THE BI-CENTENARY OF GULLIVER.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19904, 25 September 1926, Page 22

THE 81-CENTENARY OF GULLIVER.

Written for the Otago Daily Times. By LLOYD ROSS. For the delight of npos of children, but out of the bitter scorn of the author, “Gulliver's Travels" was published 'JOO years ago next mouth. It is ouc of the most ironical twists of literature that this book of adventure is cherished, whereas it should be feared and hated. Posterity has the laugh on Swift. Here was a bitter man, a man who actually hated his fellow humans as vehemently as Shakespeare's imaginative Simon of Athens, a man who in his own words “hated all nations, professions, and communities. . . But principally I hate and detest that animal called man”; who lived, as he said, “like a poisoned rat in a hole,” and died insane. He poured out his agony into a terrible satire, which to-day serves as a pleasant talc for the young. As Kipling says: “It is like tuning down the glare of a volcano to light a child to bed.” That is how wo defeat our cynics—we laugh at them. The first edition of this bitter book was sold within a week, and edition has followed edition. Human beings on whom Swift turned his scorn have retaliated by reading his works, during two centuries, with undiluted pleasure and undisturbed enjoyment. Shaw and Voltaire have suffered the same overwhelming defeat. Imperial Caesar, dead and tamed to day Might stop a hole to keep tho wind away. What kind of n man was this leather of humanity? Swift was obsequious towards the great and bullying towards the poor. Years after his death his publisher, Faulkner, was laughed at by his friends for his peculiar way of eating They smiled when he confessed Swift had told him it was the right way, whereupon he retorted: “I tell you what it is, gentlemen; if you had ever dined with the Dean you would have eaten your asparagus us he bade you." Another story is told that when db’ing at a certain house, and noticing the tablecloth before him had a small hole in it, he tore the hole as wide as he could and ate his soup through it. What a man for the author of fairy tales! Ho loved so to humiliate those who could not hit back. From individuals, he turned the range of his mighty hatred to the whole human race, and England at this time gave him plenty of material for his satires. Money ruled triumphant, and money was merely money, an end and not a means to a nobler life. Honour, favour, and virtue were reckoned in terms of shillings ant! pence. Religion was an affair of livings, to be bought and sold; politics a squabble over the spoils of office —n game of Tweedledum and Tweedledec. Swift, proud, imperious, ill of health, a boiling volcano of thwarted desires, was a Churchman in this world of pelf. He applied to be made a dean, somebody else paid a thousand-pound bribe, and Swift lost tho position. He was told he could have another deanery at the same price, hut not having the sum available, ho sold his pen to whatever party was in power. The Tories made him a Dean in Dublin, then the Whigs came in, and Swift retaliated by writing his “Modest Proposal” for eating the children of Ireland. “Look,” says the. gloomy dean, “we are letting a population starve to death, and what a waste of national resources, what a violation of our fundamental principles of business economy. Let us feed these Irish babies, and when they are nice and fat serve them on our tables; they will be happy during their brief span of life, and we shall no longer have to import food from foreign parts. It was one of the most terrific pieces of irony in all literature. Then came “Gulliver"—the children’s book. It is a perfect allegory. Yon can enjoy it for its simple, clear, thrilling story, or gnash your teeth for its rancour. Swift was a double-dyed villain. His work entered our nurseries as a story book, to remain as a social tract. First, we visit the land in which the people are only six inches high, and so we laugh at the pettiness of life. The fleet of Lilliput, seized by Gulliver, consisted of toy boats. Pomp and ceremony and national glory are reduced to the scale of a village pond. Then we visit the country where humans are corresponding’, tall, and we realise how awkward, gross, and stupid we really are. The King of Brobdingnay agreed with Swift that the majority of ns are "the most pernicious raco of little odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.” So on, until we come to the land of noble and beautiful horses in which human beings are filthy apes. The writer of this book left his fortune to found a lunatic asylum as— And ehowed by one tatirio touch No nation needed it bo much.

As with “Pilgrim’s Progress,” children no longer read “Gulliver’s Travels” as much as once they did, for they have heard there is a moral behind the tale—and children detest sugar-coated pills even more than plain castor oil. This is a pity, for there are few modern books which are so enthralling. With the skill of a Wells, Swift develops his fantasy as a traveller might describe a strange unknown land he had visited. Every detail is mentioned; Gulliver’s early _ life, his map, the astronomical observations that have proved so miraculously true in modern times. This, which was to satirise naval preparations, becomes a passage, which any boy who has sailed a ship reads and rereads: "I went on boldly in spite of the enemy's arrows many of which struck against the glasses of my spectacles, but without any other defect, farther than a little to discompose them. I had now fastened all the hooks, and taking the knot in my band began to pull, but not a ship would stir, for they were all too fast held by their anchors, so that the boldest part of my enterprise remained. I therefore lot go the cord, and leaving the hooks fixed to the ships, I resdutely cut with my knife the cables that fastened the anchors, receiving about 200 shots in my face and hands; then I took up the knotted end of the cables to which my hooks were tied, and with great ease drew 50 of the enemy's largest men-ot-war after me.”

Most children play at boats on the carpet before the fire with a few sticks, as Robert Louis Stevenson well knew. Most, too, have walked through the bush pretending to hurl stones at mighty foes, like Jack the Giant Killer. Swift might merely have boon recreating this world of the imagination.

Yet wc cannot escape the moral of Gulliver if we follow him to the end, to the world whoso noblest creatures look like horses and the morons like men. Gulliver protests the resemblance is only in the body, and that he is the spiritual equal of horses! Asked to prove it, he tells the history of the world—its wars, corruption, poverty, disease, and selfishness—and wo all are humiliated. Grown-ups then arc stimulated into a self-examination that. Gulliver prompts, just as Sir James Frazer made fairy tales readable by the uuromantic elders. Are wc as bad as this venomous misanthrope declares? A modern critic has written, 'The millenium will be here when all men read ‘ Gulliver’s Travels,’ as children read it, and do not need to be ashamed. If you have discarded “Gulliver” as a child’s book, take it up, and read it from this point of view. But don't let your boy know and spoil his innocent pleasure.