Page:Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Lemuel Gulliver First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships.djvu/20

xii ''tales modelled on the same plan. Models with a certain kind of resemblance may be adduced almost without number: and without attempting to gauge with any assurance the amount of Swift's indebtedness, it may be sufficient to repeat here, once again, the more obvious models which may have been present to his mind. The first of these is the True History of Lucian : a book which Swift had almost certainly read: which, in its direct simplicity of narration, combined with extravagance of marvellous episodes, bears a strong resemblance to Gulliver: but which is chiefly designed, as Gulliver is not, to ridicule the absurdities of historians. Cyrano de Bergerac, in the previous century, had written Voyages to the Sun and Moon, which had been translated into English, and which, also, was certainly known to Swift, as he borrows certain episodes from it — such as the exhibition of the hero for money, as Gulliver is exhibited in Brobdingnag : the comparison between the hero and the apes (just as Gulliver is compared to the Yahoo) : and some incidental remarks. The Gerania of Joshua Barnes, of Cambridge (1675), describes a people called Pygmies, who, it is suggested, may have given to Swift the idea of the Lilliputians. The Voyages in Rabelais have frequently been compared with those of Gulliver : but there is really much more of contrast than of parallel in the comparison between Rabelais's extravagant fancy, and the calm and merciless satire for which Swift's story is merely a convenient dress. Voltaire's Micromegas only shows that the idea of representing an imaginary country in which the ordinary proportions of size were transmogrified, was no unfamiliar one when Swift was writing'' Gulliver.

Those to whom Swift's genius is an object of the most profound admiration may feel somewhat jealous of the popularity which has been universally accorded to the Travels of Gulliver. They may be disposed to agree with Johnson's verdict, in which {while paradoxically doubting Swift's authorship he pronounces the Tale of a Tub to be without question the greatest of the works that swell his