º º: § §. § § % § gº sº Publications of the University of Cincinnati. SERIES II, . - ºš vol. III. & 㺠§ º § º §§ º º § & § º º § º º §§ º sº ºšč *º º zººlººwºººººººººº §. § 3.3% § §§§ º zº º §§ §§§ ºft §§ §§ sº incinnati, Ohio, as second-ch §§ §. § º §§ # ETITITIIIII, | ºntºulºs º mºn - sºſ ( ) º H ; É UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Bulletin No. 24. Publications of the University of Cincinnati. SERIES II. VOL. III. THE SOURCES OF GULLIVER's TRA'OELS. MAX POLL. The University Bulletins are Issued Monthly Entered at the Postoffice at Cincinnatt, Ohto, as second-class matter UNIVERSITY PRESS CINCINNATI, O. i hºv, , ºf-rºa. ++% 1-26-72% THE SOURCES OF GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. Gulliver's ZYazels were probably composed between 1720 and 1724. Swift had experienced in his political career his greatest disappointment. He had not succeeded in becoming an English bishop and he had received for all his labors and troubles only the deanery of St. Patrick at Dublin. The party of which he was one of the most clever and energetic adherents was no longer in power, since the death of Queen Anne, and his political friends, such as Bolingbroke and Ormond had fled, while Oxford, Wyndham, Prior and others were imprisoned. Swift himself had sought refuge in Ire- 1and from the dangers which threatened him and all the partisans of the Tory ministry. It was during this time of retirement, as is generally held, that he was busied with the composition of Gulliver's Travels; the germ of them, however, is to be found in the travels of Martimus Scriblerus. Swift, while staying in Lon- don, had joined a literary association, called the Scriblerus Club, the members of which were his literary friends, Pope, Gay, Arbuthnot, and the statesmen Oxford and St. John. “The final cause of this club”, Leslie Stephens, in his bio- graphy of Swift,” p. 167, tells us, “was supposed to be the composition of a joint-stock satire. We learn from an inter- esting letter 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-head- edness 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 * English Men of Letters, ed. by John Morley, New York, 1882. (3) 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 seerhs probable that Gulliver originated in Swift's mind in the course of his meditations upon Scriblerus.” And, indeed, if we read the concluding chapter of Pope's Memoirs of Martimus Scriblerus we find in it the outlines of Gullizer’s 7%razels. “It was in the year 1699 that Martin set out on his travels. Thou wilt certainly be very curious to know what they were. It is not yet time to inform thee. But what hints I am at liberty to give, I will. “Thou shalt know then, that, in his first voyage, he was carried by a prosperous storm to a discovery of the remains of the ancient Pygmaean empire. “That, in his second, he was happily shipwrecked on the land of the Giants, now the most humane people in the world. “That, in his third voyage, he discovered a whole king- dom of philosophers, who govern by the mathematics; with whose admirable schemes and projects he returned to benefit his own dear country; but had the misfortune to find them rejected by the envious ministers of Queen Anne, and him- self sent treacherously away. “And hence it is, that, in his fourth voyage, he dis- covers a vein of melancholy proceeding almost to a disgust of the species; but, above all, a mortal detestation to the whole flagitious race of ministers, and a final resolution not to give in any memorial to the Secretary of State, in order to subject the lands he discovered to the Crown of Great Britain.” This sketch, under Swift's hands, grew into one of the most admirable and bitter satires on mankind that has ever been written.—We must now ask from what motives Swift overwhelmed mankind with such severe sarcasm. We have already mentioned that he had been unsuccessful in his politi- cal career; that insignificant fellows, mere nobodys, were pre- ferred to him, which produced a hatred and an indignation in * Pope’s Works, 1806, vol. VI 171 f. (4) the banished Dean which could never be extinguished. His youth too had been a joyless one; his father died before Swift was born, leaving his wife and children in the greatest dis- tress. It was only through the cold charity of relations that Swift was enabled to enter college where he led a miserable life. The first years after leaving the university he spent in dependence on the sick and morose Sir William Temple at Moor Park. When he had at last succeeded in getting rid of these slavish chains by the death of Sir William, Swift hastened to London to remind King William of the promises which the king had made on the occasion of the royal visit to Moor Park; but his Majesty had forgotten them. He now accepted the offer of the Earl of Berkeley, one of the Lords Justices of Ireland, to enter his service, and he attended his Lordship as a chaplain and secretary to Dublin. But here he had to endure a new disappointment inasmuch as the rich deanery of Derry, which had been promised to him, was bes- towed on another and as he was presented only with the small vicarages of Laracor and Rathbeggan. As an adviser of ministers he expected to see his services rewarded by an English bishopric, but this hope also proved to be an idle O1162, All these disillusions and failing health had embittered his character and in this humor he wrote his satire. “Dies also ist der Anstoss,” says Richard M. Meyer,” “er wird tiber- gangen,_nicht dass er ein Opfer seines Patriotismus, seiner Frömmigkeit, auch nur seiner Geburt geworden wäre. Keine dieser Empfindungen ist in ihm verletzt; auch nicht sein Selbstbewusstsein, demn er hat nie an sich gezweifelt. Aber er meint nun, wie wohl andere sich für diese Welt zu gut glauben, er sei zu klug für diese Menschen. Dies lenkt seinen Blick auf die Unzulänglichkeit zunichst der Macht- haber. Aber wieviel unbedeutender wird erst die Masse sein, die diese Nullen verehrt l So gilt seine Satire von Anfang die- ser Eigenschaft, richtiger diesem Mangel an Eigenschaften.” The form of his satire Swift has derived from the imag- inary voyages which we meet with in the literatures of many nations and of which we find a good account in Dun- * Richard M. Meyer: 3. Swift and G. Ch. Lichtenberg. Zwet Satiriker des 18. 3ahr- hunderts. Berlin, 1886, p, 19. f ºn º º: # %. **. £r & Cº., 77° sº A º £, .** . * (5) w!, 1op's History of Fiction. Some of these earlier types we shall have occasion to examine later. - Of the four parts into which Swift has divided his Travels the first contains the Voyage to Lilliput. In the three other pooks Gulliver acts more as a looker-on, but in the first he himself plays a very important part among the pigmies; he renders them good service by taking the enemy's fleet, by saving the royal palace, which is in flames; he confers bene- fits upon them, but he only reaps ingratitude and he is forced to leave their country. But in the first book the satire is yet very inoffensive; it refers chiefly to the court and poli- tics of England, and Swift seems to have had particular incidents and persons in view. ºw The outlines of the Voyage to Lilliput are founded upon the fiction of the pigmies and there is no doubt that Swift nas borrowed the idea of the first scene between Gulliver and the Lilliputians from Philostratus, notwithstanding he once boasted that he had never stolen a hint. Philostratus describes the picture Hercules amongst the Pigmies as follows: “The Pigmies, to revenge the death of Antaeus, having found Hercules napping in Libya, mustered up all their forces against him. One phalanx (he tells us) assaulted his left hand; but against his right hand, that be- ing the stronger, two phalanxes were appointed. The arch- ers and slingers besieged his feet, admiring the hugeness of his thighs. But against his head, as the arsenal, they rais- ed batteries, the king himself taking his post there. They set fire to his hair, put reaping-hooks in his eyes; and that he might not breathe, clapped doors to his mouth and nos- trils; but all the execution that they could'do was only to awake him, which when done, deriding their folly, he gather- ed them all up into his lion's skin, and carried them (Philos- tratus thinks) to Euristhenes.” David Asher differs widely in opinion concerning the source of the Voyage to Lilliput. He writes: * 3magines, book II. 22. Cf. The Works of 3onathan Swift, published by Sir Walter Scott. Sec. ed. Edinburgh, 1824, vol. XI, p. 7. The page numbers of the quotations from Swift refer to this edition. (6) * “In den unlängst nur in einer Auflage von 150 Exem- plaren erschienenen “Mémoires de Goldoni pour servir à l'his- toire de sa vie et à celle de son theatre etc. Tome Premier . . v. Loehner, Venezia, 1883” bin ich bei der Durchlesung derselben auf S. 134 auf den unverkennbaren Ursprung des Liliputnärchens gestossen. Goldoni erzählt nāmlich daselbst von Seiner Aufführung auf einem Puppen theater in der Familie des Grafen Lantieri einer “Das Niesen des Her- cules” betitelten Posse von Pietro Jacopo Martelli, die dieser selbst eine Bambocciata genannt hatte. “Die Phantasie des Verfassers', sagt er, “sandte Hercules ins Land der Däum- linge. Diese armen Kleinen, erschreckt beinn Anblick eines belebten Berges, der Arme und Beine hatte, verbargèn sich in Löcher. Eines Tages, als. Hercules auf offnem Felde lag und ruhig schlief, kamen die furchtsamen Einwohner aus ihren Schlupfwinkeln hervor und, mit Dornen und Schilf- rohren bewaffnet, bestiegen sie das Ungeheuer und bedeck- ten es von Kopf bis Füssen, wie die Fliegen sich eines Stückes in Fâulnis geratenen Fleisches bemächtigen. Her- cules erwacht; er empfindet etwas in seiner Nase, er niest; seine Feinde fallen von allen Seiten herunter und so endet A, a . . - £/ ſº-tiv-2, 207. }./…/ 3 4. f # das Stück.” Die Aufführung fand zwischen 1723 und 1728 statt . . . . , da er (Martelli) aber 1727 gestorben ist und Zweifel an der Priorität Martelli's aufkommen.” But Asher seems not to know that Miss Vanhomrigh, immortalized by the Dean in his poem Cadenus and Vanessa, hints as early as 1722 at the adventure of Gulliver with the ape in Brobdingmag and that the Voyage to Lilliput was surely written before that time. Swift was also a very care- ful peruser of Philostratus whose works were in his library. Mr. Theophilus Swift has read the notes which the Dean had written himself in the blank leaves of the volume. Ash- er himself adds: “Wie die Kenntnis dieser Posse zu Swift gedrungen sein kann, ist freilich Schwer zu sagen. Doch 1ässt es sich vermuten, dass er sie durch seine engen Verbin- dungen mit den Grossen des Landes, die ja Italien bereisten und wohl auch für dessen Literatur sich interessierten, er- * Das Vorbild Swift’s zte setnem Gulliver. Anglia VII, Anzeiger, p. 93 f. (7) & gº { } tº tº tºº-, fºr a 'vºve...) Gulliver's Travels erst 1726–27 erschienen sind, so kann kein . , f tt. K-3 & #4;. tº #, *77:/. 1angt habe.” But none of Swift's acquaintances had travelled in Italy during these years, as far as I can ascertain, and I think, therefore, that Asher considers Martelli the source of Swift without good reason. - fºrkºv.). “ Another incident in his Voyage to Lilliput Swift seems tº, a fºr . to have borrowed from Addison, as Macaulay in his essay on ; . . . . . . . . . Addison” thinks. “The emperor,” says Gulliver, “is taller, +, ×{* * t Y. I by almost the breadth of my nail, than any of his court; cºſ' xxx which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders.” (p. 38). About thirty years before Gulliver’s Travels appeared, Addison wrote these lines: “Iamgue acies inter medias sese arduus infert Pygmeadum ductor, qui, majestate verendus, Incessuque gravis, reliquos supereminet omnes Mole gigantea, mediamoue exsurgit in ulnam.” Cº. º. 7ſ V From Rabelais (Gargantua I, chapitre XVII, Com- favºr “” ment Gargantua paya sa bien venue es Parisiens”) Swift º has taken, I dare say, the mode which Gulliver makes use of, to extinguish the flames of the burning royal palace. "all, aºlº In chapter VI Gulliver speaks of the manner in which “” the inhabitants of Lilliput educate theſe children: “They will never allow that a child is under any obligation to his father for begetting him, or to his mother for bringing him into the world.” (p. 79). This idea bears some resemblance to an institution which Cyrano de Bergerac, the author of the Histoire comique des États et Ampires de la Zune et du Soleil,” became acquainted with when he lived with the lunar people, where it was the rule that fathers obeyed their children. Many other hints Swift has derived from the history of his time and the allusions to the court and politics of Eng- land were understood by all his contemporaries. Lord Orrery, f Delany, f Hawkesworths and Sir Walter Scotts $ in * The Works of Lord Macaulay, New York, 1860, vol. V, p. 332. * Voyages de Cyrano de Bergerac dans les Empires de la Lune et du Soleil, et L’Histoire. des Oiseaux, part of Voyages Imaginaires, Songes, Visions et Romans Cabalistiques, vol. XIII, Amsterdam, 1787. The page numbers of the quotations from Bergerac refer to this edition. . t Lord Orrery: Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. 3onathan Swift, 1zsz. # P. Delany: Observations upon Lord Orrery's Remarks etc., 1754. $ J. Hawkesworth : The Life of 3. Swift, 1765. $$. In his edition of Swift's works. (8) Zatſ 7. * °3; & § h£eir comments on Gullivré's Travels have been very pains- aking in pointing out and explaining all these allusions. Sir Robert Walpole, Swift's political enemy, is inti- mated under the character of the prime minister Flimnap. When Gulliver tells of the rope-dancers, who jump for get- ting an office, and mentions that “Flimnap would infallibly have broken his neck, if one of the king's cushions, that acci- dentally lay on the ground, had not weakened the force of his fall” (p. 50), this aims at Walpole's dismissal from office in 1717 through the successful intrigues of Sunderland and Stanhope. Under the cushion, which broke his fall, we have perhaps to understand the Duchess of Kendal, mistress of George I, with whom he stood on friendly terms and who saved him from utter disgrace. Gulliver also describes another entertainment at the Lilliputian court. “The emperor lays on the table three fine silken threads of six inches long; one is blue, the other red, and the third green. The threads are proposed as prizes for those persons whom the emperor has a mind to distin- guish by a peculiar mark of his favor . . . He 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, sev- eral times, according as the stick is advanced or depressed . . . Whoever performs his part with most agility, and holds out the longest in leaping and creeping, is rewarded with the blue-colored silk; the red is given to the next, and the green to the third”. (p. 50–51.) This stroke of satire probably alludes to that circumstance that Walpole got the order of of the Bath as a preliminary step to that of the Garter. The political factions of High-heels and Low-heels mean the parties of Whigs and Tories, and the religious divisions of Papist and Protestant are pointed out by the Big-endians and the Small-endians. When Gulliver remarks that the heir to the crown wears one heel higher than the other it refers to the English crown- prince, George II, who gathered about him both the discon- tented Whigs and Tories and divided his favors between the two parties. * (9) k-v Gulliver incurs the disfavor of the Empress on account of his mode of extinguishing the flames of the burning royal palace. Swift's commentators discover in it an allusion to the disgrace with Queen Anne, which he had brought upon himself by his Tale of a Tub, wherein he had given himself a very great freedom'in regard to religion, so that many of the clergy were much scandalized by this satire. Lilliput is England, Blefuscu France: Gulliver is forced to leave Lilliput and to flee to Blefuscu, because he had re- fused completely to destroy all the enemy's vessels, a crime similar to that imputed to Bolingbroke, who was accused for having made a peace when it was possible to have entire- 1y ruined Louis XIV. Bolingbroke, as well as Ormond, was compelled to take shelter at the French court. A certain similarity seems to exist between Gulliver's trial before the Lilliputian ministery and that of Bergerac before the tribunal of the birds in the Histoire des Oiseaux, of which we have to speak later. In the Voyage to Brobdingnag, Gulliver, who had been a giant among the Lilliputians, now becomes a pigmy and it sounds very ridiculous when we hear the small Gulliver praise, amidst the gigantic inhabitants of Brobdingnag, the institu- tions of England and the deeds of his countrymen whom the lºing of Brobdingnag calls “the most pernicious race of little odious vermin, that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth” (p. 170). The drift of Swift's second book is a bitter and intense satire upon England. The out- line Swift has taken from Cyrano de Bergerac's Histoire comi- gue des Etats et Empires de la Lume, the contents of which are as follows: One evening, in the light of the full moon, Cyrano de Bergerac returns home from a merry banquet in the society of some friends. The moon in her brightness attractithe attention of the whole company and a very ani- mated discussion on her ärises. In the course of the conver- sation Cyrano declareš the moon an inhabited world and on arriving at home begins to meditate upon measures which must be taken in order to make a journey to that planet. Finally it occurs to him to use bottles, filled with morning dew, which is drawn up by the sun. With the help of these bottles he rises into the air, but he cannot reach the moon, (10) º, § *; and lets himself sink down upon the earth, and, through the revolution of the earth, arrives in Canada. Here he makes new experiments to get to the moon, in which he at last succeeds by rubbing the marrow of certain animals on his body, which the moon sucks up. Very soon after his arrival he meets inhabitants of the moon, giants twelve yards high, who think Cyrano to be the female of the queen's ape and deliver him to a mountebank, who shows him for | money. “This mountebank carried me to his dwelling where he taught me to perform as dwarf, to turn somersets, to make faces and on afternoons made those who wanted to see me pay a certain entrance fee. But heaven, softened by my sufferings and angry at seeing its master's temple defiled, brought it about, that one day, as I was tied to the end of a rope, with which the charlatan made me jump for the amuse- ment of the people, I heard the voice of a man who asked me in Greek who I was. I was much astonished to hear in that country a person speak as in our world. He questioned me for some time. I answered him and related to him in general the whole undertaking and the result of my journey. He consoled me and I remember he said to me: “Well, my son, you are being punished for the sins of your world. Here as well as ºthere are vulgar people who cannot endure the thought of things to which they are not accustomed. But know, you are only getting tit for tat and if any one from this earth had gone up into yours and had been bold enough to say he was a man, your learned men would look upon him as a monster and have him smothered.’ He promised me then that he would inform the court of my misfortunes.” (p. 147f). We see that the same thing happens to Cyrano as to Gulliver in Brobdingnag. The inhabitants of this country are also giants and the farmer, whose servants had found Gulliver, also exhibits him as a show and makes much money out of him. The English traveller must also play several jokes to amuse the spectators. “I turned about several times to the company, says Gulliver, paid my humble respects, said they were welcome, and used some other speeches I had been taught. I took up a thimble filled with liquor, which Glumdalclitch had given me for a cup, and drank their (11) health. I drew out my hanger, and flourished with it after the manner of fencers in England. My nurse gave me a part of a straw, which I exercised as a pike, having learnt the art in my youth.” (p. 126). That man who spoke to Cyrano in the Greek language was “le Démon de Socrate”, who tells him “that he had, after the death of this philosopher, guided and taught at Thebes Epaminondas; that afterwards, having gone among the Romans, justice had drawn him to the party of Cato the Younger; that after his death he had devoted himself to Brutus; that all these great persons having left in this world, in their stead, nothing but the ghosts of their virtues, he had withdrawn with his companions to the temples and desert places”. (p. 149.) - The demon, as he had promised, brings our poet to the court, where everybody likewise considers him to be the female of the queen's ape, which had just been brought to court. Cyrano recognizes in him a man, a Spaniard, who, weary of living among his stupid countrymen, had come to the moon by the help of birds. Both are confined in a cage, where they have in the night many conversations about phi- losophy and astronomy with each other, while all day long people come to stare at them. Meanwhile Bergerac and the Spaniard had picked up a smattering of the moon language, so that some free-thinkers of the moon held them to be be- ings endowed with reason. But the men of science very violently opposed this opinion, saying: “We go on our four feet because God was unwilling to trust a thing so precious on a less firm foundation and he feared, if man should walk otherwise, some misfortune would happen to him. For this reason he was careful to establish him on four pillars so that he could not fall; but disdaining to have anything to do with the construction of these two brutes, he abandomned them to the caprice of nature which, not minding the loss of such insignificant beings, merely placed them on two paws.” (p. 182f.) ---. The result of the philosophical inquiries concerning the two Europeans, was that they were declared to be parrots without feathers. We remember that Gulliver too had learn- ed the language of Brobdingnag and that the men of science (12) there could not agree as to the species of beings to which he belonged, some of them taking him for a “carnivorous ani- mal”, others for an “embryo or abortive birth”. His rela- tion to Glumdalclitch also bears some resemblance to that of Cyrano's to one of the queen's maids of honor. “The queen's maidens kept stuffing scraps into my basket and the prettiest one of all, having taken quite a fancy to me, was so over- whelmed with joy that, when we were alone together and I told her about the customs and amusements of the people of our world and especially about the chimes and other musi- cal instruments she declared to me, with tears in her eyes, that she would gladly follow me if I should ever be able to fly back to our world.” (p. 186) Meanwhile Bergerac had been taught by the fowler of the queen the moon language, in which he now made such great progress that the dispute, whether he was a being en- dowed with reason or not, was again renewed, notwithstand- ing that the great scholars had resolved “to 1ssue a decree, which forbade people to believe that he was a rational being, with very particular orders to all persons of whatever qual- ity or condition, to suppose, however intelligent his action might be, that it was instinct that guided him.” (p. 184) In spite of this decree the quarrel became so violent that Ber- gerac was ordered to appear before a public assembly which was to judge of his capacities. The decision was that he was not a man, but an ostrich and he was again confined in a cage. To some courtiers, who once paid him a visit in his prison, the bold traveller had expressed the opinion that the moon was in reality only a moon, and not an earth. Because of this irreligion and blasphemy he was condemned to death and only his public declaration, “que cette lune-ci n'est pas une lune, mais un monde, et que ce monde de la-bas n'est pas un monde, mais une lune,” (p. 197) saved his life. For his rescue he was indebted to his old friend, the Demon of Soc- rates, who also brought it about, that Cyrano after his liber- ation was declared to be a man. After having become further acquainted with the customs and manners of the moon people and having lived for a time with a moon family, Bergerac was seized with homesickness and asked the Demon to take him down to the earth. The Demon yielded 'is) to his wish and carried him to Italy, whence Cyrano returned home. It is beyond all doubt that this French tale was the model of the Voyage to Bobdingnag and we have seen that Swift has borrowed, not only the outlines, but even some of the inci- dents, from it. Gulliver, on his arrival in this country, is very soon surrounded by several natives, who are of the same size as those of the moon and who are astonished at his small stature. The farmer to whom he has been brought exhibits him as a public show in the next town for money and brings him finally to the metropolis, where the queen buys him and presents him to the king. At court he first learns thorough- ly the language, the rudiments of which the farmer's daugh- ter had already taught him and there he has several disputes with his Majesty's philosophers, who take him to be other than a man and who quarrel with one another as to what species of beings he belongs. When walking alone, Gulliver observes “that the smaller birds did not appear to be at all afraid of me, but would hop about within a yard's distance, looking for worms and other food, with as much indifference and security as if no creature at all were near them”. (p. 150f.) The French traveller experiences the same misfortunes in the realm of birds: “What surprised me still more was that these birds, instead of getting scared at meeting me, fluttered about me; one whistled in my ears, the other circled around my head”. (p. 357) Glumdalclitch shows as much affection for Gulliver as the young moon lady for Bergerac, and Swift too mentions the maids of honor, whom however he heartily dislikes and scoffs and sneers at, as Delany in his Remarks informs us: “I well remember his (i. e. the Dean), making strange re- ports of the phraseologies of persons about the court and par- ticularly the maids of honor.” This conformity with the Histoire comique convinces us that the French tale is, no doubt, the source of the Voy- age to Brobdingmag. The many sea-terms which Swift uses in the description of the storm he has copied, as Professor de Morgan has shown, word for word from Sturmy's Compleat Mariner. * ...…”< *...…sº sº Af 4...ºr- 6-66. ; (14) Zoº”. * £73. A. hºrt a wºrk... …). Ct. , is Nº. 6, 7 tº 1.7%, lººr'. . . . . 13 \ \ The third part of Gulliver's Travels, the Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi etc., is especially a satire upon the abuses of science and Swift particularly ridicules mathema- ticians, astronomers, chemists and projectors of all kinds, who waste their time in vain chimerical projects. Several ideas he is said to have derived from Francis Godwin's romance, The Voyage of Domingo Gonzales to the World of the Moon,” as Sir W. Scott remarks. (p. 194, note.) But a careful perusal of this book has convinced me that such is not the case and I entirely agree with Hönncher, who, in an excellent articlef, which treats especially the relations be- tween Swift and Bergerac, says: “Obschon Verfasser dieser Skizze nun fest tiberzeugt ist, dass der Verfasser der Gulliv- er's Travels aus dieser geistreichen Novelle, ‘berühmt wegen des natürlichen und wahrhaften Tones der Lügen des Ver- fassers' mehr als eine glückliche Idee gezogen, so vermochte doch eine aufmerksame Lecture ihn nicht von der Wahr- scheinlichkeit obiger Vermutung (i. e. the influence of God- win's romance upon the Voyage to Laputa) zu überzeugen”. (p. 418). Dunlop, in his History of Prose Fiction (p. 535) thinks that Bergerac's Histoire des États du Soleil has sug- gested the plan of the Voyage to Laputa. He does not show, however, any ground for his opinion and I cannot find any resemblance between the two books. Let me give briefly the contents of Cyrano's novel for the purpose of making a com- parison with that of the Voyage to Laputa. Cyrano (he now calls himself Dyrcona—d (e) Cyrano) arrives at Toulon on his return from Italy and thence goes to Toulouse, in the neighborhood of which city there lives a friend of his. This nobleman, M. de Colignac, had been positively informed that Cyrano had perished at Quebec and he is, therefore, the more glad to see him again and accommodates him with a room in his castle. Here Bergerac composes a narration of his adventures in the moon, through which he makes him- self so renowned that his portrait is sold in the streets of the neighboring town. The parliament of Toulouse too, hears of his extraordinary travels and of his opinions which were * Reprinted Anglia X 428 f. Cf. E. Hönncher’s Bemerkungen zu Godwin’s Voyage of Domingo Gonzales to the Moon, Anglia X 452 f. - f 2wellen zu Dean 3onathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Anglia X397 ff. (15) often in opposition to the doctrines of the Catholic church and puts him, therefore, in prison as a sorcerer and heretic. After having succeeded in escaping by bribing the jailer, he is again taken prisoner. The deliverance from his second imprisonment he obtains by the help of an ingeniously contrived machine, which he had constructed in the dungeon. After a voyage of four months in this machine, Bergerac reaches one of the small stars which move in a circle around the sun and which are considered by men to be solar spots. He makes the acquaintance of a “petit homme, tout nu”, by whom he is let into the most profound secrets of nature. The language which the little man speaks he understands directly, notwith- standing that he had never heard it before. This was only possible because the inhabitant of the solar spot spoke “1a langue matrice”. Thereupon Cyrano leaves the star and continues his voyage to the sun, where he arrives after twenty-two months. During the journey his machine had become unnecessary, because his mere volition carried him to the sun. The beings whom he meets at first on the sun are very small, but they are able to assume any shape. To Cyrano they appear as magnificent fruits of a tree, as eagles etc. A nightingale then leads the poet to the realm of birds, where he has very unpleasant experiences. The birds fall upon him, take him prisoner and accuse him of being a man, the sworn enemy of their kind. Notwithstanding that he pre- tends to be an ape he is condemned to death. Preparations for the execution are already made, but at the very 1ast moment the intercession of a magpie, his aunt's magpie, which he had always defended on earth against the teasings of the people, saves him. After that Dyrcona leaves the realm of birds and comes to a marvellous wood, the oaks of which can speak; they tell him a mystical story of the “Arbres amants”. In the sun Bergerac meets an old friend, his teacher Campanella, the composer of the story “Civitas solis”. This learned man leads our poet to the “Lake of Sleep”, into which five rivers fall, the rivers of the five sen- ses. The meeting of a man and wife of the “Empire des Amants” offers to our poet the opportunity of speaking of the sexual relations in the sun. Thereupon the travellers light upon Descartes; with the greeting between him and (16) Campanella, the story breaks off.-Wherein the resemblance between this romance and the Voyage to Laputa lies, I am unable to see, with the single exception perhaps that Ber- gerac's flying chariot might have suggested to the Dean the invention of the Flying Island. Swift has not forgotten, in painting the men of letters on the Flying Island, again to make sundry hits at eminent contemporaries, as his commentators have pointed out. The account of the academy of Lagado, a satire on the Royal Society in London, as is known, is the most interesting and beautiful part of the third book. Under the Flying Island there is a country (Ireland is probably meant) which is also governed by the king of Laputa. Inhabitants of this coun- try had once come to the island where they acquired a know- 1edge of mathematics, but only an imperfect one. Having returned home they founded the academy, already mentioned, and here these pretenders “eke out their plans of mechanical improvement by dint of whim and fancy”. It is beyond doubt that Swift has borrowed the general idea of this satire upon projectors from Rabelais, although he has not followed his model word for word; but concerning the fundamental idea the description of the academy agrees completely with the twenty-second chapter of the fifth book of Pantagruel : “How Queen Whim's officers were employed, and how the said Lady retained us among her Abstractors”. On his way home to England Gulliver comes to the island of Glubbdubdrib, which is inhabited by magicians, who are ruled by a prince or governor, who has the power of calling up from the dead whomever he likes. In order to please his English visitor, he orders Gulliver “to call up whatever persons he would choose to name, and in whatever numbers, among all the dead from the beginning of the world to the present time, and command them to answer any questions he would think fit to ask”. (p. 249.) Gulliver gladly avails himself of this opportunity and conjures up the ghosts of Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Caesar, Pompey, Descartes etc., all of whom appear in the most ridiculous light. The idea of making ghosts appear for the purpose of stripping them of the nimbus which adorned them in their lives, Swift has perhaps also derived from Rabelais who in (17) 2 * 7 …tt-Cº-º-º-t + ſ (, ; ; tı, tº . book II chapter XXX: “How Epistemon, who had his head cut off, was finely healed by Panurge” makes Epistemon relate his adventures which he had had in hel1, where he had met a number of celebrated persons. He saw for instance Alex- ander the Great “there mending old stockings, whereby he got but a very poor living”, Julius Caesar and Pompey were “boat-wrights and tighters of ships” etc. In the Voyage to the Houyhnhnms Swift, under the picture of the Yahoos, gives for the 1ast time vent to his hatred towards mankind, destroys the fancied dignity of humanity and strips off the pretended virtues with which men deceive themselves. To show this, is his task in this book. - I have no doubt that Bergerac's work in its general tendencies has suggested to Swift the idea of degrading and humiliating mankind so deeply as to place them on the same level with brutes, and raise above them other beings that men are accustomed to treat as their inferiors. Did it not happen to the French traveller that the inhabitants of the moon flatly refused to acknowledge him as a human being, that they took him for some sort of ostrich, devoid of reason, and that he had humbly to submit to such a degrading treatment, hurting so much his human pride, nay, that he was even compelled to declare in public that the world from which he came was not a world but a moon. When he gets to the realm of birds he fares even worse. Being taken prisoner and expecting to be devoured by the infuriated birds, Bergerac finds a defender in a magpie. In the quarrel that arises among the feathered citizens of the kingdom as to what to do with the intruder, the French author seizes the opportunity of hurling invectives against mankind, perhaps more insulting and humiliating even than those which the Yahoos have to suffer at Swift's hands: “The muttering”, says Cyrano, “nearly rose to a riot, for my magpie, having been bold enough to state that it was barbarous to thus blindly put to death an animal whose faculties were somewhat like their own, they wanted to tear the magpie to pieces since it would be very absurd to believe that a creature, entirely naked, whom nature itself, in giving it birth, had not cared to provide with the most necessary (18) protection, should be able to reason. If, at least, they added it were an animal whose form were a little more like our own; but it was as unlike and as hideous as it could be, in a word, a bald animal, a plucked bird, a chimaera, made up of all sorts of species and a terror to all; man, I say, so foolish and so vain that he imagines that we have been created merely for him, man, who with that keen mind of his is unable to distinguish sugar and arsenic and who will swallow hemlock, which his nice judgment makes him mistake for parsley; man, who maintains that the senses alone are the basis of reasoning and yet who has the weakest, most sluggish and most untrustworthy senses of all creatures, man, whom nature created as a sort of monstrosity but to whom it has given the ambition to rule over all other animals, let him be put to death”. (Alstoire des Oiseaux, p. 359 f.) Cyrano, being brought before a tribunal, pretends to be a monkey in order to save his life. But his lie is soon dis- covered. It would lead too far to describe the further proceedings before the court of justice. To show, however, how small the esteem is in which Bergerac holds mankind or rather how great the contempt and disgust is which he feels for them, I wish to quote one more passage: “And even this empire which they fondly think they possess is an imaginary prerogative. They are, on the contrary, so inclined to ser- vitude that, for fear of lacking a master, they sell their free- dom. to each other. It is thus that the young are the slaves of the old, the poor of the rich, the peasants of the squires, the princes of the kings, and the kings themselves of the laws which they have established. But with all that, the poor slaves are so afraid of not having masters enough, that, as though they dread that freedom might come to them from some unexpected quarter, they make up gods for them- selves in all the elements, in the water, in the air, in the fire, under the earth; they will make some of wood rather than not have enough and I think even that they tickle themselves with false hopes of immortality, less from a horror of non- existence than because they fear not to have masters after death”. (Histoire des Øiseaux, p. 374 f.) f O (19) º **, ***** / I think these quotations will show not only the affinity, the congeniality of the natures of Swift and Bergerac, but also the influence the latter has exercised upon the Dean, when he, to the great indignation of most of his contempor- aries, showed them their portraits in his description of the Yahoos. *Y. Borkowsky has published, in Anglia XV*, a very inter- esting, although sometimes bold article on the same subject, bold especially in attributing the authorship of the Voyage to Cacklogallinia, that appeared 1727, to Swift, for which assertion, I think, he does not furnish evidence enough, especially as he knows it only through a German translation and had therefore no opportunity to compare the style and language of the anonymous author with that of Swift. I do not see any reason why the Dean should have concealed from his most intimate friends the fact that he was writing . another satire, especially as Gulliver's Travels are often mentioned in his correspondence with Pope, Sheridan etc. Furthermore, would it, be astonishing to see appearing an imitation of a story which was such a complete success, and was read, as Gay writes to Swift, “from the Cabinet-council to the Nursery”? In other respects, however, Borkowsky’s paper throws much light, by minute researches, upon the principal sources of Gulliver's 77-avels, Rabelais and Bergerac, as well as upon some minor sources like More's Utopia, L’ Aſistoire des Sevarambes etc. Not only are the general ideas and tendencies pointed out that Swift's work has in common with the Histoire Comique, but also some passages are quoted that prove beyond a doubt that also in the Voyage to the Houynhnhnms the Dean is much indebted to Bergerac. Another source of the Voyage to the Houyhnhnms seems to be Godwin’s Voyage of Domingo Gonzales to the World of the Moom, which we refused to admit to be the source of the Voy- age to Laputa. Hönncher, in his reprint of this talef, has distinguished those passages that bear resemblance to the Płistoire Comique and Gulliver’s Travels by italics. I quote the following: § 3.14 * Quellen zu Swift’s “ Gulliver'. p. 354 f. f See note * on page 15. (20) Speaking of the lunar people Gonzales says: “The chief cause of their good government is an excellent disposi- tion in the nature of the people, so that all, both old and young, hate all manners of vice, and live in such love, peace and amity, as it seems to be another paradise. . . . Neither need they any lawyers, for there is no contention, the seeds whereof, when they begin to sprout, are by the wisdom of the next superior plucked up by the roots. And as little want is there of physicians, they never surfeit themselves; the air is likewise pure and temperate, neither is there any cause of sickness; I could never hear of any that were dis- tempered. But, the time assigned them by nature being spent, they die without the least pain, or rather cease to live, as a candle does to give light, when what nourishes it is con- sumed. I was once at the departure of one of them, and was much surprised that notwithstanding the happy life he lived, and the multitudes of friends and children he should forsake, yet as soon as he understood his end to approach, he pre- pared a great feast, and, inviting all whom he esteemed, exhorted them ‘to be merry, and rejoice with him, since the time was come he should now leave the counterfeit pleasures of that world, and be made partaker of all true joy and per- fect happiness.’ I did not so much admire his own constancy as the behaviour of his friends; with us in the like case all seem to mourn, when many of them do often but laugh in their sleeves”. (p. 448) Are we not vividly reminded of the country of the Houy- hnhnms when we read this description ? There too they have no need of 1awyers and Gulliver finds it extremely difficult to explain the meaning of the word to the Houyhnhnm, his master, who “desired to be farther satisfied what I meant by law, and the dispensers thereof, according to the present practice in my own country; because he thought nature and reason were sufficient guides for a reasonable animal, as we pretended to be, in showing us what we ought to do, and what to avoid” (p. 316). Gulliver also reports of the Houyhnhnms “that they are subject to no diseases, and therefore can have no need of physicians” (p. 348) and that “if they can avoid casualties, they die only of old age, and are buried in the obscurest places that (21) can be found; their friends and relations expressing neither joy nor grief at their departure; nor does the dying person discover the least regret that he is leaving the world, any more than if he were upon returning home from a visit to one of his neighbors. (p. 349) . . . . Some weeks before their death they feel a gradual decay, but without pain. During this time they are much visited by their friends; . . . About ten days before their death, which they seldom fail in comput- ing, they return the visits that have been made them . and take a solefnn leave of their friends, as if they were go- ing to some remote part of the country, where they designed to pass the rest of their lives.” (p. 350) There is still another work to which the Voyage to the Houyhnhnms bears a certain resemblance, however slight it may be. It is a kind of Utopia by Jambulos. The original, to be sure, has been lost, but Diodorus mentions it and re- lates its contents in his “History”. As Henricus Stephanus had published an edition of it in 1559, it is not impossible that the Dean, who was fond of ancient literature and who devoted much of his time to this kind of studies, may have come across it and read it. In relating its contents we fol- low Erwin Rohde” who gives the story as follows: “Jambulus hatte sich nach dem Tode seines Vaters, eines Kaufmanns, ebenfalls in Kaufmannsgeschäften durch Arabien nach dem Lande der Gewürze begeben. Von Rău- bern tiberfallen, wurde er mit einem Reisegefährten zuerst zum Hirten gemacht, dann von Aethiopen gefangen, an die Küste geschleppt, und auf einem, für sechs Monate mit Speise und Trank versehenem Schiffe als Sühnopfer, dergleichen jene Aethiopen alle 600 Jahr einmal dem Meere zu überge- ben pflegten, in den Ocean hinausgeschickt; man hatte ihn- en befohlen, nach Süden zu fahren, wo sie eine glückselige Insel, von wohlwollenden Menschen bewohnt, antreffen wir- den. Nach einer Fahrt von 4 Monaten gelangten sie zu dieser grossen Insel und wurden von den Einwohnern giitig auf genommen. In der Schildrung der Zustände auf jener glūcklichen Insel bestand nun der eigentliche Inhalt der Erzählung des Jambulus” but which we can pass over, * Der griechische Roman and seine Worläufer, Leipzig, 1876. (22) because in this connection it is of no interest to us. “Bei diesem glückseligen Volke lebte J ambulus, mit seinem Gefährten 7 Jahre; endlich trieb man sie als Ubeltäter und an Schlimme Sitten gewohnt, aus, Von Neuem auf ibrem Schiffe dem Meere liberlassen, wurden sie nach langer Fahrt endlich an die Küste Indiens geworfen.” Rhode defines the purpose which Jambulos had in mind when he wrote his story, to be the showing to the world cor- rupted by culture, a picture of a humanity leading a blame- less and painless life in primaeval vigor and beauty, in bliss- ful peace under the simplest rule of nature; a humanity which cannot endure in their midst, even for a short time, a guest touched with the corruption of civilized Greek life. Is this not exactly the same purpose which Swift had in view, when he composed the fourth part of his Travels 2 Was not Gulliver, only because he was a detestable Yahoo, compelled to leave the country of the Houyhnhnms, although he tried hard and successfully to imitate their pure manners and customs ? - It seems to me that a certain similarity between the two works cannot be denied, and I am not sure whether the Dean has not been influenced to a certain extent by the Greek romance. If we survey the result of these researches, I think there can be hardly any doubt as to Swift's indebtednes to Philo- stratus, Bergerac, Rabelais and Godwin, The question whether Jambulos' story has exercised any influence upon Gulliver's ZYavels I dare not positively decide. ~~~~...~~~ 5 g (, “…a --- C/.../ • 27J * A....C., ºf 4. //~~~ /%-4. [. ~f~d ) 7.//~2. XXy if (23) rº.