I had, as I before observed, one private pocket, which escaped their search, wherein there was a pair of spectacles (which I sometimes use for the weakness of mine eyes), a pocket perspective, and some other little conveniences; which, being of no consequence to the emperor, I did not think myself bound in honour to discover, and I apprehended they might be lost or spoiled, if I ventured them out of my possession.

suspicion in those days, wearied out by constant requisitions to surrender his fire-arms, and by the repeated annoyances which he had experienced, sent his poker, tongs, and shovel to the arsenal, and took a regular receipt for them from the officer in command,

CHAPTER III.

THE AUTHOR DIVERTS THE EMPEROR, AND HIS NOBILITY OF BOTH SEXES, IN A VERY UNCOMMON MANNER.-THE DIVERSIONS OF THE COURT OF LILLIPUT DESCRIBED.THE AUTHOR HAS HIS LIBERTY GRANTED HIM UPON CERTAIN CONDITIONS.

Y gentleness and good behaviour had gained so far on the emperor and his court, and indeed upon the army and people in general, that I began to conceive hopes of getting my liberty in a short time. I took all possible methods to cultivate this favourable disposition. The natives came, by degrees, to be less apprehensive of any danger from me; I would sometimes lie down, and let five or six of them dance on my head; and at last the boys and girls

would venture to come and play at hide and seek in my hair. I had now made a good progress in understanding and speaking their language. The emperor had a mind one day to entertain me with several of the country shows, wherein they exceeded all nations I have known, both for dexterity and magnificence. I was diverted with none so much as that of the rope-dancers, performed upon a slender white thread extended about two feet, and twelve inches from the ground; upon which I shall desire liberty, with the reader's patience, to enlarge a little.

This diversion is only practised by those persons who are candidates for great employments, and high favour at court. They are trained in this art from their youth, and are not always of noble birth, or liberal education. When a great office is vacant, either by death or disgrace. (which often happens), five or six of those candidates petition the emperor to entertain his majesty and the court with a dance on the rope; and whoever jumps the highest, without falling, succeeds in the office. Very often the chief ministers themselves are commanded to show their skill, and to convince the emperor that they have not lost their faculty. Flimnap, the treasurer, is allowed to cut a caper on

Under the name of Flimnap, Swift designed to hold up Sir Robert Walpole to odium and ridicule, as he had all his life pursued him with the bitterest enmity and the most

the straight rope, at least an inch higher than any other lord in the whole empire. I have seen him do the somerset* several times together, upon a trencher fixed on a rope which is no thicker than a common packthread in England. My friend Reldresal,† principal secretary for private affairs, is, in my opinion, if I am not partial, the second after the treasurer: the rest of the great officers are much upon a par.

These diversions are often attended with fatal accidents, whereof great numbers are on record. I myself have seen two or three candidates break a limb. But the danger is much greater when the ministers themselves are commanded to show their dexterity; for, by contending to excel themselves and their fellows, they strain so far that there is

savage satire both in prose and verse. That Walpole had great faults cannot be denied; that he had great ministerial qualities is equally undeniable. Few political leaders have ever been so lavishly abused, especially by his contemporaries; while his partisans were as extravagant in their praise of him. Indeed, we have to look beyond his own day to form a just estimate of him. Two, who may be said to be almost contemporaries, were, perhaps, the first to do him justice. Johnson, who, though he had in early life written against him, lived to change his opinion, and to give a generous expression of that change. "He was the best minister," said he, "this country ever had, for he would have kept it in perpetual peace if we (meaning the Tories) would have let him." "He was an honourable man," wrote Burke, "and a sound Whig. He was not, as the Jacobites and discontented Whigs of his own time have represented him, a prodigal and corrupt minister. They charged him, in their libels and seditious conversations, as having first reduced corruption to a system. Such was their cant. But he was far from governing by corruption. He governed by party attachments. The profound repose, the equal liberty, the firm protection of just laws during the whole period of his power, were the principal causes of that prosperity which took such rapid strides towards perfection, and which furnished to this nation ability to acquire the military glory which it has since obtained, as well as to bear the burthens, the cause, and consequence of that warlike reputation." That this is an over-partial portraiture must be admitted. Let us pass from it to that of a writer of our own days for a fairer estimate. "Every variety of invective," says Mr. Massey, in his "History of England," "which faction, jealousy, and personal hatred could suggest, was heaped upon his head; but the topics principally relied upon, and which could not be disputed, so far from being a reproach, are the very grounds on which his reputation as a wise and faithful minister must ever rest. That he was not scrupulous in the application of public money is undoubted; but the charge of personal peculation, by which the vindictive rage of his enemies sought his life as well as his honour, not only failed, but is discredited by the fact that he died largely in debt (£50,000). The really vulnerable parts of his character were never attacked. The evil example of his private life, his utter contempt of decorum, the proverbial grossness of his conversation, and the periodical debaucheries of Houghton, which were the talk of the whole country, all passed uncensured."

Somerset or summersault, a gambol of a tumbler, in which he springs up, turns heels over head in the air, and comes down upon his feet.-Orig.

†This is probably meant for James Stanhope, who was appointed Secretary of State shortly after the accession of George I., and was created Earl of Stanhope in 1717. His death was singular. An abusive attack made upon him by the profligate Duke of Wharton so agitated him that he burst a blood-vessel, and died the next day, February 4, 1721.

hardly one of them who has not received a fall, and some of them two or three. I was assured that, a year or two before my arrival, Flimnap would infallibly have broken his neck, if one of the king's cushions, that accidentally lay on the ground, had not weakened the force of his fall.* There is likewise another diversion, which is only shown before the emperor and empress, and first minister, upon particular occasions. The emperor lays on the table three fine silken threads of six inches long; one is blue, the other red, and the third green. These threads are proposed as prizes for those persons whom the emperor has a mind to distinguish by a peculiar mark of his favour. The ceremony is performed in his majesty's great chamber of state, where the candidates are to undergo a trial of dexterity, very different from the former, and such as I have not observed the least resemblance of in any other country of the New or Old World. The emperor holds a stick in his hands, both ends parallel to the horizon, while the candidates advancing, one by one, sometimes leap over the stick, sometimes creep under it, backward and forward, several times, according as the stick is advanced or depressed. Sometimes the emperor holds one end of the stick, and his first minister the other; sometimes the minister has it entirely to himself. Whoever performs his part with most agility, and holds out the longest in leaping and creeping, is rewarded with the blue-coloured silk; the red is given to the next, and the green to the third, which they all wear girt twice round about the middle; and you see few great persons about this court who are not adorned with one of these girdles.†

Sir Walter Scott says that Swift here alludes to the retirement of Walpole from office in 1717, through the successful intrigues of Sunderland and Stanhope, who gained the ear of the King while he was in Hanover. On Walpole's resignation Stanhope became First Lord of the Treasury; till whose death, in 1721, Walpole did not return to office. It is said that the Duchess of Kendal, the King's mistress, was mainly instrumental to his restoration to favoura fact that is indicated by the King's cushion breaking his fall. This lady, Erengard Melesina, Baroness of Schulenburg, exercised a surprising influence over the King, though she was neither handsome nor graceful. Indeed, she was so tall and thin that she was nicknamed the Maypole;" while the Countess of Darlington, another of the King's favourites, was called from her great obesity, the "Elephant and Castle."

These decorations are obviously the three orders of knighthood-the blue being the "Garter," the red the "Bath," and the green the "Thistle." Swift here alludes disparagingly to Walpole, on whom the King conferred the order of the Bath (revived for the occasion) a few days before the prorogation of Parliament in 1724. In 1726 he was installed a Knight of the Garter. On the occasion of the revival of the Order of the Bath, Swift wrote some lines in which the germ of the idea in the text is found—

"And he who'll leap over a stick for the king,

Is qualified best for a dog in a string."

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