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Gulliver and the Struldbruggs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

J. Leeds Barroll III
J. Leeds Barroll III*
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin 12
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Extract

The struldbrugg incident in Gulliver's Travels has been relatively neglected. Scholars either allude to the Struldbruggs only in passing or omit the incident entirely from their comments on Book iii. The last sustained treatment is that in the notes of Emil Pons's edition of twenty-seven years ago. Pons's comments, however, attempting as they do to connect the hideous Struldbruggs with Swift's possible fear of old age, reflect a manner of approaching Swift which has become rather out of date. The purpose of this article is to consider three aspects of the Struldbrugg episode: (1) old age and the fear of death as conventional subjects for moral reflection and satire; (2) a desire for immortality in the light of the homiletic tradition; (3) the significance of Gulliver's conversations with his host. Such a study will attempt to show that Swift's treatment of the Struldbruggs conforms to a traditional background as regards both his literary method and his intellectual milieu.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 73 , Issue 1 , March 1958 , pp. 43 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1958

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References

1 Gulliver's Travels (Extraits) (Paris, 1927), pp. 279–280, n. 2; 287, n. 1.

2 Gulliver's Travels: A Critical Study (Princeton, 1923), p. 165.

3 Works, [ed. Jonathan Swift] (Edinburgh, 1754), n, 466.

4 Cf. also Temple's essay Of Health and Long Life and Taller 266, Guardian 26, and Spectator 336.

5 Gulliver's Travels, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford, 1941), xi, 196. Hereafter this edition will be referred to as HD.

6 The Philosophical Transactions and Collections to the End of the Year MDCC Abridg'd, ed. John Lowthorpe (London, 1716), iii, 302–304.

7 The Philosophical Transactions ... to the Year MDCCXX Abridg'd, ed. Benjamin Motte (London, 1721), iv, 155.

8 See also The History of Man (Edinburgh, 1790), i, 53–60: “Of Age, great, memorable, and Renewed.”

9 The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, ed. Charles Kerby-Miller (New Haven, 1950), pp. 91–92, and Kerby-Miller's comment, pp. 175–176.

10 It would be erroneous to state, however, that the fear of death was regarded as one of the conventional satiric themes such as avarice and ambition. J. W. Duff, Roman Satire (Berkeley, Calif., 1936), p. 203, under “Traditional Themes,” fails to mention this subject, and Bishop Hall in his list of subjects appropriate to satire also omits it.

11 The Praise of Folly, trans. H. H. Hudson (Princeton, 1941), pp. 41–12.

12 The Essays of Montaigne trans. E. J. Trechmann (London, 1927), i, 89.

13 See also G. R. Coffman, “Old Age from Horace to Chaucer,” Speculum, ix (July 1934), 249–277.

14 Essay upon ... Jonathan Swift (London, 1755), sigs. P4v–P5: “[It] is the finest lecture that ever was conceived by any mortal man, to reconcile poor tottering creatures unto a chearful resignation of this wretched life, and perfectly agreeable to that sentiment of the inspired prophet. The days of our life are threescore years and ten; and though men be so strong, that they live to fourscore years; yet is their life then but labour and sorrow.”

15 Boyle's Lectures (London, 1765), ii, 147. Hereafter this work will be referred to as Boyle.

16 Eight Sermons (Cambridge, 1724), pp. 100–103.

17 Fear of death as tantamount to a fear of eternal punishment is again suggested by Swift in his letter to Pope, 1 June 1728. Speakings of Mrs. Pope's illness, Swift remarks: “If I were five-and-twenty, I would wish to be of her age, to be as secure as she is of a better life” (Correspondence, ed. F. Elrington Ball, London, 1913, iv, 34).

18 Cf. John Tillotson, Sermons (London, 1757), Vol. vi, Sermon 110.

19 The original reading of this clause in the 1681 edition (i, 33), is “to enjoy a Sensual, Animal Happiness in a state of Earthly Immortality.” The passage and future passages in the text are taken from the London, 1747, edition.

20 Robert South stresses this same point in his sermon The Impossibility of Man's Meriting of God (Sermons, New York, 1867, ii, 15–17).

21 Cited by Martin Price, Swift's Rhetorical Art (New Haven, 1953), p. 85, n. 8.

22 Cf. Tillotson, Sermons, vi, 457–459. William Sherlock also sums up the argument in his Practical Discourse Concerning Death (1689), a popular work translated into French and Welsh. “A Soul, which is wholly sensualiz'd by living in the Body,” says Sherlock, “if it be turn'd out of the Body without any change, cannot ascend into Heaven, which is a state of perfect Purity. ... Death which is the Punishment of Sin, is not meerly the death of the Body, but that state of Misery to which Death translates Sinners” (1705 ed., London, pp. 241–246). Sherlock enlarges on this later: “Some men are wholly sunk into flesh and sense ... Now these men have great reason to be afraid of Death; for when they go out of this World, they will find nothing that belongs to this World in the next” (pp. 333–334).

23 All of these ideas about earthly immortality may also be found combined in Sherlock.

24 Works, ed. Temple Scott (London, 1898), iii, 315–320; called to my attention by Prof. L. A. Landa to whose supervision in the preparation of this article I am greatly indebted.

25 John Hawkesworth, who raised the same objection in a note, explained the disparity in terms of technique (Swift, Works, New York, 1812, ix, 237, n.). The Luggnaggian, living with the “fact” of the Struldbruggs, regarded immortality as a reality, whereas eternal youth had no place in the fictional universe which Swift created for him. Hawkesworth then is aware of what George Sherburn has called “the infinite playfulness of Swift's mind” (“Methods in Books about Swift,” SP, xxxv [Oct. 1938], 635–656), and has interpreted the incident accordingly.

26 See Tillotson, Sermon 184; John Leland, A Defense of Christianity (London, 1753), ii, 416; Isaac Watts, The Ruin and Recovery of Mankind (London, 1740), p. 193; James MacKenzie, The History of Health (Edinburgh, 1759), pp. 22–23.

27 “Swift's Yahoo and the Christian Symbols,” JHI, xv (April 1954), 201–217.