One of the few expressions of protest at the time, came, curiously, from a member of Swift's intimate circle, Lord Bolingbroke; 'he is the person', continued Pope,  'who least approves it,  blaming  it  as a  design  of  evil  consequence to depreciate human nature'.
But this might have been no more than a joke at Bolingbroke's expense.

 Swift, the militant Church of England or Church of Ireland man, needed no excuse to poke fun at Bolingbroke, and his deistical or even atheistical deviations from the Christian faith. 'A merry book' by a man gay-spirited and greatly loved as well as feared; that was the general view of Swift's contemporaries. Stomachs were stronger in the reigns of Queen Anne and George I.
 
 

 "Gulliver's Travels" is a perpetual unfinished argument, one from which flatly contradictory morals have been and still can be extracted.

 Some of the most eminent authorities have made the most eminent asses of themselves, a development which Swift foresaw and invited: 'an author perfectly blameless, against whom the tribe of answers, considers, observers, reflectors, detectors, remarks, will never be able to find matter for exercising their talents'.
Swift's politics left much to be desired. He had made himself the confession in playful verse:

  "He was an Honest Man, I'll swear-
   Why, Sir, I differ from you there.
    For, I have heard another Story
    He was a most confounded Tory."

   "Severe, unjust and degrading as this satire is (he wrote), it was hailed with malignant triumph by those whose disappointed hopes had thrown them into the same state of gloomy misanthropy which it argues in its author."

 If this was how Swift was to be defended by his political friends, what could he expect from his enemies?

 Swift, for all his devotion to truth, could be defensive and secretive. He insisted upon his independence and privacy, even to his lifelong companion (Stella). The nearest we can come to intimacy with him is through his letters to her, and yet these cover only a few years of his life and all but the most oblique reference to Vanessa is excluded from them. The enigma of Swift's love life is so interesting, in my belief the best and most comprehensive theory which at least fits the known fact and does not, like the syphilis theory, defy them, is provided by Denis Johnston in his "In Search of Swift". But, "Gulliver's Travels" must be judged without the aid of Stella's secret.

 George Orwell, for instance, accepts that Swift was 'a diseased writer' and that he solved his dilemmas by blowing everything to pieces in the only way open to him, that is, by going mad, and then cudgels his brain to discover how a man with 'a world view which only just passes that test of sanity' can still have such appeal to so many, included himself.

 Surely the author of Gulliver, whatever else he was doing, was consciously compressing his whole life into one book and stripping aside all sentimental impurities:

 "Swift (insists Miss Kathleen Williams) refuses to simplify; as a moral being and a political being man is a complex creature, and only a process of compromise can produce in any sphere a state of things which will do justice to his complexity."

 Swift's ways of thinking and feeling we become know that at the heart of Swift's work are unity and consistency, and we see that the attack is also a defence, that tools of destruction are being employed for a positive and constructive purpose.

 Pope, Gay, Arbuthnot and Bolingbroke knew how sane Swift was and how cheerful he could be, and did he not write to them about Gulliver and say:

 "I desire you and all my friends will take a special care that my disaffection to the world may not be imputed to my age ... I tell you after all, that I do not hate mankind: it is 'vous autres' who hate them, because you would have them reasonable animals, and are angry for being disappointed."
 
 
 

Nearly all his works were published anonymously, and, for only this one, did he receive any payment (200 pounds). The whole work is a metaphoric satire on man and human institutions (in the manner of Morality Plays, with its personified abstractions, mainly vices and virtues), and a fascinating tale of travels in wonderland. It can be considered a novel of travel and a philosophical novel.

 Swift probably got the idea of a satire in the form of a travels´ narrative at the meetings of the Scriblerus Club, and intended it form part of the 'Memoirs of Scriblerus'; indeed Scriblerus is described in the 'Memoirs' as visiting the same countries as Gulliver. Swift appears to have worked at the book from as early as 1720.

 His Proposal for the "Universal use of Irish Manufactures" (1720) was followed by "The Drapier's Letters" (1724-1725) in which he savagely and effectively attacked the English government for proposing to grant William Wood permission to coin money for Ireland. The government had regarded these anonymously written "Drapier's Letters" (particularly the fourth "Letter" in which Swift argued that the Irish should be as free as their brethren in England) as treasonable, and the printer of the "Letters" was arrested.

 At this point Swift wrote a pamphlet entitle "Seasonable Advice", the Grand Jury discharged the printer and the Government had to withdraw Wood's grant.

 By 1726 Swift, whose authorship was known not only to the authorities in England and Ireland but also to the population in Dublin, had become a popular patriot. And after a visit to England (to arrange amongst other things the printing of "Gulliver's Travels"), he was received with immense acclaim when he returned to Dublin.
 
 

 Jonathan Swift began to write "Gulliver's Travels" in 1721. In a letter of September, 1752 he told his friend Alexander Pope that he had been spending his time in 'finishing, correcting, amending and transcribing' these "Travels", in 'four parts complete newly argumented, and intended for the press when the world shall deserve them, or rather when a Printer shall be found brave enough to venture his Eares'.

 One of the fascinations of "Gulliver's Travels" is that, although every phrase seems immediately comprehensible, the whole subject matter is endless complex.

 When the book was published, anonymously, on 28 October 1726, success was instantaneous. Immediate translations were made into French and Dutch; Swift's friends in London competed with one another in dispatching glowing reports to the author in Dublin.

 This remark about a printer reminds us that Swift was writing his masterpiece at the he had returned to Ireland to be Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, disappointed, after his brilliant work for the Tory ministry in London from 1710 to 1714, at not receiving preferment in England. But, paradoxically, despite his initially strong desire not to involve himself in Irish political life, he found he could not avoid his passions being raised by the question of the rights of the Irish people. And so, from 1720 onwards, he wrote brilliant pamphlets expressing his belief in the need for Irish economic and political freedom.

 "Gulliver's Travels" might be assigned to its proper place thus:
'When once you have thought of the big men and little men, it is very easy to do all the rest'.
A good Johnsonian joke, maybe, but it still leaves us wondering whether he ever got past the first two books and the disappearance of the big men and the little men (the criticism of Swift's talents was the denigration of his demeanour and character).

 It is worth remembering these facts and that Swift himself regarded "Gulliver's Travels" as 'admirable things, and will wonderfully mend the World'. He was deeply concerned with the state of the world: he wanted to show how it could be mended. He was also deeply concerned with the nature of power; and he wanted to show how it was used and abused, and to demonstrate the gap that existed between its use and reason satirically. But his irony has not always been understood, and, from his own time onwards, many critics have made heavy weather of "Gulliver's Travels". Thus Thackeray, for instance, in the nineteenth century thought that the moral they contained was 'horrible, shameful, unmanly, blasphemous' and Professor Leavis in our time has regarded the force of the last books as conditioned by frustration and constriction.

 What has bothered many critics is the question of whether there is any unity in the four books of the "Travels". Yet if they are read carefully, the general attitude they display will be seen as often being much more in tone with the ideas generally accepted in Swift's own age than has been realised by critics. The result of modern specialised criticism has been that now we know more about the thought of Swift's age and, as modern criticism has become more intelligently sympathetic to Swift himself and his ideas, we realise more fully the over-all concepts contained in "Gulliver's Travels". We may also (after the holocausts and brutalities of the twentieth century) be more ready to realise, with Swift, the dark abysses in man's nature and to understand how deeply Swift was affected by the poverty and misrule he saw about him in Ireland.

 Summary: "A Voyage to Lilliput"

 Gulliver is a ship's surgeon and is shipwrecked. He wakes up to find himself tethered down by minute people barely six inches in height. He is brought to the capital of this country, Lilliput, and endeavours to persuade the Emperor to give him his freedom. He is given a measure of liberty in return for services he must render Lilliput. And he learns the language, and a good deal about the ways of the court. He had hitherto been 'a stranger to courts, for which I was unqualified by my condition'. Now he learns even more when, having captured the main fleet of Blefuscu, the neighbouring power, he refuses to bring the rest of its ships into the power of Lilliput because he does not wish to be the cause of bringing a free and brave people into slavery. He has realised the over-weaning ambition of the Emperor, and next he learns the savagery of the court. Articles of impeachment are drawn up against him. He is accused of 'maliciously, traitorously, and devilishly, by discharge of his Urine' putting out a fire in the Empress's apartments. He is also accused of treachery with the Blefuscans. His enemies on the Council wish to poison him, his supposed friend suggests putting out his eyes. The Council are convinced of his guilt without the formal proof required by law, and a compromise solution, of starving him to death, is suggested by his friend. And then he escapes from Lilliput, having come to realise the true nature of kings, ministers and courtiers. The satire has been achieved by scaling down the pride and arrogance and unreliability of the powerful. Thus the quarrel of the Big Endians and Little Endians and the capering of the courtiers on the rope reflect some of the absurdities and corruptions of English or European political administrations.

 References specifics about the book:

 In short, Part One, "A Voyage to Lilliput", is the fantasy about the giant in the land of midgets told in such unchangeable, precise, matter-of-fact terms that it has a household word and idea in every civilised tongue throughout the world. The first book touches on comedy.

 It is the simplicity of "Gulliver's Travels" which gives it its particular strength. A child can read it with pleasure, for the sake of its brilliantly imaginative invention, its adventures and its humour. And adult can also do so, but not without being deeply disturbed, as Swift intended us to be at the spectacle man presents to a cool, rational view of his nature when he is in contact with his fellows. Swift hated hypocrisy and was able to show it up savagely through his cool irony, his logic, his wit.

 But he did more than attack the measure of his success is that within the simplicity of the "Travels" (and the echoes in them of the travellers' tales so fashionable in his time) there is the subletly of structure, the complexity of viewpoint and scale which allows us to capture Swift's positive belief that if man would only apply his reason consistently he would see how absurdly he behaved.

 Swift's philosophy, whatever it may be, forms only one part of "Gulliver's Travels". The book is stuffed with personal, literary and political allusions. On every page there are more or less abstruse references which had a special meaning for the readers of Swift's own age.

 Book's language:

 Writers claiming to do no more than appraise its philosophical content have been driven to paroxysms of denunciation. Somehow the foremost exponent of lucidity in the English language has left as his chief legacy a grotesque enigma.

 The author protests at the outset that 'the style is very plain and simple'. And so it is. Every sentence attained his rigorous standard of simplicity.

 Gentleness, playfulness, irony, finely poised argument and lacerating invectives are so carefully enfolded one within another that it is evident Jonathan Swift created the endless mystery on purpose.

 Book's style and general criticism:

 What kind of book, then is "Gulliver's Travels"?
Some critics have seen it as a novel, but, as has been suggested, to regard it in this way is not useful:
 thought it is true that probably Samuel Butler's "Erewhon" and possibly Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World", even George Orwell's "Anima! Farm" and "1984" owe much to it.

 It is not a narrative, thought it does consist of episodes strung together loosely. It is an expression of Swift's 'bitter wisdom', a distillation of his experience of the world of power, of politics and diplomacy.

 He had learned much from his patron Sir William Temple, the ex-ambassador and amateur political philosopher, and from Bolingbroke in the years from 1710 to 1714. Bolinbroke seemed to Swift like a youthful Temple;  but Swift was not a man to embrace the kind of complacent contentment that Bolinbroke displayed. The Houyhnhnms had no idea of Evil. And Swift certainly had.

 His achievement in "Gulliver's Travels" is to give us portraits of men who embodied evil, not only those who did so obviously but those whose evil was not immediately obvious because it was accepted.

 Lord Bathrust exposed sin, folly and pride in no uncertain way in "Gulliver's Travels". We need, always, to bear in mind the total impact of the book, its unity of viewpoint, and we need to read each book in the light of what has gone before.

 And we must remember Swift's own life, if his picture baffles us. He hated folly and wickedness; but he had his friends. He had both ideals and standards for mankind: wit, humour and intellect he possessed in over-flowing measure; and he had a religious concept of life: not everyman's to be sure. But Swift's sensibility was that of a sombre man in all his satire jesting.

 He insisted on being himself, and "Gulliver's Travels" is a superb expression of aspects of his complex personality. Within him, too raged the battle between reason and passion, with his dominating intellect achieving ultimate control in the name of liberty.

 For him it was, paradoxically enough, the liberty 'to be used like a Lord' and so he pushed logic to inexorable extremes of gravity or absurdity to suit his purposes. And those purposes included the liberty of others who, like himself, were not born into ranks of privilege or power, but for whom he sought freedom from the abuses of power and privilege made by unworthy men.

 A series of writers attempted the serious work of biography previously neglected and the more they assembled facts in their proper context the more the picture of Swift, the ogre, began to dissolve:

 -Leslie Stephen in his volume (1882) and Churto Collins in his (1893) surveyed the work already done in rectifying glaring injustices, but, even so, both quailed before the later sections of "Gulliver's Travels".

 -Churton Collins's reactions were similar:

 "It ("Gulliver's Travels", he wrote) has no moral, no social, no philosophical purpose. It was the mere ebullition of cynicism and misanthropy. A savage jeu d'esprit. And as such wise men will regard it, ... At no period distinguished by generosity of sentiment, by humanity, by decency, could such satire have been universally applauded. Yet so it was. The men and women of those times appear to have seen nothing objectionable in an apologue which would scarcely have passed without protest in the Rome of Petronius."

 -Hazlitt, Macaulay and Thackeray were supposedly talking about the same man and the same book:

 Whether the excellence of "Gulliver's Travels" is in the conception or the execution, is of little consequence; the power is somewhere, and it is a power that has moved the world. The power is not that of big words and vaunting common places. Swift left these to those who wanted them; and has done what his acuteness and intensity of mind alone could enable any one to conceive or to perform. His object was to strip empty pride and grandeur of the imposing air which external circumstances throw around them; and for this purpose he has cheated the imagination of the illusions which the prejudices of sense and of the world put upon it, by reducing every thing to the abstract predicament of size. He enlarges or diminishes the scale, as he wishes to show the insignificance or the grossness of our overweening self-love. That he has done this with mathematical precision, with complete presence of mind and perfect keeping, in a manner that comes equally home to the understanding of the man and the child. He has taken a new view of human nature, and he has torn the scales from off his moral vision.

 The moral lesson is as the intellectual exhibition is amusing. It is an attempt to tear off the mask of imposture from the world; and nothing but imposture has a right to complain of it.

 -So even strong Swift defenders seemed unable to repel the weight of the attack. Somehow Gulliver could not be treated as a book at all: it was unfit for human consumption. Partly we had been studying Swift's new biographers, although these, as we have seen, were still on the defensive about Gulliver as an enemy of injustice and oppression.

 -The man and the book; the two become inextricable, however open to objection such a method of judgement may be.
 It is peculiarly difficult to discuss Swift's writings, insists F.R. Leavis, without shifting the focus of discussion to the kind of man that Swift was:

 "For instance, one may (it appears), having offered to discuss the nature and import of Swift's satire find oneself countering imputations of misanthropy with the argument that Swift earned the love of Pope, Arbuthnot, Gay, several other men and two women; this should not be found necessary by the literary critic."

Having reached the conclusion that Swift's greatness 'is no matter of moral grandeur or human centrality; our sense is merely a sense of great force', he adds: 'And this force, as we feel it, is conditioned by frustration and constriction: the channels of life have been blocked and perverted.'

 Then, was "Gulliver's Travels" the product of a perverted, diseased mind? Was Swift a gloomy misanthrope who never laughed, a tormented hater of all men and, more particularly, all women, consumed at last in the furnace of his own fury? Did he, in short, go mad?
 
 

Swift wrote about himself:

   "I  shall be like that tree, I shall die at the top'.
   "Principally I hate and detest that animal called man ...".

 He bequeathed his small fortune to found an asylum in Dublin and wrote the famous lines on his own death:

 "He gave the little wealth he had,
  To build a House for Fools and Mad.
  And shew'd by one Satiric Touch,
  No nation needed it so much."

 There is, also, plentiful evidence from various witnesses of the scarcely endurable pains and miseries which bore him to the grave.
 

 Swift, from birth to death, was insane by no medical definition. He was no more eccentric or neurotic than Pope or Johnson, and probably less so. Tradition of his madness has been rejected for forty years by every qualified scholar who has bothered to look into the question.
 

 In short, It is the simplicity of "Gulliver's Travels" which gives it its particular strength. A child can read it with pleasure, for the sake as its brilliantly imaginative invention, its adventures and its humour.

 In other words, "Gulliver's Travels" not only satirises man's lack of reason, it also makes a moral plea to use it. Swift was, as a friend Arbuth recorded:

  'a sincere honest man, and speaking truth where
   others were afraid to speak it'