land. Thus, in his
view, politicians, rulers, pedagogues, apothecaries, explorers are not
subjects for his sling: they are curiosities.

He stares at these curiosities with simple wonder. He does not see the
world as a joke, but as an earnest and extraordinary thing. He is always
ready to be mildly surprised and he is never sceptical; that is, he
never doubts the possibility of the impossible when it happens to him:
he gravely doubts it when it happens to anybody else. Thus it is clear
that he does not think much of Mr Lemuel Gulliver, that his chief enemy
is his old rival Baron de Tott. If he were not so polite Muenchausen
would call de Tott a plain liar; he refrains and merely outstrips the
upstart, as a gentleman should do. Muenchausen sees the world in terms of
himself; he would have no faith in the marvellous escapes of von Trenck,
Jack Sheppard, and Monte Cristo. 'I,' says Muenchausen, and the rivals
may withdraw. He does not even fear imitation, and if he were confronted
with Dickens's story of the lunars in _Household Words_, or with his
French imitator, M. de Crac, he would chivalrously say: 'Most
creditable, but I....' Nothing in Muenchausen is so colossal as his 'I.'
Like the Gauls he fears naught, save that the sky will fall upon his
head, and I am not sure that he fears even that: the accident might
enable him to make interesting notes on heaven.

There is, perhaps, unjustified levity in this surmise of mine, for
Muenchausen is a pious man. When, in Russia, he covers an old man with
his cloak, a voice from heaven calls to him: 'You will be rewarded, my
son, for this in time.' It must have been the voice of St Hubert, the
patron to whom Muenchausen readily paid his homage, for Muenchausen simply
believed in him, liked to think that 'some passionate holy sportsman, or
sporting abbot or bishop, may have shot, planted, and fixed the cross
between the antlers of St Hubert's stag.' But his piety is personal; he
believes that the voice is for him alone, that St Hubert is his own
saint. Gigantic Muenchausen shuts out his own view of the world. His
shadow falls upon and obscures it. That is why he so continuously brags.
The most resolute horseman shrinks from a wild young horse, but
Muenchausen tames him in half an hour and makes him dance on the
tea-table without breaking a single cup; the Grand Seignior discards his
own envoy and employs him on State business at Cairo; he makes a cannon
off a cannon-ball, 'having