Gullivers Travels | Page 3

true month, nor day of the month: and I hear the original manuscript is all destroyed
since the publication of my book; neither have I any copy left: however, I have sent you
some corrections, which you may insert, if ever there should be a second edition: and yet
I cannot stand to them; but shall leave that matter to my judicious and candid readers to
adjust it as they please.
I hear some of our sea Yahoos find fault with my sea-language, as not proper in many
parts, nor now in use. I cannot help it. In my first voyages, while I was young, I was
instructed by the oldest mariners, and learned to speak as they did. But I have since found
that the sea Yahoos are apt, like the land ones, to become new- fangled in their words,
which the latter change every year; insomuch, as I remember upon each return to my own
country their old dialect was so altered, that I could hardly understand the new. And I
observe, when any Yahoo comes from London out of curiosity to visit me at my house,
we neither of us are able to deliver our conceptions in a manner intelligible to the other.
If the censure of the Yahoos could any way affect me, I should have great reason to
complain, that some of them are so bold as to think my book of travels a mere fiction out
of mine own brain, and have gone so far as to drop hints, that the Houyhnhnms and
Yahoos have no more existence than the inhabitants of Utopia.

Indeed I must confess, that as to the people of Lilliput, Brobdingrag (for so the word
should have been spelt, and not erroneously Brobdingnag), and Laputa, I have never yet
heard of any Yahoo so presumptuous as to dispute their being, or the facts I have related
concerning them; because the truth immediately strikes every reader with conviction.
And is there less probability in my account of the Houyhnhnms or Yahoos, when it is
manifest as to the latter, there are so many thousands even in this country, who only
differ from their brother brutes in Houyhnhnmland, because they use a sort of jabber, and
do not go naked? I wrote for their amendment, and not their approbation. The united
praise of the whole race would be of less consequence to me, than the neighing of those
two degenerate Houyhnhnms I keep in my stable; because from these, degenerate as they
are, I still improve in some virtues without any mixture of vice.
Do these miserable animals presume to think, that I am so degenerated as to defend my
veracity? Yahoo as I am, it is well known through all Houyhnhnmland, that, by the
instructions and example of my illustrious master, I was able in the compass of two years
(although I confess with the utmost difficulty) to remove that infernal habit of lying,
shuffling, deceiving, and equivocating, so deeply rooted in the very souls of all my
species; especially the Europeans.
I have other complaints to make upon this vexatious occasion; but I forbear troubling
myself or you any further. I must freely confess, that since my last return, some
corruptions of my Yahoo nature have revived in me by conversing with a few of your
species, and particularly those of my own family, by an unavoidable necessity; else I
should never have attempted so absurd a project as that of reforming the Yahoo race in
this kingdom: But I have now done with all such visionary schemes for ever.
April 2, 1727





PART I--A VOYAGE TO LILLIPUT.

CHAPTER I.

[The author gives some account of himself and family. His first inducements to travel. He
is shipwrecked, and swims for his life. Gets safe on shore in the country of Lilliput; is
made a prisoner, and carried up the country.]
My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire: I was the third of five sons. He sent me
to Emanuel College in Cambridge at fourteen years old, where I resided three years, and
applied myself close to my studies; but the charge of maintaining me, although I had a
very scanty allowance, being too great for a narrow fortune, I was bound apprentice to
Mr. James Bates, an eminent surgeon in London, with whom I continued four years. My
father now and then sending me small sums of money, I laid them out in learning
navigation, and other parts of the mathematics, useful to those who intend to travel, as I
always believed it would be, some time or other, my fortune to do. When I left Mr. Bates,
I went down to my father: where, by the assistance of him and my uncle John, and