Or from a judge turn pleader, to persuade
The choice we make, or justify it made?
Proud of an easy conquest all along,
She but removes weak passions for the strong:
So, when small humors gather to a gout,
The doctor fancies he has driven them out.
Yes, Nature's road must ever be preferred:
Reason is here no guide, but still a guard.
'Tis hers to rectify, not overthrow,

And treat this passion more as friend than foe:
A mightier power the strong direction sends,
And several men impels to several ends:
Like varying winds, by other passions tost,
This drives them constant to a certain coast.

Let power or knowledge, gold or glory, please,
Or (oft more strong than all) the love of ease,
Through life 'tis followed, e'en at life's expense.
The merchant's toil, the sage's indolence,
The monk's humility, the hero's pride,
All, all, alike, find Reason on their side.

The Eternal Art, educing good from ill,
Grafts on this passion our best principle:
'Tis thus the mercury of man is fixed;
Strong grows the virtue with his nature mixed;
The dross cements what else were too refined;
And, in one interest, body acts with mind.

As fruits, ungrateful to the planter's care,
On
On savage stocks inserted learn to bear;
The surest virtues thus from passions shoot,
Wild Nature's vigor working at the root.
What crops of wit and honesty appear
From spleen, from obstinacy, hate, or fear!
See anger, zeal and fortitude supply;
Even avarice, prudence; sloth, philosophy;
Lust, through some certain strainers well refined,
Is gentle love, and charms all womankind;
Envy, to which the ignoble mind's a slave,
Is emulation in the learned or brave:

Nor virtue, male or female, can we name,

But what will grow on pride, or grow on shame.
Thus Nature gives us (let it check our pride)

The virtue nearest to our vice allied:
Reason the bias turns to good from ill,
And Nero reigns a Titus if he will.
The fiery soul abhorred in Catiline,
In Decius charms, in Curtius is divine:

The same ambition can destroy or save,

And makes a patriot as it makes a knave.

IV. This light and darkness in our chaos joined, What shall divide? The God within the mind, Extremes in Nature equal ends produce:

In man they join to some mysterious use;

Though each by turns the other's bounds invade,
As, in some well-wrought picture, light and shade;
And oft so mixed, the difference is too nice
Where ends the virtue, or begins the vice.
Fools! who from hence into the notion fall
That vice and virtue there is none at all.
If white and black blend, soften, and unite
A thousand ways, is there no black or white?
Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain:
'Tis to mistake them costs the time and pain.
V. Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

But where the extreme of vice, was ne'er agreed.

Ask where's the North? At York, 'tis on the Tweed;

In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there,

At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where:

No creature owns it in the first degree,

But thinks his neighbor farther gone than he,
E'en those who dwell beneath its very zone,
Or never feel the rage, or never own.

What happier natures shrink at with affright
The hard inhabitant contends is right.

VI. Virtuous and vicious every man must be;
Few in the extreme, but all in the degree:
The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise;

And e'en the best, by fits, what they despise.
'Tis but by parts we follow good or ill;

For, vice or virtue, self directs it still.

Each individual seeks a several goal;

VII. But Heaven's great view is one, and that the whole. That counter-works each folly and caprice;

That disappoints the effects of every vice;
That happy frailties to all ranks applied,
Shame to the virgin, to the matron pride,
Fear to the statesman, rashness to the chief,
To kings presumption, and to crowds belief;
That virtue's ends from vanity can raise,
Which seeks no interest, no reward but praise,
And build on wants, and on defects of mind,
The joy, the peace, the glory, of mankind.
Heaven, forming each on other to depend,
(A master, or a servant, or a friend,)
Bids each on other for assistance call,

Till one man's weakness grows the strength of all.
Wants, frailties, passions, closer still ally

The common interest, or endear the tie.

To these we owe true friendship, love sincere,
Each home-felt joy that life inherits here:
Yet from the same we learn, in its decline,

Those joys, those loves, those interests, to resign;

Taught half by reason, half by mere decay,
To welcome death, and calmly pass away.

Whate'er the passion, knowledge, fame, or pelf,
Not one will change his neighbor with himself.
The learned is happy Nature to explore ;
The fool is happy that he knows no more;
The rich is happy in the plenty given;

The poor contents him with the care of Heaven.
See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing,
The sot a hero, lunatic a king,

The starving chemist in his golden views
Supremely blest, the poet in his Muse.

See some strange comfort every state attend,
And pride bestowed on all, a common friend:
See some fit passion every age supply;
Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.
Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law,
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw!
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite!

Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage;
And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age:
Pleased with this bauble still, as that before;
Till, tired, he sleeps, and Life's poor play is o'er.
Meanwhile opinion gilds with varying rays
Those painted clouds that beautify our days:
Each want of happiness by hope supplied,
And each vacuity of sense by pride:
These build as fast as knowledge can destroy;
In Folly's cup still laughs the bubble, Joy;
One prospect lost, another still we gain ;
And not a vanity is given in vain;
E'en mean self-love becomes, by force divine,
The scale to measure others' wants by thine.
See! and confess, one comfort still must rise:
'Tis this, — though man's a fool, yet God is wise.

JONATHAN SWIFT.

1667-1745.

Author of "Tale of a Tub," "Gulliver's Travels," "The Drapier Letters," and many other minor works of prose and poetry. With almost infinite scorn and contempt for the pretentious claims of king, court, and people, the assumptions of the would-be great and learned, he towers, compared with other writers, a Brobding. nag of bitter irony, fierce sarcasm, and savage wit, among harmless Liliputians.

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS TO BROBDINGNAG.

THE frequent labors I underwent every day made in a few weeks a very considerable change in my health. The more my master got by me, the more insatiable he grew. I had quite lost my stomach, and was quite reduced to a skeleton. The farmer observing it, and concluding I must soon die, resolved to make as good a hand of me as he could. While he was thus reasoning and resolving with himself, a sardral, or gentleman usher, came from court, commanding my master to carry me immediately thither for the diversion of the queen and her ladies. Some of the latter had already been to see me, and reported strange things of my beauty, behavior, and good sense. Her Majesty, and those who attended her, were beyond measure delighted with my demeanor. I fell on my knees, and begged the honor of kissing her imperial foot; but this gracious princess held out her little finger towards me after I was set on the table, which I embraced in both my arms, and put the tip of it with the utmost respect to my lip. She asked me some general questions about my country and my travels, which I answered as distinctly and in as few words as I could. She asked whether I could be content to live at court. I bowed down to the board of the table, and humbly answered, that I was my master's slave; but, if I were at my own disposal, I should be proud to devote my life to her Majesty's service. She then asked my master whether he was willing to sell me at a good price. He, who apprehended that I could not live a month, was ready enough to part with me, and demanded a thousand pieces of gold, which were ordered him on the spot; each piece being about the bigness of eight hundred moidores. But allowing for the proportion of all things between that country and Europe, and the high price of gold among them, this was hardly so great a sum as a thousand guineas would be in England. I then said to the queen, since I was now her Majesty's most humble creature and vassal, I must beg the favor that Glumdalclitch, who had always tended me with so much care and kindness, and knew how to do it so well, might be admitted into the service, and continue to be my nurse and instructor. Her Majesty agreed to my petition, and easily got the farmer's consent, who was glad enough to have his daughter preferred at court; and the poor girl herself was not able to hide her joy. My late master withdrew, bidding me farewell, and saying he had left me in a good service; to which I replied not a word, only making him a slight bow.

The queen observed my coldness, and, when the farmer was gone out of the apartment, asked me the reason. I made bold to tell her Majesty that I owed no other obligation to my late master

than his not dashing out the brains of a poor harmless creature, found by chance in his fields; which obligation was amply recompensed by the gain he had made in showing me through half the kingdom, and the price he had now sold me for; that the life I had since led was laborious enough to kill an animal of ten times my strength; that my health was much impaired by the continual drudgery of entertaining the rabble every hour of the day; and that, if my master had not thought my life in danger, her Majesty would not have got so cheap a bargain: but as I was out of all fear of being ill treated under the protection of so great and good an empress, the ornament of nature, the darling of the world, the delight of her subjects, the phoenix of the creation, so I hoped my late master's apprehensions would appear to be groundless; for I had already found my spirits revive by the influence of her most august presence. This was the sum of my speech, delivered with great improprieties and hesitation. The latter part was altogether framed in the style peculiar to that people, whereof I learned some phrases from Glumdalclitch while she was carrying me to court.

The queen, giving great allowance for my defectiveness in speaking, was, however, surprised at so much wit and good sense in so diminutive an animal. She took me in her own hand, and carried me to the king, who was then retired to his cabinet. His Majesty, a prince of much gravity and austere countenance, not well observing my shape at first view, asked the queen, after a cold manner, how long it was since she grew fond of a splacknuck; for such, it seems, he took nie to be as I lay upon my breast in her Majesty's right hand. But this princess, who has an infinite deal of wit and humor, set me gently on my feet upon the scrutoire, and commanded me to give his Majesty an account of myself; which I did in a very few words: and Glumdalelitch, who attended at the cabinet-door, and could not endure I should be out of her sight, being admitted, confirmed all that had passed from my arrival at her father's house.

The king, although he is as learned a person as any in his dominions (having been educated in the study of philosophy, and particularly mathematics), yet when he observed my shape exactly, and saw me walk erect, before I began to speak, conceived I might be a piece of clock-work (which has in that country arrived to a very great perfection) contrived by some ingenious person. But when he heard my voice, and found what I delivered to be regular and rational, he could not conceal his astonishment. He was by no means satisfied with the relation I gave him of the manner I came into his kingdom, but thought it a story concerted between Glumdalclitch, and her father, who had taught me a set of words to make me sell at a better price. Upon this imagination he put