Gulliver's Travels

By Jonathan Swift

Gulliver?s Travels by Jonathan Swift is one of the greatest satirical works ever written. Through the misadventures of Lemuel Gulliver, his hopelessly ?modern? protagonist, Swift exposes many of the follies of the English Enlightenment, from its worship of science to its neglect of traditional philosophy and theology. Swift?s satire on the threats posed by the Enlightenment and the embryonic spirit of secular fundamentalism makes Gulliver?s Travels priceless reading for today?s defenders of tradition. This new critical edition, edited by Dutton Kearney of Aquinas College, contains detailed notes to the text and a selection of tradition-oriented essays by some of the finest contemporary Swift scholars.

The Ignatius Critical Editions represent a tradition-oriented alternative to popular textbook series such as the Norton Critical Editions or Oxford World Classics, and are designed to concentrate on traditional readings of the Classics of world literature. Whereas many modern critical editions have succumbed to the fads of modernism and post-modernism, this series will concentrate on tradition-oriented criticism of these great works. Edited by acclaimed literary biographer, Joseph Pearce, the Ignatius Critical Editions will ensure that traditional moral readings of the works are given prominence, instead of the feminist, or deconstructionist readings that often proliferate in other series of 'critical editions'. As such, they represent a genuine extension of consumer-choice, enabling educators, students and lovers of good literature to buy editions of classic literary works without having to 'buy into' the ideologies of secular fundamentalism. The series is particularly aimed at tradition-minded literature professors offering them an alternative for their students. The initial list will have about 15 - 20 titles. The goal is to release three books a season, or six in a year.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ignatius Press
• Release date: Mar 18, 2010
• ISBN: 9781681492414

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was an Irish poet and satirical writer. When the spread of Catholicism in Ireland became prevalent, Swift moved to England, where he lived and worked as a writer. Due to the controversial nature of his work, Swift often wrote under pseudonyms. In addition to his poetry and satirical prose, Swift also wrote for political pamphlets and since many of his works provided political commentary this was a fitting career stop for Swift. When he returned to Ireland, he was ordained as a priest in the Anglican church. Despite this, his writings stirred controversy about religion and prevented him from advancing in the clergy.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Dutton Kearney

Aquinas College

In the last chapter of Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift’s narrator tells readers that his principal Design was to inform, and not to amuse thee (see p. 328).¹ Swift’s contemporaries would have immediately recognized an allusion to Horace’s Ars poetica:

[O]mne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulci

lectorem delctando pariterque monendo.

[The poet who pleases everyone (literally, the man who carries off every vote) is the one who blends the useful with the sweet, simultaneously amusing and informing the reader.]

To eliminate amusement from literature is to act contrarily to the entire English literary tradition, which adopted Horace’s counsel. From Geoffrey Chaucer’s description of The Canterbury Tales as tales of best sentence and most solas² to Saint Thomas More’s frontispiece to his Utopia (A Truly Golden Handbook, No Less Beneficial than Entertaining), we repeatedly see this practice, which is arguably perfected in the playwright William Shakespeare, whose poetry is so delightful that readers and audiences are often unaware of the depths to which they have been instructed. These three examples of Chaucer, More, and Shakespeare have something in common beyond Horace: each of these artists has an implicit trust in his readers’ ability to comprehend a work of art.

Jonathan Swift, too, trusts in his readers’ capacity for reason, but Lemuel Gulliver, his narrator, does not. Although his readers have been following four major voyages full of miniature men, giants, ludicrous scientists, and talking horses, they are not to be amused, but to be informed. Gulliver’s outlook upon literature marks the end of one era and the beginning of another, the final end of the Renaissance and the beginning of the modern world, one that had been fully energized by its recent victory over the ancient world. In this new world, literature is a philosophical delivery system, a thinly disguised treatise whose teachings are to be extracted and put into practice and where delight is removed for the sake of utilitarianism. Literature is no longer a distinct mode of knowledge, an imaginative cosmos within which readers learn practical wisdom through characters’ choices and the consequences of those choices. If Swift (1667—1745) is the very last of the Renaissance humanists, then Gulliver is his successor, the first of the moderns.

Gulliver’s understanding of literature reveals his sympathies in the most important intellectual debate during Swift’s lifetime, the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns (often referred to by its shortened French title, the Querelle). In the seventeenth century, claims were made that modern accomplishments in philosophy, science, art, and literature had eclipsed those of the ancient Greeks and Romans—the very models that had been imitated during the Renaissance. In the case of the sciences—and in particular, Isaac Newton’s Principia of 1689—these claims were true. However, in the case of liberal arts such as literature and philosophy, there were fiercely contested debates about Tasso’s or Milton’s superiority over Homer, or whether Descartes had eclipsed Aristotle. From our contemporary perspective, such an argument may seem almost frivolous, but there was a remarkably robust debate at the time. At the heart of the debate was the moderns’ conviction that scientific progress necessarily corresponded to moral progress.

One of the participants in this controversy was Sir William Temple, for whom the young Jonathan Swift worked as a secretary. In his famous essay Upon the Ancient and Modern Learning, Temple attacked the members of the Royal Society, rejecting the doctrine of progress and supporting the virtuosity and excellence of ancient learning. Swift wrote some occasional and satiric defenses of Temple’s position, indicating his own sympathy for the ancients and his contempt for those, such as his own fictional creation, Gulliver, who supported the modern notion of progress. It is, therefore, crucial to a true understanding of Gulliver’s Travels to understand the critical distance between the author of the work and his fictional protagonist. Indeed, it would be more accurate to describe Gulliver as Swift’s antagonist, or as his object of scorn and ridicule.

Unable to gain a preferment from King William III, Swift went to Ireland, where he was ordained in the established (Anglican) church. He traveled regularly between Ireland and England, eventually working as an editor of the Examiner, a pro-Tory (Royalist) newspaper that supported Queen Anne. Swift had hoped that his support would lead to an appointment as dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, the most important church in England. The queen refused, and he became dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, the most important church in Ireland. At her death in 1714, Swift’s political ambitions effectively came to an end. During this time, he arranged for Esther Johnson and her elderly companion Mrs. Dingley to take up residence in Dublin. He had met Esther Johnson at Sir William Temple’s when she was eight. Johnson is better known as Stella, to whom Swift wrote many letters, published posthumously as his Journal to Stella. While traveling to London and writing letters to Stella, Swift appears to have caught the infatuation of Esther Vanhomrigh (whom Swift nicknamed Vanessa), who followed him back to Dublin in 1714. Vanessa died in 1723, and Stella died in 1728. Swift’s relationship with these two women has been the object of much speculation in scholarly biographies.

Swift’s constitution did not allow him to write lengthy discourses, so he turned to satire, the literature of disappointment. Almost all of the literature of Great Britain at this time had an air of disappointment about it, a disappointment that was connected to Charles II’s failure to live up to expectations following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Having endured a civil war and the increasingly unpopular commonwealth that followed in its wake, England was ready for peace again. Recalling the emperor Augustus, who locked the Janus Gates for the first time in the history of Rome—the gates were to be kept open when Rome was at war—contemporary writers labeled this time as an Augustan Age. Unfortunately, as soon as it became clear that Charles II was more interested in being entertained than in picking up Octavian’s mantle, hope was exchanged for cynicism and satire. It is telling that Alexander Pope’s greatest work, The Dunciad (1743), ends on a note of pessimism, as universal darkness buries all (4.656). Two years after the publication of Pope’s magnum opus, Jonathan Swift, the last of the Renaissance humanists, died.

Swift anonymously published Gulliver’s Travels in 1726 and brought the Querelle to bear upon his narrator, Lemuel Gulliver, a representative modern. Like the wandering Odysseus, Gulliver seeks the best way to live, but unlike his literary predecessor, he does not think that it subsists in hearth and home. Rather, Gulliver is drawn toward abstraction in all of its forms (Jacques Maritain and Allen Tate would later condemn this type of disembodied intellectualism as angelism), and as a result, he seems to be completely incapable of exercising practical reason. More than anything else, Gulliver wants to know how to attain moral perfection, but he wants to bypass the time-consuming apprenticeship that is required to build solid habits. Twenty-four years before Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s First Discourse, Gulliver is Swift’s answer to the central question of the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns: Has the restoration of the arts and sciences contributed to the purification of morals? For both of these writers, the answer is no. Although it may seem odd to see Swift’s name so close to Rousseau’s, the example is important because it shows how the Querelle could cut across ideological lines.

Lemuel Gulliver’s four voyages take him to the remote regions of the world and span sixteen and a half years. On his first voyage, Gulliver is the ship’s surgeon; on his final voyage, he is the ship’s captain. At first glance, he seems to have had quite a successful maritime career. However, many men become ill and die while he is their physician, and a mutiny cuts short his captaincy. Because Gulliver’s prose is spare, exact, and practical, readers can easily overlook how progressively attached Gulliver becomes to abstraction. In the end, the man who offers his Travels for the rapid and universal improvement of mankind—"it must be owned, that seven Months were a sufficient Time to correct every Vice and Folly to which Yahoos are subject" (see p. 7)—sleeps in a stable with his horses because his wife and children repulse him. Clearly, at the end of his Travels, Gulliver is eccentric, if not mad.

Small wonder, then, that this book has always vexed its readers. They recognize that on one level, like Lucian’s A True History, like books 9-12 of Homer’s Odyssey, and like Cervantes’ Don Quixote, it is a fairy tale for adults. The fantastical elements of very small people, very large people, floating islands, and talking horses are all greatly entertaining. Satires are comparable to fairy tales in that they both point to a moral truth, and despite Gulliver’s claims to the contrary, his Travels do point to moral truths. In the eighteenth century, Gulliver would have been pronounced with a long e, making the Latinized version of the name "to trick (gull) by means of the truth (vere). Lemuel means beloved of God". Clearly, Swift was thinking of the narrator of More’s Utopia, Raphael (healer of God) Hythloday (speaker of nonsense). Thus, Swift tricks us with the truth about ourselves, and because he does it through the persona of Gulliver—a man with whom very few readers can fully identify—there is so much imaginative distance that we readers do not realize we are being satirized. Early in his literary career, Swift wrote that Satyr [satire] is a sort of Glass [mirror], wherein Beholders do generally discover every body’s Face but their Own; which is the chief Reason for that kind Reception it meets in the World, and that so very few are offended with it.³ Indeed, how is it possible to identify ourselves with a man who has forsaken his spouse for a broodmare?

Part 1’s Lilliput and part 2’s Brobdingnag satirize British politics: the former parodies Swift’s contemporaries, and the latter parodies Swift’s contemporaries against the backdrop of ancient Rome. These satires and parodies are so straightforward that Samuel Johnson said of the entire work: When once you have thought of big men and little men, it is very easy to do all the rest.⁴ However, the last two parts of the work are considerably more complex than the first two. Part 3’s voyage to Laputa was written after the other three parts were completed, and on the surface, it seems tangential to the work. Ostensibly a satire of the Royal Society,⁵ it is also an important critique of what has become known in our time as scientism. Scientism is the philosophical proposition that the only sure knowledge is that which comes to be known through a scientific discipline. Such an approach is appropriate when the knowledge sought is about material objects. For example, biology can provide knowledge about the processes of the body. However, biology cannot say anything about immaterial objects such as the soul—philosophy and theology are the proper disciplines for that knowledge. Scientism posits that because scientific inquiry is the only mode of knowing, the soul can be examined only through a scientific discipline—but because science can examine only that which can be measured, it has nothing to say about the soul. Or worse, scientism makes the claim that the soul must be material because philosophy and theology are entirely too speculative. After Aristotle dismantled the arguments of the Pre-Socratics in his Metaphysics, ancient philosophical materialists such as Heraclitus and Democritus made a comeback in Swift’s Great Britain through the work of Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes. In our time, philosophical materialism has united with a subschool of Darwinism, giving rise to what has been called the New Atheism. There is nothing new about it, of course, and Swift—as an Anglican churchman and as a Renaissance humanist—attacked this understanding of human nature and of the soul.

None of the parts of Gulliver’s Travels has generated as much critical interest as the voyage to the Houyhnhnms. Early readers such as Sir Walter Scott and William Thackeray were shocked and repulsed. Later readers have fallen into two camps, the soft school and the hard school, essentially viewing the voyage either through the lens of the satire of Horace or the satire of Juvenal. The soft school argues that Swift satirizes Gulliver’s idealism, which is the lighter satire of the Horatian style. The hard school is more Juvenalian; that is, its proponents argue that rather than comedy, there is bitter and sarcastic vitriol, and Gulliver’s disapprobation of humanity barely masks Swift’s own misanthropy. Whichever school one sides with, it cannot be denied that Gulliver forces himself to choose between a false dichotomy of two abstractions: he is neither a vile Yahoo (irrational passion) nor a Houyhnhnm (passionless reason).

A tradition-oriented approach to Gulliver’s Travels is fruitful for three immediate reasons. As Mary Reichardt has suggested, [I]f literary works have no foundation in truth or ability to address ultimate concerns, the study of literature and the endless production of literary criticism become only a rarified, elitist game.⁶ The second reason has already been mentioned: Swift is in a conscious dialogue with the literary tradition that extends from Homer to Thomas More. In bringing the ideas of the ancients to bear upon the eighteenth century, Swift is continuing the same work of his predecessors in the English Renaissance. The third reason is that many of the controversies in Gulliver’s Travels remain relevant. Although the Querelle may seem like a historical footnote, the battle between the ancients and the moderns continues in different formats.⁷ On another note, feminist critics often dismiss Swift as a misogynist. Although a brief introduction is not the appropriate venue to address this topic—which is a complex issue in Swift’s life and work—it should be remembered that as a satirist, Swift criticizes everyone. Gulliver’s misanthropy is the work of Swift the satirist, not Swift the misogynist, and reducing his work by reading it through a lens of race, class, and gender often tells us less about Swift than it does about an individual literary critic. As Swift famously said in a letter to Alexander Pope:

I have ever hated all Nations professions and Communityes and all my love is towards individualls for instance I hate the tribe of Lawyers, but I love Councellor such a one, and Judge such a one for so with Physicians (I will not speak of my own trade) Soldiers, English, Scotch, French; and the rest but principally I hate and detest that animal called man, although I hartily love John, Peter, Thomas and so forth. This is the system upon which I have governed myself many years (but do not tell) and so I shall go on till I have done with them I have got materials toward a treatise, proving the falsity of that definition animal rationale [rational animal], and to show it would be only rationis capax [capable of reason]. Upon this great foundation of Misanthropy (though not in Timon’s manner) The whole building of my Travells is erected: And I never will have peace of mind till all honest men are of my Opinion.⁸

Unlike Gulliver, Swift detested abstractions. As a satirist, Swift expected to be disappointed: an individual’s capacity for reason does not automatically guarantee reasonable behavior. Concupiscence will always remain a major impediment. Gulliver is attracted to the Houyhnhnms because they have reduced all human behavior to reason: "Reason alone is sufficient to govern a Rational Creature" (see p. 292). Gulliver’s audacity, not his humanity, is what is bothersome to Swift. Timon of Athens hated men indiscriminately; Swift’s misanthropy was specific and was limited to the abstraction called man, and not to actual men or women.

As we read Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, we might ask ourselves how much has changed in the last three hundred years. Has not the careerism of our contemporary politicians created a more pernicious myopia than that of the Lilliputians? Although our children no longer learn about Roman history in our public schools, they are no less prepared to dismiss the ancient world than is Gulliver. Surely, as increases in technological knowledge lag behind advances in human wisdom, scientism and philosophical materialism can have no less of a devastating effect in the twenty-first century than they do on Laputa, the Academy of Lagado, and cities like Balnibarbi. Finally, there has been no end to the individual’s struggle between the passions and reason; Gulliver and Saint Paul suffer equally: For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.⁹ In short, the human problems of the eighteenth century remain the human problems of the twenty-first because the nature of pride has not changed.

Textual Note

The text of Gulliver’s Travels given here is taken from volume 11 of Herbert Davis’ edition of Swift’s Prose Writings (1965 reprint). It is based on volume 3 of George Faulkner’s Dublin edition of Swift’s Works (1735).

The Text of

GULLIVER’S TRAVELS

Frontispiece portrait of Gulliver from the octavo edition, 1735. (Splendide Mendax means Splendidly False.)

Title page from the 1735 edition.

NOTE: In his poem De Rerum Natura, Lucretius suggests that people shy away from philosophical materialism like children shy away from medicine. After describing how children need honey on the rim of a cup in order to drink their bad-tasting medicine, so common people need the honey of Lucretius’ poetry in order to take his philosophical medicine. Swift, who did not agree with Lucretius’ materialism, is using the quotation ironically.

ADVERTISEMENT

Mr. Sympson’s Letter to Captain Gulliver, prefixed to this Volume, will make a long Advertisement unnecessary. Those Interpolations complained of by the Captain, were made by a Person since deceased, on whose Judgment the Publisher relyed to make any Alterations that might be thought necessary. But, this Person, not rightly comprehending the Scheme of the Author, nor able to imitate his plain simple Style, thought fit among many other Alterations and Insertions, to compliment the Memory of her late Majesty, by saying, That she governed without a Chief Minister. We are assured, that the Copy sent to the Bookseller in London, was a Transcript of the Original, which Original being in the Possession of a very worthy Gentleman in London, and a most intimate Friend of the Authors; after he had bought the Book in Sheets, and compared it with the Originals, bound it up with blank Leaves, and made those Corrections, which the Reader will find in our Edition. For, the same Gentleman did us the Favour to let us transcribe his Corrections.

A LETTER FROM CAPT. GULLIVER,

TO HIS COUSIN SYMPSON¹

I hope you will be ready to own publickly, whenever you shall be called to it, that by your great and frequent Urgency you prevailed on me to publish a very loose and uncorrect Account of my Travels; with Direction to hire some young Gentlemen of either University to put them in Order, and correct the Style, as my Cousin Dampier² did by my Advice, in his Book called, A Voyage round the World. But I do not remember I gave you Power to consent, that any thing should be omitted, and much less that any thing should be inserted: Therefore, as to the latter, I do here renounce every thing of that Kind; particularly a Paragraph about her Majesty the late Queen Anne,³ of most pious and glorious Memory; although I did reverence and esteem her more than any of human Species. But you, or your Interpolator, ought to have considered, that as it was not my Inclination, so was it not decent to praise any Animal of our Composition⁴ before my Master Houyhnhnm: And besides, the Fact was altogether false; for to my Knowledge, being in England during some Part of her Majesty’s Reign, she did govern by a chief Minister; nay, even by two successively; the first whereof was the Lord of Godolphin, and the second the Lord of Oxford;⁵ so that you have made me say the thing that was not. Likewise, in the Account of the Academy of Projectors, and several Passages of my Discourse to my Master Houyhnhnm, you have either omitted some material Circumstances, or minced or changed them in such a Manner, that I do hardly know mine own Work. When I formerly hinted to you something of this in a Letter, you were pleased to answer, that you were afraid of giving Offence; that People in Power were very watchful over the Press; and apt not only to interpret, but to punish every thing which looked like an Inuendo (as I think you called it.) But pray, how could that which I spoke so many Years ago, and at about five Thousand Leagues distance, in another Reign, be applyed to any of the Yahoos, who now are said to govern the Herd; especially, at a time when I little thought on or feared the Unhappiness of living under them. Have not I the most Reason to complain, when I see these very Yahoos carried by Houyhnhnms in a Vehicle, as if these were Brutes, and those the rational Creatures? And, indeed, to avoid so monstrous and detestable a Sight, was one principal Motive of my Retirement hither.

Thus much I thought proper to tell you in Relation to yourself, and to the Trust I reposed in you.

I do in the next Place complain of my own great Want⁶ of Judgment, in being prevailed upon by the Intreaties and false Reasonings of you and some others, very much against mine own Opinion, to suffer my Travels to be published. Pray bring to your Mind how often I desired you to consider, when you insisted on the Motive of publick Good; that the Yahoos were a Species of Animals utterly incapable of Amendment⁷ by Precepts or Examples: And so it hath proved; for instead of seeing a full Stop put to all Abuses and Corruptions, at least in this little Island, as I had Reason to expect: Behold, after above six Months Warning, I cannot learn that my Book hath produced one single Effect according to mine Intentions: I desired you would let me know by a Letter, when Party and Faction were extinguished; Judges learned and upright; Pleaders honest and modest, with some Tincture of common Sense; and Smithfield⁸ blazing with Pyramids of Law-Books; the young Nobility’s Education entirely changed; the Physicians banished; the Female Yahoos abounding in Virtue, Honour, Truth and good Sense: Courts and Levees of great Ministers thoroughly weeded and swept; Wit, Merit and Learning rewarded; all Disgracers of the Press in Prose and Verse, condemned to eat nothing but their own Cotten⁹ and quench their Thirst with their own Ink. These, and a Thousand other Reformations, I firmly counted upon by your Encouragement; as indeed they were plainly deducible from the Precepts delivered in my Book. And, it must be owned, that seven Months were a sufficient Time to correct every Vice and Folly to which Yahoos are subject; if their Natures had been capable of the least Disposition to Virtue or Wisdom: Yet so far have you been from answering mine Expectation in any of your Letters; that on the contrary, you are loading our Carrier every Week with Libels, and Keys, and Reflections, and Memoirs, and Second Parts; wherein I see myself accused of reflecting upon great States-Folk; of degrading human Nature, (for so they have still the Confidence to stile it), and of abusing the Female Sex. I find likewise, that the Writers of those Bundles are not agreed among themselves; for some of them will not allow me to be Author of mine own Travels; and others make me Author of Books to which I am wholly a Stranger.¹⁰

I find likewise, that your Printer hath been so careless as to confound the Times, and mistake the Dates of my several Voyages and Returns; neither assigning the true Year, or the true Month, or Day of the Month: And I hear the original Manuscript is all destroyed, since the Publication of my Book.¹¹ Neither have I any Copy left; however, I have sent you some Corrections, which you may insert, if ever there should be a second Edition: And yet I cannot stand to them, but shall leave that Matter to my judicious and candid Readers, to adjust it as they please.

I hear some of our Sea-Yahoos¹² find Fault with my Sea-Language, as not proper in many Parts, nor now in Use. I cannot help it. In my first Voyages, while I was young, I was instructed by the oldest Mariners, and learned to speak as they did. But I have since found that the Sea-Yahoos are apt, like the Land ones, to become new fangled in their Words; which the latter change every Year; insomuch, as I remember upon each Return to mine own Country, their old Dialect was so altered, that I could hardly understand the new. And I observe, when any Yahoo comes from London out of Curiosity to visit me at mine own House, we neither of us are able to deliver our Conceptions in a Manner intelligible to the other.

If the Censure of Yahoos could any Way affect me, I should have great Reason to complain, that some of them are so bold as to think my Book of Travels a meer Fiction out of mine own Brain; and have gone so far as to drop Hints, that the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos have no more Existence than the Inhabitants of Utopia.¹³

Indeed I must confess, that as to the people of Lilliput, Brobdingrag, (for so the Word should have been spelt, and not erroneously Brobdingnag), and Laputa, I have never yet heard of any Yahoo so presumptuous as to dispute their Being, or the Facts I have related concerning them; because the Truth immediately strikes every Reader with Conviction. And, is there less Probability in my Account of the Houyhnhnms or Yahoos, when it is manifest as to the latter, there are so many Thousands even in this City, who only differ from their Brother Brutes in Houyhnhnmland, because they use a Sort of Jabber, and do not go naked. I wrote for their Amendment, and not their Approbation.¹⁴ The united Praise of the whole Race would be of less Consequence to me, than the neighing of those two degenerate Houyhnhnms I keep in my Stable; because, from these, degenerate as they are, I still improve in some Virtues, without any Mixture of Vice.

Do these miserable Animals presume to think that I am so far degenerated as to defend my Veracity; Yahoo as I am, it is well known through all Houyhnhnmland, that by the Instructions and Example of my illustrious Master, I was able in the Compass of two Years (although I confess with the utmost Difficulty) to remove that infernal Habit of Lying, Shuffling, Deceiving, and Equivocating, so deeply rooted in the very Souls of all my Species; especially the Europeans.

I have other Complaints to make upon this vexatious¹⁵ Occasion; but I forbear troubling myself or you any further. I must freely confess, that since my last Return, some Corruptions of my Yahoo Nature have revived in me by conversing with a few of your Species, and particularly those of mine own Family, by an unavoidable Necessity; else I should never have attempted so absurd a Project as that of reforming the Yahoo Race in this Kingdom; but I have now done with all such visionary Schemes for ever.¹⁶

April 2, 1727

THE PUBLISHER TO THE READER

The author of these Travels, Mr Lemuel Gulliver,¹ is my ancient and intimate Friend; there is likewise some Relation between us by 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.

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.

Before he quitted Redriff, he left the Custody of the following Papers in my Hands, with the Liberty to dispose of them as I should think fit. I have carefully perused them three Times: The Style is very plain and simple; and the only Fault I find is, that the Author, after the Manner of Travellers, is a little too circumstantial. 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 spoke it.

By the Advice of several worthy Persons, to whom, with the Author’s Permission, I communicated these Papers, I now venture to send them into the World; hoping they may be, at least for some time, a better Entertainment to our young Noblemen, than the common Scribbles² of Politicks and Party.

This Volume would have been at least twice as large, if I had not made bold to strike out innumerable Passages relating to the Winds and Tides, as well as to the Variations and Bearings³ in the several Voyages; together with the minute Descriptions of the Management of the Ship in Storms, in the Style of Sailors: Likewise the Account of the Longitudes and Latitudes;⁴ wherein I have Reason to apprehend that Mr Gulliver may be a little dissatisfied: But I was resolved to fit the Work as much as possible to the general Capacity of Readers. However, if my own Ignorance in Sea-Affairs shall have led me to commit some Mistakes, I alone am answerable for them: And if any Traveller hath a Curiosity to see the whole Work at large, as it came from the Hand of the Author, I will be ready to gratify him.

As for any further Particulars relating to the Author, the Reader will receive Satisfaction from the first Pages of the Book.

Richard Sympson

PART ONE

A Voyage to Lilliput

CHAPTER ONE

The Author giveth some Account of himself and Family; his first Inducements to travel. He is shipwrecked, and swims for his Life; gets safe on shoar in the Country of Lilliput; is made a Prisoner, and carried up the Country.

My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the Third of five Sons. He sent me to Emanuel-College¹ in Cambridge, at Fourteen Years old, where I resided three Years, and applied my self close to my Studies: But the Charge of maintaining me (although I had a very scanty Allowance) being too great for a narrow Fortune; I was bound Apprentice to Mr James Bates, an eminent Surgeon in London, with whom I continued four Years; and my Father now and then sending me small Sums of Money, I laid them out in learning Navigation, and other Parts of the Mathematicks, useful to those who intend to travel, as I always believed it would be some time or other my Fortune to do. When I left Mr Bates, I went down to my Father; where, by the Assistance of him and my Uncle John, and some other Relations, I got Forty Pounds, and a Promise of Thirty Pounds a Year to maintain me at Leyden:² There I studied Physick³ two Years and seven Months, knowing it would be useful in long Voyages.

Soon after my Return from Leyden, I was recommended by my good Master Mr Bates, to be Surgeon to the Swallow, Captain Abraham Pannell Commander; with whom I continued three Years and a half, making a Voyage or two into the Levant,⁴ and some other Parts. When I came back, I resolved to settle in London, to which Mr Bates, my Master, encouraged me; and by him I was recommended to several Patients. I took Part of a small House in the Old Jury,⁵ and being advised to alter my Condition,⁶ I married Mrs Mary Burton, second Daughter to Mr Edmond Burton, Hosier, in Newgate-street,⁷ with whom I received four Hundred Pounds for a Portion.⁸ But, my good Master Bates dying in two Years after, and I having few Friends, my Business began to fail; for my Conscience would not suffer me to imitate the bad Practice of too many among my Brethren. Having therefore consulted with my Wife, and some of my Acquaintance, I determined to go again to Sea. I was Surgeon successively in two Ships, and made several Voyages, for six Years, to the East and West-Indies; by which I got some Addition to my Fortune. My Hours of Leisure I spent in reading the best Authors, ancient and modern; being always provided with a good Number of Books; and when I was ashore, in observing the Manners and Dispositions of the People, as well as learning their Language; wherein I had a great Facility by the Strength of my Memory.

The last of these Voyages not proving very fortunate, I grew weary of the Sea, and intended to stay at home with my Wife and Family. I removed from the Old Jury to Fetter-Lane,⁹ and from thence to Wapping,¹⁰ hoping to get Business among the Sailors; but it would not turn to account. After three Years Expectation that things would mend, I accepted an advantageous Offer from Captain William Prichard, Master of the Antelope, who was making a Voyage to the South-Sea. We set sail from Bristol, May 4th, 1699, and our Voyage at first was very prosperous.

It would not be proper for some Reasons, to trouble the Reader with the Particulars of our Adventures in those Seas: Let it suffice to inform him, that in our Passage from thence to the East-Indies, we were driven by a violent Storm to the North-west of Van Diemen’s Land.¹¹ By an Observation, we found ourselves in the Latitude of 30 Degrees 2 Minutes South. Twelve of our Crew were dead by immoderate Labour, and ill Food; the rest were in a very weak Condition.¹² On the fifth of November, which was the beginning of Summer in those Parts, the Weather being very hazy, the Seamen spyed a Rock, within half a Cable’s¹³ length of the Ship; but the Wind was so strong, that we were driven directly upon it, and immediately split. Six of the Crew, of whom I was one, having let down the Boat into the Sea, made a Shift to get clear of the Ship, and the Rock. We rowed by my Computation, about three Leagues,¹⁴ till we were able to work no longer, being already spent with Labour while we were in the Ship. We therefore trusted ourselves to the Mercy of the Waves; and in about half an Hour the Boat was overset by a sudden Flurry from the North. What became of my Companions in the Boat, as well as of those who escaped on the Rock, or were left in the Vessel, I cannot tell; but conclude they were all lost. For my own Part, I swam as Fortune directed me, and was pushed forward by Wind and Tide. I often let my Legs drop, and could feel no Bottom: But when I was almost gone, and able to struggle no longer, I found myself within my Depth;¹⁵ and by this Time the Storm was much abated. The Declivity¹⁶ was so small, that I walked near a Mile before I got to the Shore, which I conjectured was about Eight o’Clock in the Evening. I then advanced forward near half a Mile, but could not discover any Sign of Houses or Inhabitants; at least I was in so weak a Condition, that I did not observe them. I was extremely tired, and with that, and the Heat of the Weather, and about half a Pint of Brandy that I drank as I left the Ship, I found my self much inclined to sleep. I lay down on the Grass, which was very short and soft; where I slept sounder than ever I remember to have done in my Life, and as I reckoned, above Nine Hours; for when I awaked, it was just Day-light. I attempted to rise, but was not able to stir: For as I happened to lie on my Back, I found my Arms and Legs were strongly fastened on each Side to the Ground; and my Hair, which was long and thick, tied down in the same Manner. I likewise felt several slender Ligatures¹⁷ across my Body, from my Armpits to my Thighs. I could only look upwards; the Sun began to grow hot, and the Light offended mine Eyes. I heard a confused Noise about me, but in the Posture I lay, could see nothing except the Sky. In a little time I felt something alive moving on my left Leg, which advancing gently forward over my Breast, came almost up to my Chin; when bending mine Eyes downwards as much as I could, I perceived it to be a human Creature not six Inches high, with a Bow and Arrow in his Hands, and a Quiver at his Back. In the mean time, I felt at least Forty more of the same Kind (as I conjectured) following the first. I was in the utmost Astonishment, and roared so loud, that they all ran back in a Fright; and some of them, as I was afterwards told, were hurt with the Falls they got by leaping from my Sides upon the Ground. However, they soon returned; and one of them, who ventured so far as to get a full Sight of my Face, lifting up his Hands and Eyes by way of Admiration, cryed out in a shrill, but distinct Voice, Hekinah Degul:¹⁸ The others repeated the same Words several times, but I then knew not what they meant. I lay all this while, as the Reader may believe, in great Uneasiness: At length, struggling to get loose, I had the Fortune to break the Strings, and wrench out the Pegs that fastened my left Arm to the Ground; for, by lifting it up to my Face, I discovered the Methods they had taken to bind me; and, at the same time, with a violent Pull, which gave me excessive Pain, I a little loosened the Strings that tied down my Hair on the left Side; so that I was just able to turn my Head about two Inches. But the Creatures ran off a second time, before I could seize them; whereupon there was a great Shout in a very shrill Accent; and after it ceased, I heard one of them cry aloud, Tolgo Phonac; when in an Instant I felt above an Hundred Arrows discharged on my left Hand, which pricked me like so many Needles; and besides, they shot another Flight into the Air, as we do Bombs in Europe; whereof many, I suppose, fell on my Body, (though I felt them not) and some on my Face, which I immediately covered with my left Hand. When this Shower of Arrows was over, I fell a groaning with Grief and Pain; and then striving again to get loose, they discharged another Volly larger than the first; and some of them attempted with Spears to stick me in the Sides; but, by good Luck, I had on me a Buff Jerkin,¹⁹ which they could not pierce. I thought it the most prudent Method to lie still; and my Design²⁰ was to continue so till Night, when my left Hand being already loose, I could easily free myself: And as for the Inhabitants, I had Reason to believe I might be a Match for the greatest Armies they could bring against me, if they were all of the same Size with him that I saw. But Fortune disposed otherwise of me. When the People observed I was quiet, they discharged no more Arrows: But by the Noise increasing, I knew their Numbers were greater; and about four Yards from me, over-against my right Ear, I heard a Knocking for above an Hour, like People at work; when turning my Head that Way, as well as the Pegs and Strings would permit me, I saw a Stage erected about a Foot and a half from the Ground, capable of holding four of the Inhabitants, with two or three Ladders to mount it: From whence one of them, who seemed to be a Person of Quality, made me a long Speech, whereof I understood not one Syllable. But I should have mentioned, that before the principal Person began his Oration, he cryed out three times Langro Dehul san: (these Words and the former were afterwards repeated and explained to me.) Whereupon immediately about fifty of the Inhabitants came, and cut the Strings that fastened the left side of my Head, which gave me the Liberty of turning it to the right, and of observing the Person and Gesture of him who was to speak. He appeared to be of a middle Age, and taller than any of the other three who attended him; whereof one was a Page, who held up his Train,²¹ and seemed to be somewhat longer than my middle Finger; the other two stood one on each side to support him. He acted every part of an Orator; and I could observe many Periods²² of Threatnings, and others of Promises, Pity, and Kindness. I answered in a few Words, but in the most submissive Manner, lifting up my left Hand and both mine Eyes to the Sun, as calling him for a Witness; and being almost famished with Hunger, having not eaten a Morsel for some Hours before I left the Ship. I found the Demands of Nature so strong upon me, that I could not forbear shewing my Impatience (perhaps against the strict Rules of Decency) by putting my Finger frequently on my Mouth, to signify that I wanted Food. The Hurgo (for so they call a great Lord, as I afterwards learnt) understood me very well: He descended from the Stage, and commanded that several Ladders should be applied to my Sides, on which above an hundred of the Inhabitants mounted, and walked towards my Mouth, laden with Baskets full of Meat, which had been provided, and sent thither by the King’s Orders upon the first Intelligence²³ he received of me. I observed there was the Flesh of several Animals, but could not distinguish them by the Taste. There were Shoulders, Legs, and Loins shaped like those of Mutton, and very well dressed, but smaller than the Wings of a Lark. I eat²⁴ them by two or three at a Mouthful; and took three Loaves at a time, about the bigness of Musket Bullets. They supplyed me as fast as they could, shewing a thousand Marks of Wonder and Astonishment at my Bulk and Appetite. I then made another Sign that I wanted Drink. They found by my eating that a small Quantity would not suffice me; and being a most ingenious People, they slung up with great Dexterity one of their largest Hogsheads;²⁵ then rolled it towards my Hand, and beat out the Top; I drank it off at a Draught,²⁶ which I might well do, for it hardly held half a Pint, and tasted like a small Wine of Burgundy, but much more delicious. They brought me a second Hogshead, which I drank in the same Manner, and made Signs for more, but they had none to give me. When I had performed these Wonders, they shouted for Joy, and danced upon my Breast, repeating several times as they did at first, Hekinah Degul. They made me a Sign that I should throw down the two Hogsheads, but first warned the People below to stand out of the Way, crying aloud, Borach Mivola; and when they saw the Vessels in the Air, there was an universal Shout of Hekinah Degul. I confess I was often tempted, while they were passing backwards and forwards on my Body, to seize Forty or Fifty of the first that came in my Reach, and dash them against