The winter of 1713-14 passed by Swift in England was full of anxiety and vexation. He found time, however, to join in a remarkable literary association. The so-called Scriblerus Club does not appear, indeed, to have had any definite organization. The rising young wits, Pope and Gay, both of them born in 1688, were already becoming famous, and were taken up by Swift, still in the zenith of his political power. Parnell, a few years their senior, had been introduced by Swift to Oxford as a convert from Whiggism. All three became intimate with Swift and Arbuthnot, the most learned and amiable of the whole circle of Swift’s friends. Swift declared him to have every quality that could make a man amiable and useful with but one defect—he had “a sort of slouch in his walk;” he was loved and respected by every one, and was one of the most distinguished of the Brothers. Swift and Arbuthnot and their three juniors discussed literary plans in the midst of the growing political excitement. Even Oxford used, as Pope tells us, to amuse himself during the very crisis of his fate by scribbling verses and talking nonsense with the members of this informal Club, and some doggerel lines exchanged with him remain as a specimen—a poor one it is to be hoped—of their intercourse. The familiarity thus begun continued through the life of the members. Swift can have seen very little of Pope. He hardly made his acquaintance till the latter part of 1713; they parted in the summer of 1714; and never met again except in Swift’s two visits to England in 1726-27. Yet their correspondence shows an affection which was no doubt heightened by the consciousness of each that the friendship of his most famous contemporary author was creditable; but which, upon Swift’s side at least, was thoroughly sincere and cordial, and strengthened with advancing years.
The final cause of the Club was supposed to be the composition of a joint-stock satire. We learn from an interesting letter[74] that Pope formed the original design; though Swift thought that Arbuthnot was the only one capable of carrying it out. The scheme was to write the memoirs of an imaginary pedant, who had dabbled with equal wrong-headedness in all kinds of knowledge; and thus recalls Swift’s early performances—the Battle of the Books and the Tale of a Tub. Arbuthnot begs Swift to work upon it during his melancholy retirement at Letcombe. Swift had other things to occupy his mind; and upon the dispersion of the party the Club fell into abeyance. Fragments of the original plan were carried out by Pope and Arbuthnot, and form part of the Miscellanies, to which Swift contributed a number of poetical scraps, published under Pope’s direction in 1726-27. It seems probable that Gulliver originated in Swift’s mind in the course of his meditations upon Scriblerus. The composition of Gulliver was one of the occupations by which he amused himself after recovering from the great shock of his “exile.” He worked, as he seems always to have done, slowly and intermittently. Part of Brobdingnag at least, as we learn from a letter of Vanessa’s, was in existence by 1722. Swift brought the whole manuscript to England in 1726, and it was published anonymously in the following winter. The success was instantaneous and overwhelming. “I will make over all my profits” (in a work then being published) “to you,” writes Arbuthnot, “for the property of Gulliver’s Travels, which, I believe, will have as great a run as John Bunyan.” The anticipation was amply fulfilled. Gulliver’s Travels is one of the very few books some knowledge of which may be fairly assumed in any one who reads anything. Yet something must be said of the secret of the astonishing success of this unique performance.
One remark is obvious. Gulliver’s Travels (omitting certain passages) is almost the most delightful children’s book ever written. Yet it has been equally valued as an unrivalled satire. Old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, was “in raptures with it,” says Gay, “and can dream of nothing else.” She forgives his bitter attacks upon her party in consideration of his assault upon human nature. He gives, she declares, “the most accurate” (that is, of course, the most scornful) “account of kings, ministers, bishops, and courts of justice, that is possible to be writ.” Another curious testimony may be noticed. Godwin, when tracing all evils to the baneful effects of government, declares that the author of Gulliver showed a “more profound insight into the true principles of political justice than any preceding or contemporary author.” The playful form was unfortunate, thinks this grave philosopher, as blinding mankind to the “inestimable wisdom” of the work. This double triumph is remarkable. We may not share the opinions of the cynics of the day, or of the revolutionists of a later generation; but it is strange that they should be fascinated by a work which is studied with delight, without the faintest suspicion of any ulterior meaning, by the infantile mind.
The charm of Gulliver for the young depends upon an obvious quality, which is indicated in Swift’s report of the criticism by an Irish bishop, who said that “the book was full of improbable lies, and for his part he hardly believed a word of it.” There is something pleasant in the intense gravity of the narrative, which recalls and may have been partly suggested by Robinson Crusoe, though it came naturally to Swift. I have already spoken of his delight in mystification, and the detailed realization of pure fiction seems to have been delightful in itself. The Partridge pamphlets and its various practical jokes are illustrations of a tendency which fell in with the spirit of the time, and of which Gulliver may be regarded as the highest manifestation. Swift’s peculiarity is in the curious sobriety of fancy, which leads him to keep in his most daring flights upon the confines of the possible. In the imaginary travels of Lucian and Rabelais, to which Gulliver is generally compared, we frankly take leave of the real world altogether. We are treated with arbitrary and monstrous combinations which may be amusing, but which do not challenge even a semblance of belief. In Gulliver this is so little the case that it can hardly be said in strictness that the fundamental assumptions are even impossible. Why should there not be creatures in human form with whom as in Lilliput, one of our inches represents a foot, or, as in Brobdingnag, one of our feet represents an inch? The assumption is so modest that we are presented—it may be said—with a definite and soluble problem. We have not, as in other fictitious worlds, to deal with a state of things in which the imagination is bewildered, but with one in which it is agreeably stimulated. We have certainly to consider an extreme and exceptional case; but one to which all the ordinary laws of human nature are still strictly applicable. In Voltaire’s trifle, Micromegas, we are presented to beings eight leagues in height and endowed with seventy-two senses. For Voltaire’s purpose the stupendous exaggeration is necessary; for he wishes to insist upon the minuteness of human capacities. But the assumption of course disqualifies us from taking any intelligent interest in a region where no precedent is available for our guidance. We are in the air; anything and everything is possible. But Swift modestly varies only one element in the problem. Imagine giants and dwarfs as tall as a house or as low as a footstool, and let us see what comes of it. That is a plain, almost a mathematical problem; and we can therefore judge his success, and receive pleasure from the ingenuity and verisimilitude of his creations.
“When you have once thought of big men and little men,” said Johnson, perversely enough, “it is easy to do the rest.” The first step might perhaps seem in this case to be the easiest; yet nobody ever thought of it before Swift; and nobody has ever had similar good fortune since. There is no other fictitious world the denizens of which have become so real for us, and which has supplied so many images familiar to every educated mind. But the apparent ease is due to the extreme consistency and sound judgment of Swift’s realization. The conclusions follow so inevitably from the primary data that when they are once drawn we agree that they could not have been otherwise; and infer, rashly, that anybody else could have drawn them. It is as easy as lying; but everybody who has seriously tried the experiment knows that even lying is by no means so easy as it appears at first sight. In fact, Swift’s success is something unique. The charming plausibility of every incident, throughout the two first parts, commends itself to children, who enjoy definite concrete images, and are fascinated by a world which is at once full of marvels, surpassing Jack the Giant Killer and the wonders seen by Sinbad, and yet as obviously and undeniably true as the adventures of Robinson Crusoe himself. Nobody who has read the book can ever forget it; and we may add that besides the childlike pleasure which arises from a distinct realization of a strange world of fancy, the two first books are sufficiently good-humoured. Swift seems to be amused as well as amusing. They were probably written during the least intolerable part of his exile. The period of composition includes the years of the Vanessa tragedy and of the war of Wood’s halfpence; it was finished when Stella’s illness was becoming constantly more threatening, and published little more than a year before her death. The last books show Swift’s most savage temper; but we may hope that in spite of disease, disappointments, and a growing alienation from mankind, Swift could still enjoy an occasional piece of spontaneous, unadulterated fun. He could still forget his cares, and throw the reins on the neck of his fancy. At times there is a certain charm even in the characters. Every one has a liking for the giant maid of all work, Glumdalelitch, whose affection for her plaything is a quaint inversion of the ordinary relations between Swift and his feminine adorers. The grave, stern, irascible man can relax after a sort, though his strange idiosyncrasy comes out as distinctly in his relaxation as in his passions.
I will not dwell upon this aspect of Gulliver, which is obvious to every one. There is another question which we are forced to ask, and which is not very easy to answer. What does Gulliver mean? It is clearly a satire—but who and what are its objects? Swift states his own view very unequivocally. “I heartily hate and detest that animal called man,” he says,[75] “although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.” He declares that man is not an animal rationale, but only rationis capax: and he then adds, “Upon this great foundation of misanthropy ... the whole building of my travels is erected.” “If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it,” he says in the same letter, “I would burn my travels.” He indulges in a similar reflection to Sheridan.[76] “Expect no more from man,” he says, “than such an animal is capable of, and you will every day find my description of Yahoos more resembling. You should think and deal with every man as a villain, without calling him so, or flying from him or valuing him less. This is an old true lesson.” In spite of these avowals, of a kind which, in Swift, must not be taken too literally, we find it rather hard to admit that the essence of Gulliver can be an expression of this doctrine. The tone becomes morose and sombre, and even ferocious; but it has been disputed whether in any case it can be regarded simply as an utterance of misanthropy.
Gulliver’s Travels belongs to a literary genus full of grotesque and anomalous forms. Its form is derived from some of the imaginary travels of which Lucian’s True History—itself a burlesque of some early travellers’ tales—is the first example. But it has an affinity also to such books as Bacon’s Atlantis, and More’s Utopia; and, again, to later philosophical romances like Candide and Rasselas; and not least, perhaps, to the ancient fables, such as Reynard the Fox, to which Swift refers in the Tale of a Tub. It may be compared, again, to the Pilgrim’s Progress, and the whole family of allegories. The full-blown allegory resembles the game of chess said to have been played by some ancient monarch, in which the pieces were replaced by real human beings. The movements of the actors were not determined by the passions proper to their character, but by the external set of rules imposed upon them by the game. The allegory is a kind of picture-writing, popular, like picture-writing at a certain stage of development, but wearisome at more cultivated periods, when we prefer to have abstract theories conveyed in abstract language, and limit the artist to the intrinsic meanings of the images in which he deals. The whole class of more or less allegorical writing has thus the peculiarity that something more is meant than meets the ear. Part of its meaning depends upon a tacit convention in virtue of which a beautiful woman, for example, is not simply a beautiful woman, but also a representative of Justice and Charity. And as any such convention is more or less arbitrary, we are often in perplexity to interpret the author’s meaning, and also to judge of the propriety of the symbols. The allegorical intention, again, may be more or less present: and such a book as Gulliver must be regarded as lying somewhere between the allegory and the direct revelation of truth, which is more or less implied in the work of every genuine artist. Its true purpose has thus rather puzzled critics. Hazlitt[77] urges, for example, with his usual brilliancy, that Swift’s purpose was to “strip empty pride and grandeur of the imposing air which external circumstances throw around them.” Swift accordingly varies the scale, so as to show the insignificance or the grossness of our self-love. He does this with “mathematical precision;” he tries an experiment upon human nature; and with the result that “nothing solid, nothing valuable is left in his system but wisdom and virtue.” So Gulliver’s carrying off the fleet of Blefuscu is “a mortifying stroke, aimed at national glory.” “After that, we have only to consider which of the contending parties was in the right.”
Hazlitt naturally can see nothing misanthropical or innocent in such a conclusion. The mask of imposture is torn off the world, and only imposture can complain. This view, which has no doubt its truth, suggests some obvious doubts. We are not invited, as a matter of fact, to attend to the question of right and wrong, as between Lilliput and Blefuscu. The real sentiment in Swift is that a war between these miserable pygmies is, in itself, contemptible; and therefore, as he infers, war between men six feet high is equally contemptible. The truth is that, although Swift’s solution of the problem may be called mathematically precise, the precision does not extend to the supposed argument. If we insist upon treating the question as one of strict logic, the only conclusion which could be drawn from Gulliver is the very safe one that the interest of the human drama does not depend upon the size of the actors. A pygmy or a giant endowed with all our functions and thoughts would be exactly as interesting as a being of the normal stature. It does not require a journey to imaginary regions to teach us so much. And if we say that Swift has shown us in his pictures the real essence of human life, we only say for him what might be said with equal force of Shakspeare or Balzac, or any great artist. The bare proof that the essence is not dependent upon the external condition of size is superfluous and irrelevant; and we must admit that Swift’s method is childish, or that it does not adhere to this strict logical canon.
Hazlitt, however, comes nearer the truth, as I think, when he says that Swift takes a view of human nature such as might be taken by a being of a higher sphere. That, at least, is his purpose; only, as I think, he pursues it by a neglect of “scientific reasoning.” The use of the machinery is simply to bring us into a congenial frame of mind. He strikes the key-note of contempt by his imagery of dwarfs and giants. We despise the petty quarrels of beings six inches high; and therefore we are prepared to despise the wars carried on by a Marlborough and a Eugene. We transfer the contempt based upon mere size, to the motives, which are the same in big men and little. The argument, if argument there be, is a fallacy; but it is equally efficacious for the feelings. You see the pettiness and cruelty of the Lilliputians, who want to conquer an empire defended by toy-ships; and you are tacitly invited to consider whether the bigness of French men-of-war makes an attack upon them more respectable. The force of the satire depends ultimately upon the vigour with which Swift has described the real passions of human beings, big or little. He really means to express a bitter contempt for statesmen and warriors, and seduces us to his side, for the moment, by asking us to look at a diminutive representation of the same beings. The quarrels which depend upon the difference between the high-boots and the low-heeled shoes; or upon breaking eggs at the big or little end; the party intrigues which are settled by cutting capers on the tight-rope, are meant, of course, in ridicule of political and religious parties; and its force depends upon our previous conviction that the party-quarrels between our fellows are, in fact, equally contemptible. Swift’s satire is congenial to the mental attitude of all who have persuaded themselves that men are, in fact, a set of contemptible fools and knaves, in whose quarrels and mutual slaughterings the wise and good could not persuade themselves to take a serious interest. He “proves” nothing, mathematically or otherwise. If you do not share his sentiments, there is nothing in the mere alteration of the scale to convince you that they are right; you may say, with Hazlitt, that heroism is as admirable in a Lilliputian as in a Brobdingnagian, and believe that war calls forth patriotism, and often advances civilization. What Swift has really done is to provide for the man who despises his species a number of exceedingly effective symbols for the utterance of his contempt. A child is simply amused with Bigendians and Littleendians; a philosopher thinks that the questions really at the bottom of church quarrels are in reality of more serious import: but the cynic who has learnt to disbelieve in the nobility or wisdom of the great mass of his species finds a most convenient metaphor for expressing his disbelief. In this way Gulliver’s Travels contains a whole gallery of caricatures thoroughly congenial to the despisers of humanity.
In Brobdingnag Swift is generally said to be looking, as Scott expresses it, through the other end of the telescope. He wishes to show the grossness of men’s passions, as before he has shown their pettiness. Some of the incidents are devised in this sense; but we may notice that in Brobdingnag he recurs to the Lilliput view. He gives such an application to his fable as may be convenient, without bothering himself as to logical consistency. He points out indeed the disgusting appearances which would be presented by a magnified human body; but the King of Brobdingnag looks down upon Gulliver, just as Gulliver looked down upon the Lilliputians. The monarch sums up his view emphatically enough by saying, after listening to Gulliver’s version of modern history, that “the bulk of your natives appear to me to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the face of the earth.” In Lilliput and Brobdingnag, however, the satire scarcely goes beyond pardonable limits. The details are often simply amusing, such as Gulliver’s fear when he gets home, of trampling upon the pygmies whom he sees around him. And even the severest satire may be taken without offence by every one who believes that petty motives, folly and selfishness, play a large enough part in human life to justify some indignant exaggerations. It is in the later parts that the ferocity of the man utters itself more fully. The ridicule of the inventors in the third book is, as Arbuthnot said at once, the least successful part of the whole; not only because Swift was getting beyond his knowledge, and beyond the range of his strongest antipathies, but also because there is no longer the ingenious plausibility of the earlier books. The voyage to the Houyhnhnms, which forms the best part, is more powerful, but more painful and repulsive.