their ancient proportions, only tall Elzevirs are worth collecting. Dr. Lemuel Gulliver remarks that the King of Lilliput was taller than any of his court by almost the breadth of a nail, and that his altitude filled the minds of all with awe. Well, the Philistine may think a few millimetres, more or less, in the height of an Elzevir are of little importance. When he comes to sell, he will discover the difference. An uncut, or almost uncut, copy of a good Elzevir may be worth fifty or sixty pounds or more ”

“ A rivulet of blood is (p. 34) running. In the center of the picture is a tree of liberty. To this tree Pitt is bound, while Fox is lashing him.
The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver.
"You may have seen Gillray's famous print of him—in the old wig, in the stout, old, hideous Windsor uniform—as the King of Brobdingnag, peering at a little Gulliver, whom he holds up in his hand, whilst in the other he has an opera-glass, through which he surveys the pygmy? Our fathers chose to set up George as the type of a great king; and the little Gulliver was the great Napoleon."—Thackeray's "Four Georges". ”