five thousand leagues diftance, in another reign, be ap plied to any of the Yahoos, who now are faid to govern the herd; efpecially at a time when I little tbought on, or feared, the unhappiness of living under them? have not I the most reafon to complain, when I fee these very Yahoos carried by Houyhnhnms in a vehicle, as if these were brutes and those the rational creatures? and indeed, to avoid so monstrous and detestable a fight was one principal motive of my retirement hither.

Thus much I thought proper to tell you in relation to yourself, and to the trust I reposed in you.

I do in the next place complain of my own great want of judgment, in being prevailed upon by the intreaties and falfe reafonings of you and fome others, very much against my own opinion, to fuffer my travels to be pu blifhed. Pray bring to your mind how often I defired you to confider, when you infifted on the motive of publick good, that the Yahoos were a species of animals utterly incapable of amendment by precepts or example: and fo it hath proved; for, instead of feeing a full ftop put to all abuses and corruptions, at least in this little island, as I had reason to expect; behold, after above fix months warning, I cannot learn that my book has produced one fingle effect according to mine intentions. I defired you would let me know by a letter, when party and faction were extinguished; judges learned and upright; pleaders honeft and modeft, with fome tincture of common fenfe, and Smithfield blazing with pyramids of Jaw-books; the young nobility's education entirely changed; the phyficians banished; the female Yahoos abounding in virtue, honour, truth, and good fenfe; courts and levees of great ministers thoroughly weeded and fwept ; wit, merit, and learning rewarded; all difgracers of the prefs in profe and verfe, condemned to eat nothing but their own cotton, and quench their thirst with their own ink. These, and a thoufand other reformations, I firmly counted upon by your encouragement; as indeed they were plainly deducible from the precepts delivered in my book. And it must be owned, that feven months were a fufficient time to correct every vice and folly to which Yahoos are fubject, if their natures had been capable of the leaft difpofition to virtue or wifdom: yet, fo far have

you

you been from anfwering mine expectation in any of your letters; that on the contrary you are loading our carrier every week with libels, and keys, and reflections, and memoirs, and second parts; wherein I see myself accused of reflecting upon great states-folk; of degrading human nature (for fo they have still the confidence to ftile it) and of abufing the female fex. I find likewife, that the writers of those bundles are not agreed among themselves; for fome of them will not allow me to be the author of mine own travels; and others make me author of books, to which I am wholly a stranger.

I find likewife, that your printer hath been fo careless as to confound the times, and mistake the dates of my feveral voyages and returns; neither affigning the true year, nor the true month, nor day of the month: and I hear the original manuscript is all deftroyed fince the pu blication of my book; neither have I any copy left; however, I have fent you fome corrections, which you may infert, if ever there fhould be a second edition: and yet I cannot stand to them; but fhall leave that matter to my judicious and candid readers to adjust it as they please.

I hear fome of our sea-Yahoos find fault with my fealanguage, as not proper in many parts, nor now in use. I cannot help it. In my firft voyages, while I was young, I was inftructed by the oldest mariners, and learned to fpeak as they did. But I have fince found that the feaYahoos are apt, like the land ones, to become newfangled in their words, which the latter change every year ; infomuch, as I remember upon each return to mine own› country, their old dialect was fo altered, that I could hardly understand the new. And I obferve, when any Yahoo comes from London, out of curiofity to visit me at mine own house, we neither of us are able to deliver our conceptions in a manner intelligible to the other.

If the cenfure of the Yahoos could any way affect me, I fhould have great reason to complain, that fome of them are fo bold as to think my book of travels a mere fiction out of mine own brain; and have gone fo far as to drop hints, that the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos have no more existence than the inhabitants of Utopia.

Indeed I must confefs, that as to the people of Lilliput,Brobdingrag (for fo the word fhould have been fpelt,and not erroneouflys

A3

erroneously Brobdingnag) and Laputa, I have never yet heard of any Yahoo fo prefumptuous as to difpute their be ing, or the facts, I have related concerning them; becaufe the truth immediately ftrikes every reader with conviction. And is there lefs probability in my account of the Houyhnhnms or Yahoos, when it is manifeft as to the latter, there are fo many thousands, even in this city, who only differ from their brother brutes in Houyhnhnm-land, because they use a sort of Jabber, and do not go naked? I wrote for their amendment, and not their approbation. The united praise of the whole race would be of lefs confequence to me, than the neighing of thofe two degenerate Houyhnhnms I keep in my ftable; because from thefe, degenerate as they are, I ftill improve in fome virtues without any mixture of vice.

Do thefe miferable animals prefume to think, that I am fo degenerated as to defend my veracity? Yahoo as I am, it is well known through all Houyhnhnm-land, that, by the inftructions and example of my illuftrious mafter, I was able in the compafs of two years (although I confefs with the utmost difficulty) to remove that infernal habit of lying, fhuffling, deceiving, and equivocating, fo deeply rooted in the very fouls of all my fpecies; espe cially the Europeans.

I have other complaints to make upon this vexatious occafion; but I forbear troubling myfelf or you any further. I muft freely confefs, that fince my last return some corruptions of my Yahoo nature have revived in me by converfing with a few of your fpecies, and particularly thofe of mine own family, by an unavoidable neceffity; else I should never have attempted fo abfurd a project as that of reforming the Yahoo race in this kingdom: but I have now done with all fuch vifionary schemes for ever.

April 2, 1727.

That the original copy of these travels was altered by the perfon, through whose hands it was conveyed to the press, is a fact; but the passages, of which Mr. Gulliver complains in this letter, are to be found only in the first editions; for the

Dean

Dean having restored the text wherever it had been altered, sent the copy to the late Mr. Motte, by the hands of Mr. Charles Ford. This copy has been exactly followed in every fubfequent edition, except that printed in Ireland, by George Falkener; the editor of which, fuppofing the Dean to be serious when he mentioned the corruptions of dates, and yet finding them unaltered, thought fit to alter them himself; there is however scarce one of these alterations, in which he has not committed a blunder; though while he was thus bufy in defacing the parts that were perfect, he fuffered the accidental blemishes of others to remain. Hawkef.-See the preface to this edition.

TRAVELS

TRAVELS into feveral REMOTE NATIONS

of the world*.

PART I

A VOYAGE to LILLIPUT.

CHAP. I..

The author gives fome account of himself and family: his firft inducements to travel. He is fhipwrecked, and fwims for his life; gets fafe on bore in the country of Lilliput is made a prifoner, and carried up the coun

try.

M

Y father had a fmall eftate in Nottinghamshire; I was the third of five fons. He fent me to Emanuel college in Cambridge at fourteent years old, where I refided three years, and applied myself close to my studies; but the charge of maintaining

* Thefe voyages are intended as a moral political romance; in which Swift seems to have exerted the strongest efforts of a fine irregular genius. But while his imagination and his wit delight, the venomous ftrokes of his fatire, although in some places › juft, are carried into so universal a severity, that not only all human actions, but human nature itself, is placed in the worst light.-Perfection in every attribute is not indeed allotted to particular men. But, among the whole fpecies, we discover fuch an affemblage of all the great and amiable virtues, as may convince us, that the original order of nature contains in it the greatest beauty. It is directed in a right line, but it deviates into curves and irregular motions, by various alterations and difturbing causes. Different qualifications shine out in different men. BACON and NEWTON (not to mention BOYLE) fhew the divine extent of the human mind: of which power Swift could not be infenfible; but his disappointments rendered him fplenetic, and angry with the whole world.-Education, habit, and conftitution, give a surprising variety of characters; and