Journeys Through Bookland, Volume 5 | Page 3

anyone, but it does show us that even a brilliant intellect cannot save a man who persistently neglects to guard his character, and that fame does not always bring happiness.
But Swift was by no means all bad, and his great services to Ireland are still deservedly recognized by that devoted people. He really laid the foundation for their prosperity and may be said to have created constitutional liberty for them.
It is, however, as a wit and a writer that Swift is now chiefly famous. Many are the stories told of his readiness in repartee, his bright sallies in conversation, and of his skill in quick and caustic rhyming. It is said that one day, when traveling in the south of Ireland, he stopped to give his horse water at a brook which crossed the road; a gentleman of the neighborhood halted for the same purpose, and saluted him, a courtesy which was politely returned. They parted, but the gentleman, struck by the dean's figure, sent his servant to inquire who the man was. The messenger rode up to the dean and said, "Please, sir, master would be obliged if you would tell him who you are."
"Willingly," replied the dean. "Tell your master I am the person that bowed to him when we were giving our horses water at the brook yonder."
[Illustration: JONATHAN SWIFT 1667-1745]
Swift's interests lay rather with the common people than with the Irish aristocracy, who, he thought, were arrant "grafters." Of one in particular he said,
"So great was his bounty-- He erected a bridge--at the expense of the county."
The last thing Swift wrote was an epigram. It was in almost the final lucid interval between periods of insanity that he was riding in the park with his physician. As they drove along, Swift saw, for the first time, a building that had recently been put up.
"What is that?" he inquired.
"That," said the physician, "is the new magazine in which are stored arms and powder for the defence of the city."
"Oh!" said the dean, pulling out his notebook. "Let me take an item of that; this is worth remarking: 'My tablets!' as Hamlet says, 'my tablets! Memory put down that.'" Then he scribbled the following lines, the last he ever penned:
"Behold a proof of Irish sense! Here Irish wit is seen! When nothing's left that's worth defence, We build a magazine."
With the exception of _Gulliver's Travels_, very little that Dean Swift wrote is now read by anyone but students.

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS
INTRODUCTION
Gulliver's Travels was published in 1726 and without any allusion to the real author, though many knew that the work must have come from the pen of Dean Swift. Though the dean was habitually secretive in what he did, he had some reason for not wishing to say in public that he had written so bitter a satire on the government and on mankind.
The work was immediately popular, not only in the British Isles but on the Continent as well. No such form of political satire had ever appeared, and everyone was excited over its possibilities. Not all parts of the work were considered equally good; some parts were thought to be failures, and the Fourth Voyage was as a whole deservedly unpopular. The Voyages to Lilliput and to Brobdingnag were considered the best, and to them is to be attributed the greater part of the author's fame. Their popularity continues with the years.
Lemuel Gulliver is represented as a British sailor who had been educated as a doctor but whose wandering instincts led him back to the sea. On his return from his voyages he writes the account of his adventures; and the manner in which this account is written is so masterly that we almost believe the things he tells.
In describing the manners, customs, and governments of the several countries, he shows in his inimitable way the weakness of his king, prince, nobles, government and mankind in general.
While the scholar and the man of affairs may still be interested in the political significance of what is said and in a study of the keen knowledge of human nature shown by the writer, yet it is principally as a story that the work is now popular. Everybody enjoys reading about the wonderful people who existed only in the imagination of the great dean of Saint Patrick's.
In this volume are printed some of the most enjoyable parts of the first and second voyages. About the only changes from the original text are in the omission of those passages which contribute nothing to the narrative or which for other reasons it seems inadvisable to reprint. These omissions put the real fictitious narrative into so small a compass that children will be entertained from beginning to end.
The Voyage to Lilliput was directed against the policy of the English Court during the reign of