But the Houyhnhnms, who live under the government of reafon, are no more proud of the good qualities they poffefs, than I should be for not wanting a leg or an arm, which no man in his wits would boast of, although he must be miferable without them. I dwell the longer upon this fubject, from the defire I have to make the fociety of an English Yahoo by any means not infupportable; and therefore I here entreat thofe who have any tincture of this abfurd vice, that they will not presume to come in my fight. *To mortify pride, which indeed was not made for man;. and produces not only the most ridiculous follics, but the most. 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 satire against the innumerable follies and corruptions in law, politics, learning, morals, and religion. And, without difpute, thefe manifold: corruptions have, in a course of ages, by the refinemeuts 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 excefs of perturbation and mischief which they severally occasion 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 space of thirty, fifty, or feventy 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 003 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 these Travels, exerted a force of ridicule and fatire, pointed fo directly against the depravities of human-kind, and supported with such an abundance of wit and pleasantry, 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 cause of virtue on all the patrons and abettors of iniquity. Swift. то QUINBUS FLESTRIN, THE MAN-MOUNTAIN. A LILLIPUTIAN ODE. I N Amaze Can our eyes May my lays Swell with praife, Worthy me! Of him told, When they faid, Atlas' head Propt the fkies: See! and believe your eyes! II. Sec |