CHAPTER II.

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.

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

_climenole_) 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 planes 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 _Laputa_, whereof I could never learn the

true etymology. _Lap_, in the old obsolete language, signifies high;

and _untuh_, a governor; from which they say, by corruption, was

derived _Laputa_, from _Lapuntuh_. 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 _quasi

lap outed_; _lap_, signifying properly, the dancing of the sunbeams in

the sea, and _outed_, a wing; which, however, I shall not obtrude, but

submit to the judicious reader.

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.

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.”

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 schoolboys at

the end of the string that holds their kite. Sometimes we received wine

and victuals from below, which were drawn up by pulleys.

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.

Their houses are very ill built, the walls bevel, 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.

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.

These people are under continual disquietudes, never enjoying a

minute’s 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.