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_ CHAPTER II
[The humours and dispositions of the Laputians described. An
account of their learning. Of the king and his court. The
author's reception there. The inhabitants subject to fear and
disquietudes. An account of the women.]
At my alighting, I was surrounded with a crowd of people, but those
who stood nearest seemed to be of better quality. They beheld me
with all the marks and circumstances of wonder; neither indeed was
I much in their debt, having never till then seen a race of mortals
so singular in their shapes, habits, and countenances. Their heads
were all reclined, either to the right, or the left; one of their
eyes turned inward, and the other directly up to the zenith. Their
outward garments were adorned with the figures of suns, moons, and
stars; interwoven with those of fiddles, flutes, harps, trumpets,
guitars, harpsichords, and many other instruments of music, unknown
to us in Europe. I observed, here and there, many in the habit of
servants, with a blown bladder, fastened like a flail to the end of
a stick, which they carried in their hands. In each bladder was a
small quantity of dried peas, or little pebbles, as I was
afterwards informed. With these bladders, they now and then
flapped the mouths and ears of those who stood near them, of which
practice I could not then conceive the meaning. It seems the minds
of these people are so taken up with intense speculations, that
they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of others,
without being roused by some external taction upon the organs of
speech and hearing; for which reason, those persons who are able to
afford it always keep a flapper (the original is climenole) in
their family, as one of their domestics; nor ever walk abroad, or
make visits, without him. And the business of this officer is,
when two, three, or more persons are in company, gently to strike
with his bladder the mouth of him who is to speak, and the right
ear of him or them to whom the speaker addresses himself. This
flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his
walks, and upon occasion to give him a soft flap on his eyes;
because he is always so wrapped up in cogitation, that he is in
manifest danger of falling down every precipice, and bouncing his
head against every post; and in the streets, of justling others, or
being justled himself into the kennel.
It was necessary to give the reader this information, without which
he would be at the same loss with me to understand the proceedings
of these people, as they conducted me up the stairs to the top of
the island, and from thence to the royal palace. While we were
ascending, they forgot several times what they were about, and left
me to myself, till their memories were again roused by their
flappers; for they appeared altogether unmoved by the sight of my
foreign habit and countenance, and by the shouts of the vulgar,
whose thoughts and minds were more disengaged.
At last we entered the palace, and proceeded into the chamber of
presence, where I saw the king seated on his throne, attended on
each side by persons of prime quality. Before the throne, was a
large table filled with globes and spheres, and mathematical
instruments of all kinds. His majesty took not the least notice of
us, although our entrance was not without sufficient noise, by the
concourse of all persons belonging to the court. But he was then
deep in a problem; and we attended at least an hour, before he
could solve it. There stood by him, on each side, a young page
with flaps in their hands, and when they saw he was at leisure, one
of them gently struck his mouth, and the other his right ear; at
which he startled like one awaked on the sudden, and looking
towards me and the company I was in, recollected the occasion of
our coming, whereof he had been informed before. He spoke some
words, whereupon immediately a young man with a flap came up to my
side, and flapped me gently on the right ear; but I made signs, as
well as I could, that I had no occasion for such an instrument;
which, as I afterwards found, gave his majesty, and the whole
court, a very mean opinion of my understanding. The king, as far
as I could conjecture, asked me several questions, and I addressed
myself to him in all the languages I had. When it was found I
could neither understand nor be understood, I was conducted by his
order to an apartment in his palace (this prince being
distinguished above all his predecessors for his hospitality to
strangers), where two servants were appointed to attend me. My
dinner was brought, and four persons of quality, whom I remembered
to have seen very near the king's person, did me the honour to dine
with me. We had two courses, of three dishes each. In the first
course, there was a shoulder of mutton cut into an equilateral
triangle, a piece of beef into a rhomboides, and a pudding into a
cycloid. The second course was two ducks trussed up in the form of
fiddles; sausages and puddings resembling flutes and hautboys, and
a breast of veal in the shape of a harp. The servants cut our
bread into cones, cylinders, parallelograms, and several other
mathematical figures.
While we were at dinner, I made bold to ask the names of several
things in their language, and those noble persons, by the
assistance of their flappers, delighted to give me answers, hoping
to raise my admiration of their great abilities if I could be
brought to converse with them. I was soon able to call for bread
and drink, or whatever else I wanted.
After dinner my company withdrew, and a person was sent to me by
the king's order, attended by a flapper. He brought with him pen,
ink, and paper, and three or four books, giving me to understand by
signs, that he was sent to teach me the language. We sat together
four hours, in which time I wrote down a great number of words in
columns, with the translations over against them; I likewise made a
shift to learn several short sentences; for my tutor would order
one of my servants to fetch something, to turn about, to make a
bow, to sit, or to stand, or walk, and the like. Then I took down
the sentence in writing. He showed me also, in one of his books,
the figures of the sun, moon, and stars, the zodiac, the tropics,
and polar circles, together with the denominations of many plains
and solids. He gave me the names and descriptions of all the
musical instruments, and the general terms of art in playing on
each of them. After he had left me, I placed all my words, with
their interpretations, in alphabetical order. And thus, in a few
days, by the help of a very faithful memory, I got some insight
into their language. The word, which I interpret the flying or
floating island, is in the original Laputa, whereof I could never
learn the true etymology. Lap, in the old obsolete language,
signifies high; and untuh, a governor; from which they say, by
corruption, was derived Laputa, from Lapuntuh. But I do not
approve of this derivation, which seems to be a little strained. I
ventured to offer to the learned among them a conjecture of my own,
that Laputa was quasi lap outed; lap, signifying properly, the
dancing of the sunbeams in the sea, and outed, a wing; which,
however, I shall not obtrude, but submit to the judicious reader.
Those to whom the king had entrusted me, observing how ill I was
clad, ordered a tailor to come next morning, and take measure for a
suit of clothes. This operator did his office after a different
manner from those of his trade in Europe. He first took my
altitude by a quadrant, and then, with a rule and compasses,
described the dimensions and outlines of my whole body, all which
he entered upon paper; and in six days brought my clothes very ill
made, and quite out of shape, by happening to mistake a figure in
the calculation. But my comfort was, that I observed such
accidents very frequent, and little regarded.
During my confinement for want of clothes, and by an indisposition
that held me some days longer, I much enlarged my dictionary; and
when I went next to court, was able to understand many things the
king spoke, and to return him some kind of answers. His majesty
had given orders, that the island should move north-east and by
east, to the vertical point over Lagado, the metropolis of the
whole kingdom below, upon the firm earth. It was about ninety
leagues distant, and our voyage lasted four days and a half. I was
not in the least sensible of the progressive motion made in the air
by the island. On the second morning, about eleven o'clock, the
king himself in person, attended by his nobility, courtiers, and
officers, having prepared all their musical instruments, played on
them for three hours without intermission, so that I was quite
stunned with the noise; neither could I possibly guess the meaning,
till my tutor informed me. He said that, the people of their
island had their ears adapted to hear "the music of the spheres,
which always played at certain periods, and the court was now
prepared to bear their part, in whatever instrument they most
excelled."
In our journey towards Lagado, the capital city, his majesty
ordered that the island should stop over certain towns and
villages, from whence he might receive the petitions of his
subjects. And to this purpose, several packthreads were let down,
with small weights at the bottom. On these packthreads the people
strung their petitions, which mounted up directly, like the scraps
of paper fastened by school boys at the end of the string that
holds their kite. Sometimes we received wine and victuals from
below, which were drawn up by pulleys.
The knowledge I had in mathematics, gave me great assistance in
acquiring their phraseology, which depended much upon that science,
and music; and in the latter I was not unskilled. Their ideas are
perpetually conversant in lines and figures. If they would, for
example, praise the beauty of a woman, or any other animal, they
describe it by rhombs, circles, parallelograms, ellipses, and other
geometrical terms, or by words of art drawn from music, needless
here to repeat. I observed in the king's kitchen all sorts of
mathematical and musical instruments, after the figures of which
they cut up the joints that were served to his majesty's table.
Their houses are very ill built, the walls bevil, without one right
angle in any apartment; and this defect arises from the contempt
they bear to practical geometry, which they despise as vulgar and
mechanic; those instructions they give being too refined for the
intellects of their workmen, which occasions perpetual mistakes.
And although they are dexterous enough upon a piece of paper, in
the management of the rule, the pencil, and the divider, yet in the
common actions and behaviour of life, I have not seen a more
clumsy, awkward, and unhandy people, nor so slow and perplexed in
their conceptions upon all other subjects, except those of
mathematics and music. They are very bad reasoners, and vehemently
given to opposition, unless when they happen to be of the right
opinion, which is seldom their case. Imagination, fancy, and
invention, they are wholly strangers to, nor have any words in
their language, by which those ideas can be expressed; the whole
compass of their thoughts and mind being shut up within the two
forementioned sciences.
Most of them, and especially those who deal in the astronomical
part, have great faith in judicial astrology, although they are
ashamed to own it publicly. But what I chiefly admired, and
thought altogether unaccountable, was the strong disposition I
observed in them towards news and politics, perpetually inquiring
into public affairs, giving their judgments in matters of state,
and passionately disputing every inch of a party opinion. I have
indeed observed the same disposition among most of the
mathematicians I have known in Europe, although I could never
discover the least analogy between the two sciences; unless those
people suppose, that because the smallest circle has as many
degrees as the largest, therefore the regulation and management of
the world require no more abilities than the handling and turning
of a globe; but I rather take this quality to spring from a very
common infirmity of human nature, inclining us to be most curious
and conceited in matters where we have least concern, and for which
we are least adapted by study or nature.
These people are under continual disquietudes, never enjoying a
minutes peace of mind; and their disturbances proceed from causes
which very little affect the rest of mortals. Their apprehensions
arise from several changes they dread in the celestial bodies: for
instance, that the earth, by the continual approaches of the sun
towards it, must, in course of time, be absorbed, or swallowed up;
that the face of the sun, will, by degrees, be encrusted with its
own effluvia, and give no more light to the world; that the earth
very narrowly escaped a brush from the tail of the last comet,
which would have infallibly reduced it to ashes; and that the next,
which they have calculated for one-and-thirty years hence, will
probably destroy us. For if, in its perihelion, it should approach
within a certain degree of the sun (as by their calculations they
have reason to dread) it will receive a degree of heat ten thousand
times more intense than that of red hot glowing iron, and in its
absence from the sun, carry a blazing tail ten hundred thousand and
fourteen miles long, through which, if the earth should pass at the
distance of one hundred thousand miles from the nucleus, or main
body of the comet, it must in its passage be set on fire, and
reduced to ashes: that the sun, daily spending its rays without
any nutriment to supply them, will at last be wholly consumed and
annihilated; which must be attended with the destruction of this
earth, and of all the planets that receive their light from it.
They are so perpetually alarmed with the apprehensions of these,
and the like impending dangers, that they can neither sleep quietly
in their beds, nor have any relish for the common pleasures and
amusements of life. When they meet an acquaintance in the morning,
the first question is about the sun's health, how he looked at his
setting and rising, and what hopes they have to avoid the stroke of
the approaching comet. This conversation they are apt to run into
with the same temper that boys discover in delighting to hear
terrible stories of spirits and hobgoblins, which they greedily
listen to, and dare not go to bed for fear.
The women of the island have abundance of vivacity: they, contemn
their husbands, and are exceedingly fond of strangers, whereof
there is always a considerable number from the continent below,
attending at court, either upon affairs of the several towns and
corporations, or their own particular occasions, but are much
despised, because they want the same endowments. Among these the
ladies choose their gallants: but the vexation is, that they act
with too much ease and security; for the husband is always so rapt
in speculation, that the mistress and lover may proceed to the
greatest familiarities before his face, if he be but provided with
paper and implements, and without his flapper at his side.
The wives and daughters lament their confinement to the island,
although I think it the most delicious spot of ground in the world;
and although they live here in the greatest plenty and
magnificence, and are allowed to do whatever they please, they long
to see the world, and take the diversions of the metropolis, which
they are not allowed to do without a particular license from the
king; and this is not easy to be obtained, because the people of
quality have found, by frequent experience, how hard it is to
persuade their women to return from below. I was told that a great
court lady, who had several children,--is married to the prime
minister, the richest subject in the kingdom, a very graceful
person, extremely fond of her, and lives in the finest palace of
the island,--went down to Lagado on the pretence of health, there
hid herself for several months, till the king sent a warrant to
search for her; and she was found in an obscure eating-house all in
rags, having pawned her clothes to maintain an old deformed
footman, who beat her every day, and in whose company she was
taken, much against her will. And although her husband received
her with all possible kindness, and without the least reproach, she
soon after contrived to steal down again, with all her jewels, to
the same gallant, and has not been heard of since.
This may perhaps pass with the reader rather for an European or
English story, than for one of a country so remote. But he may
please to consider, that the caprices of womankind are not limited
by any climate or nation, and that they are much more uniform, than
can be easily imagined.
In about a month's time, I had made a tolerable proficiency in
their language, and was able to answer most of the king's
questions, when I had the honour to attend him. His majesty
discovered not the least curiosity to inquire into the laws,
government, history, religion, or manners of the countries where I
had been; but confined his questions to the state of mathematics,
and received the account I gave him with great contempt and
indifference, though often roused by his flapper on each side.
_____
Content of PART III - A VOYAGE TO LAPUTA, BALNIBARBI, LUGGNAGG, GLUBBDUBDRIB, AND JAPAN - CHAPTER II [Jonathan Swift's novel: Gulliver's Travels] _
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