lying and false representation, it was with much difficulty that he comprehended what I meant, although he had otherwise a most acute judgment; for he argued thus: "That the use of speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive information of facts; now, if any one said the thing which was not, these ends were defeated, because I cannot properly be said to understand him: and I am so far from receiving information that he leaves me worse than in ignorance; for I am led to believe a thing black when it is white, and short when it is long." And these were all the notions he had concerning that faculty of lying, so perfectly well understood and so universally practiced among human creatures.

To return from this digression. When I asserted that the Yahoos were the only governing animals in my country, which my master said was altogether past his conception, he desired to know whether we "had Houyhnhnms among us, and what was their employment?" I told him, "We had great numbers; that in summer they grazed in the fields, and in winter were kept in houses with hay and oats, where Yahoo servants were employed to rub their skins smooth, comb their manes, pick their feet, serve them with food, and make their beds." "I understand you well," said my master: "it is now very plain, from all you have spoken, that whatever share of reason the Yahoos pretend to, the Houyhnhnms are your masters. I heartily wish our Yahoos would be so tractable." I begged his Honor "would please to excuse me from proceeding any further, because I was very certain that the account he expected from me would be highly displeasing." But he insisted in commanding me to let him know the best and the worst. I told him "he should be obeyed." I owned that "the Houyhnhnms among us, whom we called horses, were the most generous and comely animal we had: that they excelled in strength and swiftness, and when they belonged to persons of quality, were employed in traveling, racing, or drawing chariots; they were treated with much kindness and care, till they fell into diseases, or became foundered in the feet: but then they were sold, and used to all kinds of drudgery till they died: after which their skins were stripped, and sold for what they were worth, and their bodies left to be devoured by dogs and birds of prey. But the common race of horses had not so good fortune; being kept by farmers and carriers, and other mean people, who put them to greater labor and fed them worse." I described as

well as I could our way of riding; the shape and use of a bridle, a saddle, a spur, and a whip; of harness and wheels. I added that we fastened plates of a certain hard substance called iron at the bottom of their feet, to preserve their hoofs from being broken by the stony ways on which we often traveled.

My master, after some expressions of great indignation, wondered "how we dared to venture upon a Houyhnhnm's back; for he was sure that the weakest servant in his house would be able to shake off the strongest Yahoo, or by lying down and rolling on his back, squeeze the brute to death." I answered that "Our horses were trained up, from three or four years old, to the several uses we intended them for: that if any of them proved intolerably vicious, they were employed for carriages; that they were severely beaten, while they were young, for any mischievous. tricks; that the males designed for the common use of riding or draught were generally castrated about two years after their birth, to take down their spirits, and make them more tame and gentle: that they were indeed sensible of rewards and punishments; but his Honor would please to consider that they had not the least tincture of reason, any more than the Yahoos in this country."

It put me to the pains of many circumlocutions to give my master a right idea of what I spoke; for their language does not abound in variety of words, because their wants and passions are fewer than among us. But it is impossible to express his noble resentment at our savage treatment of the Houyhnhnm race; particularly after I had explained the manner and use of castrating horses among us to hinder them from propagating their kind, and to render them more servile. He said, "If it were possible there could be any country where Yahoos alone were endued with reason, they certainly must be the governing animal; because reason in time will always prevail against brutal strength. But considering the frame of our bodies, and especially of mine, he thought no creature of equal bulk was so ill contrived for employing that reason in the common offices of life;" whereupon he desired to know whether "those among whom I lived resembled me or the Yahoos of his country." I assured him that "I was as well shaped as most of my age; but the younger, and the females, were much more soft and tender, and the skins of the latter generally as white as milk." He said, "I differed indeed from other Yahoos, being much more cleanly and not altogether

He

so deformed; but in point of real advantage, he thought I differed for the worse. That my nails were of no use either to my fore or hinder feet: as to my fore-feet, he could not properly call them by that name, for he never observed me to walk upon them, that they were too soft to bear the ground; that I generally went with them uncovered; neither was the covering I sometimes wore on them of the same shape or so strong as that on my feet behind. That I could not walk with any security, for if either of my hinder feet slipped, I must inevitably fall." He then began to find fault with other parts of my body:- "The flatness of my face, the prominence of my nose, mine eyes placed directly in front, so that I could not look on either side without turning my head; that I was not able to feed myself without lifting one of my fore-feet to my mouth, and therefore nature had placed those joints to answer that necessity. knew not what could be the use of those several clefts and divisions in my feet behind,- that these were too soft to bear the hardness and sharpness of stones, without a covering made from the skin of some other brute; that my whole body wanted a fence against heat and cold, which I was forced to put on and off every day with tediousness and trouble. And lastly, that he observed every animal in this country naturally to abhor the Yahoos; whom the weaker avoided, and the stronger drove from them. So that, supposing us to have the gift of reason, he could not see how it were possible to cure that natural antipathy which every creature discovered against us; nor, consequently, how we could tame and render them serviceable. However, he would," as he said, "debate the matter no further; because he was more desirous to know my story, the country where I was born, and the several actions and events of my life before I came hither."

ON

THE STRULDBRUGS

From Gulliver's Travels

NE day, in much good company [among the Luggnaggians] I was asked by a person of quality, "whether I had seen any of their struldbrugs, or immortals?" I said, "I had not; " and desired he would explain to me what he meant by such an appellation, applied to a mortal creature. He told me

that "sometimes, though very rarely, a child happened to be born in a family, with a red circular spot on the forehead, directly over the left eyebrow, which was an infallible mark that it should never die. The spot," as he described it, was about the compass of a silver threepence, but in the course of time grew larger, and changed its color: for at twelve years of age it became green, so continued till five-and-twenty, then turned a deep blue; at five-and-forty it grew coal-black, and as large as an English shilling, but never admitted any further alteration."

After this preface, he gave me a particular account of the struldbrugs among them. He said, "They commonly acted like mortals till about thirty 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 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 opinionated, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, 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 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 harbor of rest to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what 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 with more pity and assistance because they want many bad qualities which abound in others."

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

(1837-)

BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE

ARLY in the eighties, there were living in England six great poets, whose work had given to the later Victorian era of English song a splendor almost comparable to that of the Elizabethan and later Georgian periods. All of these poets but one have now passed away (Rossetti in 1882, Arnold in 1888, Browning in 1889, Tennyson in 1892, and Morris in 1896), leaving Mr. Swinburne in solitary pre-eminence. In this year of the Queen's Jubilee he is left with no possible rival among the living; and stands as the Victorian poet par excellence in a peculiarly literal sense, for he was born in the year of her Majesty's accession to the throne, which makes his sixty years conterminous with the sixty years of her reign. So little has been made public concerning that life, that his personality has remained even more closely veiled than was that of Tennyson; and the facts at the command of the biographer are of the most meagre description. He was the son of a distinguished officer of the Royal Navy; and on his mother's side, descended from the third Earl of Ashburnham. educated at Balliol College, Oxford, but left in 1860 without taking a degree. A journey to Italy followed; made chiefly for the purpose of paying a tribute of affectionate admiration to the old poet Landor, then nearing the close of his days in Florence. The greater part of Mr. Swinburne's life has been spent in England: for a time he lived in London with the Rossetti brothers and Mr. George Meredith; but for many years past his home has been at Wimbledon, where he has kept house with Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton, the distinguished critic and the closest of his friends.

ALGERNON SWINBURNE

He was

Mr. Swinburne made his first appearance in literature as a dramatic poet; and published in rapid succession the four dramas 'Rosamond' (1860), The Queen Mother' (1860), 'Atalanta in Calydon' (1865), and Chastelard' (1865). The first of these works has for XXIV-894