Gulliver's Travels

further account of Glubbdubdrib. Ancient and modern history
corrected.

Having a desire to see those ancients who were most renowned for wit
and learning, I set apart one day on purpose. I proposed that Homer and
Aristotle might appear at the head of all their commentators; but these
were so numerous, that some hundreds were forced to attend in the
court, and outward rooms of the palace. I knew, and could distinguish
those two heroes, at first sight, not only from the crowd, but from
each other. Homer was the taller and comelier person of the two, walked
very erect for one of his age, and his eyes were the most quick and
piercing I ever beheld. Aristotle stooped much, and made use of a
staff. His visage was meagre, his hair lank and thin, and his voice
hollow. I soon discovered that both of them were perfect strangers to
the rest of the company, and had never seen or heard of them before;
and I had a whisper from a ghost who shall be nameless, “that these
commentators always kept in the most distant quarters from their
principals, in the lower world, through a consciousness of shame and
guilt, because they had so horribly misrepresented the meaning of those
authors to posterity.” I introduced Didymus and Eustathius to Homer,
and prevailed on him to treat them better than perhaps they deserved,
for he soon found they wanted a genius to enter into the spirit of a
poet. But Aristotle was out of all patience with the account I gave him
of Scotus and Ramus, as I presented them to him; and he asked them,
“whether the rest of the tribe were as great dunces as themselves?”

I then desired the governor to call up Descartes and Gassendi, with
whom I prevailed to explain their systems to Aristotle. This great
philosopher freely acknowledged his own mistakes in natural philosophy,
because he proceeded in many things upon conjecture, as all men must
do; and he found that Gassendi, who had made the doctrine of Epicurus
as palatable as he could, and the vortices of Descartes, were equally
to be exploded. He predicted the same fate to attraction, whereof the
present learned are such zealous asserters. He said, “that new systems
of nature were but new fashions, which would vary in every age; and
even those, who pretend to demonstrate them from mathematical
principles, would flourish but a short period of time, and be out of
vogue when that was determined.”

I spent five days in conversing with many others of the ancient
learned. I saw most of the first Roman emperors. I prevailed on the
governor to call up Heliogabalus’s cooks to dress us a dinner, but they
could not show us much of their skill, for want of materials. A helot
of Agesilaus made us a dish of Spartan broth, but I was not able to get
down a second spoonful.

The two gentlemen, who conducted me to the island, were pressed by
their private affairs to return in three days, which I employed in
seeing some of the modern dead, who had made the greatest figure, for
two or three hundred years past, in our own and other countries of
Europe; and having been always a great admirer of old illustrious
families, I desired the governor would call up a dozen or two of kings,
with their ancestors in order for eight or nine generations. But my
disappointment was grievous and unexpected. For, instead of a long
train with royal diadems, I saw in one family two fiddlers, three
spruce courtiers, and an Italian prelate. In another, a barber, an
abbot, and two cardinals. I have too great a veneration for crowned
heads, to dwell any longer on so nice a subject. But as to counts,
marquises, dukes, earls, and the like, I was not so scrupulous. And I
confess, it was not without some pleasure, that I found myself able to
trace the particular features, by which certain families are
distinguished, up to their originals. I could plainly discover whence
one family derives a long chin; why a second has abounded with knaves
for two generations, and fools for two more; why a third happened to be
crack-brained, and a fourth to be sharpers; whence it came, what
Polydore Virgil says of a certain great house, Nec vir fortis, nec
femina casta; how cruelty, falsehood, and cowardice, grew to be
characteristics by which certain families are distinguished as much as
by their coats of arms; who first brought the pox into a noble house,
which has lineally descended scrofulous tumours to their posterity.
Neither could I wonder at all this, when I saw such an interruption of
lineages, by pages, lackeys, valets, coachmen, gamesters, fiddlers,
players, captains, and pickpockets.

I was chiefly disgusted with modern history. For having strictly
examined all the persons of greatest name in the courts of princes, for
a hundred years past, I found how the world had been misled by
prostitute writers, to ascribe the greatest exploits in war, to
cowards; the wisest counsel, to fools; sincerity, to flatterers; Roman
virtue, to betrayers of their country; piety, to atheists; chastity, to
sodomites; truth, to informers: how many innocent and excellent persons
had been condemned to death or banishment by the practising of great
ministers upon the corruption of judges, and the malice of factions:
how many villains had been exalted to the highest places of trust,
power, dignity, and profit: how great a share in the motions and events
of courts, councils, and senates might be challenged by bawds, whores,
pimps, parasites, and buffoons. How low an opinion I had of human
wisdom and integrity, when I was truly informed of the springs and
motives of great enterprises and revolutions in the world, and of the
contemptible accidents to which they owed their success.

Here I discovered the roguery and ignorance of those who pretend to
write anecdotes, or secret history; who send so many kings to their
graves with a cup of poison; will repeat the discourse between a prince
and chief minister, where no witness was by; unlock the thoughts and
cabinets of ambassadors and secretaries of state; and have the
perpetual misfortune to be mistaken. Here I discovered the true causes
of many great events that have surprised the world; how a whore can
govern the back-stairs, the back-stairs a council, and the council a
senate. A general confessed, in my presence, “that he got a victory
purely by the force of cowardice and ill conduct;” and an admiral,
“that, for want of proper intelligence, he beat the enemy, to whom he
intended to betray the fleet.” Three kings protested to me, “that in
their whole reigns they never did once prefer any person of merit,
unless by mistake, or treachery of some minister in whom they confided;
neither would they do it if they were to live again:” and they showed,
with great strength of reason, “that the royal throne could not be
supported without corruption, because that positive, confident, restiff
temper, which virtue infused into a man, was a perpetual clog to public
business.”

I had the curiosity to inquire in a particular manner, by what methods
great numbers had procured to themselves high titles of honour, and
prodigious estates; and I confined my inquiry to a very modern period:
however, without grating upon present times, because I would be sure to
give no offence even to foreigners (for I hope the reader need not be
told, that I do not in the least intend my own country, in what I say
upon this occasion,) a great number of persons concerned were called
up; and, upon a very slight examination, discovered such a scene of
infamy, that I cannot reflect upon it without some seriousness.
Perjury, oppression, subornation, fraud, pandarism, and the like
infirmities, were among the most excusable arts they had to mention;
and for these I gave, as it was reasonable, great allowance. But when
some confessed they owed their greatness and wealth to sodomy, or
incest; others, to the prostituting of their own wives and daughters;
others, to the betraying of their country or their prince; some, to
poisoning; more to the perverting of justice, in order to destroy the
innocent, I hope I may be pardoned, if these discoveries inclined me a
little to abate of that profound veneration, which I am naturally apt
to pay to persons of high rank, who ought to be treated with the utmost
respect due to their sublime dignity, by us their inferiors.

I had often read of some great services done to princes and states, and
desired to see the persons by whom those services were performed. Upon
inquiry I was told, “that their names were to be found on no record,
except a few of them, whom history has represented as the vilest of
rogues and traitors.” As to the rest, I had never once heard of them.
They all appeared with dejected looks, and in the meanest habit; most
of them telling me, “they died in poverty and disgrace, and the rest on
a scaffold or a gibbet.”

Among others, there was one person, whose case appeared a little
singular. He had a youth about eighteen years old standing by his side.
He told me, “he had for many years been commander of a ship; and in the
sea fight at Actium had the good fortune to break through the enemy’s
great line of battle, sink three of their capital ships, and take a
fourth, which was the sole cause of Antony’s flight, and of the victory
that ensued; that the youth standing by him, his only son, was killed
in the action.” He added, “that upon the confidence of some merit, the
war being at an end, he went to Rome, and solicited at the court of
Augustus to be preferred to a greater ship, whose commander had been
killed; but, without any regard to his pretensions, it was given to a
boy who had never seen the sea, the son of Libertina, who waited on one
of the emperor’s mistresses. Returning back to his own vessel, he was
charged with neglect of duty, and the ship given to a favourite page of
Publicola, the vice-admiral; whereupon he retired to a poor farm at a
great distance from Rome, and there ended his life.” I was so curious
to know the truth of this story, that I desired Agrippa might be
called, who was admiral in that fight. He appeared, and confirmed the
whole account: but with much more advantage to the captain, whose
modesty had extenuated or concealed a great part of his merit.

I was surprised to find corruption grown so high and so quick in that
empire, by the force of luxury so lately introduced; which made me less
wonder at many parallel cases in other countries, where vices of all
kinds have reigned so much longer, and where the whole praise, as well
as pillage, has been engrossed by the chief commander, who perhaps had
the least title to either.

As every person called up made exactly the same appearance he had done
in the world, it gave me melancholy reflections to observe how much the
race of humankind was degenerated among us within these hundred years
past; how the pox, under all its consequences and denominations had
altered every lineament of an English countenance; shortened the size
of bodies, unbraced the nerves, relaxed the sinews and muscles,
introduced a sallow complexion, and rendered the flesh loose and
rancid.

I descended so low, as to desire some English yeoman of the old stamp
might be summoned to appear; once so famous for the simplicity of their
manners, diet, and dress; for justice in their dealings; for their true
spirit of liberty; for their valour, and love of their country. Neither
could I be wholly unmoved, after comparing the living with the dead,
when I considered how all these pure native virtues were prostituted
for a piece of money by their grand-children; who, in selling their
votes and managing at elections, have acquired every vice and
corruption that can possibly be learned in a court.