<p class="gutsumm">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.</p>
<p>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 <i>climenole</i>) 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Laputa</i>, whereof I
could never learn the true etymology. <i>Lap</i>, in the
old obsolete language, signifies high; and <i>untuh</i>, a
governor; from which they say, by corruption, was derived
<i>Laputa</i>, from <i>Lapuntuh</i>. 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 <i>quasi lap outed</i>; <i>lap</i>,
signifying properly, the dancing of the sunbeams in the sea, and
<i>outed</i>, a wing; which, however, I shall not obtrude, but
submit to the judicious reader.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h3>III - CHAPTER III.</h3>
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