Children read the voyages to Lilliput
and Brobdingnag, to the flying island of Laputa and the country of the
Houyhnhnms, as they read _Robinson Crusoe_, as stories of wonderful
adventure. Swift had all of De Foe's realism, his power of giving
veri-similitude to his narrative by the invention of a vast number of
small, exact, consistent details. But underneath its fairy tales
_Gulliver's Travels_ is a satire, far more radical than any of Dryden's
or Pope's, because directed, not against particular parties or persons,
but against human nature. In his account of Lilliput and Brobdingnag,
Swift tries to show that human greatness, goodness, beauty disappear if
the scale be altered a little. If men were six inches high instead of
six feet, their wars, governments, science, religion--all their
institutions, in fine, and all the courage, wisdom, and virtue by which
these have been built up, would appear laughable. On the other hand, if
they were sixty feet high instead of six, they would become disgusting.
The complexion of the finest ladies would show blotches, hairs,
excrescences, and an overpowering effluvium would breathe from the pores
of the skin. Finally, in his loathsome caricature of mankind, as Yahoos,
he contrasts them, to their shame, with the beasts, and sets instinct
above reason.
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