great a height into the sea; which would certainly have been a most astonishing object, worthy to have the description of it transmitted to future ages and the comparison of Phaëton was so obvious, that he could not forbear applying it, although I did not much admire the conceit.

The captain having been at Tonquin, was, in his return to England, driven north-eastward to the latitude of 44 degrees, and longitude of 143. But meeting a trade wind two days after I came on board him, we sailed southward a long time, and coasting New Holland, kept our course west-south-west, and then south-south-west, till we doubled the Cape of Good Hope. Our voyage was very prosperous, but I shall not trouble the reader with a journal of it. The captain called in at one or two ports, and sent in his long-boat for provisions and fresh water; but I never went out of the ship till we came into the Downs, which was on the 3rd day of June, 1706, about nine months after my escape. I offered to leave my goods in security for the payment of my freight, but the captain protested he would not receive one farthing. We took a kind leave of each other, and I made him promise he would come and see me at my house in Redriff. I hired a horse and guide for five shillings, which I borrowed of the captain.

As I was on the road, observing the littleness of the houses, the trees, the cattle, and the people, I began to think myself in Lilliput. I was afraid of trampling on every traveller I met, and often called aloud to have them stand out of the way, so that I had like to have gotten one or two broken heads for my impertinence.

When I came to my own house, for which I was forced to inquire, one of the servants opening the door, I bent down to go in (like a goose under a gate), for fear of striking my head. My wife ran out to embrace me, but I stooped lower than her knees, thinking she could otherwise never be able to reach my mouth. My daughter kneeled to ask my blessing, but I could not see her till she arose, having been so long used to stand with my head and eyes erect to above sixty feet; and then I went to take her up with one hand by the waist. I looked down upon the servants, and one or two friends who were in the house, as if they had been pigmies, and I a giant. I told my wife she had been too thrifty, for I found she had starved herself and her daughter to nothing. In short, I behaved myself so unaccountably, that they were all of the captain's opinion when he first saw me, and

concluded I had lost my wits. This I mention as an instance of the great power of habit and prejudice.*

In a little time, I and my family and friends came to a right understanding but my wife protested I should never go to sea any more; although my evil destiny so ordered, that she had not power to hinder me, as the reader may know hereafter. In the meantime, I here conclude the second part of my unfortunate voyages.

The conduct of Gulliver upon his return to his native land is thoroughly consistent, and gives wonderful spirit and liveliness to the narrative. His fear of trampling on those whom he met, his bending down to go in at the door like a goose under a gate, his stooping to embrace his wife, and looking over his daughter, are all admirably humorous. "The sort of reaction," observes Scott, "which is produced upon the traveller's mind when restored to persons of his own size (particularly after his return from the land of giants), greatly reconciles us to a deception maintained with such accuracy and truth of description."

Among the complimentary poems which appeared after the publication of the first edition of the "Travels" was the following by Arbuthnot.

THE LAMENTATION OF GLUMDALCLITCH FOR THE LOSS OF GRILDRIG.

A PASTORAL.

JJAPAN

CHAPTER I.

THE AUTHOR SETS OUT ON HIS THIRD VOYAGE.-IS TAKEN BY PIRATES.-THE MALICE OF A DUTCHMAN.-HIS ARRIVAL AT AN ISLAND. HE IS RECEIVED IN LAPUTA.

HAD not been at home above ten days when Captain William Robinson, a Cornishman, commander of the Hopewell, a stout ship of three hundred tons, came to my house. I had formerly been surgeon of another ship, where he was master, and a fourth part owner, in a voyage to the Levant. He had always treated me more like a brother than an inferior officer; and hearing of my arrival, made me a visit, as I

apprehended only out of friendship, for nothing passed more than what is usual after long absences. But repeating his visits often, expressing

The first two voyages of Gulliver were intended, as we have seen, to satirise the Whig Administration, and the members composing it, especially Sir Robert Walpole; and to com

his joy to find me in good health, asking whether I were now settled for life, adding that he intended a voyage to the East Indies in two months; at last he plainly invited me, though with some apologies, to be surgeon of the ship; that I should have another surgeon under me, besides our two mates; that my salary should be double to the usual pay; and that having experienced my knowledge in sea affairs to be at least equal to his, he would enter into any engagement to follow my advice, as much as if I had shared in the command.

He said so many other obliging things, and I knew him to be so honest a man, that I could not reject his proposal; the thirst I had for seeing the world, notwithstanding my past misfortunes, continuing as violent as ever. The only difficulty that remained was to persuade my wife, whose consent, however, I at last obtained, by the prospect of advantage she proposed to her children.

We set out the 5th day of August, 1706, and arrived at Fort St.

ment on the defects in the political institutions of England. The object of the third voyage, that to Laputa, is to ridicule the mathematicians and philosophers of Swift's day, and in particular the members of the Royal Society, against some of whom he entertained a grudge. The undertaking was a bold one-too bold for even Swift-and accordingly it was neither as successful nor as amusing as the two voyages that preceded it. "His success," Professor de Morgan remarks, perhaps rather too severely," arises from his readers knowing as little of the class of men whom he ridicules as he does himself. It is dangerous to attempt an attack on any knowledge of which the assailant is ignorant, whether in fictitious representation or sober argument." "Swift's learning as a student of belles lettres," says Sir Walter Scott, "and even his extensive knowledge of mankind and of the human heart, were insufficient to guide him in a task which required depth of science, and where, above all, the assistance of Arbuthnot was indispensable to success." But Arbuthnot did not approve of an attack on the Royal Society, of which he was a distinguished member, and so, we may presume, gave the author no assistIt is, therefore, not to be wondered at that Swift at times displays his own ignorance of the principles which he assails. If, however, in this he is justly censurable, we must remember that he did good service in exposing with pitiless severity a class of men who had in his day done much mischief-those quacks who had just sufficient smattering of scientific knowledge to enable them to gull the public with supposed discoveries, which people of every condition in life received with avidity, to their own ruin. "He ridicules," says Lord Orrery, somewhat affectedly, "the vain attempts and irregular productions of those rash men who, like Ixion embracing a cloud instead of a goddess, plagued the world with centaurs, whilst Jupiter, from the embraces of a Juno and an Alcmena, blessed the earth with an Hebe and an Hercules."

ance.

The idea of the flying island would seem to have been borrowed from a romance attributed to the learned Bishop of Llandaff, Dr. Francis Godwin, entitled, "The Man in the Moon, or a Discourse of a Voyage Thither, by Domingo Gonzales," written between 1599 and 1603, and re-published, after his death, at Perth, in 1638—a work which Mr. Hallam, in his “Literary History of Europe," notices for "the natural and veracious tone of the author's lies," and the hippy conjectures of his philosophy. In it we find men of enormous stature and wonderful longevity, as well as a flying engine or chariot, drawn by birds. Swift also appears to have been indebted to Rabelais for some of his illustrations of the pursuits of the pseudo philosophers.