Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- General Editors’ Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology of Swift’s Life
- Chronology of Gulliver’s Travels
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Gulliver’s Travels
- A Letter From Capt. Gulliver, to His Cousin Sympson
- The Publisher to the Reader
- The Contents
- Part I
- Part II
- Part III
- Part IV
- Long Notes
- Appendices
- Textual Introduction
- Select Bibliography
- Index
B - Commendatory Verses
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- General Editors’ Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology of Swift’s Life
- Chronology of Gulliver’s Travels
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Gulliver’s Travels
- A Letter From Capt. Gulliver, to His Cousin Sympson
- The Publisher to the Reader
- The Contents
- Part I
- Part II
- Part III
- Part IV
- Long Notes
- Appendices
- Textual Introduction
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
On 17 February 1727 Alexander Pope wrote to Swift as follows: ‘You receiv’d, I hope, some commendatory verses from a Horse and a Lilliputian, to Gulliver; and an heroic Epistle of Mrs. Gulliver. The Bookseller would fain have printed ‘em before the second Edition of the Book, but I would not permit it without your approbation; nor do I much like them.’ This clearly refers to the fourth, first and fifth of the poems reprinted below, which were published inMotte's ‘Second Edition’ of Gulliver's Travels in May 1727, and virtually simultaneously in The Post Boy and The St James's Evening-Post. Some copies of Motte's ‘Second Edition’ contain four poems, others five: ‘The Words of the King of Brobdingnag’ is occasionally absent, and when present is tipped in.
The authorship of the poems has been reviewed by Norman Ault in his volume of Pope's minor poems in the Twickenham edition, where he concludes that they are all by Pope, with the possible and partial exception of ‘The Lamentation of Glumdalclitch’, where John Gay may have made a contribution.
The texts reprinted here are taken from Motte's ‘Second Edition’ of Gulliver's Travels (1727), as the earliest publication and the one possessing the closest link with Gulliver's Travels.
IN amaze
Lost, I gaze!
Can our Eyes
Reach thy Size?
May my Lays
Swell with Praise
Worthy thee!
Worthy me!
Muse inspire,
All thy Fire!
Bards of old
Of him told,
When they said
Atlas Head
Propt the Skies:
See! and believe your Eyes!
See him stride
Vallies wide:
Over Woods,
Over Floods.
When he treads,
Mountains Heads
Groan and shake;
Armies quake,
Lest his Spurn
Overturn
Man and Steed:
Troops take heed!
Left and Right,
Speed your Flight!
Lest an Host
Beneath his Foot be lost.
Turn’d aside
From his Hide,
Safe from Wound
Darts rebound.
From his Nose
Clouds he blows;
When he speaks,
Thunder breaks!
When he eats,
Famine threats;
When he drinks,
Neptune shrinks!
Nigh thy Ear,
In Mid Air,
On thy Hand
Let me stand,
So shall I,
Lofty Poet, touch the Sky.
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- Information
- Gulliver's Travels , pp. 573 - 588Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012