GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. 'Gulliver's Travels,' or more fully, 'The Travels of Lemuel Gulliver,' was published late in 1726, during the last visit of the author, Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) to England. It was im mediately popular and has since its publica tion enjoyed the reputation of being at once a popular child's book and the best known satire in the English language. Swift may have had the idea in mind as early as the days of the Scriblerus' Club and he definitely refers to it in a famous letter to Pope, dated 29 Sept. 1725: "I like the scheme of our meeting after distresses and dispersions, but the chief end I propose to myself in all my labors is, to vex the world rather than divert it. I have ever hated all nations, professions and communities; and all my love is toward individuals, ... But principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas and so forth.* Swift succeeded in vexing only a very few individuals; on the con trary, he diverted the world exceedingly, for the simple reason that individuals laughed at his wit and presumably felt themselves to be excluded from his general satire.
The story, which concerns itself with voy ages to very strange lands, is divided into four books: First, Lilliput, the land of the pigmies; second, Brobdingnag, the land of the giants; third, the various lands of Laputa and Balni barbi, the land of mathematicians, projectors and cranks, Glubbdubdrib, the land of ma gicians, Luggnagg, the land of the Struldbrugs, and Japan; and fourth, the land of the Houyhnhnms, or the humane horses.
In the first of these books, Swift describes a highly organized civilization of pigmies, one twelfth the height of ordinary men. Aside from this pleasing device, Swift makes the Lilliputians the means of satire by representing these small creatures as possessed of the same political systems, motives, vanities and so forth, as normal men, which in such small people are essentially ridiculous. He causes readers to laugh at their antics for much the same reason as grown-ups are apt to laugh at the imitative ways of children or apes. In particular, Swift satirizes the court intrigues of his own time. In she person of Flimnap he lampoons Sir Robert Walpole, and in the famous faction of the Big Endians he satirizes English political parties.
In the second book, the position is reversed. The attractive, diminutive Gulliver, one-twelfth the height of the giants, having been found and exploited as an object of curiosity by his peasant master, comes into the hands of the king, who proceeds to ask Gulliver all manner of questions regarding European politics and society. Gulliver's answers, which he affects to make more favorable to his °noble and most beloved country') than truth strictly allows, are nevertheless severely criticized by the king, who comes to the conclusion that the Europeans are °the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth" The chief point of lies in the comment that a large generous mind might make upon the civilization to which we are accustomed. To a less degree it lies in the magnification of certain disagreeable human qualities. As the gist of the first book might
lie in the exclamation, °What a vain little thing is man"! so that of the second book might answer the exclamation, aHow small minded is man° I The miscellaneous third which deals with special abuses of various kinds, satirizes pedantry, projecting, absurd affectations, etc., and, in the famous passage of the Struldbrugs, the conventional fear which people have of death and their desire to live eternally on the earth. The various occupations of man are treated as absurd and irrational, but it must be noted that Swift does not always draw the line clearly between legitimate occupations and the extravagances into which these may sometimes run.
The fourth book goes beyond the others in that human beings are made not merely small or large or the possessors of peculiar contriv ances, but are actually distorted into the very disagreeable creatures known as Yahoos, whose deformities and uncouth ways are treated with out reticence. Man is represented as a beast of very unattractive kind, the good qualities of courtesy, intelligence and mercy residing in his masters, the horses. It may be observed in gen eral that Swift's satire, starting with consider able geniality, becomes more and more bitter as the narrative proceeds and at the end is quite unrestrained.
Owing largely to this growing bitterness, the last books are certainly far less popular and attractive than the two earlier books. More over, the graphic narrative of the two earlier books is probably more interesting. They re count events with great straightforwardness and simplicity. Details are very carefully worked out to scale and are sufficiently numer ous and concrete to constitute one of the best pieces of narrative that we have in English. As an example of straightforward, simple, vigorous narrative, 'Gulliver's Travels' stands with 'Robinson Crusoe,"Pilgrim's Progress,' and a very few other books. In addition to this, the story, like the others that have been men tioned, contains an interesting view of human life, though one vastly different and entirely satirical in tone.
Generally speaking, Swift's satire might be called the satire of position, especially in the first two books. That is to say, Swift does not depend upon burlesque, parody, on pure wit or allegory as often as in 'The Battle of the Books' and 'A Tale of a Tub,' but on straight narrative, in which, however, he steps aside from ordinary conceptions in order to make those conceptions appear in a different light. The best example of this is to be found in chap ters six and seven in the voyage to Brobding nag, in which the king of the giants pursues the spirited but apologetic Gulliver from posi tion to position up to a situation of great irony.
The most successful short life of Swift is that of the late Sir Leslie Stephen in the 'Eng lish Men of Letters' ; compare also the shorter sketch in the 'Dictionarty of National Biog raphy.' The best longer life is that of Sir Henry Craik 1882. Good cheap modern editions of 'Gulliver' are in 'Everyman's Library' and the 'Bohn Library.'