Page:Four and Twenty Minds.djvu/236

220 readers. Of the lands to which Gulliver journeyed, the only one that is popular and famous among us is Lilliput. Brobdingnag is a close second. But we have only the vaguest notions of Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, and Glubbdubdrib, and we are quite willing to leave unvisited the land of the terrible Yahoos. But the last two parts are really more characteristic than the first two: their omission in previous Italian editions is then another instance of the fact that excisions are usually ill-judged.

The translator expresses his regret that the work “has always been so slightly and so inaccurately known and so grotesquely interpreted in Italy. Thanks to the absurdity of publishers and of the public Gulliver’s Travels has been regarded as a book for children, a harmless fantastic romance founded upon an idea that is clever but superficial.” The translator is right so far as modern Italy is concerned, but for the sake of justice he should have recalled the fact that in the eighteenth century, even before the death of Swift, Italian men of letters knew him and admired him as a satirist and moralist, and not by any means as an author of extravaganzas for children. Algarotti, for example, cited him often, and called him the modern Lucian. Baretti paid him due esteem, though he once wrote in the Frusta that “half of Swift’s fancy was always covered with filth.” Albergati and