CHAPTER IV.

The author leaves Laputa; is conveyed to Balnibarbi; arrives at the

metropolis. A description of the metropolis, and the country adjoining.

The author hospitably received by a great lord. His conversation with

that lord.

Although I cannot say that I was ill treated in this island, yet I must

confess I thought myself too much neglected, not without some degree of

contempt; for neither prince nor people appeared to be curious in any

part of knowledge, except mathematics and music, wherein I was far

their inferior, and upon that account very little regarded.

On the other side, after having seen all the curiosities of the island,

I was very desirous to leave it, being heartily weary of those people.

They were indeed excellent in two sciences for which I have great

esteem, and wherein I am not unversed; but, at the same time, so

abstracted and involved in speculation, that I never met with such

disagreeable companions. I conversed only with women, tradesmen,

flappers, and court-pages, during two months of my abode there; by

which, at last, I rendered myself extremely contemptible; yet these

were the only people from whom I could ever receive a reasonable

answer.

I had obtained, by hard study, a good degree of knowledge in their

language; I was weary of being confined to an island where I received

so little countenance, and resolved to leave it with the first

opportunity.

There was a great lord at court, nearly related to the king, and for

that reason alone used with respect. He was universally reckoned the

most ignorant and stupid person among them. He had performed many

eminent services for the crown, had great natural and acquired parts,

adorned with integrity and honour; but so ill an ear for music, that

his detractors reported, “he had been often known to beat time in the

wrong place;” neither could his tutors, without extreme difficulty,

teach him to demonstrate the most easy proposition in the mathematics.

He was pleased to show me many marks of favour, often did me the honour

of a visit, desired to be informed in the affairs of Europe, the laws

and customs, the manners and learning of the several countries where I

had travelled. He listened to me with great attention, and made very

wise observations on all I spoke. He had two flappers attending him for

state, but never made use of them, except at court and in visits of

ceremony, and would always command them to withdraw, when we were alone

together.

I entreated this illustrious person, to intercede in my behalf with his

majesty, for leave to depart; which he accordingly did, as he was

pleased to tell me, with regret: for indeed he had made me several

offers very advantageous, which, however, I refused, with expressions

of the highest acknowledgment.

On the 16th day of February I took leave of his majesty and the court.

The king made me a present to the value of about two hundred pounds

English, and my protector, his kinsman, as much more, together with a

letter of recommendation to a friend of his in Lagado, the metropolis.

The island being then hovering over a mountain about two miles from it,

I was let down from the lowest gallery, in the same manner as I had

been taken up.

The continent, as far as it is subject to the monarch of the flying

island, passes under the general name of _Balnibarbi_; and the

metropolis, as I said before, is called _Lagado_. I felt some little

satisfaction in finding myself on firm ground. I walked to the city

without any concern, being clad like one of the natives, and

sufficiently instructed to converse with them. I soon found out the

person’s house to whom I was recommended, presented my letter from his

friend the grandee in the island, and was received with much kindness.

This great lord, whose name was Munodi, ordered me an apartment in his

own house, where I continued during my stay, and was entertained in a

most hospitable manner.

The next morning after my arrival, he took me in his chariot to see the

town, which is about half the bigness of London; but the houses very

strangely built, and most of them out of repair. The people in the

streets walked fast, looked wild, their eyes fixed, and were generally

in rags. We passed through one of the town gates, and went about three

miles into the country, where I saw many labourers working with several

sorts of tools in the ground, but was not able to conjecture what they

were about; neither did I observe any expectation either of corn or

grass, although the soil appeared to be excellent. I could not forbear

admiring at these odd appearances, both in town and country; and I made

bold to desire my conductor, that he would be pleased to explain to me,

what could be meant by so many busy heads, hands, and faces, both in

the streets and the fields, because I did not discover any good effects

they produced; but, on the contrary, I never knew a soil so unhappily

cultivated, houses so ill contrived and so ruinous, or a people whose

countenances and habit expressed so much misery and want.

This lord Munodi was a person of the first rank, and had been some

years governor of Lagado; but, by a cabal of ministers, was discharged

for insufficiency. However, the king treated him with tenderness, as a

well-meaning man, but of a low contemptible understanding.

When I gave that free censure of the country and its inhabitants, he

made no further answer than by telling me, “that I had not been long

enough among them to form a judgment; and that the different nations of

the world had different customs;” with other common topics to the same

purpose. But, when we returned to his palace, he asked me “how I liked

the building, what absurdities I observed, and what quarrel I had with

the dress or looks of his domestics?” This he might safely do; because

every thing about him was magnificent, regular, and polite. I answered,

“that his excellency’s prudence, quality, and fortune, had exempted him

from those defects, which folly and beggary had produced in others.” He

said, “if I would go with him to his country-house, about twenty miles

distant, where his estate lay, there would be more leisure for this

kind of conversation.” I told his excellency “that I was entirely at

his disposal;” and accordingly we set out next morning.

During our journey he made me observe the several methods used by

farmers in managing their lands, which to me were wholly unaccountable;

for, except in some very few places, I could not discover one ear of

corn or blade of grass. But, in three hours travelling, the scene was

wholly altered; we came into a most beautiful country; farmers’ houses,

at small distances, neatly built; the fields enclosed, containing

vineyards, corn-grounds, and meadows. Neither do I remember to have

seen a more delightful prospect. His excellency observed my countenance

to clear up; he told me, with a sigh, “that there his estate began, and

would continue the same, till we should come to his house: that his

countrymen ridiculed and despised him, for managing his affairs no

better, and for setting so ill an example to the kingdom; which,

however, was followed by very few, such as were old, and wilful, and

weak like himself.”

We came at length to the house, which was indeed a noble structure,

built according to the best rules of ancient architecture. The

fountains, gardens, walks, avenues, and groves, were all disposed with

exact judgment and taste. I gave due praises to every thing I saw,

whereof his excellency took not the least notice till after supper;

when, there being no third companion, he told me with a very melancholy

air “that he doubted he must throw down his houses in town and country,

to rebuild them after the present mode; destroy all his plantations,

and cast others into such a form as modern usage required, and give the

same directions to all his tenants, unless he would submit to incur the

censure of pride, singularity, affectation, ignorance, caprice, and

perhaps increase his majesty’s displeasure; that the admiration I

appeared to be under would cease or diminish, when he had informed me

of some particulars which, probably, I never heard of at court, the

people there being too much taken up in their own speculations, to have

regard to what passed here below.”

The sum of his discourse was to this effect: “That about forty years

ago, certain persons went up to Laputa, either upon business or

diversion, and, after five months continuance, came back with a very

little smattering in mathematics, but full of volatile spirits acquired

in that airy region: that these persons, upon their return, began to

dislike the management of every thing below, and fell into schemes of

putting all arts, sciences, languages, and mechanics, upon a new foot.

To this end, they procured a royal patent for erecting an academy of

projectors in Lagado; and the humour prevailed so strongly among the

people, that there is not a town of any consequence in the kingdom

without such an academy. In these colleges the professors contrive new

rules and methods of agriculture and building, and new instruments, and

tools for all trades and manufactures; whereby, as they undertake, one

man shall do the work of ten; a palace may be built in a week, of

materials so durable as to last for ever without repairing. All the

fruits of the earth shall come to maturity at whatever season we think

fit to choose, and increase a hundred fold more than they do at

present; with innumerable other happy proposals. The only inconvenience

is, that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection; and in

the mean time, the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in

ruins, and the people without food or clothes. By all which, instead of

being discouraged, they are fifty times more violently bent upon

prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and despair: that

as for himself, being not of an enterprising spirit, he was content to

go on in the old forms, to live in the houses his ancestors had built,

and act as they did, in every part of life, without innovation: that

some few other persons of quality and gentry had done the same, but

were looked on with an eye of contempt and ill-will, as enemies to art,

ignorant, and ill common-wealth’s men, preferring their own ease and

sloth before the general improvement of their country.”

His lordship added, “That he would not, by any further particulars,

prevent the pleasure I should certainly take in viewing the grand

academy, whither he was resolved I should go.” He only desired me to

observe a ruined building, upon the side of a mountain about three

miles distant, of which he gave me this account: “That he had a very

convenient mill within half a mile of his house, turned by a current

from a large river, and sufficient for his own family, as well as a

great number of his tenants; that about seven years ago, a club of

those projectors came to him with proposals to destroy this mill, and

build another on the side of that mountain, on the long ridge whereof a

long canal must be cut, for a repository of water, to be conveyed up by

pipes and engines to supply the mill, because the wind and air upon a

height agitated the water, and thereby made it fitter for motion, and

because the water, descending down a declivity, would turn the mill

with half the current of a river whose course is more upon a level.” He

said, “that being then not very well with the court, and pressed by

many of his friends, he complied with the proposal; and after employing

a hundred men for two years, the work miscarried, the projectors went

off, laying the blame entirely upon him, railing at him ever since, and

putting others upon the same experiment, with equal assurance of

success, as well as equal disappointment.”

In a few days we came back to town; and his excellency, considering the

bad character he had in the academy, would not go with me himself, but

recommended me to a friend of his, to bear me company thither. My lord

was pleased to represent me as a great admirer of projects, and a

person of much curiosity and easy belief; which, indeed, was not

without truth; for I had myself been a sort of projector in my younger

days.