GULLIVER’S
TRAVELS
PART 1
GULLIVER’S
TRAVELS
into several
REMOTE NATIONS OF THE WORLD
BY
JONATHAN SWIFT, D.D.,
Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin.
Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin.
1726–7.
THE PUBLISHER TO THE READER.
Theauthor
of these Travels, Mr. Lemuel Gulliver, is my ancient and intimate friend; there
is likewise some relation between us on the mother’s side. About three
years ago, Mr. Gulliver growing weary of the concourse of curious people coming
to him at his house in Redriff, made a small purchase of land, with a
convenient house, near Newark, in Nottinghamshire, his native country; where he
now lives retired, yet in good esteem among his neighbours.
Although
Mr. Gulliver was born in Nottinghamshire, where his father dwelt, yet I have
heard him say his family came from Oxfordshire; to confirm which, I have
observed in the churchyard at Banbury in that county, several tombs and
monuments of the Gullivers.
Before he
quitted Redriff, he left the custody of the following papers in my hands, with
the liberty to dispose of them as I should think fit. I have carefully
perused them three times. The style is very plain and simple; and the
only fault I find is, that the author, after the manner of travellers, is a
little too circumstantial. There is an air of truth apparent through the
whole; and indeed the author was so distinguished for his veracity, that it
became a sort of proverb among his neighbours at Redriff, when any one affirmed
a thing, to say, it was as true as if Mr. Gulliver had spoken it.
By the
advice of several worthy persons, to whom, with the author’s permission, I
communicated these papers, I now venture to send them into the world, hoping
they may be, at least for some time, a better entertainment to our young
noblemen, than the common scribbles of politics and party.
This
volume would have been at least twice as large, if I had not made bold to
strike out innumerable passages relating to the winds and tides, as well as to
the variations and bearings in the several voyages, together with the minute
descriptions of the management of the ship in storms, in the style of sailors;
likewise the account of longitudes and latitudes; wherein I have reason to
apprehend, that Mr. Gulliver may be a little dissatisfied. But I was
resolved to fit the work as much as possible to the general capacity of
readers. However, if my own ignorance in sea affairs shall have led me to
commit some mistakes, I alone am answerable for them. And if any
traveller hath a curiosity to see the whole work at large, as it came from the
hands of the author, I will be ready to gratify him.
As for any
further particulars relating to the author, the reader will receive satisfaction
from the first pages of the book.
RICHARD
SYMPSON.
A LETTER FROM CAPTAIN GULLIVER TO HIS COUSIN SYMPSON.
Written in the Year 1727.
I hope you
will be ready to own publicly, whenever you shall be called to it, that by your
great and frequent urgency you prevailed on me to publish a very loose and
uncorrect account of my travels, with directions to hire some young gentleman
of either university to put them in order, and correct the style, as my cousin
Dampier did, by my advice, in his book called “A Voyage round the world.”
But I do not remember I gave you power to consent that any thing should be
omitted, and much less that any thing should be inserted; therefore, as to the
latter, I do here renounce every thing of that kind; particularly a paragraph
about her majesty Queen Anne, of most pious and glorious memory; although I did
reverence and esteem her more than any of human species. But you, or your
interpolator, ought to have considered, that it was not my inclination, so was
it not decent to praise any animal of our composition before my master Houyhnhnm:
And besides, the fact was altogether false; for to my knowledge, being in England
during some part of her majesty’s reign, she did govern by a chief minister;
nay even by two successively, the first whereof was the lord of Godolphin, and
the second the lord of Oxford; so that you have made me say the thing that was
not. Likewise in the account of the academy of projectors, and several
passages of my discourse to my master Houyhnhnm, you have either omitted
some material circumstances, or minced or changed them in such a manner, that I
do hardly know my own work. When I formerly hinted to you something of
this in a letter, you were pleased to answer that you were afraid of giving
offence; that people in power were very watchful over the press, and apt not
only to interpret, but to punish every thing which looked like an innuendo
(as I think you call it). But, pray how could that which I spoke so many
years ago, and at about five thousand leagues distance, in another reign, be
applied to any of the Yahoos, who now are said to govern the herd;
especially at a time when I little thought, or feared, the unhappiness of
living under them? Have not I the most reason to complain, when I see
these very Yahoos carried by Houyhnhnms in a vehicle, as if they
were brutes, and those the rational creatures? And indeed to avoid so
monstrous and detestable a sight 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 entreaties and false reasoning of you and some others, very much
against my own opinion, to suffer my travels to be published. Pray bring
to your mind how often I desired you to consider, when you insisted on the
motive of public good, that the Yahoos were a species of animals utterly
incapable of amendment by precept or example: and so it has proved; for,
instead of seeing a full stop put to all abuses and corruptions, at least in
this little island, as I had reason to expect; behold, after above six months
warning, I cannot learn that my book has produced one single effect according
to my intentions. I desired you would let me know, by a letter, when
party and faction were extinguished; judges learned and upright; pleaders
honest and modest, with some tincture of common sense, and Smithfield blazing
with pyramids of law books; the young nobility’s education entirely changed;
the physicians banished; the female Yahoos abounding in virtue, honour,
truth, and good sense; courts and levees of great ministers thoroughly weeded
and swept; wit, merit, and learning rewarded; all disgracers of the press in
prose and verse condemned to eat nothing but their own cotton, and quench their
thirst with their own ink. These, and a thousand 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 seven months were a sufficient time to correct every vice and folly to
which Yahoos are subject, if their natures had been capable of the least
disposition to virtue or wisdom. Yet, so far have you been from answering
my 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 state folk;
of degrading human nature (for so they have still the confidence to style it),
and of abusing the female sex. I find likewise that the writers of those
bundles are not agreed among themselves; for some of them will not allow me to
be the author of my own travels; and others make me author of books to which I
am wholly a stranger.
I find
likewise that your printer has been so careless as to confound the times, and mistake
the dates, of my several voyages and returns; neither assigning the true year,
nor the true month, nor day of the month: and I hear the original manuscript is
all destroyed since the publication of my book; neither have I any copy left:
however, I have sent you some corrections, which you may insert, if ever there
should be a second edition: and yet I cannot stand to them; but shall leave
that matter to my judicious and candid readers to adjust it as they please.
I hear
some of our sea Yahoos find fault with my sea-language, as not proper in
many parts, nor now in use. I cannot help it. In my first voyages,
while I was young, I was instructed by the oldest mariners, and learned to
speak as they did. But I have since found that the sea Yahoos are apt,
like the land ones, to become new-fangled in their words, which the latter
change every year; insomuch, as I remember upon each return to my own country
their old dialect was so altered, that I could hardly understand the new.
And I observe, when any Yahoo comes from London out of curiosity to
visit me at my house, we neither of us are able to deliver our conceptions in a
manner intelligible to the other.
If the
censure of the Yahoos could any way affect me, I should have great
reason to complain, that some of them are so bold as to think my book of
travels a mere fiction out of mine own brain, and have gone so far as to drop
hints, that the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos have no more existence than
the inhabitants of Utopia.
Indeed I
must confess, that as to the people of Lilliput, Brobdingrag (for
so the word should have been spelt, and not erroneously Brobdingnag),
and Laputa, I have never yet heard of any Yahoo so presumptuous
as to dispute their being, or the facts I have related concerning them; because
the truth immediately strikes every reader with conviction. And is there
less probability in my account of the Houyhnhnms or Yahoos, when
it is manifest as to the latter, there are so many thousands even in this
country, who only differ from their brother brutes in Houyhnhnmland,
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 less consequence to me, than the neighing of those two degenerate Houyhnhnms
I keep in my stable; because from these, degenerate as they are, I still
improve in some virtues without any mixture of vice.
Do these
miserable animals presume to think, that I am so degenerated as to defend my
veracity? Yahoo as I am, it is well known through all Houyhnhnmland,
that, by the instructions and example of my illustrious master, I was able in
the compass of two years (although I confess with the utmost difficulty) to
remove that infernal habit of lying, shuffling, deceiving, and equivocating, so
deeply rooted in the very souls of all my species; especially the Europeans.
I have
other complaints to make upon this vexatious occasion; but I forbear troubling
myself or you any further. I must freely confess, that since my last
return, some corruptions of my Yahoo nature have revived in me by
conversing with a few of your species, and particularly those of my own family,
by an unavoidable necessity; else I should never have attempted so absurd a
project as that of reforming the Yahoo race in this kingdom: But I have
now done with all such visionary schemes for ever.
April 2, 1727
The History proper begins next week, after these pretended remonstrances
