MORAL AND POLITICAL LESSONS OF

'GULLIVER'S TRAVELS.'

An Oration; delivered at the Literary Institution, John-Street, Fitzroy Square: September 23rd, 1849.

BY THOMAS COOPER.

(Continued from last number.)

THE Courage of these tiny people amazes Gulliver for they mouut upon his body, and walk to and fro upon him, till he feels inclined to seize a score or two of them and punish them; but he reflects that he might suffer by it, since their numbers are so great, and so resigns himself to patience, believing they will eventually liberate him. He falls asleepthey had mingled a sleepy potion with the wine they gave him—and when he wakes, he is being drawn towards their capital city on a machine seven feet long, raised three inches from the ground, moving upon two and twenty wheels, and dragged by one thousand five hundred Lilliputian horses, each four inches and a half high!

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Gulliver's adventures when he arrives at the capital of Lilliput-his interview with the emperor-his description of the council held as to what was to be done with himself,- Quinbus Flestrin,' or the Man-mountain, as they termed him-their search of his person, and inventory of the articles found upon him, such as his watch, his snuff-box, his comb, his sword, and his pistols-afford proofs of Swift's singular ingenuity. You will not expect me to complete the detail. My aim is to induce you read for yourselves. You will not fail to observe with what remarkable skill Swift has proportioned the appearance of the objects he has described -with what mathematical instinct, in the lessening of the size of the Lilliputians, he has also squared the dimensions of their houses, their dress, their arms, and all other circumstantials surrounding them. The calm, quiet satire with which he has depictured the pomp and absurd forms of courts, in his portraiture of this diminutive people, is equally admirable. Not seldom, he has a stroke at some real character. Thus, in describing the games performed, before the emperor of Lilliput, Gulliver is made to say:

"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 the trencher fixed on a rope which is no thicker than a common packthread in England."

Sir Robert Walpole, the prime minister of the period is the real Flimnap. Swift belonged to the Tory party, at the time he wrote the Travels; and he could not forbear the opportunity of having a satirical blow at the Whig premier.

The 'articles' upon which Gulliver is allowed to have his liberty, are introduced by a royal preamble which contains an admirable satire of the ridiculous claims of sovereigns. Thus it reads:

"Guļbasto 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 the 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."

The articles consist of several provisions-the chief being that Gulliver shall not depart from Lilliput-that he shall render himself useful while there shall especially aid the emperor against his enemies of Blefuscuand shall, on the observance of said conditions be allowed daily as much meat and drink as would be sufficient for 1728 Lilliputians. Gulliver swears to the conditions, and then the chain which had been fastened to his legs in sleep, is unlocked, and he is set at liberty. Swift makes his hero conclude the account of the treaty with a passage which contains a piquant parody on the grave descriptions of travellers:

"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 1728 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 proportion of twelve to one, they concluded, from the similarity of their bodies, that mine must contain at least 1728 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 this people, as well as the prudent and exact economy of so great a prince."

The High and Low Church parties of the time of George the 1st, are pointedly satirised in the picture of the High and Low Heel parties of Lilliput; and the prince, afterwards George 2nd, is ridiculed for his characteristic trimming in the portrait of the imperial heir' who had one high, and one low heel to his shoes. But the most skilful satire is that of the Big and Little Endians. The Lilliputians broke their eggs at the smaller end, the inhabitants of Blefuscu at the larger. Both asserted they were right in their interpretation of the 54th chapter of the Blundecral, which declared that all true believers should break their eggs at the convenient end.' Six rebellions had been raised in Lilliput, and 11,000 persons had suffered death,-all for the precious right of breaking their eggs at the larger end, according to ancient custom. The Blefuscu people being Big-Endians, were at war with the emperor of Lilliput as an abettor of heresy. England and France or the Protestant and Roman Catholic states-are ridiculed under these figures. Gulliver is, at length, pressed to assist in the war, and performs the famous feat of drawing to shore 50 of the Blefuscu men-of-war ships. The emperor desires him to draw all their ships to the Lilliputian shore, to reduce Blefuscu to a province, and compel all the Big Endians to break their eggs at the smaller end! Gulliver, however, refuses to be made the instrument of completely enslaving that people-the emperor is offended with him—and, thenceforth, intrigue against him is rife in the court, and is headed by one who had been all along his enemy-Skyresh Bolgolam, the highadmiral. An important accident brings the plot against him to a crisis: the royal palace is on fire, and Gulliver puts out the fire in a natural way, which in spite of his having saved her life, the queen declares to be unpardonable. Modern taste is offended with these strokes of Swift; but his strong mind had wondrous skill in adapting them to the exposure of the ridiculousness of pride and false delicacy.

Gulliver had secret information by a courtier that his enemies are now bent on his destruction. They are proposing, either to set fire to his house at night, to poison all his shirts and sheets, to put out his eyes, or to starve him gradually to death. He takes his determination-makes his escape to Blefuscu, where he is well received, and the pigmy monarch of that country offers him greater honours than he had ever received in Lilliput-but he sees a boat, keel upwards, in the sea, is assisted in securing it—is then allowed to depart in it-comes up with an English vessel, and so reaches his own country, once more.

In his second voyage the hero enters the country of Brobdingnag-a land of giants, in whose presence he is as much a pigmy, as each of the Lilliputians were in his. I must not delay to give even a brief sketch of this second part of Gulliver. Suffice it to say that it is as perfect as the first; while the contrast between the situation of the same man, who was before a giant and is now a pigmy, is most felicitously conceived, and increases our enjoyment of the satire at every page, as we proceed. The only feature of tenderness in the book is found in the portrait of Glumdalclitch -the maid who carries Gulliver in her bosom, and takes care of him. How far Swift partook of the Radicalism of Genius, in spite of his professed Toryism, begins to be strongly developed in this second part of the book. Gulliver's descriptions of the English institutions before the king of Brobdingnag, and the replies of the giant monarch, are as unlike Tory writing as anything we can conceive. But, perhaps, in the entire book, there is nothing so forcible as the narrative of that conversation in which Gulliver proposed to ingratiate himself with the king by discovering to him the invention of gunpowder and its use by engines that would enable the monarch, when beseiging any city of his enemies, to rip up the pave ments, tear the houses to pieces, and burst and throw splinters on every side, dashing out the brains of all who came near.' What reception the proposal made is thus described:

"The king was struck with horror at the description I had given of those terrible engines, and the proposal I had made. 'He was amazed, how so impotent and grovelling an insect as I," (these were his expressions) 'could entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a manner, as to appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of blood and desolation, which I had painted, as the common effects of those destructive machines; whereof,' he said, 'some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have been the first contriver. As for himself,' he protest

ed, that although few things delighted him so much as new discoveries in art or nature, yet he would rather lose half his kingdom, than be privy to such a secret; which he commanded me, as I valued my life, never to mention any more."

“A strange effect of narrow principles and views! that a prince possessed of every quality which procures veneration, love, and esteem; of strong parts, great wisdom, and profound learning, endowed with admirable talents, and almost adored by his subjects, should, from a nice, unnecessary scruple, whereof in Europe we can have no conception, let slip an opportunity put into his hands that would have made him absolute master of the lives, the liberties, and the fortunes of his people. Neither do I say this, with the least intention to detract from the many virtues of that excellent king, whose character, I am sensible, will, on this account, be very much lessened in the opinion of an English reader: but I take this defect among them to have risen from their ignorance, by not having hitherto reduced politics into a science, as the more acute wits of Europe have done. For, I remember very well, in a discourse one day with the king, when I happened to say, there were several thousand books among us written upon the art of government,' it gave him (directly contrary to my inten tion) a very mean opinion of our understandings. He professed both to abominate and despise all mystery, refinement, and intrigue, either in a prince or a minister. He could not tell what I meant by secrets of state, where an enemy, or some rival nation, were not in the He confined the knowledge of governing within very narrow bounds, to common sense and reason, to justice and lenity, to the speedy determination of civil and criminal causes; with some other obvious topics, which are not worth considering. And he gave it for his

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opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground, where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.''

There is a commentary on the Art of Government, and a test for excellence of discovery, which-whatever may be thought of the fantastic dress of the story-ought to render 'Gulliver's Travels' a book never to be forgotten or neglected! (To be continued in next number.)

CRITICAL EXEGESIS OF GOSPEL HISTORY,

ON THE BASIS OF STRAUSS's 'LEBEN JESU.'

A SERIES OF EIGHT DISCOURSES; DELIVERED AT THE LITERARY INSTITUTION, JOHN STREET, TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD, AND AT THE HALL OF SCIENCE, CITY ROAD, ON SUNDAY EVENINGS, DURING THE WINTERS OF 1848–9, AND 1849–50.

V. THE TRANSFIGURATION: LOCALITY, DURATION, AND CHRONOLOGY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS.

1. THE Light with which Jesus is described to have been invested—whence came it? He was transfigured before them,' says our authorised translation of Matthew and Mark; but the expression in the Greek is μeraμoopwonmetamorphosed. Not an outward illumination, therefore, is intended to be described; but an irradiation from within-an effulgence of the beams of the Divinity through the veil of the Humanity, would seem to be represented. This was the crisis, say some divines, commencing that purifying change of the corporeality of the Redeemer which was necessary, and which was continued up to the time of his ascension into heaven. But we know of no possible purification of matter. If the Deity be in Nature, it is always pure. The churchyard or burial-ground needs no mummery of consecration'-the human body needs no purifying. Such an idea is narrow and confined, and could only have been conceived in an ignorant age. It is in the spirituality of Christ's mind that the noblest idea of purification is developed. But it was to manifest his glory,' say the orthodox. Then why was not that glory manifested in the presence of the multitude, instead of only in the presence of three disciples,-and for what purpose was it manifested, if they were 'charged to tell the vision to no man' until after the resurrection?

2. The Apparition of the Dead, at the Transfiguration-how are we to conceive of it? Can departed souls become visible to the living? And if these had bodies, whence had they them? According to Scripture we are not to have restored bodies till the general resurrection. If it be replied that Elijah, who was one of the apparitions, went to heaven in a fiery chariot without dying; and was transfigured as he went up-the apparition of Moses has still to be accounted for. The last chapter of Deuteronomy informs us that he died and was buried in a valley in the land of Moab.' What was the object of the appearance of these departed spirits Talking' with Jesus, is all that we are told of their object by Matthew and Mark; but Luke adds of his decease, which he should accomplish at Jerusalem.' But Moses and Elias had no need to come to reveal this; for, according to all the first three evangelists, Jesus had predicted his own death and sufferings a