Pope's 'Gulliver' Poems

Pope read Gulliver's Travels on its publication and was inspired to write a poem for every book.

I. Ode to Quinbus Flestrin

The Man Mountain, by Titty Tit, Poet Laureate to His Majesty of Lilliput. Translated into English

IN amaze   Lost I gaze!   Can our eyes   Reach thy size!   May my lays         5   Swell with praise,   Worthy thee!   Worthy me!   Muse, inspire   All thy fire!         10   Bards of old   Of him told,   When they said   Atlas’ head   Propp’d the skies:         15 See! and believe your eyes!   See him stride   Valleys wide,   Over woods,   Over floods!         20   When he treads,   Mountains’ heads   Groan and shake,   Armies quake;   Lest his spurn         25   Overturn   Man and steed:   Troops, take heed!   Left and right,   Speed your flight!         30   Lest an host Beneath his foot be lost;   Turn’d aside   From his hide   Safe from wound,         35   Darts rebound.   From his nose   Clouds he blows!   When he speaks,   Thunder breaks!         40   When he eats,   Famine threats!   When he drinks,   Neptune shrinks!   Nigh thy ear         45   In mid air,   On thy hand   Let me stand;   So shall I, Lofty poet! touch the sky.         50   I like the way the poem is short to reflect the shortness of the people. I also appreciate the way it fleshes out the fears of the Lilliputians.

II. The Lamentation of Glumdalclitch for the Loss of Grildrig

A Pastoral SOON as Glumdalclitch miss’d her pleasing care, She wept, she blubber’d, and she tore her hair; No British miss sincerer grief has known, Her squirrel missing, or her sparrow flown. She furl’d her sampler, and haul’d in her thread,         5 And stuck her needle into Grildrig’s bed; Then spread her hands, and with a bounce let fall Her baby, like the giant in Guildhall. In peals of thunder now she roars, and now She gently whimpers like a lowing cow:         10 Yet lovely in her sorrow still appears: Her locks dishevell’d, and her flood of tears, Seem like the lofty barn of some rich swain, When from the thatch drips fast a shower of rain.   In vain she search’d each cranny of the house,         15 Each gaping chink, impervious to a mouse. ‘Was it for this (she cried) with daily care Within thy reach I set the vinegar, And fill’d the cruet with the acid tide, While pepper-water worms thy bait supplied?         20 Where twined the silver eel around thy hook, And all the little monsters of the brook! Sure in that lake he dropt; my Grilly’s drown’d!’ She dragg’d the cruet, but no Grildrig found.   ‘Vain is thy courage, Grilly, vain thy boast!         25 But little creatures enterprise the most. Trembling I ’ve seen thee dare the kitten’s paw, Nay, mix with children, as they play’d at taw, Nor fear the marbles as they bounding flew; Marbles to them, but rolling rocks to you!         30   ‘Why did I trust thee with that giddy youth? Who from a page can ever learn the truth? Versed in court tricks, that money-loving boy To some lord’s daughter sold the living toy; Or rent him limb from limb in cruel play,         35 As children tear the wings of flies away. From place to place o’er Brobdingnag I ’ll roam, And never will return, or bring thee home. But who hath eyes to trace the passing wind? How then they fairy footsteps can I find?         40 Dost thou bewilder’d wander all alone In the green thicket of a mossy stone; Or, tumbled from the toadstool’s slipp’ry round, Perhaps, all maim’d, lie grovelling on the ground Dost thou, embosom’d in the lovely rose,         45 Or, sunk within the peach’s down repose? Within the kingcup if thy limbs are spread, Or in the golden cowslip’s velvet head, O show me, Flora, midst those sweets, the flower Where sleeps my Grildrig in the fragrant bower.         50   ‘But ah! I fear thy little fancy roves On little females, and on little loves; Thy pigmy children, and thy tiny spouse, The baby playthings that adorn thy house, Doors, windows, chimneys, and the spacious rooms,         55 Equal in size to cells of honeycombs. Hast thou for these now ventured from the shore, Thy bark a bean shell, and a straw thy oar? Or in thy box now bounding on the main, Shall I ne’er bear thyself and house again?         60 And shall I set thee on my hand no more, To see thee leap the lines, and traverse o’er My spacious palm; of stature scarce a span, Mimic the actions of a real man? No more behold thee turn my watch’s key,         65 As seamen at a capstan anchors weigh? How wert thou wont to walk with cautious tread, A dish of tea, like milkpail, on thy head! How chase the mite that bore thy cheese away, And keep the rolling maggot at a bay!’         70   She spoke; but broken accents stopp’d her voice, Soft as the speaking-trumpet’s mellow noise: She sobb’d a storm, and wiped her flowing eyes, Which seem’d like two broad suns in misty skies. O squander not thy grief! those tears command         75 To weep upon our cod in Newfoundland; The plenteous pickle shall preserve the fish, And Europe taste thy sorrows in a dish. I similarly like how the long lines reflect the largeness of the Brobidingags. I always felt sorry for Glumdalclitch, she was a generally caring and lovely person.

Poems Suggested by Gulliver III. To Mr. Lemuel Gulliver

The Grateful Address of the Unhappy Houyhnhnms Now in Slavery and Bondage in England

TO thee, we wretches of the Houyhnhnm band, Condemn’d to labour in a barb’rous land, Return our thanks. Accept our humble lays, And let each grateful Houyhnhnm neigh thy praise.   O happy Yahoo, purged from human crimes,         5 By thy sweet sojourn in those virtuous climes, Where reign our sires; there, to thy country’s shame, Reason, you found, and Virtue were the same. Their precepts razed the prejudice of youth, And ev’n a Yahoo learn’d the love of Truth.         10   Art thou the first who did the coast explore? Did never Yahoo tread that ground before? Yes, thousands! But in pity to their kind, Or sway’d by envy, or thro’ pride of mind, They hid their knowledge of a nobler race,         15 Which own’d, would all their sires and sons disgrace.   You, like the Samian, visit lands unknown, And by their wiser morals mend your own. Thus Orpheus travell’d to reform his kind, Came back, and tamed the brutes he left behind.         20   You went, you saw, you heard: with virtue fought, Then spread those morals which the Houyhnhnms taught. Our labours here must touch thy gen’rous heart, To see us strain before the coach and cart; Compell’d to run each knavish jockey’s heat!         25 Subservient to Newmarket’s annual cheat! With what reluctance do we lawyers bear, To fleece their country clients twice a year! Or managed in your schools, for fops to ride, How foam, how fret beneath a load of pride!         30 Yes, we are slaves—but yet, by reason’s force, Have learn’d to bear misfortune like a horse.   O would the stars, to ease my bonds ordain That gentle Gulliver might guide my rein! Safe would I bear him to his journey’s end,         35 For ’t is a pleasure to support a friend. But if my life by doom’d to serve the bad, Oh! mayst thou never want an easy pad! HOUYHNHNM

IV. Mary Gulliver to Captain Lemuel Gulliver

An Epistle ARGUMENT   The captain, some time after his return, being retired to Mr. Sympson’s in the country, Mrs. Gulliver, apprehending from his late behaviour some estrangement of his affections, writes him the following expostulatory, soothing, and tenderly complaining epistle.

WELCOME, thrice welcome to thy native place! What, touch me not? what, shun a wife’s embrace? Have I for this thy tedious absence borne, And waked, and wish’d whole nights for thy return? In five long years I took no second spouse;         5 What Redriff wife so long hath kept her vows? Your eyes, your nose, inconstancy betray; Your nose you stop, your eyes you turn away. ’T is said, that thou shouldst ‘cleave unto thy wife;’ Once thou didst cleave, and I could cleave for life.         10 Hear, and relent! hark how thy children moan! Be kind at least to these; they are thy own: Behold, and count them all; secure to find The honest number that you left behind. See how they bat thee with their pretty paws:         15 Why start you? are they snakes? or have they claws? Thy Christian seed, our mutual flesh and bone: Be kind at least to these; they are thy own.   Biddel, like thee, might farthest India rove; He changed his country, but retain’d his love.         20 There ’s Captain Pannel, absent half his life, Comes back, and is the kinder to his wife; Yet Pannel’s wife is brown compared to me, And Mrs. Biddel sure is fifty-three.   Not touch me! never neighbour call’d me slut!         25 Was Flimnap’s dame more sweet in Lilliput? I ’ve no red hair to breathe an odious fume; At least thy Consort’s cleaner than thy Groom. Why then that dirty stable-boy thy care? What mean those visits to the Sorrel Mare?         30 Say, by what witchcraft, or what demon led, Preferr’st thou litter to the marriage-bed?   Some say the Devil himself is in that mare: If so, our Dean shall drive him forth by prayer. Some think you mad, some think you are possess’d,         35 That Bedlam and clean straw will suit you best. Vain means, alas, this frenzy to appease! That straw, that straw would heighten the disease.   My bed (the scene of all our former joys, Witness two lovely girls, two lovely boys)         40 Alone I press: in dreams I call my dear, I stretch my hand; no Gulliver is there! I wake, I rise, and shiv’ring with the frost Search all the house; my Gulliver is lost! Forth in the street I rush with frantic cries;         45 The windows open, all the neighbours rise: ‘Where sleeps my Gulliver? O tell me where.’ The neighbours answer, ‘With the Sorrel Mare.’   At early morn I to the market haste (Studious in every thing to please thy taste);         50 A curious fowl and ’sparagus I chose (For I remember’d you were fond of those); Three shillings cost the first, the last seven groats; Sullen you turn from both, and call for oats. Others bring goods and treasure to their houses,         55 Something to deck their pretty babes and spouses: My only token was a cup like horn, That ’s made of nothing but a lady’s corn. ’T is not for that I grieve; O, ’t is to see The Groom and Sorrel Mare preferr’d to me!         60   These, for some moments when you deign to quit, And at due distance sweet discourse admit, ’T is all my pleasure thy past toil to know; For pleas’d remembrance builds delight on woe. At ev’ry danger pants thy consort’s breast,         65 And gaping infants squall to hear the rest. How did I tremble, when by thousands bound, I saw thee stretch’d on Lilliputian ground! When scaling armies climb’d up every part, Each step they trod I felt upon my heart.         70 But when thy torrent quench’d the dreadful blaze, King, Queen, and Nation staring with amaze, Full in my view how all my husband came; And what extinguish’d theirs increas’d my flame. Those spectacles, ordain’d thine eyes to save,         75 Were once my present; love that armour gave. How did I mourn at Bolgolam’s decree! For when he sign’d thy death, he sentenc’d me.   When folks might see thee all the country round For sixpence, I ’d have giv’n a thousand pound.         80 Lord! when the giant babe that head of thine Got in his mouth, my heart was up in mine! When in the marrow bone I see thee ramm’d, Or on the housetop by the monkey cramm’d, The piteous images renew my pain,         85 And all thy dangers I weep o’er again. But on the maiden’s nipple when you rid, Pray Heav’n, ’t was all a wanton maiden did! Glumdalclitch, too! with thee I mourn her case, Heaven guard the gentle girl from all disgrace!         90 O may the king that one neglect forgive, And pardon her the fault by which I live! Was there no other way to set him free? My life, alas! I fear prov’d death to thee.   O teach me, dear, new words to speak my flame;         95 Teach me to woo thee by thy best lov’d name! Whether the style of Grildrig please thee most, So call’d on Brobdingnag’s stupendous coast, When on the monarch’s ample hand you sate, And halloo’d in his ear intrigues of state;         100 Or Quinbus Flestrin more endearment brings, When like a mountain you look’d down on kings: If ducal Nardac, Lilliputian peer, Or Glumglum’s humbler title soothe thy ear: Nay, would kind Jove my organs so dispose,         105 To hymn harmonious Houyhnhnm thro’ the nose, I ’d call thee Houyhnhnm, that high sounding name Thy children’s noses all should twang the same; So might I find my loving spouse of course Endued with all the virtues of a horse.         110

I enjoy these little poems, I love how the Scriblerans engage with each other's work. I also enjoyed how  we get to see parts of the story from outside of Gulliver's perspective. Soon I will be talking about 'Mistress Masham's Repose', which I have been greatly enjoying.

A few points on Kit Smart

Soon I shall write about Christopher Smart’s wonderful poem ‘Jubilate Agno’ but first I want to clear up some misconceptions as voiced in a goodreads review.

If you do not know who Kit Smart is, I will offer these teasers: 1. He was a good friend of Dr. Johnson, 2. He preached half naked on the streets of London, 3. He wrote much of his greatest poem on the walls of Bedlam.

Point 1: Smart and Johnson were not friends, more acquaintances, yes one of Johnson’s famous quotes is in defence of Smart (“He insisted on people praying with him; and I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as any one else. Another charge was, that he did not love clean linen; and I have no passion for it.") But they were not friends and Johnson was not an admirer, saying that comparing Christopher Smart and Samuel Derrick were like comparing a louse and flea.

Point 2: There is some evidence in the poem Jubilate Agno that he may have taken his clothes off, but the exact reason for his incarceration in a madhouse are unknown. It was known, however that he started to act erratically and started to accost people to pray with them. There is also the suggestion in Jubilate Agno of him using violence to get people to pray.

Point 3: He didn’t. He wrote the poem in a cramped scribble on paper while incarcerated in Potter's private asylum in Bethnal Green.

Christopher Smart interested me before I read Jubilate Agno, a hack writer stabled to Jack Newberry (pioneer of children’s fiction) and married into the Newberry family, he wrote a great deal. He won prizes for religious poetry at college but earned his money in London as a wit, his most popular character being Mary Midnight, a Midwife who edited a magazine for women - he even took to the stage in drag as this character (I have a book collection of The Midwife and they are very funny, rather like Tom Brown’s Amusements). Something happened and he was incarcerated for madness, when he was released he found it hard to get work and later died in a debtor’s jail. Seems like the sad story of a man with talents who burned himself out, but there is something luminous in Jubilate Agno - and a lot of his other stuff is entertaining also.

THE LONG NOSED FAIR

Once on a time I fair Dorinda kiss'd, 

Whose nose was too distinguish'd to be miss'd; 

My dear, says I, I fain would kiss you closer, 

But tho' your lips say aye—your nose says, no, Sir.— 

The maid was equally to fun inclin'd, 

And plac'd her lovely lily-hand behind; 

Here, swain, she cry'd, may'st thou securely kiss, 

Where there's no nose to interrupt thy bliss.

ON MY WIFE’S BIRTHDAY

'Tis Nancy's birth-day—raise your strains, 

Ye nymphs of the Parnassian plains, 

And sing with more than usual glee 

To Nancy, who was born for me. 

Tell the blythe Graces as they bound, 

Luxuriant in the buxom round; 

They're not more elegantly free, 

Than Nancy, who was born for me. 

Tell royal Venus, tho' she rove, 

The queen of the immortal grove, 

That she must share her golden fee 

With Nancy, who was born for me. 

Tell Pallas, tho' th'Athenian school, 

And ev'ry trite pedantic fool, 

On her to place the palm agree, 

'Tis Nancy's, who was born for me. 

Tell spotless Dian, tho' she range, 

The regent of the up-land grange, 

In chastity she yields to thee, 

O Nancy, who was born for me. 

Tell Cupid, Hymen, and tell Jove, 

With all the pow'rs of life and love, 

That I'd disdain to breathe or be, 

If Nancy was not born for me.

Reading Casanova: Volume Two.

The bad boy is back. Volume Two and Casanova is more shocking than before. I took my time reading this, finding it harder to pick up as I did to put down, the sheer unstoppable nature of it made it a difficult read. 

It starts in good form, with Casanova falling in love with a castrato called Belino and sleeping with Belino’s twelve year old sister to get to him (much to the girl’s mum who decides Casanova’s money is a gift from God). After some unfortunate bedroom to-ing and fro-ing, Casanova feels he spies a penis but knows that the fact that he still feels horny convinces him that Belino must be a girl. A second try reveals that Belino is in fact a girl with a complicated glue on penis and not a castrato. He helps her set herself up as a singer and she goes to Mantua, which he will not because he still feels fate is leading him to Constantinople.

Along the way he loses his passport, is imprisoned and ‘accidentally’ escapes by deciding to sit on a horse that bolts. I’m not sure I believe that accidentally even a little. Then he goes to a city where the doctor thanks him for giving everyone a venereal disease that has kept him in business. Eventually, he arrives in Constantinople where he declines an offer of gay sex and also a rich marriage which comes at the price of becoming a Muslim. Then he joins the army, hangs around in Crete where he tries to defrost an ice-maiden by being very annoying and clingy and making special sweets out of her ground up hair.

Later he goes back to Venice as a tramp, gets up to some ‘hilarious’ unsavoury escapades and then saves a rich man of nobility from dying, becoming his adopted son and the inheritor of a rich estate in the process. Then he wanders about a bit playing pranks (including giving a girl some fart sweets) before starting some elaborate charade as a magician...

...and so it goes on. Casanova, still not twenty-five, lurches in and out of bed, prison and adventure. He also really has caught the gambling bug and gains and loses money all over the shop. All of this youthful extravagance lovingly captured and recreated by old Casanova who really knows how to tell a story. The last part where he is pretending to be a Magician is slowly built up to a climax when the volume ends with the words.

   ‘It was night...’  and no more, pulling you into the next volume.

Casanova’s very fluid set of morals came into play. At one point he spends a page arguing how it was only morally right to lie as telling the truth would have been impolite and a let down. Another time he recounts that he ‘... told them the whole story exactly as it happened, omitting only what it was not prudent to tell them.’ We wonder whether he is doing us the same disservice.

Again there is the dark side, along with all the humour, the shock and the gasps of disbelief that came out my mouth as a read his adventures, there is something unpleasant lurking. There is the time he beat up a prostitute because she took the money but held back on the goods. Also disturbing is the lengths he goes to for a joke. Digging up a dead body, cutting an arm off and leaving it in a bed to scare a man - all in revenge for making his suit dirty. 

So, again it’s hard to completely like Casanova but at the same time you can’t help fall for his charm and vivaciousness. 

I look forward to volume three, but not yet.

Review: A History of John Bull by John Arbuthnot

As I had read something from the other Scriblerans it seemed right to read something from Dr Arbuthnot.

He was an interesting man, the royal physician and later a thriving doctor. The running joke among the Scriblerans was about the fact that he always had plenty of interesting and outlandish ideas to write about and was more than willing to give those ideas away. All accounts paint him as a funny, witty man, generous and good company. It seems clear that he didn't think of himself heavily as a literary man and it is sometimes hard to know which parts of the Scribleran body of work are his or not.

If 'John Bull' is anything to go by, then I would suggest that any part of Scribleran literature that involves long lists of things must be an Arbuthnot one. He really does love his lists. There was one chapter that consisted only of a list of various legal services. I imagine the last chapter of the 'Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus' was probably one of his too, as he seems to be an ideas person and likes the format of lots of silly little ideas that have not been completely developed.

John Bull itself came out as three pamphlets before being collected in book form. They tell of the trouble that occurred to John Bull when he set out to sue Louis Baboon for his tailoring contracts and got greatly in debt while his lawyer, Henry Hocus and his business partner, Nicholas Frog do well. This storyline is a thinly told story of the War of Spanish Succession, with Nicholas Frog as Holland (confusing I know), Louis Baboon (AKA Bourbon) as France and Henry Hocus as the Duke of Marlborough.

Later episodes include the harsh treatment of John's sister Peg (Scotland) and her love of a young man (representing Presbyterianism) who starts pious but then tries to make Peg's Mum (Anglicanism) ill. The story also talks about the death of John's skittish former wife and his remarriage to a more sensible one - this being an analogy for changing parliaments.

Much of the humour of the book has evaporated. A topical political allegory loses much of its laughs and punches when the things it is satirising are so fixed to their time. All we are left with is a mildly entertaining story about a foolish but loveable man who nearly bankrupts himself in suing someone else.

Of course the main legacy of the book is the character of John Bull, the stoic, no-nonsense, hard-living representation of England. You don't hear so much about John Bull anymore and I imagine he is not how the English would like to represent themselves - however, some of his qualities have been invested in that icon of steadfast Britishness, the bulldog.

So, not all that recommended, although I am interested in reading a biography of John Arbuthnot some time, he's an interesting fella.