Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 6.djvu/138

116 beheld a company of English lords and ladies in their finery, and birth-day clothes, acting their several parts in the most courtly manner of strutting, and bowing, and prating; to say the truth, I should have been strongly tempted to laugh as much at them, as the king and his grandees did at me. Neither indeed could I forbear smiling at myself, when the queen used to place me upon her hand towards a looking-glass, by which both our persons appeared before me in full view together; and there could be nothing more ridiculous than the comparison: so that I really began to imagine myself dwindled many degrees below my usual size.

Nothing angered and mortified me so much as the queen's dwarf; who, being of the lowest stature that was ever in that country, (for I verily think he was not full thirty feet high) became so insolent at seeing a creature so much beneath him, that he would always affect to swagger and look big as he passed by me in the queen's antichamber, while I was standing on some table talking with the lords or ladies of the court, and he seldom failed of a smart word or two upon my littleness; against which I could only revenge myself by calling him brother, challenging him to wrestle, and such repartees as are usual in the mouths of court pages. One day, at dinner, this malicious little cub was so nettled with something I had said to him, that, raising himself upon the frame of her majesty's chair, he took me up by the middle, as I was sitting down, not thinking any harm, and let me drop into a large silver bowl of cream, and then ran away as fast as he could. I fell over head and ears, and, if I had not been a good swimmer, it might have gone very hard with me; for clitch