description of the discoveries as to the secret springs of history which he made among the Ghosts of Laputa :

Here I discovered the true course of many great events that have surprised the world; how a whore can govern the back-stairs, the back-stairs a council, the council a senate. A General confessed in my presence, that he had 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 the whole of their 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, restive temper which virtue infused into a man was a perpetual clog to public business.

Perhaps the most consummate instance of Swift's irony in our language is to be found in Gulliver's conversation with the King of Brobdingnag. The Englishman offers to tell his Majesty the secret of the use of gunpowder, in order that he may thus be able to make himself absolutely supreme in his kingdom, and enforce his commands at pleasure. Such, however, were the miserable effects of a confined education,' that the king not only refuses with horror, but declares that rather than know such a secret he would lose half his kingdom, and further commands Gulliver, as he values his life, never to mention the subject again. Then follows Gulliver's reflections on conduct so extraordinary :

A strange effect of narrow principles and views, that a prince possessed of every quality which secures veneration,

love, and esteem; of strong parts, of great wisdom, and profound learning; indued with admirable talents, and almost adored by his subjects, should, from a nice, unnecessary scruple, whereof in Europe we can have no conception, let slip an opportunity put into his hands that would have made him absolute master of the lives, of the liberties, and the fortunes of his people! Neither do I say this with the least intention to detract from the many virtues of that excellent king, whose character, I am sensible, will, on this account, be very much lessened in the opinion of an English reader; but I take this defect among them to have arisen from their ignorance, by not having hitherto reduced politics to a science as the more acute wits of Europe have done.

Equally good as an example of this peculiar mixture of satire and irony is the character of a Minister given by Gulliver to his horse-master :

I told him that a first or chief minister of State, who was the person I intended to describe, was a creature wholly exempt from joy and grief, love and hatred, pity and anger; at least, makes use of no other passion but a violent desire of wealth, power, titles; that he applies his words to all uses except to the indication of his mind; he never tells a truth, but with the intent that you should take it for a lie; nor a lie, but with the design that you shall take it for a truth; that those he speaks worst of behind their backs are in the surest way of preferment, and whenever he begins to praise you to others, or to yourself, you are from that day forlorn. The worst mark you can receive is a promise, especially when it is confirmed with an oath; after which every wise man retires, and gives over all hope.

Many reflections scattered up and down 'Gulliver's Travels' show how clear and sane was Swift's insight into the world around him. Take, for example, the

famous description of the action-at-law which he gave to his master in the land of the Houyhnhnms, and the

definition of legal precedents; or the criticism on our system of female education.

It would be possible to multiply to any length instances of each form of literary artifice to be found in the pages of this extraordinarily various book. The style alone, though it will drive the student to despair if he fancies it possible to imitate, will in every other way well repay the most careful analysis. Its characteristics cannot be better given than in Swift's own description of the Brobdingnag literature. 'Their style is clear, masculine, and smooth, but not florid; for they avoid nothing more than multiplying unnecessary words or using various expressions.' And with such words it may be well to close an attempt to reinvite those who have not read Gulliver's Travels' since childhood, to study once more one of the profoundest and most brilliant of satires, one of the greatest of imaginative creations, and one of the noblest models of style in the English language.

MILTON'S PROSE

I

THERE is no doubt that if we take Milton's prose as a whole it cannot be called good. It did nothing for the development of English style. Full as are his writings of magnificent outbursts of eloquent rhetoric, the instrument he uses is very imperfect and very carelessly handled. It is just the antithesis of his poetic manner. One of his greatest glories as a poet is the magnificent equality of his style-an equality not of a medium, but of a superlative excellence. In prose he is always in danger of falling to the level of the contemporary tract; and though he rises, none higher, it is only at intervals. In truth, the pedestrian passages in his prose writings have no style at all. They might, except for the sense and learning, have as well been written by any hack pamphleteer. No human being could read twenty lines of Milton's most ordinary verse -though such a phrase is a misnomer-and not recognise, before he recognised any other beauty, that he was reading the works of one of the great masters of expression. There are pages in Milton's prose works which those most susceptible to the charm of style may read without an emotion. Of course they will not turn very many pages in this mood. Before

long they must come to one of those magnificent outbursts in which the rushing splendour of words bears down all criticism. But to have written such passages is not to be a great prose-writer. A great prose-writer must be judged by the ordinary level of his writing. Dryden was a great prose-writer, though he never wrote in prose any passage of really magnificent sound or transcendent appropriateness of expression. Milton's ordinary level of writing was too often in the following strain1:

Nevertheless, there be in others, beside the first supposed author, men not unread, nor unlearned in antiquity, who admit that for approved story, which the former explode for fiction; and seeing that ofttimes relations heretofore accounted fabulous have been after found to contain in them many footsteps and relics of something true, as what we read in poets of the flood, and giants little believed, till undoubted witnesses taught us that all was not feigned; I have therefore determined to bestow the telling over even of these reputed tales, be it for nothing else but in favour of our English poets and rhetoricians, who by their art will know how to use them judiciously.

This enormous sentence, which, to use Mr. Mark Pattison's phrase, does not stop with the sense, but only because the writer is out of breath, is by no means an extreme example.

Compare for a moment Dryden's fluent idiom in a few sentences from his 'Dedication of the Eneid: '

If sounding words are not of our growth and manufacture, who shall hinder me to import them from a foreign country?

This passage occurs in the History of England, a work which is said to have been forty years in writing, and therefore may more fairly be taken than the hurried compositions which he threw forth in the moment of an instant political need.