such diminutive insects as I: and yet," says he, "I dare engage these
creatures have their titles and distinctions of honour; they contrive
little nests and burrows, that they call houses and cities; they make a
figure in dress and equipage; they love, they fight, they dispute, they
cheat, they betray!" And thus he continued on, while my colour came and
went several times, with indignation, to hear our noble country, the
mistress of arts and arms, the scourge of France, the arbitress of
Europe, the seat of virtue, piety, honour, and truth, the pride and envy
of the world, so contemptuously treated.

But as I was not in a condition to resent injuries, so upon mature
thoughts I began to doubt whether I was injured or no. For, after having
been accustomed several months to the sight and converse of this people,
and observed every object upon which I cast mine eyes to be of
proportionable magnitude, the horror I had at first conceived from their
bulk and aspect was so far worn off, that if I had then 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 antechamber, 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 usually 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