bardments, sea fights; ships sunk with a thousand men; twenty thousand killed on each side; dying groans, limbs flying in the air; smoke, noise, confusion, trampling to death under horses' feet; flight, pursuit, victory; fields strewed with carcasses, left for food to dogs and wolves, and birds of prey; plundering, stripping, ravishing, 10 burning, and destroying. And, to set forth the valor of my own dear countrymen, I assured him that I had seen them blow up a hundred enemies at once in a siege, and as many in a ship; and beheld the dead bodies come down in pieces from the clouds, to the great diversion of the spectators.

I was going on to more particulars when my master commanded me 20 silence. He said, whoever understood

the nature of Yahoos might easily believe it possible for so vile an animal to be capable of every action I had named, if their strength and cunning equaled their malice. But as my discourse had increased his abhorrence of the whole species, so he found it gave him a disturbance in his mind, to which he was wholly a stranger before. 30 He thought his ears, being used to such abominable words, might, by degrees, admit them with less detestation; that although he hated the Yahoos of this country, yet he no more blamed them for their odious qualities than he did a gnnayh (a bird of prey) for its cruelty, or a sharp stone for cutting his hoof. But when a creature, pretending to reason, could be capable 40 of such enormities, he dreaded lest the corruption of that faculty might be worse than brutality itself. He seemed therefore confident that, instead of reason, we were only possessed of some quality fitted to increase our natural vices; as the reflection from a troubled stream returns the image of an illshapen body, not only larger, but more distorted.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

Political Acrobatics. 1. This passage from Chapter III of "A Voyage to Lilliput" in Gulliver's Travels reveals the satire that underlies the book. Swift is making fun of the court of George I. In Flimnap he ridicules

George I's prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole. The caper on the pack-thread is a reference to Walpole's resignation in 1717. The cushion refers to a duchess in high favor with the monarch. She is supposed to have restored Walpole to the King's regard. The colored threads satirize three of the orders, Garter, Bath, and Thistle, which the King conferred on his courtiers as a mark of special favor.

2. What impression does this give you of the life of courts? Of the wisdom of politicians? Of the value of their ambitions? Does the satire

apply today to American politics?

War. 1. This selection is also from Gulliver's Travels (Chapter V of "A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms"). What trivial causes of war does Gulliver mention? What caused the War of the Spanish Succession? Does this cause suggest any of those enumerated by Gulliver?

2. What was the cause of the Spanish-American War? The Boer War? The World War? Can any of them be brought under one or more of the causes Gulliver mentions?

3. Write out an account of modern warfare which shall make some of its recent scientific developments clear to a Houyhnhnm. Try to make the conversation as lifelike as Swift does.

4. Does the satire here seem more mellow or more bitter than in "Political Acrobatics"?

5. Pupils shoud reread "A Voyage to Lilliput" and "A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms." Someone should report on A Tale of a Tub. Point out examples of the simplicity of Swift's style, his precise use of words, the keenness of his satire, humor, and irony.