A Mathematical Problem.
[2120]. At last we entered the palace, and proceeded into the chamber of presence where I saw the king seated on his throne, attended on each side by persons of prime quality. Before the throne, was a large table filled with globes and spheres, and mathematical instruments of all kinds. His majesty took not the least notice of us, although our entrance was not without sufficient noise, by the concourse of all persons belonging to the court. But he was then deep in a problem, and we attended an hour, before he could solve it. There stood by him, on each side, a young page with flaps in their hands, and when they saw he was at leisure, one of them gently struck his mouth, and the other his right ear; at which he started like one awaked on the sudden, and looking toward me and the company I was in, recollected the occasion of our coming, whereof he had been informed before. He spake some words, whereupon immediately a young man with a flap came to my side, and flapt me gently on the right ear, but I made signs, as well as I could, that I had no occasion for such an instrument; which, as I afterwards found, gave his majesty, and the whole court, a very mean opinion of my understanding. The king, as far as I could conjecture, asked me several questions, and I addressed myself to him in all the languages I had. When it was found, that I could neither understand nor be understood, I was conducted by his order to an apartment in his palace, (this prince being distinguished above all his predecessors, for his hospitality to strangers) where two servants were appointed to attend me. My dinner was brought, and four persons of quality, did me the honour to dine with me. We had two courses of three dishes each. In the first course, there was a shoulder of mutton cut into an equilateral triangle, a piece of beef into a rhomboides, and a pudding into a cycloid. The second course, was, two ducks trussed up in the form of fiddles; sausages and puddings, resembling flutes and haut-boys, and a breast of veal in the shape of a harp. The servants cut our bread into cones, cylinders, parallelograms, and several other mathematical figures.—Swift, Jonathan.
Gulliver’s Travels; A Voyage to Laputa; Chap. 2.
[2121]. Those to whom the king had entrusted me, observing how ill I was clad, ordered a taylor to come next morning, and take measure for a suit of cloaths. This operator did his office after a different manner, from those of his trade in Europe. He first took my altitude by a quadrant, and then, with rule and compasses, described the dimensions and outlines of my whole body, all which he entered upon paper; and in six days, brought my cloaths very ill made, and quite out of shape, by happening to mistake a figure in the calculation. But my comfort was, that I observed such accidents very frequent, and little regarded.—Swift, Jonathan.
Gulliver’s Travels; A Voyage to Laputa, Chap. 2.
[2122]. The knowledge I had in mathematics, gave me great assistance in acquiring their phraseology, which depended much upon that science, and music; and in the latter I was not unskilled. Their ideas are perpetually conversant in lines and figures. If they would, for example, praise the beauty of a woman, or any other animal, they describe it by rhombs, circles, parallelograms, ellipses, and other geometrical terms, or by words of art drawn from music, needless here to repeat. I observed in the king’s kitchen all sorts of mathematical and musical instruments, after the figures of which, they cut up the joints that were served to his majesty’s table.—Swift, Jonathan.
Gulliver’s Travels; A Voyage to Laputa, Chap. 2.
[2123]. I was at the mathematical school, where the master taught his pupils, after a method, scarce imaginable to us in Europe. The propositions, and demonstrations, were fairly written on a thin wafer, with ink composed of a cephalic tincture. This, the student was to swallow upon a fasting stomach, and for three days following, eat nothing but bread and water. As the wafer digested, the tincture mounted to his brain, bearing the proposition along with it. But the success has not hitherto been answerable, partly by some error in the quantum or composition, and partly by the perverseness of lads; to whom this bolus is so nauseous, that they generally steal aside, and discharge it upwards, before it can operate; neither have they been yet persuaded to use so long an abstinence as the prescription requires.—Swift, Jonathan.
Gulliver’s Travels; A Voyage to Laputa, Chap. 5.