Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 11, 2025
The young teacher had given him a copy of Gulliver's Travels. "Look a here, Marse Rooney, I been a readin' dat book yer gimme " "Well, that's good." "Yer say dat book's history?" "Well, it's what we call fiction, but I think fiction's the very best history we can read. It may not have happened just that way but it's true all the same."
These things are exceedingly difficult for a modern to realise; we feel as though we had penetrated into some Gulliver's world or kingdom of the Moon; for theology and its methods have been relegated, these many hundred years, to a sort of Hortus inclusus where nothing human grows.
"The Pilgrim's Progress," "Robinson Crusoe," and "Gulliver's Travels" were all written by men of the British Isles, but our fourth book, "Don Quixote," was written by a Spaniard named Cervantes. He was a soldier part of his life and as valiant a fighter as his own hero.
Thackeray's English Humorists of the last Century. Sir Roger de Coverley. New York: Harpers, 1878. Swift's Tale of a Tub, Gulliver's Travels, Directions to Servants, Polite Conversation, The Great Question Debated, Verses on the Death of Dean Swift. The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope. London: Macmillan & Co., 1869. Pope's example continued potent for fifty years after his death.
The book by the Dean of St. Patrick's, "Gulliver's Travels," is a perfect caricature of the political dwarfs of his time, and vividly represents the men who misruled this country in George III's reign.
He would only admit two good verses in Gray's exquisite "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard," where it would take a very acid critic to find two bad ones. "Tristram Shandy" would not live. "Hamlet" was gabble. Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" was poor stuff, and he never wrote anything good except "A Tale of a Tub." Voltaire was illiterate. Rousseau was a scoundrel.
And "old man Means," and "old Miss Means," and Bud Means, and Bill Means, and Sis Means listened with great eyes while he told of Sinbad's adventures, of the Old Man of the Sea, of Robinson Crusoe, of Captain Gulliver's experiences in Liliput, and of Baron Munchausen's exploits. Ralph had caught his fish.
Paoli knew sufficient English to maintain the dialogue, having picked up some slight knowledge of the tongue from Irish refugee officers in the Neapolitan service. His library was turned over by his inquisitive guest, who found among the books some odd volumes of The Spectator and The Tatler, Pope's Essay on Man, Gulliver's Travels, and Barclay's Apology for the Quakers.
The two works which, out of the whole range of English literature, contain in a supreme degree those elements of power, breadth, and common sense, which lie at the root of the national genius 'Gulliver's Travels' and the 'Dunciad' both appeared during Voltaire's visit.
The adjective Lilliputian, meaning "very small," comes from Lilliput, the land of little people in which Gulliver found himself in Swift's famous book, "Gulliver's Travels." Then many common expressions are taken from characters in well-known books.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking