This gracious princess held out her little finger towards me."-Page 111, between that country and Europe, and the high price of gold among them, this was hardly so great a sum as a thousand guineas would be in England. I then said to the queen, since I was now her majesty's most humble creature and vassal, I must beg the favour that Glumdalclitch, who had always tended me with so much care and kindness, and knew how to do it so well, might be admitted into the service, and continue to be my nurse and instructor. Her majesty agreed to my petition, and easily got the farmer's consent, who was glad enough to have his daughter preferred at court, and the poor girl herself was not able to hide her joy. My late master withdrew, bidding me farewell, and saying he had left me in a good service to which I replied not a word, only making him a slight bow. The observed my queen coldness; and when the farmer was gone out of the apartment, asked me the reason. I made bold to tell her majesty, that I owed no other obligation to my late master, than his not dashing out the brains of a poor harmless creature, found by chance in his fields; which obligation was amply recompensed by the gain he had made in showing me through half the kingdom, and the price he had now sold me for. That the life I had since led was laborious enough to kill an animal of ten times my strength. That my health was much impaired, by the continual drudgery of entertaining the rabble every hour of the day; and that, if my master had not thought my life in danger, her majesty would not have got so cheap a bargain. But as I was out of all fear of being ill-treated under the protection of so great and good an empress, the ornament of Nature, the darling of the world, the delight of her subjects, the phoenix of the creation; so, I hoped my late master's apprehensions would appear to be groundless; for I had already found my spirits revive by the influence of her most august presence. • Sir Walter Scott observes that the portrait of the Queen of the Brobdingnags, who is represented as amiable and inquisitive-the protectress of the pigmy stranger—is unquestionably designed as a compliment to the Princess of Wales, whom Swift was then desirous to gratify, though he afterwards seems to have transferred his allegiance to Mrs. Howard. Caroline of Anspach, wife of George, afterwards the second king of that name, was a very remarkable woman. In early life she was extremely handsome; her hands are described as models of perfect symmetry, her carriage was dignified, her eyes penetrating and expressive, and her voice soft and musical. An attack of small-pox, shortly after her marriage, greatly impaired her beauty. She was a clever, accomplished, worthy, intellectual woman. She loved to surround herself, at her Court in Leicester House, with wits and eminent literary men, with whom she discussed philosophy, divinity, and general literature. Swift, in a letter to the Duchess of Queensbury, says of her—“A nameless person sent me eleven messages before I would yield to a visit." Yet, while she patronised learned men, she suffered Sale to remain in poverty, and rewarded the labours of Gay, whom Swift used to call her "led captain," with a wretched pension; while she made a poor thresher, of the name of Stephen Duck, who had written some bad verses, the keeper of her library at Richmond. She was an excellent wife and mother, and retained a strong influence to the last over her husband, who mourned the loss of one of whom he said, "I never yet saw the woman worthy to buckle her shoe;" whose prudence and sweetness of temper so often moderated or checked his own resentments, and whose counsels and affection conduced to his happiness. "I do not know," said he to the elder Horace Walpole after her death, "what to do or which way to turn myself." 15 This was the sum of my speech, delivered with great improprieties and hesitation. The latter part was altogether framed in the style peculiar to that people, whereof I learned some phrases from Glumdalclitch, while she was carrying me to court. The queen, giving great allowance for my defectiveness in speaking, was, however, surprised at so much wit and good sense in so diminutive an animal. She took me in her own hand, and carried me to the king, who was then retired to his cabinet. His majesty, a prince of much gravity and austere countenance,* not well observing my shape at first view, asked the queen, after a cold manner, how long it was since she grew fond of a fond of a splacnuck? for such, it seems, he took me to be, as I lay upon my breast in her majesty's right hand. right hand. But this princess, who has an infinite deal of wit and humour, set me gently on my feet upon the scrutoire, and commanded me to give his majesty an account of myself, which I did in a very few words: and Glumdalclitch, who attended at the cabinet door, and could not endure I should be out of her sight, being admitted, confirmed all that had passed from my arrival at her father's house. The king, although he is as learned a person as any in his dominions, having been educated in the study of philosophy, and particularly mathematics, yet when he observed my shape exactly, and saw me walk erect, before I began to speak, conceived I might be a piece of clock-work (which has in that country arrived to a very great perfection), contrived by some ingenious artist. ingenious artist. But when he heard my voice, and found what I delivered to be regular and rational, "Swift's King of Brobdingnag," says Sir Walter Scott, "is a patriot monarch, governing his people on the principles of reason and philanthropy; separated, by his situation and his subjects' immense superiority in physical force, from either the necessity or the temptation of war and conquest; a stoic in appetite and in ambition; holding everything of little importance, except what directly tended to the real benefit of his subjects. This vision, as vain and improbable as the size of the personage so gifted, is maintained with singular art through the whole section. The monarch's coldness and indifference while he considered the traveller as a mere plaything or subject of idle curiosity, joined to his earnest and anxious colloquies with Gulliver, so soon as he discovered him to be a rational and thinking being, convey some traits of William III. If there be any resemblance in the portrait, it must have escaped the pen of Swift unconsciously; for though his youth was taught to admire that monarch, it is well known William's panegyric was the last the Dean would have drawn in the latter stage of his life." Dr. Taylor thinks that probably the Dean had an eye to the Prince of Wales, afterwards George II., "from whom the Tories had formed favourable anticipations." With the exception of his cold and phlegmatic nature, we see little resemblance between him and the monarch of Brobdingnag, the wise and learned man, the patron of scholars. Even the grossest flattery would have shrunk from presenting the one as the portraiture of the other. he could not conceal his astonishment.* He was by no means satisfied with the relation I gave him of the manner I came into his kingdom, but thought it a story concerted between Glumdalclitch and her father, who had taught me a set of words, to make me sell at a better price. Upon this imagination he put several other questions to me, and still received rational answers: no otherwise defective than by a foreign accent and an imperfect knowledge of the language, with some rustic phrases which I had learned at the farmer's house, and did not suit the polite style of a court. His majesty sent for three great scholars, who were then in the weekly waiting, according to the custom in that country. These gentlemen, after they had examined my shape with much nicety, were of different opinions concerning me. They all agreed that I could not be produced according to the regular laws of Nature, because I was not framed with a capacity of preserving my life, either by swiftness, or climbing of trees, or digging holes in the earth. They observed by my teeth, which they viewed with great exactness, that I was a carnivorous animal; yet most quadrupeds being an over-match for me, and field mice, with some others, too nimble, they could not imagine how I should be able to support myself, unless I fed upon snails and other insects, which they offered, by many learned arguments, to evince that I could not possibly do. One of these virtuosi seemed to think that I might be an embryo or abortive birth. But this opinion was rejected by the other two, who observed my limbs to be perfect and finished ; and that I had lived several years, as it was manifest from my beard, the stumps whereof they plainly discovered through a magnifying-glass. They would not allow me to be a dwarf, because my littleness was beyond all degrees of comparison; for the queen's favourite dwarf, the smallest ever known in the kingdom, was nearly thirty feet high. After much debate, they concluded unanimously that I was only relplum scalcath, which is, interpreted literally, lusus naturæ ; † a determination Many of our readers are of course acquainted with the famous caricature of the celebrated Gilray, in which he turns to political account the interview of Gulliver with the King of Brobdingnag. The latter is represented by George III., in the costume with which we are all so familiar-the old bob-wig, and the ugly old Windsor uniform. He is peering at the pigmy Gulliver, whom he holds in one hand, while he surveys him through an opera glass, which he brings to bear upon him, with the other. The pigmy is, of course, intended to represent Napoleon. In this serio-comic discussion of the three learned philosophers, the Author no doubt ridícules the speculations of some of the naturalists of his own day, and, not improbably, has in view some of the members of the Royal Society, for whom he did not entertain very great |