hinking of an empire falling." Swift's first noteworthy
publication was his _Tale of a Tub_, 1704, a satire on religious
differences. But his great work was _Gulliver's Travels_, 1726, the
book in which his hate and scorn of mankind, and the long rage of
mortified pride and thwarted ambition found their fullest expression.
Children read the voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag, to the flying
island of Laputa and the country of the Houyhnhnms, as they read
_Robinson Crusoe_, as stories of wonderful adventure. Swift had all of
De Foe's realism, his power of giving veri-similitude to his narrative
by the invention of a vast number of small, exact, consistent details.
But underneath its fairy tales, _Gulliver's Travels_ is a satire, far
more radical than any of Dryden's or Pope's, because directed, not
against particular parties or persons, but against human nature. In
his account of Lilliput and Brobdingnag, Swift tries to show--looking
first through one end of the telescope and then through the other--that
human greatness, goodness, beauty disappear if the scale be altered a
little. If men were six inches high instead of six feet--such is the
logic of his tale--their wars, governments, science, religion--all
their institutions, {191} in fine, and all the courage, wisdom, and
virtue by which these have been built up, would appear laughable. On
the other hand, if they were sixty feet high instead of six, they would
become disgusting. The complexion of the finest ladies would show
blotches, hairs, excrescences, and an overpowering effluvium would
breathe from the pores of the skin. Finally, in his loathsome
caricature of mankind, as Yahoos, he contrasts them to their shame with
the beasts, and sets instinct above reason.

The method of Swift's satire was grave irony. Among his minor writings
in this kind are his _Argument against Abolishing Christianity_, his
_Modest Proposal_ for utilizing the surplus population of Ireland by
eating the babies of the poor, and his _Predictions of Isaac
Bickerstaff_. In the last he predicted the death of one Partridge, an
almanac maker, at a certain day and hour. When the time set was past,
he published a minute account of Partridge's last moments; and when the
subject of this excellent fooling printed an indignant denial of his
own death, Swift answered very temperately, proving that he was dead
and remonstrating with him on the violence of his language. "To call a
man a fool and