Practical Class 6

The Seventeenth Century: The Age of Revolution (1603-1688)

1. Read the Study Guide on the period, make notes by filling in the table
below. Speak on the main historic events and the developments of
literature in the 17th century.
Dates Events Brief characteristics of the event
1603 the reign of James I James IV of Scotland (1566-1624) succeeded
Elizabeth I and became James I of England
1605 the Gunpowder Plot The aim of the plot was to assassinate the
Protestant King James I.

Upon Elizabeth I’s death, James IV of Scotland (1566-1624) became James I of England.
Even though James I espoused the divine right of kings, his power was limited by Parliament,
a powerful and persistent representative institution.
Even under Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, Parliament was called to vote on the most
arbitrary laws, including tax laws. The House of Commons, also, had and retained the power
of the purse, even when the sovereign packed Commons with favorites. Consequently,
Commons exercised a challenge to the sovereign’s freedom of action. The Parliament kept their
power in England: the sovereign could not make laws without votes of the House of Lords and
Commons. To some extent, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 demonstrated the importance and
power of Parliament. The plot was to assassinate James I, who was brought up as a Protestant,
by blowing up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament.
English sovereigns were also limited by their lack of a standing army. After the union of
the Scottish and English crowns with James I, England had no boundaries to defend; it had no
garrisons, no garrison cities, no fortresses—except on the coast—and no standing army.
Instead, England had a navy, which does not lend itself well to despotism, as it cannot be sent
over land. Without an army or money, it was difficult for the sovereign to be a despot.
Parliament bowed to Elizabeth I and her ministers because, as a Protestant and patriot, she
stood for the wishes of her country. When James I became king, things changed. Parliament
was ready for changes, a fact of which James I seemed unaware. He was a theologian who wrote
on monarchy by divine right. He defied Parliament and the wishes of the aristocracy.
And his son Charles I (b. 1600) persisted with this defiance. Charles I tried to rule
without Parliament, but money matters made him finally call Parliament. They came together
with a list of grievances, and the conflict eventually blew up into a Civil War, the opponents of
which were those who espoused Parliament, the Parliamentarians, and those who supported
Charles I, the Royalists.
 The Parliamentarians opposed Charles I’s economic and political decrees; he had issued
arbitrary decrees, billeted soldiers in civilian land, levied taxes without Parliamentary
consent—infringements of the rights and liberties that Charles I had guaranteed by signing the
constitutional document The Petition of Right (1628). Charles I also tried to make England an
all-Anglican Church, a move that England would not accept. Protestant Dissenters, particularly
Calvinists and Puritans, were outraged; they considered the Anglican Church too close to
Roman Catholicism so wanted to purify it. Some even wanted to do away with church hierarchy,
including bishops, and have Protestantism like that in Scotland. James I had distrusted the
church; he taught his son Charles I to distrust it as well. Although Charles I was, in many ways,
a fine person, he was also a most inept king. He fused his opponents into a strong party. The
Civil War (1642-1641) was fought; intrigue and attempts for peace were unsuccessful. Oliver
Cromwell (b. 1599), the leader of Parliament, became the leader of the country under the
Commonwealth. And Charles I was tried for treason and beheaded (1649).
Cromwell was a complex man: crafty, ruthless, and cruel; generous and noble. He was a
Puritan of liberal policies. He often emerged from a bout of prayer convinced of God’s will and
his own. He made many mistakes and often hated what he did, including placing England
under martial law. He raged against his generals who carried this law to extremes. He wanted
a Parliament, but he couldn’t get it to accede to his wishes, so he dismissed it. In 1658, he died
during thunder and rain: a good end for such a stormy character. Death came to his assistance,
as he feared that he had done England wrong. His son Richard was incapable of ruling the
country, so Cromwell’s generals suggested bringing back the monarchy.
By crowning Charles II (1630-1685)—the son of Charles I—England accepted a
Restoration of the monarchy, but not an absolute monarchy. Charles II was the smartest and
laziest of kings. He secretly wanted to be more absolute than Parliament desired, so he
endorsed the reestablishment of Roman Catholicism in England and made a secret treaty with
France, the Treaty of Dover (1670), through which he received a pension from Louis XIV.
Consequently, when Charles II came into conflict with Parliament, he ruled without it and was
able to do so because of that pension. During his reign, two catastrophes struck London,
catastrophes inherent to its increasing population: the Great Plague of London (1665) and the
Great Fire of London (1666). The bubonic plague killed around 100,000 people. And the Great
Fire destroyed what remained of Medieval London, the narrow alleys and thatched roofed
buildings within the Roman City Wall. Over the course of four days, around 70,000 homes
were destroyed, many of which were demolished to serve as firebreaks. From the remains of
these catastrophes, a new city was built, under the supervision of Robert Hooke (1635-1703).
The architect Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) rebuilt fifty-two churches in the City of
London, a merchant area almost entirely destroyed by fire. His great St Paul’s Cathedral stands
today. He also founded the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge,
heralding the new scientific spirit.
Charles II’s brother James II (1633-1701) came to power in 1685 and was in the Glorious
Revolution of 1688 due in particular to religious conflict. Two years after the Restoration,
Parliament asserted the dominance of the Anglican Church by passing the Act of Uniformity
requiring The Book of Common Prayer and ordained episcopal clergy for worship to be legal.
In 1673, Parliament passed the Test Act requiring all holders of civil and military office to take
the oath of Supremacy and to declare against transubstantiation (the communion bread and
wine becoming the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ), a declaration that required
confirmation in the taking of communion according to Anglican rites.
James II was a devout Roman Catholic. He had two daughters: Mary (1662-1694), who
married William, the Prince of Orange (1650-1702); and Anne (1665-1714), who married Prince
George of Denmark (1653-1708). James II’s first wife, the commoner Anne Hyde, died in 1671.
James II came into power with the assumption that his successor would be Mary, who was
Protestant. After his wife’s death, however, James II married the Roman Catholic Mary of
Modena, an Italian princess. Fear and resentment grew against James II. A revolt under
Charles II’s illegitimate son, James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth (1649-1685) was put down
cruelly. James II refused to abide by the Test Act, appointing Roman Catholics to military
command without requiring them first to take the Supremacy oath. When Parliament criticized
this behavior, James II dismissed Parliament, ordering it never to meet again during his reign.
In 1688, James II’s wife gave birth to James Francis Edward (d. 1766), who would likely entail
a Roman Catholic succession. A conspiracy arose that led to Mary’s husband, William of
Orange’s, being invited to invade England and overthrow Charles II. After losing support of
his army and nobility, Charles II fled to France.
One year previously, Sir Isaac Newton’s (1632-1727) Philosophia Naturalis
Principia Mathematica marked an intellectual revolution sparked by the Reformation and
the Protestant affirmation of individual conscience over authority. This authority of the
individual was further promoted by the disappearance of the old guild system—the guild being
an association of merchants that straitjacketed industry—that led to economic individualism,
with the individual demanding to be left alone in working out their economic salvation. This
economic individualism, combined with the growing religious individualism, promoted the
authority of the individual against the paternalism of state, a sign of which proved the Glorious
Revolution.
Thomas Hobbes’s (1588-1679) Leviathan (1651) delineated the principles of
authority in state through the individual’s ceding power to sovereign authority in order to
obtain protection and peace; in effect, it delineated not the divine right of kings but a social
contract. Reason, rather than revelation or paternalistic authority, became the standard of
knowledge and guiding principles.
Francis Bacon (1561-1621) exhorted building knowledge through sense perception
and from experience derived from the application of those senses, exhorted a knowledge built
on concrete particulars and facts. Now, knowledge was power. Newton’s Principia
demonstrated this power in its laws, of motion, universal gravitation, and planetary motion;
laws that prepared for individuals acquiring greater power (through understanding) over their
environment and themselves.
Newton epitomized the spirit of the age. And much of its negotiations—even
vacillations—between central authority and individual rights and powers played out in the age’s
poetry and drama. This age was rich in various schools of poetry.
Traditional poets emulated the elaborate style of Spenser. John Milton was influenced
by Spenser’s moral approach to writing and poetry and by his patriotic feeling. And Milton
would produce the next great English epic, Paradise Lost. Other poets, like Ben Jonson, reacted
against Spenser’s style. Jonson took as his guide Greek and Roman poetry, characterized by its
directness, precision, balance, and restraint. He inspired a group of poets known as the “Sons
of Ben,” including Robert Herrick; these poets were also called Cavalier Poets. And still other
poets wrote in a metaphysical strain, using irregular meter, unusual verse forms, and writing
in intense, dramatic, and complex verse. Metaphysical poets, like George Herbert and Andrew
Marvell, wrote with wit and irony, using unusual metaphors. Tension fueled the new
metaphysical poetry, particularly John Donne’s (1572-1631) with its search for an absolute
that resolves the disparate many, a search expressed through paradoxes, conceits, and
antitheses displaying individual reason and intellect.
Late Jacobean and Caroline drama, facing a decline in popularity due to censorship and
Puritan restrictions, appealed to the more private inclinations and desires of courtiers and
intellectuals in plays with increasingly violent, risqué, and cynical themes, the latter epitomized
in Ben Jonson’s comedies, including The Alchemist and Volpone (1606). Courtly bent also
gave rise to heroic drama with its epic subject matter of national import, and its verse form of
the heroic couplet, that is, closed couplets in iambic pentameter. John Dryden (1631-1700)
not only coined the term but also epitomized it in such plays as All for Love, or the World Well
Lost (1677). And court masques, opulent spectacles, directly appealed to individuals’ senses,
even as they ordered them through art itself, as did Jonson’s The Vision of Delight (1617) and
The Gypsies Metamorphosed (1621).
The most important publication of the age pointed to the reconciliation of individual
conscience with ultimate authority. The authorized King James Bible (1611), including the
Old Testament, New Testament, and Apocrypha, enriched the English language and thought
in a way that still resonates. John Milton would defend free thought and free expression—even
to the point of requiring the execution of divinely-appointed kings—in his prose tracts and
treatises. And when the Restoration destroyed his vision of liberty and made him an exile,
Milton appealed to the Spirit that inspired biblical prophets to illuminate his own darkness so
that he himself might justify the ways of God to men in his great epic Paradise Lost (1667,
1674).

(Source: British Literature I: Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century and Neoclassicism. Bonnie J. Robinson,
Laura J. Getty, eds. University of North Georgia Press Dahlonega, Georgia, 2018,
pp. 1415-1419)
2. Read the facts of John Donne’s biography. Speak on his life and literary
career.
JOHN DONNE
(1572-1631)
John Donne was born into a family of devout Roman Catholics at a time when Roman
Catholics were greatly persecuted in England. His mother, Elizabeth, came from a family
related to Thomas More. One of Donne’s uncles, who was a Jesuit, was imprisoned, sentenced
to death, and exiled for heading a clandestine mission in England. Donne’s brother Henry was
arrested for harboring a priest; Henry died of the plague in Newgate Prison. In effect, Donne
was a member of a minority group. His family was wealthy enough to afford Donne the Grand
Tour, but he was hindered by his religious faith.
He was sent to Oxford at the age of eleven not because he was a child prodigy but because
graduates at sixteen were supposed to pledge allegiance to the English monarch rather than
the Pope. He matriculated at Hart Hall, Oxford but was unable to earn a law degree because he
was Roman Catholic. He also probably studied at Cambridge then traveled abroad. Upon
returning to London, Donne studied law, the classics, divinity, and languages. He also lived
somewhat as a libertine, a young man around town, frequenting plays and admiring women.
And he wrote verses, sonnets, Ovidian elegies to love, satires that challenged literary tradition
and religious authority, and essays dealing with paradoxes and problems.
As a writer, Donne was both unique and original. He was a seeker, always accepting and
rejecting ideas. He took a skeptical approach to reality, using awkward meter and a jumble of
allusions and objects in his poems. Instead of perpetuating what he felt was the trite blandness
of the typical Elizabethan metaphor in which a lady was described as a “fair flower,” her lips
like rubies and her hair like gold, Donne used striking images and the metaphysical conceit,
that is, a less ornamental but still often extravagant metaphor which points out an unusual
parallel between what are usually highly dissimilar elements. He forces his readers to accept
his conceits by surprising them with their aptness or causing them to see new details in an
accepted analogy. Donne’s poems include a series of heterogeneous objects yoked masterfully,
even violently, together. For he had an intellectual avidity, a hunger for the Absolute that would
resolve all (often conflicting) particulars. For a time, love seemed to be that Absolute, that
would make his “circle just” (“A Valediction Forbidding Mourning,” 35).
In 1597, Donne was appointed secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton (1540-1617), the keeper
of the seal; he also served as a member of parliament. His career looked promising; he was a
world traveler, and a soldier who fought with Sir Walter Raleigh in the expeditions to Cadiz
and the Azores. He fell in love with Anne More, the seventeen-year-old niece of Lord Egerton,
and they secretly married. Their marriage was illegal, though, and Anne’s father, Sir George
More, had Donne imprisoned. The marriage was later sanctioned, but Donne’s position in
Egerton’s service was lost and his career in pieces.
Donne (re)pieced together a career by writing anti-Catholic treatises, all the while
hoping for political preferment. He was befriended by Sir Robert Drury, whom he accompanied
to the Continent and who allowed Donne’s family a home on the Drury estate. He was offered
a job as a benefice for the church, which he refused. Realizing that his only path to advancement
lay in the Church of England, Donne converted to Anglicanism. Anne Donne died in 1617;
Donne was ordained as a priest and became Dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral in 1621. He was a
powerful preacher at a time when sermons were given extraordinary attention. Besides
sermons, Donne wrote translations, elegies, satires, and holy sonnets devoted to God, the great
Absolute that translates “all our scattered leaves” into an open book, made perfect before God
(Meditation 17).
Suffering from the fever that ultimately killed him, Donne preached his own funeral
sermon. He also had his portrait taken, dressed in a shroud: he made a masterpiece of death.
3. Get ready to read John Donne’s poems expressively, and to interprete one
of the poems using questions after the selection.
The Indifferent (1633)
by John Donne
I CAN love both fair and brown;
Her whom abundance melts, and her whom want betrays;
Her who loves loneness best, and her who masks and plays;
Her whom the country form’d, and whom the town;
Her who believes, and her who tries;
Her who still weeps with spongy eyes,
And her who is dry cork, and never cries.
I can love her, and her, and you, and you;
I can love any, so she be not true.

Will no other vice content you?

Will it not serve your turn to do as did your mothers?
Or have you all old vices spent, and now would find out others?
Or doth a fear that men are true torment you?
O we are not, be not you so;
Let me—and do you—twenty know;
Rob me, but bind me not, and let me go.
Must I, who came to travel thorough you,
Grow your fix’d subject, because you are true?

Venus heard me sigh this song;

And by love’s sweetest part, variety, she swore,
She heard not this till now; and that it should be so no more.
She went, examined, and return’d ere long,
And said, “Alas! some two or three
Poor heretics in love there be,
Which think to stablish dangerous constancy.
But I have told them, ‘Since you will be true,
You shall be true to them who’re false to you.’”
Break of Day (1633)
by John Donne
’TIS true, ’tis day; what though it be?
O, wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise because ’tis light?
Did we lie down because ’twas night?
Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither,
Should in despite of light keep us together.

Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;

If it could speak as well as spy,
This were the worst that it could say,
That being well I fain would stay,
And that I loved my heart and honour so
That I would not from him, that had them, go.

Must business thee from hence remove?

O! that’s the worst disease of love,
The poor, the foul, the false, love can
 Admit, but not the busied man.
He which hath business, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.
The Flea (1633)
by John Donne
Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two;
And this, alas! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we’re met,
And cloister’d in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck’d from thee?
Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou
Find’st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
’Tis true; then learn how false fears be;
Just so much honour, when thou yield’st to me,
Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

1. How, if at all, can readers reconcile Donne’s love poems with his religious poems? Do his love
poems contain religious, or spiritual, elements?
2. How, if at all, do Donne’s poems reconcile a cynical realization of the many, or life’s
heterogeneity, with his thirst for the Absolute, or the one? Do his poems offer partial solutions
to his dilemma?
3. How do Donne’s poems compare with Elizabethan love poetry? How does Donne’s poetic style
compare with the Elizabethans’?

(Source: British Literature I: Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century and Neoclassicism. Bonnie J. Robinson,
Laura J. Getty, eds. University of North Georgia Press Dahlonega, Georgia, 2018,
pp. 1420-1426)
Neoclassicism and the Eighteenth Century
4. Read the information about the Enlightenment and comment on its ideas
(“The 18th century / The Enlightenment”, http://classic-english-
literature.blogspot.com/2008/02/18th-century-enlightenment.html).

5. Read the Study Guide on the 18th-century literature, jot down the most
prominent writers f the period, and their works.
Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) Book IV, Ch. 11 discusses
sensations—our own being and intuition—and God as equaling reason (and vice versa).
Influenced by Locke, David Hume (1711-1776) claimed that true history was made by the
individual’s sensation of the particular. Human ideas of the world originated in their sensations
of the world. Both he and Locke attacked the concept of innate ideas (ideas with which one is
born) that predetermine individual character. Locke, the major English philosopher of the
eighteenth century, validated the voice of experience and the acquisition of knowledge through
sensation. He suggested that humans could get to God through experience and through reason.
The state, government, politics, and human interactions all could be understood from a
human—rather than divine—and rational perspective.
The world adjusted to human measures and measurement, to the assertion (or
reassertion) of classic virtues now seen as respect for rules and order. Neoclassical poetry
particularly asserted the rules of balance, proportion, and restraint in both style—the heroic
couplet—and subject.
The ascendancy of science and the scientific method heralded by Newton helped make
the Royal Society an arbiter of style, that is, of prose style. The Royal Society had given its
imprimatur to Newton’s Principia and, from its beginning through the eighteenth century,
promoted the language of its members for their plain, unadorned style in recording (and
accumulating) observable facts. The great achievement in prose, the novel, developed
throughout the eighteenth century.
It was seen as novel, that is, a new species of writing. Extended prose fiction developed
as a genre in opposition to traditional genres which dealt with authority figures. Novels
immersed characters from all classes in social experiences, quite otherwise than tragedy, epic,
religious seventeenth-century poetry, or psalms. The novel elevated the realistic (or literal) and
incorporated literal forms of discourse; consequently, the novel would include letters,
household bills, contracts, depositions, and more (discourses that were excluded from
traditional genres like the epic).
The novel began to take form about the individual, not the human being as a type. As a
result of sensation—through which individuals acquire experience—the genre began to develop
on its own as a way to advance a concept of character different from Aristotle’s (which was that
character was coherent and consistent).
This different concept infected other genres; for example, in drama, George Lillo (1691-
1739) justified tragedy as melodrama (a mixture of genres) by explaining the need to expand
Aristotle’s notion of tragic character in which only the highest and most noble character could
evoke terror and pity in a fall. What became antithetical to tragedy was a new concept of place
(as opposed to the classical unity of place).
Movement in all forms became central to the novel. Experience is discovered in other
places, so early eighteenth century novels moved from place to place. They incorporated
travelogues. And they connected with other classes (not just the aristocratic) and cultures.
The novel was only one new kind of writing that developed throughout this century;
others included the periodical essay, published in such vehicles as The Spectator and The
Tattler; and the mock-heroic/anti-epic, involving the reworking and redefining of tragedy as a
low form. A whole body of genres—drama, prose, and poetry—underwent revision, or
innovation. One way to account for this greater variety—particularly with the development of
the novel—and the relationship that these genres held to one another, is by considering
audience.
After the Glorious Revolution, certain changes occurred in audience, in the reading
public. One difference occurred through the way that printing was diffused in periodicals. In
the eighteenth century, newspapers and dailies proliferated, with journalism establishing itself
as a social and political force. Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe gained influence through their
writing. Defoe probably influenced English involvement in the War of the Spanish Succession,
while Swift’s The Conduct of the Allies (1711) certainly influenced demand for the war to end.
Scientific observation, an appeal to the senses, and more coalesced in the concept of the
spectator. Writers began to take on spectator roles and postures, acquiring a new manner of
speaking to and conversing with an audience, their readers.
That relation offered a reciprocal satisfaction of desires, with the writer having a
benevolent interest in entertaining, informing, and educating readers, and was understood in
the diffusion of information about politics, manners, fictions, and literature. A whole range of
subject matter came to be discussed in print between authors and an audience conceived as a
literate, though not a learned, group.
And writing became concerned with education—particularly women’s education—and
principled reason. The success of writers like Samuel Johnson, Swift, and Defoe attested to an
audience separate from the Court, Church, and University, an audience that would
reciprocally—and financially—support writers, thus freeing them from the patronage system.
Writers could now express diverse points of view and opinions independent of high-born
and wealthy patrons, and ranging between parties; they could explore individual psychology,
consciousness, and conscience. Aphra Behn, one of the first writers to live by the pen, allied
herself with Tory attacks on slavery and the cult of the noble savage which became the fashion
through her prose work Oroonoko. Though Swift began as a Whig, war and war-profiteers
turned his sympathies towards the Tories. In Gulliver’s Travels, Swift would ferociously attack
human nature in general and the Whigs in particular. Deism reached through Reason involved
a conflict between those who believed in a revealed religion and those who believed in reason
as a way to have religion. Defoe would explore the Tory Dissenter’s conscience in his
contributions to the developing novel genre. The heroine of his Moll Flanders is immersed in
a multiplicity of sensations—suffering, humor, love, death, goodness, and wickedness—and
demonstrates how wickedness does not fate one to damnation, does not prevent penitence and
redemption. The atomism, individualism, multiplicity, and diversity that began in the
seventeenth century thus realized its literary form in the eighteenth-century novel.
(Source: British Literature I: Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century and Neoclassicism. Bonnie J. Robinson,
Laura J. Getty, eds. University of North Georgia Press Dahlonega, Georgia, 2018,
pp. 2120-2124)

6. Read the information about life and works of Jonathan Swift. Speak on
his most important literary works. Read through the Study Guide.
JONATHAN SWIFT
(1667-1745)
Born in Dublin posthumously to an Anglican father Jonathan Swift and Anglican
mother, Jonathan Swift depended on the generosity of his uncle for both his upbringing and
education. He studied at Kilkenny School and then at Trinity College, Dublin, from which he
graduated in 1689. After a frustratingly unproductive stint in England as personal secretary to
Sir William Temple (1628-1699), a family friend and diplomat with connections to the Royal
Court, Swift returned to Ireland where he was ordained as an Anglican priest. After an
appointment to a church in Northern Ireland, followed by again unproductive work in England
with Temple and then with Charles Berkeley, 2nd Earl of Berkeley (1649-1710), Swift took an
ecclesiastical living near Dublin. He also began a long, probably platonic relationship with a
woman named Esther Johnson (1681-1728) with whom he lived in close emotional contact for
the rest of her life. The letters he wrote her, collected in Journal to Stella (1766), give an
intimate view of Swift’s political and religious activities and friendships.
At Temple’s encouragement, Swift wrote laudatory poetry. On his own initiative, he
wrote satire, beginning with A Tale of a Tub (1704) which he published anonymously, a satire
on excesses in religion, politics, human pride, literature, science—and much else. Swift’s hopes
for his church career were tied to politics, and he eventually allied himself with the Tory party
and its resistance to Dissenters and nonconformists. On their behalf, Swift wrote propagandist
satire in The Examiner. He became particularly close to the activities and political ambitions
of Robert Harley and Henry St. John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, the most prominent Tory
rulers. Their debacle and loss of power cost Swift a hoped-for Bishopric in the English Church.
Queen Anne, personally offended by A Tale of a Tub which she thought obscene, effectively
exiled Swift to Ireland by appointing him as the Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin.
His political and moral acumen persisted strong, leading him to write the Drapier’s
Letters to the People of Ireland (1724-35), pamphlets against British corruption and
exploitation of the Irish economy. These pamphlets made Swift a hero to the Irish. Although
published anonymously, the Irish populace knew their writer’s identity; despite charges of
sedition against the writer and offers of reward for identifying the writer, the Irish never
informed against Swift. He further vilified British exploitation of Irish resources in A Modest
Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People of Ireland from Being a Burden to Their
Parents (1729). It offers a literal rendition of this exploitation by suggesting the Irish sell their
children as food to the wealthy.
His Gulliver’s Travels (1726) vilified humankind for its misdirected pride and various
atrocities against humanity. The force, range, and bitterness of this text’s indictment against
humans who wrongly assume their own rationality strike home even today. Generations of
critics resisted its satire, considering it the work of a madman. Indeed, Swift did decline into
senility and dependency (Samuel Johnson later claimed that Swift in this condition was
displayed as an object of entertainment). Gulliver’s Travels’ prose style shifts markedly among
its four books, suggesting a possible mental incoherence. The beauties and wonders of Lilliput
are pushed aside in Brobdingnag, with its stinking giants, and Houyhnhnm land, with the
vicious and howling Yahoos. But Swift had a very serious point to make about human nature,
one that he seemed to want to drive home (and against which his readers, and parishioners,
may have been dully resistant). So he was artful and deft but also heavy-handed and blunt. By
having the Houyhnhnms (“superior” horses) reject Gulliver for being a complete Yahoo
(humans), Swift shows that humans are not rational animals but only capable of rationality.
The distinction, and its consequences, was too important for Swift not to want to drive it home
however he could. After his death, Swift was buried near Esther Johnson in St. Patrick’s.
(Source: British Literature I: Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century and Neoclassicism. Bonnie J. Robinson,
Laura J. Getty, eds. University of North Georgia Press Dahlonega, Georgia, 2018,
pp. 2486-2487)

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Gulliver’s Travels, a misanthropic satire of humanity, was written in 1726 by Jonathan Swift.
Like many other authors, Swift uses the journey as the backdrop for his satire. He invents a second
author, Captain Lemuel Gulliver, who narrates and speaks directly to the reader from his own
experience. The original title of Swift’s novel was Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In
Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships.
Gulliver’s name probably is an allusion to King Lemuel of Proverbs 31, who was a weak-minded
prophet. Swift may also be connecting his character to a common mule, a half-ass, half-horse animal
that is known for being stubborn and stupid. A gull is a person who is easily fooled or gullible. At the
same time, Gulliver represents the everyman with his average intelligence and general good humor. The
reader is able to identify with him and join him in his travels.
Even though Swift constantly alludes to events that were happening while he was alive, the story
rings true today, bringing light to our own societal issues and to patterns of human nature. Throughout
Gulliver's voyages, Swift goes to great lengths to scrutinize, parody, and satire various aspects of human,
and often English, society. He does this in two ways, first by comparing humanity's ways with those of
cultures decidedly beneath it (such as the Yahoos and the Lilliputians); second, by comparing humanity
with cultures that are far superior in intellect and political ideals (such as the Houyhnhnms).
Gulliver embarks on four distinct journeys, each of which begins with a shipwreck and ends with
either a daring escape or a congenial decision that it is time for Gulliver to leave. The societies Gulliver
comes into contact with help him (and the reader) to examine his own culture more closely. When
“Gulliver’s Travels” was published in 1726, this examination of English culture was not appreciated. The
novel was highly controversial because of the light in which it presented humanity-and more
specifically, the English. When the novel was first published, Swift's identity was hidden because of the
novel's volatile nature. The people who saw that the book made it into print also cut out a great deal of
the most politically controversial sections, about which Swift became extremely frustrated. In a letter
written under the pseudonym of Gulliver, Swift shows his annoyance with the edits made to his novel
without his consent: “I hope you will be ready to own publicly,” he writes, “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 . . . . But I do not remember I gave you power to consent that anything should be
omitted, and much less that anything should be inserted.” The version of the novel read today is
complete.
 Part of what has helped Gulliver’s Travels to persevere since Swift’s time has been its appeal to
people of all ages. The book has been read by countless children and has been made into more than one
children’s movie. At the same time, it has been widely critiqued and studied by literary scholars and
critics, politicians, and philosophers. In addition, much like the works of Shakespeare, the comedy of
the novel has something for people of all intellectual levels, from toilet humor to highbrow satires of
political processes and of ideas.
7. Read the selected chapters from “Gulliver’s Travels” by Jonathan Swift. Answer
the questions after the chapters and get ready for literary analysis.
GULLIVER’S TRAVELS
into several
REMOTE NATIONS OF THE WORLD
BY JONATHAN SWIFT, D.D.,
DEAN OF ST. PATRICK’S, DUBLIN.
[First published in 1726–7.]

Part I, Chapter 1
CHAPTER I.
The author gives some account of himself and family. His first inducements to
travel. He is shipwrecked, and swims for his life. Gets safe on shore 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 College in Cambridge at fourteen years old, where I resided three years, and applied myself
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. My father now and then sending me small sums of money, I laid
them out in learning navigation, and other parts of the mathematics, 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: there I studied
physic 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 Pannel, commander; with whom I continued three years and
a half, making a voyage or two into the Levant, 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 Jewry; and being advised to alter my condition,
I married Mrs. Mary Burton, second daughter to Mr. Edmund Burton, hosier, in Newgate-street, with
whom I received four hundred pounds for a portion.
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 Jewry to Fetter Lane, and from thence
to Wapping, 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 4, 1699, and our voyage was at first 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. 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. On the 5th of November, which was the
beginning of summer in those parts, the weather being very hazy, the seamen spied a rock within half a
cable’s 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, 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; and by this time the storm was much abated. The declivity 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 myself much
inclined to sleep. I lay down on the grass, which was very short and soft, where I slept sounder than
ever I remembered to have done in my life, and, as I reckoned, about 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 ligatures across my body, from
my arm-pits to my thighs. I could only look upwards; the sun began to grow hot, and the light offended
my 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 my 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, cried out in a shrill but distinct voice, Hekinah
degul: the others repeated the same words several times, but then I 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 a 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 volley larger than the first, and some of them attempted with spears to stick me in
the sides; but by good luck I had on a buff jerkin, which they could not pierce. I thought it the most
prudent method to lie still, and my design 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 army 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 I heard, I knew their numbers increased; and about four yards from me,
over against my right ear, I heard a knocking for above an hour, like that of 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 cried 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 that 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 that held up his
train, 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 periods of threatenings,
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 my 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 showing my impatience (perhaps
against the strict rules of decency) by putting my finger frequently to 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 a 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 intelligence 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 ate them by two or three at a mouthful, and took three loaves at a
time, about the bigness of musket bullets. They supplied me as fast as they could, showing 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, then rolled it towards my
hand, and beat out the top; I drank it off at a draught, which I might well do, for it did not hold 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 warning the people below to stand out of the way, crying aloud, Borach
mevolah; and when they saw the vessels in the air, there was a 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 the ground. But the remembrance of
what I had felt, which probably might not be the worst they could do, and the promise of honour I made
them—for so I interpreted my submissive behaviour—soon drove out these imaginations. Besides, I
now considered myself as bound by the laws of hospitality, to a people who had treated me with so much
expense and magnificence. However, in my thoughts I could not sufficiently wonder at the intrepidity
of these diminutive mortals, who durst venture to mount and walk upon my body, while one of my
hands was at liberty, without trembling at the very sight of so prodigious a creature as I must appear to
them. After some time, when they observed that I made no more demands for meat, there appeared
before me a person of high rank from his imperial majesty. His excellency, having mounted on the small
of my right leg, advanced forwards up to my face, with about a dozen of his retinue; and producing his
credentials under the signet royal, which he applied close to my eyes, spoke about ten minutes without
any signs of anger, but with a kind of determinate resolution, often pointing forwards, which, as I
afterwards found, was towards the capital city, about half a mile distant; whither it was agreed by his
majesty in council that I must be conveyed. I answered in few words, but to no purpose, and made a
sign with my hand that was loose, putting it to the other (but over his excellency’s head for fear of
hurting him or his train) and then to my own head and body, to signify that I desired my liberty. It
appeared that he understood me well enough, for he shook his head by way of disapprobation, and held
his hand in a posture to show that I must be carried as a prisoner. However, he made other signs to let
me understand that I should have meat and drink enough, and very good treatment. Whereupon I once
more thought of attempting to break my bonds; but again, when I felt the smart of their arrows upon
my face and hands, which were all in blisters, and many of the darts still sticking in them, and observing
likewise that the number of my enemies increased, I gave tokens to let them know that they might do
with me what they pleased. Upon this, the hurgo and his train withdrew, with much civility and
cheerful countenances. Soon after I heard a general shout, with frequent repetitions of the
words Peplom selan; and I felt great numbers of people on my left side relaxing the cords to such a
degree, that I was able to turn upon my right, and to ease myself with making water; which I very
plentifully did, to the great astonishment of the people; who, conjecturing by my motion what I was
going to do, immediately opened to the right and left on that side, to avoid the torrent, which fell with
such noise and violence from me. But before this, they had daubed my face and both my hands with a
sort of ointment, very pleasant to the smell, which, in a few minutes, removed all the smart of their
arrows. These circumstances, added to the refreshment I had received by their victuals and drink,
which were very nourishing, disposed me to sleep. I slept about eight hours, as I was afterwards
assured; and it was no wonder, for the physicians, by the emperor’s order, had mingled a sleepy potion
in the hogsheads of wine.
 It seems, that upon the first moment I was discovered sleeping on the ground, after my landing,
the emperor had early notice of it by an express; and determined in council, that I should be tied in the
manner I have related, (which was done in the night while I slept;) that plenty of meat and drink should
be sent to me, and a machine prepared to carry me to the capital city.
This resolution perhaps may appear very bold and dangerous, and I am confident would not be
imitated by any prince in Europe on the like occasion. However, in my opinion, it was extremely
prudent, as well as generous: for, supposing these people had endeavoured to kill me with their spears
and arrows, while I was asleep, I should certainly have awaked with the first sense of smart, which might
so far have roused my rage and strength, as to have enabled me to break the strings wherewith I was
tied; after which, as they were not able to make resistance, so they could expect no mercy.
These people are most excellent mathematicians, and arrived to a great perfection in mechanics,
by the countenance and encouragement of the emperor, who is a renowned patron of learning. This
prince has several machines fixed on wheels, for the carriage of trees and other great weights. He often
builds his largest men of war, whereof some are nine feet long, in the woods where the timber grows,
and has them carried on these engines three or four hundred yards to the sea. Five hundred carpenters
and engineers were immediately set at work to prepare the greatest engine they had. It was a frame of
wood raised three inches from the ground, about seven feet long, and four wide, moving upon twenty-
two wheels. The shout I heard was upon the arrival of this engine, which, it seems, set out in four hours
after my landing. It was brought parallel to me, as I lay. But the principal difficulty was to raise and
place me in this vehicle. Eighty poles, each of one foot high, were erected for this purpose, and very
strong cords, of the bigness of packthread, were fastened by hooks to many bandages, which the
workmen had girt round my neck, my hands, my body, and my legs. Nine hundred of the strongest men
were employed to draw up these cords, by many pulleys fastened on the poles; and thus, in less than
three hours, I was raised and slung into the engine, and there tied fast. All this I was told; for, while the
operation was performing, I lay in a profound sleep, by the force of that soporiferous medicine infused
into my liquor. Fifteen hundred of the emperor’s largest horses, each about four inches and a half high,
were employed to draw me towards the metropolis, which, as I said, was half a mile distant.
About four hours after we began our journey, I awaked by a very ridiculous accident; for the
carriage being stopped a while, to adjust something that was out of order, two or three of the young
natives had the curiosity to see how I looked when I was asleep; they climbed up into the engine, and
advancing very softly to my face, one of them, an officer in the guards, put the sharp end of his half-pike
a good way up into my left nostril, which tickled my nose like a straw, and made me sneeze violently;
whereupon they stole off unperceived, and it was three weeks before I knew the cause of my waking so
suddenly. We made a long march the remaining part of the day, and, rested at night with five hundred
guards on each side of me, half with torches, and half with bows and arrows, ready to shoot me if I
should offer to stir. The next morning at sun-rise we continued our march, and arrived within two
hundred yards of the city gates about noon. The emperor, and all his court, came out to meet us; but
his great officers would by no means suffer his majesty to endanger his person by mounting on my body.
At the place where the carriage stopped there stood an ancient temple, esteemed to be the largest in the
whole kingdom; which, having been polluted some years before by an unnatural murder, was, according
to the zeal of those people, looked upon as profane, and therefore had been applied to common use, and
all the ornaments and furniture carried away. In this edifice it was determined I should lodge. The
great gate fronting to the north was about four feet high, and almost two feet wide, through which I
could easily creep. On each side of the gate was a small window, not above six inches from the ground:
into that on the left side, the king’s smith conveyed fourscore and eleven chains, like those that hang to
a lady’s watch in Europe, and almost as large, which were locked to my left leg with six-and-thirty
padlocks. Over against this temple, on the other side of the great highway, at twenty feet distance, there
was a turret at least five feet high. Here the emperor ascended, with many principal lords of his court,
to have an opportunity of viewing me, as I was told, for I could not see them. It was reckoned that above
a hundred thousand inhabitants came out of the town upon the same errand; and, in spite of my guards,
I believe there could not be fewer than ten thousand at several times, who mounted my body by the help
of ladders. But a proclamation was soon issued, to forbid it upon pain of death. When the workmen
found it was impossible for me to break loose, they cut all the strings that bound me; whereupon I rose
up, with as melancholy a disposition as ever I had in my life. But the noise and astonishment of the
people, at seeing me rise and walk, are not to be expressed. The chains that held my left leg were about
two yards long, and gave me not only the liberty of walking backwards and forwards in a semicircle, but,
being fixed within four inches of the gate, allowed me to creep in, and lie at my full length in the temple.
 Part I, Chapter 2
CHAPTER II.
The emperor of Lilliput, attended by several of the nobility, comes to see the author
in his confinement. The emperor’s person and habit described. Learned men
appointed to teach the author their language. He gains favour by his mild
disposition. His pockets are searched, and his sword and pistols taken from him.
When I found myself on my feet, I looked about me, and must confess I never beheld a more
entertaining prospect. The country around appeared like a continued garden, and the enclosed fields,
which were generally forty feet square, resembled so many beds of flowers. These fields were
intermingled with woods of half a stang, and the tallest trees, as I could judge, appeared to be seven feet
high. I viewed the town on my left hand, which looked like the painted scene of a city in a theatre.
I had been for some hours extremely pressed by the necessities of nature; which was no wonder,
it being almost two days since I had last disburdened myself. I was under great difficulties between
urgency and shame. The best expedient I could think of, was to creep into my house, which I accordingly
did; and shutting the gate after me, I went as far as the length of my chain would suffer, and discharged
my body of that uneasy load. But this was the only time I was ever guilty of so uncleanly an action; for
which I cannot but hope the candid reader will give some allowance, after he has maturely and
impartially considered my case, and the distress I was in. From this time my constant practice was, as
soon as I rose, to perform that business in open air, at the full extent of my chain; and due care was
taken every morning before company came, that the offensive matter should be carried off in wheel-
barrows, by two servants appointed for that purpose. I would not have dwelt so long upon a
circumstance that, perhaps, at first sight, may appear not very momentous, if I had not thought it
necessary to justify my character, in point of cleanliness, to the world; which, I am told, some of my
maligners have been pleased, upon this and other occasions, to call in question.
When this adventure was at an end, I came back out of my house, having occasion for fresh
air. The emperor was already descended from the tower, and advancing on horseback towards me,
which had like to have cost him dear; for the beast, though very well trained, yet wholly unused to such
a sight, which appeared as if a mountain moved before him, reared up on its hinder feet: but that prince,
who is an excellent horseman, kept his seat, till his attendants ran in, and held the bridle, while his
majesty had time to dismount. When he alighted, he surveyed me round with great admiration; but
kept beyond the length of my chain. He ordered his cooks and butlers, who were already prepared, to
give me victuals and drink, which they pushed forward in a sort of vehicles upon wheels, till I could
reach them. I took these vehicles and soon emptied them all; twenty of them were filled with meat, and
ten with liquor; each of the former afforded me two or three good mouthfuls; and I emptied the liquor
of ten vessels, which was contained in earthen vials, into one vehicle, drinking it off at a draught; and
so I did with the rest. The empress, and young princes of the blood of both sexes, attended by many
ladies, sat at some distance in their chairs; but upon the accident that happened to the emperor’s horse,
they alighted, and came near his person, which I am now going to describe. He is taller by almost the
breadth of my nail, than any of his court; which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders. His
features are strong and masculine, with an Austrian lip and arched nose, his complexion olive, his
countenance erect, his body and limbs well proportioned, all his motions graceful, and his deportment
majestic. He was then past his prime, being twenty-eight years and three quarters old, of which he had
reigned about seven in great felicity, and generally victorious. For the better convenience of beholding
him, I lay on my side, so that my face was parallel to his, and he stood but three yards off: however, I
have had him since many times in my hand, and therefore cannot be deceived in the description. His
dress was very plain and simple, and the fashion of it between the Asiatic and the European; but he had
on his head a light helmet of gold, adorned with jewels, and a plume on the crest. He held his sword
drawn in his hand to defend himself, if I should happen to break loose; it was almost three inches long;
the hilt and scabbard were gold enriched with diamonds. His voice was shrill, but very clear and
articulate; and I could distinctly hear it when I stood up. The ladies and courtiers were all most
magnificently clad; so that the spot they stood upon seemed to resemble a petticoat spread upon the
ground, embroidered with figures of gold and silver. His imperial majesty spoke often to me, and I
returned answers: but neither of us could understand a syllable. There were several of his priests and
lawyers present (as I conjectured by their habits), who were commanded to address themselves to me;
and I spoke to them in as many languages as I had the least smattering of, which were High and Low
Dutch, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and Lingua Franca, but all to no purpose. After about two hours
the court retired, and I was left with a strong guard, to prevent the impertinence, and probably the
malice of the rabble, who were very impatient to crowd about me as near as they durst; and some of
them had the impudence to shoot their arrows at me, as I sat on the ground by the door of my house,
whereof one very narrowly missed my left eye. But the colonel ordered six of the ringleaders to be
seized, and thought no punishment so proper as to deliver them bound into my hands; which some of
his soldiers accordingly did, pushing them forward with the butt-ends of their pikes into my reach. I
took them all in my right hand, put five of them into my coat-pocket; and as to the sixth, I made a
countenance as if I would eat him alive. The poor man squalled terribly, and the colonel and his officers
were in much pain, especially when they saw me take out my penknife: but I soon put them out of fear;
for, looking mildly, and immediately cutting the strings he was bound with, I set him gently on the
ground, and away he ran. I treated the rest in the same manner, taking them one by one out of my
pocket; and I observed both the soldiers and people were highly delighted at this mark of my clemency,
which was represented very much to my advantage at court.
Towards night I got with some difficulty into my house, where I lay on the ground, and continued
to do so about a fortnight; during which time, the emperor gave orders to have a bed prepared for
me. Six hundred beds of the common measure were brought in carriages, and worked up in my house;
a hundred and fifty of their beds, sewn together, made up the breadth and length; and these were four
double: which, however, kept me but very indifferently from the hardness of the floor, that was of
smooth stone. By the same computation, they provided me with sheets, blankets, and coverlets,
tolerable enough for one who had been so long inured to hardships.
As the news of my arrival spread through the kingdom, it brought prodigious numbers of rich,
idle, and curious people to see me; so that the villages were almost emptied; and great neglect of tillage
and household affairs must have ensued, if his imperial majesty had not provided, by several
proclamations and orders of state, against this inconveniency. He directed that those who had already
beheld me should return home, and not presume to come within fifty yards of my house, without license
from the court; whereby the secretaries of state got considerable fees.
In the mean time the emperor held frequent councils, to debate what course should be taken
with me; and I was afterwards assured by a particular friend, a person of great quality, who was as much
in the secret as any, that the court was under many difficulties concerning me. They apprehended my
breaking loose; that my diet would be very expensive, and might cause a famine. Sometimes they
determined to starve me; or at least to shoot me in the face and hands with poisoned arrows, which
would soon despatch me; but again they considered, that the stench of so large a carcass might produce
a plague in the metropolis, and probably spread through the whole kingdom. In the midst of these
consultations, several officers of the army went to the door of the great council-chamber, and two of
them being admitted, gave an account of my behaviour to the six criminals above-mentioned; which
made so favourable an impression in the breast of his majesty and the whole board, in my behalf, that
an imperial commission was issued out, obliging all the villages, nine hundred yards round the city, to
deliver in every morning six beeves, forty sheep, and other victuals for my sustenance; together with a
proportionable quantity of bread, and wine, and other liquors; for the due payment of which, his majesty
gave assignments upon his treasury:—for this prince lives chiefly upon his own demesnes; seldom,
except upon great occasions, raising any subsidies upon his subjects, who are bound to attend him in
his wars at their own expense. An establishment was also made of six hundred persons to be my
domestics, who had board-wages allowed for their maintenance, and tents built for them very
conveniently on each side of my door. It was likewise ordered, that three hundred tailors should make
me a suit of clothes, after the fashion of the country; that six of his majesty’s greatest scholars should be
employed to instruct me in their language; and lastly, that the emperor’s horses, and those of the
nobility and troops of guards, should be frequently exercised in my sight, to accustom themselves to
me. All these orders were duly put in execution; and in about three weeks I made a great progress in
learning their language; during which time the emperor frequently honoured me with his visits, and
was pleased to assist my masters in teaching me. We began already to converse together in some sort;
and the first words I learnt, were to express my desire “that he would please give me my liberty;” which
I every day repeated on my knees. His answer, as I could comprehend it, was, “that this must be a work
of time, not to be thought on without the advice of his council, and that first I must lumos kelmin pesso
desmar lon emposo;” that is, swear a peace with him and his kingdom. However, that I should be used
with all kindness. And he advised me to “acquire, by my patience and discreet behaviour, the good
opinion of himself and his subjects.” He desired “I would not take it ill, if he gave orders to certain
proper officers to search me; for probably I might carry about me several weapons, which must needs
be dangerous things, if they answered the bulk of so prodigious a person.” I said, “His majesty should
be satisfied; for I was ready to strip myself, and turn up my pockets before him.” This I delivered part
in words, and part in signs. He replied, “that, by the laws of the kingdom, I must be searched by two of
his officers; that he knew this could not be done without my consent and assistance; and he had so good
an opinion of my generosity and justice, as to trust their persons in my hands; that whatever they took
from me, should be returned when I left the country, or paid for at the rate which I would set upon
them.” I took up the two officers in my hands, put them first into my coat-pockets, and then into every
other pocket about me, except my two fobs, and another secret pocket, which I had no mind should be
searched, wherein I had some little necessaries that were of no consequence to any but myself. In one
of my fobs there was a silver watch, and in the other a small quantity of gold in a purse. These
gentlemen, having pen, ink, and paper, about them, made an exact inventory of every thing they saw;
and when they had done, desired I would set them down, that they might deliver it to the emperor. This
inventory I afterwards translated into English, and is, word for word, as follows:
“Imprimis: In the right coat-pocket of the great man-mountain” (for so I interpret the
words quinbus flestrin,) “after the strictest search, we found only one great piece of coarse-cloth,
large enough to be a foot-cloth for your majesty’s chief room of state. In the left pocket we saw a
huge silver chest, with a cover of the same metal, which we, the searchers, were not able to lift. We
desired it should be opened, and one of us stepping into it, found himself up to the mid leg in a sort
of dust, some part whereof flying up to our faces set us both a sneezing for several times
together. In his right waistcoat-pocket we found a prodigious bundle of white thin substances,
folded one over another, about the bigness of three men, tied with a strong cable, and marked with
black figures; which we humbly conceive to be writings, every letter almost half as large as the palm
of our hands. In the left there was a sort of engine, from the back of which were extended twenty
long poles, resembling the pallisados before your majesty’s court: wherewith we conjecture the
man-mountain combs his head; for we did not always trouble him with questions, because we
found it a great difficulty to make him understand us. In the large pocket, on the right side of his
middle cover” (so I translate the word ranfulo, by which they meant my breeches,) “we saw a hollow
pillar of iron, about the length of a man, fastened to a strong piece of timber larger than the pillar;
and upon one side of the pillar, were huge pieces of iron sticking out, cut into strange figures, which
we know not what to make of. In the left pocket, another engine of the same kind. In the smaller
pocket on the right side, were several round flat pieces of white and red metal, of different bulk;
some of the white, which seemed to be silver, were so large and heavy, that my comrade and I could
hardly lift them. In the left pocket were two black pillars irregularly shaped: we could not, without
difficulty, reach the top of them, as we stood at the bottom of his pocket. One of them was covered,
and seemed all of a piece: but at the upper end of the other there appeared a white round substance,
about twice the bigness of our heads. Within each of these was enclosed a prodigious plate of steel;
which, by our orders, we obliged him to show us, because we apprehended they might be dangerous
engines. He took them out of their cases, and told us, that in his own country his practice was to
shave his beard with one of these, and cut his meat with the other. There were two pockets which
we could not enter: these he called his fobs; they were two large slits cut into the top of his middle
cover, but squeezed close by the pressure of his belly. Out of the right fob hung a great silver chain,
with a wonderful kind of engine at the bottom. We directed him to draw out whatever was at the
end of that chain; which appeared to be a globe, half silver, and half of some transparent metal; for,
on the transparent side, we saw certain strange figures circularly drawn, and thought we could
touch them, till we found our fingers stopped by the lucid substance. He put this engine into our
ears, which made an incessant noise, like that of a water-mill: and we conjecture it is either some
unknown animal, or the god that he worships; but we are more inclined to the latter opinion,
because he assured us, (if we understood him right, for he expressed himself very imperfectly) that
he seldom did any thing without consulting it. He called it his oracle, and said, it pointed out the
time for every action of his life. From the left fob he took out a net almost large enough for a
fisherman, but contrived to open and shut like a purse, and served him for the same use: we found
therein several massy pieces of yellow metal, which, if they be real gold, must be of immense value.
“Having thus, in obedience to your majesty’s commands, diligently searched all his pockets, we
observed a girdle about his waist made of the hide of some prodigious animal, from which, on the
left side, hung a sword of the length of five men; and on the right, a bag or pouch divided into two
cells, each cell capable of holding three of your majesty’s subjects. In one of these cells were several
globes, or balls, of a most ponderous metal, about the bigness of our heads, and requiring a strong
hand to lift them: the other cell contained a heap of certain black grains, but of no great bulk or
weight, for we could hold above fifty of them in the palms of our hands.
“This is an exact inventory of what we found about the body of the man-mountain, who used
us with great civility, and due respect to your majesty’s commission. Signed and sealed on the fourth
day of the eighty-ninth moon of your majesty’s auspicious reign.
Clefrin Frelock, Marsi Frelock.”
 When this inventory was read over to the emperor, he directed me, although in very gentle terms,
to deliver up the several particulars. He first called for my scimitar, which I took out, scabbard and
all. In the mean time he ordered three thousand of his choicest troops (who then attended him) to
surround me at a distance, with their bows and arrows just ready to discharge; but I did not observe it,
for mine eyes were wholly fixed upon his majesty. He then desired me to draw my scimitar, which,
although it had got some rust by the sea water, was, in most parts, exceeding bright. I did so, and
immediately all the troops gave a shout between terror and surprise; for the sun shone clear, and the
reflection dazzled their eyes, as I waved the scimitar to and fro in my hand. His majesty, who is a most
magnanimous prince, was less daunted than I could expect: he ordered me to return it into the scabbard,
and cast it on the ground as gently as I could, about six feet from the end of my chain. The next thing
he demanded was one of the hollow iron pillars; by which he meant my pocket pistols. I drew it out,
and at his desire, as well as I could, expressed to him the use of it; and charging it only with powder,
which, by the closeness of my pouch, happened to escape wetting in the sea (an inconvenience against
which all prudent mariners take special care to provide,) I first cautioned the emperor not to be afraid,
and then I let it off in the air. The astonishment here was much greater than at the sight of my
scimitar. Hundreds fell down as if they had been struck dead; and even the emperor, although he stood
his ground, could not recover himself for some time. I delivered up both my pistols in the same manner
as I had done my scimitar, and then my pouch of powder and bullets; begging him that the former might
be kept from fire, for it would kindle with the smallest spark, and blow up his imperial palace into the
air. I likewise delivered up my watch, which the emperor was very curious to see, and commanded two
of his tallest yeomen of the guards to bear it on a pole upon their shoulders, as draymen in England do
a barrel of ale. He was amazed at the continual noise it made, and the motion of the minute-hand,
which he could easily discern; for their sight is much more acute than ours: he asked the opinions of his
learned men about it, which were various and remote, as the reader may well imagine without my
repeating; although indeed I could not very perfectly understand them. I then gave up my silver and
copper money, my purse, with nine large pieces of gold, and some smaller ones; my knife and razor, my
comb and silver snuff-box, my handkerchief and journal-book. My scimitar, pistols, and pouch, were
conveyed in carriages to his majesty’s stores; but the rest of my goods were returned me.
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.
Part I, Chapter 3
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.
My 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 hand; 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 the language. The emperor
had a mind one day to entertain me with several of the country shows, wherein they exceed 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 the straight rope, at least an
inch higher than any other lord in the whole empire. I have seen him do the summerset 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 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 broke 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.
The horses of the army, and those of the royal stables, having been daily led before me, were no
longer shy, but would come up to my very feet without starting. The riders would leap them over my
hand, as I held it on the ground; and one of the emperor’s huntsmen, upon a large courser, took my
foot, shoe and all; which was indeed a prodigious leap. I had the good fortune to divert the emperor
one day after a very extraordinary manner. I desired he would order several sticks of two feet high, and
the thickness of an ordinary cane, to be brought me; whereupon his majesty commanded the master of
his woods to give directions accordingly; and the next morning six woodmen arrived with as many
carriages, drawn by eight horses to each. I took nine of these sticks, and fixing them firmly in the ground
in a quadrangular figure, two feet and a half square, I took four other sticks, and tied them parallel at
each corner, about two feet from the ground; then I fastened my handkerchief to the nine sticks that
stood erect; and extended it on all sides, till it was tight as the top of a drum; and the four parallel sticks,
rising about five inches higher than the handkerchief, served as ledges on each side. When I had
finished my work, I desired the emperor to let a troop of his best horses twenty-four in number, come
and exercise upon this plain. His majesty approved of the proposal, and I took them up, one by one, in
my hands, ready mounted and armed, with the proper officers to exercise them. As soon as they got
into order they divided into two parties, performed mock skirmishes, discharged blunt arrows, drew
their swords, fled and pursued, attacked and retired, and in short discovered the best military discipline
I ever beheld. The parallel sticks secured them and their horses from falling over the stage; and the
emperor was so much delighted, that he ordered this entertainment to be repeated several days, and
once was pleased to be lifted up and give the word of command; and with great difficulty persuaded
even the empress herself to let me hold her in her close chair within two yards of the stage, when she
was able to take a full view of the whole performance. It was my good fortune, that no ill accident
happened in these entertainments; only once a fiery horse, that belonged to one of the captains, pawing
with his hoof, struck a hole in my handkerchief, and his foot slipping, he overthrew his rider and
himself; but I immediately relieved them both, and covering the hole with one hand, I set down the
troop with the other, in the same manner as I took them up. The horse that fell was strained in the left
shoulder, but the rider got no hurt; and I repaired my handkerchief as well as I could: however, I would
not trust to the strength of it any more, in such dangerous enterprises.
About two or three days before I was set at liberty, as I was entertaining the court with this kind
of feat, there arrived an express to inform his majesty, that some of his subjects, riding near the place
where I was first taken up, had seen a great black substance lying on the around, very oddly shaped,
extending its edges round, as wide as his majesty’s bedchamber, and rising up in the middle as high as
a man; that it was no living creature, as they at first apprehended, for it lay on the grass without motion;
and some of them had walked round it several times; that, by mounting upon each other’s shoulders,
they had got to the top, which was flat and even, and, stamping upon it, they found that it was hollow
within; that they humbly conceived it might be something belonging to the man-mountain; and if his
majesty pleased, they would undertake to bring it with only five horses. I presently knew what they
meant, and was glad at heart to receive this intelligence. It seems, upon my first reaching the shore
after our shipwreck, I was in such confusion, that before I came to the place where I went to sleep, my
hat, which I had fastened with a string to my head while I was rowing, and had stuck on all the time I
was swimming, fell off after I came to land; the string, as I conjecture, breaking by some accident, which
I never observed, but thought my hat had been lost at sea. I entreated his imperial majesty to give
orders it might be brought to me as soon as possible, describing to him the use and the nature of it: and
the next day the waggoners arrived with it, but not in a very good condition; they had bored two holes
in the brim, within an inch and half of the edge, and fastened two hooks in the holes; these hooks were
tied by a long cord to the harness, and thus my hat was dragged along for above half an English mile;
but, the ground in that country being extremely smooth and level, it received less damage than I
expected.
Two days after this adventure, the emperor, having ordered that part of his army which quarters
in and about his metropolis, to be in readiness, took a fancy of diverting himself in a very singular
manner. He desired I would stand like a Colossus, with my legs as far asunder as I conveniently
could. He then commanded his general (who was an old experienced leader, and a great patron of mine)
to draw up the troops in close order, and march them under me; the foot by twenty-four abreast, and
the horse by sixteen, with drums beating, colours flying, and pikes advanced. This body consisted of
three thousand foot, and a thousand horse. His majesty gave orders, upon pain of death, that every
soldier in his march should observe the strictest decency with regard to my person; which however could
not prevent some of the younger officers from turning up their eyes as they passed under me: and, to
confess the truth, my breeches were at that time in so ill a condition, that they afforded some
opportunities for laughter and admiration.
I had sent so many memorials and petitions for my liberty, that his majesty at length mentioned
the matter, first in the cabinet, and then in a full council; where it was opposed by none, except Skyresh
Bolgolam, who was pleased, without any provocation, to be my mortal enemy. But it was carried against
him by the whole board, and confirmed by the emperor. That minister was galbet, or admiral of the
realm, very much in his master’s confidence, and a person well versed in affairs, but of a morose and
sour complexion. However, he was at length persuaded to comply; but prevailed that the articles and
conditions upon which I should be set free, and to which I must swear, should be drawn up by
himself. These articles were brought to me by Skyresh Bolgolam in person attended by two under-
secretaries, and several persons of distinction. After they were read, I was demanded to swear to the
performance of them; first in the manner of my own country, and afterwards in the method prescribed
by their laws; which was, to hold my right foot in my left hand, and to place the middle finger of my
right hand on the crown of my head, and my thumb on the tip of my right ear. But because the reader
may be curious to have some idea of the style and manner of expression peculiar to that people, as well
as to know the article upon which I recovered my liberty, I have made a translation of the whole
instrument, word for word, as near as I was able, which I here offer to the public.
“Golbasto Momarem Evlame Gurdilo Shefin Mully Ully Gue, most mighty Emperor of Lilliput,
delight and terror of the universe, whose dominions extend five thousand blustrugs (about twelve miles
in circumference) to the extremities of the globe; monarch of all monarchs, taller than the sons of men;
whose feet press down to the centre, and whose head strikes against the sun; at whose nod the princes
of the earth shake their knees; pleasant as the spring, comfortable as the summer, fruitful as autumn,
dreadful as winter: his most sublime majesty proposes to the man-mountain, lately arrived at our
celestial dominions, the following articles, which, by a solemn oath, he shall be obliged to perform:—
“1st, The man-mountain shall not depart from our dominions, without our license under our
great seal.
“2d, He shall not presume to come into our metropolis, without our express order; at which time,
the inhabitants shall have two hours warning to keep within doors.
“3d, The said man-mountain shall confine his walks to our principal high roads, and not offer to
walk, or lie down, in a meadow or field of corn.
“4th, As he walks the said roads, he shall take the utmost care not to trample upon the bodies of
any of our loving subjects, their horses, or carriages, nor take any of our subjects into his hands without
their own consent.
“5th, If an express requires extraordinary despatch, the man-mountain shall be obliged to carry,
in his pocket, the messenger and horse a six days journey, once in every moon, and return the said
messenger back (if so required) safe to our imperial presence.
“6th, He shall be our ally against our enemies in the island of Blefuscu, and do his utmost to
destroy their fleet, which is now preparing to invade us.
 “7th, That the said man-mountain shall, at his times of leisure, be aiding and assisting to our
workmen, in helping to raise certain great stones, towards covering the wall of the principal park, and
other our royal buildings.
“8th, That the said man-mountain shall, in two moons’ time, deliver in an exact survey of the
circumference of our dominions, by a computation of his own paces round the coast.
“Lastly, That, upon his solemn oath to observe all the above articles, the said man-mountain
shall have a daily allowance of meat and drink sufficient for the support of 1724 of our subjects, with
free access to our royal person, and other marks of our favour. Given at our palace at Belfaborac, the
twelfth day of the ninety-first moon of our reign.”
I swore and subscribed to these articles with great cheerfulness and content, although some of
them were not so honourable as I could have wished; which proceeded wholly from the malice of
Skyresh Bolgolam, the high-admiral: whereupon my chains were immediately unlocked, and I was at
full liberty. The emperor himself, in person, did me the honour to be by at the whole ceremony. I made
my acknowledgements by prostrating myself at his majesty’s feet: but he commanded me to rise; and
after many gracious expressions, which, to avoid the censure of vanity, I shall not repeat, he added,
“that he hoped I should prove a useful servant, and well deserve all the favours he had already conferred
upon me, or might do for the future.”
The reader may please to observe, that, in the last article of the recovery of my liberty, the
emperor stipulates to allow me a quantity of meat and drink sufficient for the support of 1724
Lilliputians. Some time after, asking a friend at court how they came to fix on that determinate number,
he told me that his majesty’s mathematicians, having taken the height of my body by the help of a
quadrant, and finding it to exceed theirs in the proportion of twelve to one, they concluded from the
similarity of their bodies, that mine must contain at least 1724 of theirs, and consequently would require
as much food as was necessary to support that number of Lilliputians. By which the reader may
conceive an idea of the ingenuity of that people, as well as the prudent and exact economy of so great a
prince.
(Source: The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift,
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/829/829-h/829-h.htm#footnote301)
Answer the questions:
1. In Gulliver’s Travels what is the significance of Lemuel Gulliver’s name? (Part 1,
Chapter 1).
2. In Gulliver’s Travels, Part 1, Chapter 1, what is unusual about Gulliver’s reaction to
meeting the Lilliputians?
3. What is significant about the emperor of Lilliput's appearance and manner as described
in Gulliver’s Travels, Part 1, Chapter 2?
4. What does the Lilliputians’ decision to keep Gulliver alive in Gulliver’s Travels, Part 1,
Chapter 2 reveal about them?
5. What do the emperor of Lilliput’s forms of entertainment in Gulliver’s Travels, Part 1,
Chapter 3 reveal about him?

Questions for Literary Analysis

6. Are there any characters in Gulliver’s Travels that have psychological depth?
7. Does Gulliver seem like a believable character to you?
8. Is Gulliver an everyman figure or does he have a distinctive personality of his own?
9. Is the overall flatness of characters in Gulliver’s Travels a function of the genre, satire,
or the result of Swift’s specific tone?
10. How does Swift use language and style for the purpose of satire? How does his style
change as the story progresses?