GULLIVER’S
TRAVELS
into several
REMOTE NATIONS OF THE WORLD
BY JONATHAN
SWIFT, D.D.,
dean of st. patrick’s,
dublin.
[First
published in 1726–7.]
THE PUBLISHER TO THE READER.
[As given
in the original edition.]
The author 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