<p class="gutsumm">A further account of Glubbdubdrib.
Ancient and modern history corrected.</p>
<p>Having a desire to see those ancients who were most renowned
for wit and learning, I set apart one day on purpose. I
proposed that Homer and Aristotle might appear at the head of all
their commentators; but these were so numerous, that some
hundreds were forced to attend in the court, and outward rooms of
the palace. I knew, and could distinguish those two heroes,
at first sight, not only from the crowd, but from each
other. Homer was the taller and comelier person of the two,
walked very erect for one of his age, and his eyes were the most
quick and piercing I ever beheld. Aristotle stooped much,
and made use of a staff. His visage was meagre, his hair
lank and thin, and his voice hollow. I soon discovered that
both of them were perfect strangers to the rest of the company,
and had never seen or heard of them before; and I had a whisper
from a ghost who shall be nameless, “that these
commentators always kept in the most distant quarters from their
principals, in the lower world, through a consciousness of shame
and guilt, because they had so horribly misrepresented the
meaning of those authors to posterity.” I introduced
Didymus and Eustathius to Homer, and prevailed on him to treat
them better than perhaps they deserved, for he soon found they
wanted a genius to enter into the spirit of a poet. But
Aristotle was out of all patience with the account I gave him of
Scotus and Ramus, as I presented them to him; and he asked them,
“whether the rest of the tribe were as great dunces as
themselves?”</p>
<p>I then desired the governor to call up Descartes and Gassendi,
with whom I prevailed to explain their systems to
Aristotle. This great philosopher freely acknowledged his
own mistakes in natural philosophy, because he proceeded in many
things upon conjecture, as all men must do; and he found that
Gassendi, who had made the doctrine of Epicurus as palatable as
he could, and the vortices of Descartes, were equally to be
exploded. He predicted the same fate to <i>attraction</i>,
whereof the present learned are such zealous asserters. He
said, “that new systems of nature were but new fashions,
which would vary in every age; and even those, who pretend to
demonstrate them from mathematical principles, would flourish but
a short period of time, and be out of vogue when that was
determined.”</p>
<p>I spent five days in conversing with many others of the
ancient learned. I saw most of the first Roman
emperors. I prevailed on the governor to call up
Heliogabalus’s cooks to dress us a dinner, but they could
not show us much of their skill, for want of materials. A
helot of Agesilaus made us a dish of Spartan broth, but I was not
able to get down a second spoonful.</p>
<p>The two gentlemen, who conducted me to the island, were
pressed by their private affairs to return in three days, which I
employed in seeing some of the modern dead, who had made the
greatest figure, for two or three hundred years past, in our own
and other countries of Europe; and having been always a great
admirer of old illustrious families, I desired the governor would
call up a dozen or two of kings, with their ancestors in order
for eight or nine generations. But my disappointment was
grievous and unexpected. For, instead of a long train with
royal diadems, I saw in one family two fiddlers, three spruce
courtiers, and an Italian prelate. In another, a barber, an
abbot, and two cardinals. I have too great a veneration for
crowned heads, to dwell any longer on so nice a subject.
But as to counts, marquises, dukes, earls, and the like, I was
not so scrupulous. And I confess, it was not without some
pleasure, that I found myself able to trace the particular
features, by which certain families are distinguished, up to
their originals. I could plainly discover whence one family
derives a long chin; why a second has abounded with knaves for
two generations, and fools for two more; why a third happened to
be crack-brained, and a fourth to be sharpers; whence it came,
what Polydore Virgil says of a certain great house, <i>Nec vir
fortis</i>, <i>nec foemina casta</i>; how cruelty, falsehood, and
cowardice, grew to be characteristics by which certain families
are distinguished as much as by their coats of arms; who first
brought the pox into a noble house, which has lineally descended
scrofulous tumours to their posterity. Neither could I
wonder at all this, when I saw such an interruption of lineages,
by pages, lackeys, valets, coachmen, gamesters, fiddlers,
players, captains, and pickpockets.</p>
<p>I was chiefly disgusted with modern history. For having
strictly examined all the persons of greatest name in the courts
of princes, for a hundred years past, I found how the world had
been misled by prostitute writers, to ascribe the greatest
exploits in war, to cowards; the wisest counsel, to fools;
sincerity, to flatterers; Roman virtue, to betrayers of their
country; piety, to atheists; chastity, to sodomites; truth, to
informers: how many innocent and excellent persons had been
condemned to death or banishment by the practising of great
ministers upon the corruption of judges, and the malice of
factions: how many villains had been exalted to the highest
places of trust, power, dignity, and profit: how great a share in
the motions and events of courts, councils, and senates might be
challenged by bawds, whores, pimps, parasites, and
buffoons. How low an opinion I had of human wisdom and
integrity, when I was truly informed of the springs and motives
of great enterprises and revolutions in the world, and of the
contemptible accidents to which they owed their success.</p>
<p>Here I discovered the roguery and ignorance of those who
pretend to write anecdotes, or secret history; who send so many
kings to their graves with a cup of poison; will repeat the
discourse between a prince and chief minister, where no witness
was by; unlock the thoughts and cabinets of ambassadors and
secretaries of state; and have the perpetual misfortune to be
mistaken. Here I discovered the true causes of many great
events that have surprised the world; how a whore can govern the
back-stairs, the back-stairs a council, and the council a
senate. A general confessed, in my presence, “that he
got a victory purely by the force of cowardice and ill
conduct;” and an admiral, “that, for want of proper
intelligence, he beat the enemy, to whom he intended to betray
the fleet.” Three kings protested to me, “that
in their whole reigns they never did once prefer any person of
merit, unless by mistake, or treachery of some minister in whom
they confided; neither would they do it if they were to live
again:” and they showed, with great strength of reason,
“that the royal throne could not be supported without
corruption, because that positive, confident, restiff temper,
which virtue infused into a man, was a perpetual clog to public
business.”</p>
<p>I had the curiosity to inquire in a particular manner, by what
methods great numbers had procured to themselves high titles of
honour, and prodigious estates; and I confined my inquiry to a
very modern period: however, without grating upon present times,
because I would be sure to give no offence even to foreigners
(for I hope the reader need not be told, that I do not in the
least intend my own country, in what I say upon this occasion,) a
great number of persons concerned were called up; and, upon a
very slight examination, discovered such a scene of infamy, that
I cannot reflect upon it without some seriousness. Perjury,
oppression, subornation, fraud, pandarism, and the like
infirmities, were among the most excusable arts they had to
mention; and for these I gave, as it was reasonable, great
allowance. But when some confessed they owed their
greatness and wealth to sodomy, or incest; others, to the
prostituting of their own wives and daughters; others, to the
betraying of their country or their prince; some, to poisoning;
more to the perverting of justice, in order to destroy the
innocent, I hope I may be pardoned, if these discoveries inclined
me a little to abate of that profound veneration, which I am
naturally apt to pay to persons of high rank, who ought to be
treated with the utmost respect due to their sublime dignity, by
us their inferiors.</p>
<p>I had often read of some great services done to princes and
states, and desired to see the persons by whom those services
were performed. Upon inquiry I was told, “that their
names were to be found on no record, except a few of them, whom
history has represented as the vilest of rogues and
traitors.” As to the rest, I had never once heard of
them. They all appeared with dejected looks, and in the
meanest habit; most of them telling me, “they died in
poverty and disgrace, and the rest on a scaffold or a
gibbet.”</p>
<p>Among others, there was one person, whose case appeared a
little singular. He had a youth about eighteen years old
standing by his side. He told me, “he had for many
years been commander of a ship; and in the sea fight at Actium
had the good fortune to break through the enemy’s great
line of battle, sink three of their capital ships, and take a
fourth, which was the sole cause of Antony’s flight, and of
the victory that ensued; that the youth standing by him, his only
son, was killed in the action.” He added, “that
upon the confidence of some merit, the war being at an end, he
went to Rome, and solicited at the court of Augustus to be
preferred to a greater ship, whose commander had been killed;
but, without any regard to his pretensions, it was given to a boy
who had never seen the sea, the son of Libertina, who waited on
one of the emperor’s mistresses. Returning back to
his own vessel, he was charged with neglect of duty, and the ship
given to a favourite page of Publicola, the vice-admiral;
whereupon he retired to a poor farm at a great distance from
Rome, and there ended his life.” I was so curious to
know the truth of this story, that I desired Agrippa might be
called, who was admiral in that fight. He appeared, and
confirmed the whole account: but with much more advantage to the
captain, whose modesty had extenuated or concealed a great part
of his merit.</p>
<p>I was surprised to find corruption grown so high and so quick
in that empire, by the force of luxury so lately introduced;
which made me less wonder at many parallel cases in other
countries, where vices of all kinds have reigned so much longer,
and where the whole praise, as well as pillage, has been
engrossed by the chief commander, who perhaps had the least title
to either.</p>
<p>As every person called up made exactly the same appearance he
had done in the world, it gave me melancholy reflections to
observe how much the race of human kind was degenerated among us
within these hundred years past; how the pox, under all its
consequences and denominations had altered every lineament of an
English countenance; shortened the size of bodies, unbraced the
nerves, relaxed the sinews and muscles, introduced a sallow
complexion, and rendered the flesh loose and rancid.</p>
<p>I descended so low, as to desire some English yeoman of the
old stamp might be summoned to appear; once so famous for the
simplicity of their manners, diet, and dress; for justice in
their dealings; for their true spirit of liberty; for their
valour, and love of their country. Neither could I be
wholly unmoved, after comparing the living with the dead, when I
considered how all these pure native virtues were prostituted for
a piece of money by their grand-children; who, in selling their
votes and managing at elections, have acquired every vice and
corruption that can possibly be learned in a court.</p>
<h3>III - CHAPTER IX.</h3>
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