serving up mutton in two dimensions, and cutting bread into parallelograms, which are plain superficies, as well as into cubical figures, such as cones and cylinders.

Page 115. Brobdingnag. It is curious that, though this name, according to Swift's own preface, is a misprint for Brobdingrag, which is much more pronounceable, the correct spelling has never been restored. He would, however, be a bold critic who would attempt to change it now. The arrival in Brobdingnag is, in the original, prefaced by the famous description of the storm, of which Scott remarks that it is "a parody upon the account of storms and naval manœuvres, frequent in old voyages, and is merely an assemblage of sea-terms, put together at random, but in such accurate imitation of the technicalities of the art, that seamen have been known to work hard to attain the proper meaning of it." So far is this from being true, that the description in question is a perfectly accurate account of the ordinary seaman's practice of the time, and is taken (as Mr. Knowles first pointed out in N. and Q., iv. i. 223), word for word from a seaman's handbook, Sturmy's Compleat Mariner, as anyone may see by consulting the 3rd edition, published in 1684, in the British Museum. All that Swift has done is to turn the present tense into the narrative past, and to omit some immaterial words and sentences. The identity of the two descriptions is beyond dispute; and there is nothing blameworthy in Swift's adapting the phraseology of a current technical handbook. But as the storm can no longer be regarded as peculiarly illustrative of his powers of description, the passage in question, celebrated as it is, has been omitted in the present selection. This is one of the very few cases in which Swift has been proved to have directly copied another writer. That he was indebted for many of his ideas to previous authors, notably to Rabelais, is beyond question; and the plan of the Battle of the Books is undoubtedly identical with that of F. de Callière's Histoire poétique de la guerre nouvellement declarée entre les anciens et modernes, Paris, 1688, though, as Swift protested he had never heard of the book, the resemblance must be only a coincidence. So, too, the notion of giants and dwarfs was certainly no original idea: the fancy had been retouched so lately as 1675, though with little skill, in Joshua Barnes's Gerania; or, a new discovery of a little sort of people, anciently discoursed of, called Pygmies; while a still more probable source for the bare notion of big and

little people may have been (as was lately pointed out in the Athenæum, 1884, 536, 567) Martello's puppet play, Lo Starnuto d'Ercole, which was published at Bologna in 1723, and written some six years earlier. But in these and other parallel instances, Swift may indeed have obtained a hint which he worked up in his masterpieces, but it was only a hint. The consistent elaboration of the idea, the wealth of illustration, the perfect apposition of the satire, are his alone. As Johnson said of him, "no writer can easily be found that has borrowed so little."

Page 134. The institution of flappers is of course meant to ridicule the proverbial absence of mind of philosophers, and was probably suggested by the current anecdotes, true or false, of Sir Isaac Newton's peculiarities. The Laputa voyage is, however, the least successful part of the satire, and Swift seems himself to have spent more pains in improving it than he devoted to the other voyages, if we may judge from his manuscript corrections and additions contained in a copy of the first edition of Gulliver, which he gave to his friend Charles Ford, who in turn communicated the corrections to the publisher. This copy is now in the Forster Library, in the South Kensington Museum, and a careful collation I have made shows that most of these corrections, which occur mainly in the Laputa voyage, were inserted in subsequent editions. A few unimportant alterations appear to have escaped notice, or more probably were rejected on a second revision, to which the appearance of several corrections not marked in Ford's copy bears testimony. The only addition of any length in Ford's copy that has not been inserted in any edition occurs just before the final short paragraph of Chapter III. of Laputa, at the end of the description of the Flying Island. As an unpublished addition to Gulliver the passage possesses some interest, and it is therefore printed below (with the original spelling and punctuation, but neglecting typographical peculiarities), though, on its merits, its final rejection is not perhaps inexcusable.

AN UNPUBLISHED ADDITION TO LAPUTA.

ABOUT three years before my arrival among them, while the king was in his progress over his dominions, there happened an extraordinary accident which had like to have put a period to the

T

fate of that monarchy, at least as it is now instituted. Lindalino the second city in the kingdom was the first his majesty visited in his progress. Three days after his departure, the inhabitants who had often complained of great oppressions, shut the town gates, seized on the governor, and with incredible speed and labour erected four large towers, one at every corner of the city (which is an exact square), equal in heigth (sic) to a strong pointed rock that stands directly in the center of the city. Upon the top of each tower, as well as upon the rock, they fixed a great loadstone, and in case their design should fail, they had provided a vast quantity of the most combustible fewel, hoping to burst therewith the adamantine bottom of the island if the loadstone project should miscarry.

It was eight months before the king had perfect notice that the Lindalinians were in rebellion. He then commanded that the island should be wafted over the city. The people were unanimous, and had laid in store of provisions, and a great river runs through the middle of the town. The king hovered over them several days to deprive them of the sun and the rain. He ordered many packthreads to be let down, yet not a person offered to send up a petition, but instead thereof, very bold demands, the redress of all their greivances (sic), great immunitys, the choice of their own governor, and other the like exorbitances. Upon which his majesty commanded all the inhabitants of the island to cast great stones from the lower gallery into the town; but the citizens had provided against this mischief by conveying their persons and effects into the four towers, and other strong buildings, and vaults under ground.

The king being now determined to reduce this proud people, ordered that the island should descend gently within fourty yards of the top of the towers and rock. This was accordingly done; but the officers employed in that work found the descent much speedier than usual, and by turning the loadstone could not without great difficulty keep it in a firm position, but found the island inclining to fall. They sent the king immediate intelligence of this astonishing event, and begged his majesty's permission to raise the island higher; the king consented, a general council was called, and the officers of the loadstone ordered to attend. One of the oldest and expertest among them obtained leave to try an experiment. He took a strong line of an hundred yards, and the island being raised over the town

above the attracting power they had felt, he fastened a piece of adamant to the end of his line, which had in it a mixture of iron mineral, of the same nature with that whereof the bottom or lower surface of the island is composed, and from the lower gallery let it down slowly towards the top of the towers. The adamant was not descended four yards, before the officer felt it drawn so strongly downwards, that he could hardly pull it back. He then threw down several small pieces of adamant, and observed that they were all violently attracted by the top of the tower. The same experiment was made on the other three towers and on the rock, with the same effect.

This incident broke entirely the king's measures and (to dwell no longer on other circumstances) he was forced to give the town their own conditions.

I was assured by a great minister, that if the island had descended so near the town as not to be able to raise it self, the citizens were determined to fix it for ever, to kill the king and all his servants, and entirely change the government.

ENGLISH POLITICAL TRACTS.

Page 163. The Examiner, No. 15. The numbering of the Examiners here adopted is that of the original single sheets. In all texts of Swift, however, No. 14 appears as 13, and all the subsequent numbers are shifted one back. The reason is that when the Examiners were republished in 1712 in 12mo., No. 13, the paper immediately preceding Swift's first contribution, containing a strenuous plea for non-resistance, was omitted. Swift's first Examiner was No. 14, and his last No. 46: or, in the later numbering, 13-45. There seems no good reason for following a numbering which is not that of the original publication. No. 15 is directed against the Earl of Wharton (a certain great man, p. 167), who was lord-lieutenant of Ireland from Oct. 1708 to Oct. 1710; to which post graceful allusion is made on p. 164, where the devil is described as having been viceroy of a great western province. Swift had personal reasons for disliking Wharton, but the flagrant profligacy and venality of the viceroy's character and government amply justified the undying con. tempt and hatred which inspired Swift's repeated onslaughts.

Page 166. Wooden shoes: alluding to the French sympathies of which the Tories, your best friends, were accused.

Page 168. Such counsel: alluding to the Whigs, monied men, dissenters, the war, and the national debt. The funded debt, which began in 1692 with £1,200,000 borrowed at ten per cent. by the Whig Montague had grown to fifty millions by the time of the treaty of Utrecht: and this indebtedness was a ground of serious alarm to Swift and the Tories.

Others who... were only able to give reputation and success to the Revolution: i.e. noblemen, who, like Danby and Nottingham, without embracing Whig principles, made the Revolution possible by their aid.

Page 169. This mighty change refers to the case of Dr. Sacheverell, put on his trial by the Whigs in 1710, for preaching nonresistance, which produced a Tory reaction, and the fall of the Whigs in the same year.

Page 170. Violences of either party. Swift, though a party man, was no mere partisan. "Whoever," he wrote in the Sentiments of a Church of England Man, “has a true value for Church and State would be sure to avoid the extremes of Whig for the sake of the former, and the extremes of Tory on account of the latter."

Page 171. The Examiner, No. 16. The Review was Defoe's weekly paper, and the Observator was conducted by another Whig, John Tutchin, a former adherent of Monmouth, whom Jeffreys ordered to be flogged through some of the western towns. Pope alludes to his punishment in the well-known lines,

"Earless on high stood unabashed De Foe,

And Tutchin flagrant from the scourge below.”

The non-juror was the Rev. Charles Lesley, an Irish non-juring clergyman, who promulgated Jacobite opinions in the Rehearsal. He also wrote numerous tracts against the Deists, whence Swift's respect and esteem.

The following account of the weekly papers of the year is taken from a pamphlet, ascribed by some to Gay, entitled, The Present State of Wit, and printed in 1711. Swift mentions it in the Journal to Stella, May 14, 1711, and says he thinks "Steele and Addison were privy to the printing of it.”

"As to our weekly papers, the poor Review is quite exhausted, and grown so very contemptible, that though he has