own country, but always treat their perfons with refpect for the fake of my noble mafter, his family, his friends, and the whole Houyhnhnm race, whom thefe of ours have the honour to resemble in all their lineaments, however their intellectuals came to degenerate.

I began last week to permit my wife to fit at dinner with me at the fartheft end of a long table; and to anfwer (but with the utmoft brevity) the few questions I afked her. Yet, the fmell of a yahoo continuing very offenfive, I always keep my nose well stopped with rue, lavender, or tobacco-leaves. And, altho' it be hard for a man late in life to remove old habits, I am not altogether out of hopes in fome time to fuffer a neighbour yahoo in my company, without the apprehenfions I am yet under of his teeth or his claws.

My reconcilement to the yahoo kind in general might not be fo difficult, if they would be content with those vices and follies only, which nature hath intitled them to. I am not in the leaft provoked at the fight of a lawyer, a pickpocket, a colonel, a fool, a lord, a gamefter, a politician, a whore-monger, a phyfician, an evidence, a fuborner, an attorney, a traitor, or the like; this is all according to the due courfe of things: but when I behold a lump of deformity and difeafes both in body and mind. fmitten with pride, it immediately breaks all the meafures of my patience; neither fhall I be ever able to comprehend how fuch an animal, and fuch a vice, could tally together. The wife and virtuous Houyhnhnms, who a bound in all excellencies that can adorn a rational creature, have no name for this vice in their language, which hath no terms to exprefs any thing that is evil, except those whereby they defcribe the deteftable qualities of their yabous, among which they were not able to diftinguish this of pride for want of thoroughly understanding human nature, as it fheweth itfelf in other countries, where that animal prefides. But I, who had more experience, could plainly obferve fome rudiments of it among the wild yaboos.

BUT the Houyhnhnms, who live under the government of reafon, are no more proud of the good qualities they poffefs, than I fhould be for not wanting a leg or an arm, which no man in his wits would boaft of, altho' he

muft

must be miferable without them. I dwell the longer upon this fubject, from the defire I have to make the fociety of an English yaboo by any means not infupportable; and therefore I here entreat those, who have any tincture of this abfurd vice, that they will not prefume to come in my fight.

To mortify pride, which indeed was not made for man, and produces not only the moft ridiculous follies, but the moft extenfive calamity, appears to have been one general view of the author in every part of these travels. Perfonal strength and beauty, the wisdom and the virtue of mankind, become objects, not of pride, but of humility, in the diminutive ftature and contemptible weakness of the Lilliputians; in the horrid deformity of the Brobdingnagians; in the learned folly of the Laputians; and in the parallel drawn between our manners and thofe of the Houyhnhnms. Hawkef.

Swift's Gulliver is a direct, plain, and bitter fatire against the innumerable follies and corruptions in law, politics, learning, morals, and religion. And, without difpute, thefe manifold corruptions have, in a courfe of ages, by the refinements and gloffes of iniquitous men, arrived at laft to fuch strength and effrontery, as to render it impoffible for all the wit and genius that ever warmed the imagination of a fatirift, to lash them with any degree of feverity proportioned to that excess of perturbation and mischief which they feverally occafion in the great circle of fociety. All therefore which can be done by a wife man (feeing that by nature he is appointed to act for the fpace of thirty, fifty, or seventy years, fome ridiculous, filly' part in this fantastic theatre of mifery, vice, and corruption), is either to lament, with Heraclitus, the iniquities of the world; or, which is the more chearful, and therefore I do prefume the more eligible courfe, to laugh, with Democritus, at all the knaves and fools upon earth. And accordingly we find, that Dr Swift has, in theft travels, exerted a force of ridicule and fatire, pointed fo directly against the depravities of human kind, and fupported with fuch an abundance of wit and pleafantry, as indeed more than perfuade us to believe, that his intention was either to laugh vice and immorality, if it were poffible, quite out of the world; or at least to avenge the caufe of virtue on all the patrons and abettors of iniquity. Swift.

A

EING fo great a lover of antiquities, it was reasonable to fuppofe, you would be very much obliged with any thing, that was new. I have been of late offended with many writers of essays and moral difcourfes for running into fale topics and threadbare quotations, and not handling their fubjects fully and clofely all which errors I have carefully avoided in the following effay, which I have propofed as a pattern for young writers to imitate The thoughts and obfervations being entirely new, the quotations untouched by others, the Jubject of mighty importance, and treated with much order and perfpicuity, it hath coft me a great deal of time; and I defire you will accept and confider it as the utmost effort of my genius.

PH

Hilofophers fay, that man is a microcofm, or little world, refembling in miniature every part of the

Orrery.

great:

This effay will make you fmile. In this piece the fpirit of ridicule is very highly difplayed. · The author gravely pretends, that this fubject is of mighty importance; that his fentiments are entirely new; that his que

tations

great and, in my opinion, the body natural may be compared to the body politic: and if this be fo, how can the Epicurean's opinion be true, that the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourfe of atoms; which I will no more believe, than that the accidental jumbling of the letters of the alphabet could fall by chance into a most ingenious and learned treatise of philofophy; Rifum teneatis amici! (HOR] This falfe opinion muft needs create many more; it is like an error in the first concoction, which cannot be corrected in the sccond; the foundation is weak, and whatever fuperftructure you raise upon it, muft of neceffity fall to the ground. Thus men are led from one error to another, until with Ixion they embrace a cloud instead of Juno; or, like the dog in the fable, lofe the fubftance in gaping at the fhadow. For fuch opinions cannot cohere; but like the iron and clay in the toes of Nebuchadnezzar's image, must separate and break in pieces. I have read in a certain author, that Alexander wept, because he had no more worlds to conquer; which he needed not have done, if the fortuitous concourfe of atoms could create one: but this is an opinion fitter for that many-headed beast the vulgar to entertain, than for fo wife a man as Epicurus; the corrupt part of his fect only borrowed his name, as the monkey did the cat's claw to draw the chefnut out of the fire.

HOWEVER, the first step to the cure is to know the disease; and tho' truth may be difficult to find, because, as the philofopher obferves, fhe lives in the bottom of a well, yet we need not, like blind men, grope in open day-light.

tations are untouched by others; and, above all, that he has treated his fubject with much order, fulness, and perfpicuity; on which account he hath propofed it as a pattern for young writers to imitate, and defires it may be confidered as the utmoft effort of his genius. Whereas in fact the fubject is of little importance, the fentiments are old and ftale, the quotati ons are threadbare; and, to complete his ridicule, he has treated his fubject in a light, careless, rambling, fuperficial manner, without order, fulness, meaning, or perfpicuity: and therefore it is only to be confidered, like the meditation on a broomstick, [vol. viii. p. 372.] in a farcical, fatiric light, defigned purely to expofe the folly and temerity of those brainless, illiterate feribblers, who are eternally plaguing their cotemporaries with a parcel of wild, incoherent, nonfenfical trash. Swift.

day-light. I hope I may be allowed among fo many far more learned men to offer my mite, since a stander-by may fometimes perhaps see more of the game, than he that plays it. But I do not think a philofopher obliged to account for every phænomenon in nature, or drown himself with Aristotle, for not being able to folve the ebbing and flowing of the tide, in that fatal fentence he past upon himself, Quia te non capio, tu capies me. Wherein he was at once the judge and the criminal, the accufer and executioner. Socrates, on the other hand, who faid he knew nothing, was pronounced by the oracle to be the wifeft man in the world.

BUT to return from this digreffion, I think it as clear as any demonftration in Euclid, that nature does nothing in vain; if we were able to dive into her fecret receffes, we should find that the smallest blade of grass, or most contemptible weed, has its particular ufe; but fhe is chiefly admirable in her minutest compofitions, the leaft and most contemptible infect most discovers the art of nature, if I may so call it, though nature, which delights in variety, will always triumph over art: and as the poet obferves,

Naturam expellas furca licet, ufque recurret. Hor.

BUT the various opinions of philofophers have scattered through the world as many plagues of the mind, as Pandora's box did thofe of the body, only with this difference, that they have not left hope at the bottom. And if truth be not fled with Aftrea, she is certainly as hidden as the fource of Nile, and can be found only in Utopia. Not that I would reflect on those wife fages, which would be a fort of ingratitude; and he that calls a man ungrateful, fums up all the evil that a man can be guilty of,

Ingratum fi dixeris, omnia dicis.

BUT what I blame the philofophers for (tho' fome may think it a paradox) is chiefly their pride; nothing lefs than an ipfe dixit, and you must pin your faith on their fleeve. And tho' Diogenes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his

rags,