(no subject)

[felis_ultharus]

It's passages like this that make me realize what an inspired satire Gulliver's Travels is:

To confirm what I have now said, and further to show the miserable effects of a confined education, I shall here insert a passage, which will hardly obtain belief. In hopes to ingratiate myself further into his majesty’s favour, I told him of “an invention, discovered between three and four hundred years ago, to make a certain powder, into a heap of which, the smallest spark of fire falling, would kindle the whole in a moment, although it were as big as a mountain, and make it all fly up in the air together, with a noise and agitation greater than thunder. That a proper quantity of this powder rammed into a hollow tube of brass or iron, according to its bigness, would drive a ball of iron or lead, with such violence and speed, as nothing was able to sustain its force. That the largest balls thus discharged, would not only destroy whole ranks of an army at once, but batter the strongest walls to the ground, sink down ships, with a thousand men in each, to the bottom of the sea, and when linked together by a chain, would cut through masts and rigging, divide hundreds of bodies in the middle, and lay all waste before them. That we often put this powder into large hollow balls of iron, and discharged them by an engine into some city we were besieging, which would rip up the pavements, tear the houses to pieces, burst and throw splinters on every side, dashing out the brains of all who came near. That I knew the ingredients very well, which were cheap and common; I understood the manner of compounding them, and could direct his workmen how to make those tubes, of a size proportionable to all other things in his majesty’s kingdom, and the largest need not be above a hundred feet long; twenty or thirty of which tubes, charged with the proper quantity of powder and balls, would batter down the walls of the strongest town in his dominions in a few hours, or destroy the whole metropolis, if ever it should pretend to dispute his absolute commands.” This I humbly offered to his majesty, as a small tribute of acknowledgment, in turn for so many marks that I had received, of his royal favour and protection.

The king was struck with horror at the description I had given of those terrible engines, and the proposal I had made. “He was amazed, how so impotent and grovelling an insect as I” (these were his expressions) “could entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a manner, as to appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of blood and desolation which I had painted as the common effects of those destructive machines; whereof,” he said, “some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have been the first contriver. As for himself, he protested, that although few things delighted him so much as new discoveries in art or in nature, yet he would rather lose half his kingdom, than be privy to such a secret; which he commanded me, as I valued any life, never to mention any more.

A strange effect of narrow principles and views! that a prince possessed of every quality which procures veneration, love, and esteem; of strong parts, great wisdom, and profound learning, endowed with admirable talents, and almost adored by his subjects, should, from a nice, unnecessary scruple, whereof in Europe we can have no conception, let slip an opportunity put into his hands that would have made him absolute master of the lives, the liberties, and the fortunes of his people!

I got this week mostly off to read. I'm about halfway through Gulliver's Travels. I found a good, footnoted edition of it for only $6.70 -- I can tell, reading my old, battered, footnoteless copy, that there are injokes all over the place I'm probably missing.

Even better news is that I miscalculated the number of weeks to my exam -- I had one more than I thought.

After Gulliver's Travels, the next on the list is Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews. I'd barely heard of Fielding and never read any of his work, so I raced off to Wikipedia for his biography. I found this:

"As Justice of the Peace he issued a warrant for the arrest of [English playwright] Colley Cibber for 'murder of the English language'."

I think I'm going to like this guy :)

Comments

[jenjoou.livejournal.com]

I think I like him already too. ^_^

Let me know if his novel is as interesting as his life. ^_^

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Still on Gulliver's.

Apparently, Joseph Andrews is a parody of an infamous book called Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded. And Fielding felt the need to write not one but two satires of that book :)

I've never read Pamela. I've heard it's awful, though.