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life.
The moral precision of the aphorism is asking
of reasoning and persuasive power which was accepted
in his time. He uses it in the form of very short
'dispersed meditations'.
Bacon sees aphorism as a condensation of wisdom
and knowledge. In an age which valued precepts and
aphorisms, Bacon provided exactly what they needed,
and had the knowledge and wisdom to do so. It is
probably for this reason that his essays were so
popular. Some Examples of aphorisms are cited
below:
(a) For a lie faces God and shrinks from
man. (Of Truth)
(b) This is certain, that a man that
studieth revenge keeps / his wounds green, which
would otherwise heal and do well. (Of Revenge)
(c) Revenge is a kind of wild justice. (Of
Revenge)
(d) Besides nakedness is unseemly as well in
mind and in body. (Or Simulation and Dissimulation).
Bacon uses this short pithy style so peculiar
to him to impress what he said upon the reander as
forcibly and memorably as possible.'
6.6 Poetic Qualities
Bacon's prose is poetic among them the most
poetic of poets. This may be attributed to his use of
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imagery, metaphor, and analogy and other rhetorical
devices in his prose.
The purpose of these devices is to create an
image in the imagination to up a picture before the
imagination of the reader. He was able to present
abstract ideas endowed with a kind of life and
actuality which was miraculous because they did not
lose their precision and yet were full of emotive
meaning. The clear expression of his subject matter
reveals that it is not necessary for words to be
affected or dominant but that meaning could be made
the prime interest without losing the grandeur and
dignity of literature.
Commenting of Bacon’s Essays Sir Joshua
Reynolds remarks "The excellence and their value
consisted in being the observations of a strong mind
operating upon life; and in consequence you find
there, what you seldom find in other books".
Bacon himself opinions there is no proceeding
in invention of knowledge but by similitude". So
Bacon himself sought out similarities between natural
phenomena and human situations which he could use
with strong effect.
The opening lines of ‘Of Fruth’ is cited here
as an example "What is truth? said jesting Pilate;
and would not t stay for an answer". Immediately he
is able by this image call up the picture of the
trial of Jesus Christ, and the incident of Pilate not
taking seriously the statement of Jesus at he had
come to bring truth into the world. He further uses
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this image to point out that there are a type of
people who will not take anything-particularly truth
seriously. In the essay "Of Revenge", he alludes to
the witches in closing they ascribe it to the evil
work of the witch and hunt her and either drown her
burn her. To quote "Nay, vindictive persons live the
life ' witches; who, as they are mischievous, so end
they unfortunate". In other words vindictive persons
will come to a good end, just as witches will come to
harm. Bacon thus uses images very skillfully and
powerfully in his essays to affect his purposes.
Bacon uses metaphorical language to make
matters much clearer and actual to the reader.
In the essay of 'Simulation and Dissimulation'
have the example of analogy "Where a man cannot
choose or vary in particulars, there it is good to
take the safest and wariest way, like the going
softly, by one that cannot well see;" Here we have an
example of the simplest form of analogy. The prose of
Bacon does contain many examples in almost all his
e s s a y s r hetorical devices which makes his prose
imaginative and poetic. It clearly adds depth and
richness to his prose and clarity to what he wishes
to express. He is able to bring home what he means to
express much more powerfully because of the use of
other methods.
6.7 Bacon's use of Allusions and References
Almost all the essays have at least one
reference to the Bible. The most famous one is the
reference to jesting Pilate in the essay "Of Truth".
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But besides that he has several references to the
famous King Solomon. In the essay "Of Revenge",
Solomon is quoted as saying that "it is the glory of
a man to pass by an offence". In the essay "Of
Riches", as saying: "Where there is much, there are
many to consume it; and what hath the owner but the
sight of it with his eyes? and "He that maketh haste
to be rich, shall not be innocent". Bacon also quotes
the Bible in 'On Atheism' as saying; '"The fool hath
said in his heart, there is no God". There is little
doubt that Bacon knew his Bible very well, and used
it with great effect.
Bacon also uses the classics for reference to a
very great extent. Bacon refers freely Epicurus
Plato, and Democritus among the Greeks, and Seneca
among the Roman philosophies. He refers to the Roman
Emperors Augustus Caesar, Tiberius, Vespasian and
others.
Bacon also alludes to modern writers in Europe
such as Montaigne. Cosmus, Duke of Florence, and
Spanish proverbs and thus orbiting his knowledge of
the modern European languages, French, Italian and
Spanish. This wide frame of reference goes to show
the immense amount of reading and knowledge that
Bacon possessed, and which he was able to call upon
in his dispersed meditations.
Finally we have references to Nature, a tree
and its branches, the hills, the sea, precious stones
and pearls, and talks about the waves and weathering
of time. His appreciation of the beauty and order of
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the created universe is best seen in his essay 'On
Atheism', this universal frame is without a mind.
And therefore God never wrought miracles to convince
Atheism, because his ordinary works convince it." The
belief in the natual world as against miracles is the
attitude of a truly scientific mind.
Thus the use of allusions makes his Essays
rich and varied, and give an idea of Bacon’s
encyclopedic knowledge and interests.
In the words of Benjonson “he seemed to me
ever, by his work, one of the greatest men, and the
most worthy of admiration, that had been in many
ages.” One of the contemporary men remarks "He was a
man of strong, clear and powerful imagination, his
genius was searching and inimitable; and of this I
need give no other proof than his style itself. The
course of it is vigorous and majestically; wit bold
and familiar; the comparisons fetched out of the way,
and yet the most easy".
According to Hazlih, "He united powers of
imagination and understanding in a greater degree
than almost any other writer. He was one of the
strongest instances of those men who by rare
privilege of their nature are at once poets and
philosophers, and see equally into both worlds."
Commenting upon Bacon's style, Hazlitt remarks
"His writing have the gravity of prose with the
fervour and vividness ofpoetry. His sayings have the
effect of axioms, are at once striking and self -
evident. His style is equally sharp and sweet,
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flowing and pithy, condensed and expansive expressing
volumes in a sentence, or amplifying a single,
thought intopages of rich, glowing and delightful
eloquence."
In the words of Sir, to be Mathews, "A man so
rare in knowledge of so many several kinds, endowed
with the faculty and felicity of expressing it all in
so elegant, significant, so abundant and yet so
choice and ravishing a way of words of metaphors and
allusions as perhaps the world has not seen since it
was a world.”
6.8 LET US SUM UP
You have learnt so for, life and works of
Francis Bacon, his style and technique employed in
his work and essential components of his essays.
6.9 LESSON – END ACTIVITIES:
1. Comment on the style and technique of Bacon’s
Essays with reference to the essays
prescribed.
2. The essays of Bacon are ‘true of all men, for
all time and in all place, Justify.
3. Discuss the essential features of Bacon’s
Essays.
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6.10 REFERENCES
Chaudhuri, Sukanta Bacon’s Essays : A Selection. 1977
; rpt. Delhi : Oxford University Press,
1984.
Selby F.G. Bacon’s Essays. 1889; London :
Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1964.
Hudson, William Henry Outline History of English
Literature. 1961 : rpt. Bell & Hyman
Ltd., 1988.
Saintsbury, George A short History of English
Literature. 1898; rpt. London :
Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1960.
Sutherland, James. On English Prose. 1957 : rpt.
Canada : University of Toronto Press,
1965.
Vickers, Brian Francis Bacon and Renaissance
Prose. Great Britain : Cambridge
University Press, 1968.
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Lesson 7
Charles Lamb
Contents
7.0 Aims and Objectives
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Charles Lamb’s Life & Works
7.3 Dissertation upon Roast Pig
7.4 In Praise of Chimney – Sweepers
7.5 Dream Children- A Reverie
7.6 Style and Technique of Charles Lamb
7.7 Humour and Patho7s in Charles Lamb’s Essays
7.8 Let Us Sum Up
7.9 Lesson – End Activities
7.10 References
7.0 Aims and Objectives
This lesson aims to present you the life and works of Charles
Lamb; a towering essayist and critic besides detailing various
styles, feeling techniques and detailing of employed by him in his
works.
7.1 Introduction.
The true art of the essay was born with Lamb. He ranks very
high as an essayist and critic. He is compared to Addison but he is
far, superior to Addison in depth and tenderness of feeling, and in
richness of fancy. Goldsmith comes nearer to Lamb in delicacy of
feeling and sentiment, and also in pathos and humour, but does not
posses Lamb’s exquisiteness and quaintness of fancy. After all, Lamb
is the true inventor of the essay. In his own style he has woven
together into one charming whole the quaintness’ of the Elizabethan
manner, and the clearness and common source of modern times.
7.2 Charles Lamb’s Life & Works
Charles lamb was born in 1775. He was cradled in the quiet
cloisters of the Temple, and the old-world atmosphere of the Temple
clung about him all his life. Charles Lamb was the seventh and
youngest child of John and Eilzabeth Lamb. John Lamb was a
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barrister’s clerk, with seven children, and had to fight hard against
the encroach-ments of poverty. Little money could be spared for
educational purposes, and it might have fared ill with Charles had
not Samuel Salt, his father’s patron, obtained for him, when he was
seven, a presentation to Christ’s Hospital. He could thus bid
farewell to his earlier mentor, “ Mr. William Bird, eminent writer
and teacher of languages,” whose readiness with the birch was more
obvious than his readiness with learning.
At Christ’s Hospital he stayed for another seven years. Here he
made the acquaintance of the youthful Coleridge, three years his
senior, and the acquaintance soon ripened into a friendship that was
to last a lifetime. Lamb proved a fairly good scholar, and when he
left in November 1789, ob-tained a post in the South Sea House, where
the friendly Salt was a Deputy Governor. His family had left the
Temple, the father by reason of increas-ing infirmities having
retired on a small pension, and we find them in Little Queen Street,
Holborn.
In his scanty leisure, Lamb threw himself with keen zest into
the joys of reading, a joy he shared with his sister Mary. This was
varied by occasional visits to the theatre, a brief excursion to
Hertford-shire — where some of his happiest moments were spent, and
where the one romance of his life budded and faded. His home life was
wearisome and gloomy. His father was growing childish and querulous ;
his mother was an invalid, and the strain of insanity in the family
suddenly showed itself in poor Mary, upon whom all the household
cares had devolved.
Between 1807 and 1817, Lamb’s contributions to! literature were
frequent and important. In 1817 the Lambs left the Temple for Covent
Garden, and an interesting chapter in his life was’ closed, f o r i t
was at the Temple where the famous, Wednesday evening gatherings took
place at theTemple moreover, where he made so many of his’lasting
friendships. The most interesting chapter in his literary life was to
start, however, in 1820, when Hazlitt introduced him to the editor of
the London Magazine, and the famous Elia essays came into existence.
In 1821 John Lamb died. In the summer of 1823 the Lambs once
again migrated yet further north, this time to Islington, failing
health made Lamb consider retirement, perhaps the loss of some of his
best friends weighed upon him also. The fact remains that neither
brother nor sister got so much pleasure from this retirement as had
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been anticipated.
He found the folk at Enfield slow, and too prone to talk about
cattle. To relieve his boredom he would indulge in farcically
extravagant letters.
Lamb started as a writer about 1795, when Burke and Gibbon were
at the height of their glory, and some years before Scott had given
romantic narrative verse its astonishing vogue. He experimented both
in prose and verse. The tenderness of Lamb, and his genius for
reminiscence, find expression in Mrs. Leicester’s School and Poetry
for Children (1809) works written also in collaboration and designed
for Mrs. Godwin’s “ Juvenile Library.” For some years he wrote
little, but his literary friendships helped to stimulate his slowly
maturing powers.
Lamb’s work as a critic precedes his work as an essayist,
though the essays no less than the letters scintillate in brilliant
flashes of criticism. His earlier essay work, between 1811 and 1820,
is scarcely up to the level of Leigh Hunt’s. The flowering time came
in 1820 when “Elia” entered upon his own and started with the South
Sea House, rich in observant humour and reminiscent charm. In 1833,
the final fruits of Lamb were gathered together in The Last Essays of
Elm.
7.3 DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG
Lamb believes that the practice of roasting pigs originated in
China. A manuscript which was read out to him by his friend Thomas
Manning, told the story that the art of roasting was discovered
accidentally. Once the cottage of a shepherd caught fire and his nine
young pigs were burnt to death. From the burnt bodies of the pigs the
son of the shepherd experienced an alluring odour. As he searched for
the source of that smell in the ashes, he stooped down to feel a pig,
if there were any signs of life in it. The Shepherd burnt his fingers
and in order to cool them he put mem into his month. In this way, he
happened to taste the roast skin of the pig, which appeared to him the
greatest delicacy in the world. From that day, the shepherds started
setting fire to their cottages now and then and leaving some pigs to get
roasted in it. Gradually, a wise man suggested them not to burn their
cottages but roast pigs on gridirons.
Later the judge purchased all the pigs of the town. In a few days
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his house was observed to be on fire. Then it followed that every house
was on fire. Throughout the district, fuel and pigs became very costly.
Insurance offices were closed. After a long time a practical
philosopher like Locke invented a cheaper way of roasting the flesh
of pigs and other animals.
The costly method described in the Chinese manuscript is worthy of
the pig. It is worthy because the roasted flesh of the pig is the
most delicate of all delicacies. It must be a young pig which is less
man a month old and which is called a crackling. In the plate on the
dinner-table is his second cradle. Such a pig is beautiful and good.
Elia might enjoy certain things when his friends taste them. But on
the question of the pig, he is stubborn. He himself must taste the pig.
Our ancestors were very particular about the way they sacrificed
such tender animals. How will a pig taste when it is whipped to death?
The young students at St Omer discussed a similar problem. If the pig
killed by whipping adds a new taste to the roasted flesh, is death by
whipping justifiable? Whatever be the decision, the young pig is a weak
ling a flower.
Lamb considers the roast pig as one of the best delicacies in the
world. "Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis, I will
maintain it to be the most delicate—princeps obsoniorum". Like a true
epicurean, Lamb describes the taste of this delicate dish, "There is no
flavour comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-
watched, not overroasted, crackling, as it is well called—the very
teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet in
overcoming the coy, brittle resistance with the adhesive oleaginous O
call it not fat, but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it – the
tender blossoming of fat – fat cropped in the bud.
The essay reveals Lamb's epicurean tastes. A roast pig is the
greatest
delicacy in the world. Lamb wants to enjoy every good thing in the
world.
There is a charming self-revelation in the essay. Lamb was a kind-
hearted
man, but his preference for pigs which have been whipped to death is
against his nature.
7.4 IN PRAISE OF CHIMNEY – SWEEPERS
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This essay reflects Lamb's concern for the lowly placed chimney-
sweepers. This is one of his best essays. His concern for humanity
and his profoundly sympathetic nature is vividly displayed throughout
the essay. No doubt he speaks only for the "young" chimney-sweepers
but that does in no way lessen the importance of the essay. He refers
to them as "those tender novices."
Lamb recalls his child-like wonder at the young chimneysweeper
disappearing into the chimney and emerging at the top like a warrior.
He is impressed by their work so he wants other people to be kind to
them. He urges the reader to give a penny or a two pence to a young
chimney sweeper, when he meets him on the way. He does not forget to
tell his readers not to be offended like Lamb himself if he laughs or
jeers at them because in this way only they will provide the chimney-
sweeper a chance to enjoy himself. Similarly he is pleased to see the
white teeth of a sooty young chimney-sweeper but he would not tolerate
a young beauty to show her white teeth.
Charles Lamb says that he always feels attracted towards young
chimney-sweepers whose cry of "sweep-sweep" at dawn fills him with a
little excitement that reminds him of the chirping of sparrows. He
refers to
them as their work demands patience, When Lamb was a child he used to
wonder how
young boys would enter the chimney from below, brush its walls and
then
emerge at the top.
' Lamb's appeals for such boys for their wont is strenuous as well
as dangerous. They deserve charity from us. He urges people to give a
penny or a two-pence to such a boy meeting them on the way.
The chimney-sweepers try to keep their senses of smell and taste
in order. They use sassafras tea or "salon" —a favourite beverage
with them. Lamb himself has never tasted it but thinks that it should
be gratifying to their senses as Valerian is to cats. But there are
imitators who sell the A show of charity to such boys will enable
them to do better work so that there may never be a casual spark. The
reader's hospitality will be suitably rewarded in the future as this
gesture will save them the expense of having to call fire engines in
the event of a chimney catching fire.
Lamb hates jeers and ridicules of a street crowd but he does not
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mind if a young chimney-sweeper laughs at him. He tells us that once
he fell on his back in street. A roguish young chimney-sweeper saw
him in that condition and started laughing. He went on laughing until
tears flowed from his eyes.Still Lamb did not feel offended for, as
he felt, he had provided the chimney-sweeper an opportunity to be
happy at his cost. There was of course no malice in the heart of the
young chimney-sweeper.
Lamb is critical of young ladies showing their beautiful white
teeth but the sight of a black and sooty figure of a young chimney-
sweeper showing a set of white teeth is attractive.
' Lamb testifies to their social or family status. They are born
in high aristocratic family but are kidnapped from their homes in
their infancy. Once a young chimney-sweeper was found asleep in a
lordly bed. Had he been of low-birth, he would have dared not do so.
The possible explanation can be that the boy must have got some
natural instinct to get into that aristocratic bed.
Finally, Lamb tells us how his friend Jem White used to entertain
a large number of young chimney-sweepers every year. Mr. White was a
kind man. He had a great deal of sympathy for these unfortunate
chimneysweepers. During the feast Mr. White would go round offering a
morsel here and a slice there. They had a sumptuous meal. He used to
propose several toast to the king, to the chimney sweepers. The
slogan of one of the toasts was: "May the brush supersede the
Laurel". The young chimney-sweepers really used to enjoy themselves on
these occasions. It is a sad lot, Lamb says, that after the death of Jem
White, the practice has come to an end. No one else could undertake to
continue the tradition.
The essay is characteristic of its personal note. Lamb speaks
much about his attitude, likes and dislikes. The use of "I" is in no
way annoying, instead it adds to the charm of the essay. His style is
persuasive when he speaks on behalf of the young chimney-sweepers; we
almost begin to share his sentiments about them.
There are three paragraphs in which he describes "Sassafras tea"
which is a stimulating drink for the young chimney-sweepers. It is
greatly relished not only by the chimney-sweepers, but also by other
workmen leaving their homes at dawn. They freshen themselves with
this drink.
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Another quality of the essay is that Lamb often slips into his
fancy. He imagines that some of chimney-sweepers were born in a
aristocratic family and were kidnapped from their homes in their
infancy. In order to make his argument appear sound, he relates an
anecdote concerning a young chimney-sweeper who crept into the lordly
bed in Arundel Castle.
As Lamb is fond of loading his essays with anecdotes, he does the
same in this essay as well. There are three anecdotes, one when he
slipped while walking and thus provided a chance of fun and enjoyment
to a young chimney sweeper. Two, there is a story about a young
chimneysweeper who slipped into the lordly bed in order to feel the
softness of the bed and also to give his tired limbs a little rest.
Three, there is a long narrative about Jem White who used 'to arrange
annual feasts in order to honour and provide entertainment to young
chimney-sweepers.
The essay presents a rich variety of Lamb's characteristic style.
There are high-sounding words and phrases that interest the reader
liking high-flown style of writing. Iteration which is a significant
feature of Lamb's writing is also noticeable in this essay. A few
examples of his style from this essay are given below:
"I have a kindly yearning toward these aim specks—poor blots—
innocent blackness—these young Africans of our own growth—these
almost clergy imps....." (The description of young chimney-sweepers).
It is like some ramnant of gentry not quite extinct; a badge of
better days; a hint of nobility....and a lapsed pedigree", (an
example of iteration).
Example of high-sounding or unusual words ".....whether the oily
particles (sassafras is slightly oleaginuous) do attenuate and soften
the fuliginous concretions....."
".....to come just in time to see the sable phenomenon emerge in
safety....."
".....but one of those tender novices, blooming through their first
negritude."
"Him shouldest thou haply encounter, with his dimvisage pendent over
the grateful steam, regale him with a sumptuous basin."
Lamb writes with eloquence. The description of Lamb's falling down in
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the street exciting laughter of a young chimney-sweeper is such an
example. Though the entire description has been made in one long sen-
tence, yet several parentheses therein are not able to mar either the
eloquence or the beauty of the sentence. The same is true about the
description of Jem White's way of entertaining the young chimney-
sweepers.
The racing of sentences is smooth and the reader is carried
f o r w a r d a s if he were flowing with water. Lamb's style is
characteristic in its imaginative approach and the poetic appeal. The
essay may be called a "lyric in prose". Above all the humanistic
purpose of the essay makes it all the more beautiful and pragmatic.
7.5 DREAM CHILDREN- A REVERIE
Children like to hear about their elders when they were children. So, our author’s children sat
around him to listen to the stories of childhood of their great grand-mother Field. She lived in a great
house in Norfolk. The most interesting fact about this house was that the whole story of the Children in
the Wood was carved in wood upon the chimney piece of the great hall. But this was replaced by a
marble chimney-piece by a rich person afterwards. Great grand-mother Field was not the real owner of
the house but her behaviour and manners, and her religious devotions were so great that she was
respected by every one. She however used the house as if it was her own. But later, the ornaments were
taken off from the house to the real owner’s home, which was in the adjoining country. When Mrs.
Field died, her funeral was attended by both, poor folks, and the rich people. Men from many miles .
round, came to show their respect for her memory. She was indeed a very gentle-hearted and pious
person. She knew the Psaltery by heart and also a great part of the Testament.
Then Lamb began telling them about their great grandmother’s youth, when she was regarded
as the best darcer in the country. But she was attacked by cancer, and that desisted her from dancing
any further. Her good spirits, however, could not be broken, and she continued to be good and
religious. She used to sleep by herself in a desolate chamber of that great house. She thought she saw
two apparitions of infants at midnight, but she was sure that they were good creatures, and would not
hurt her. She was also very kind to her grand--children, who went to her during the holidays.’ Lamb
himself used to spend hours in gazing upon old busts of the Emperors Rome. He used to roam round
the large silent rooms of that huge house, and looked through the wt;rn-out hangings, fluttering
tapestry, and carved oaken panels. He also used to hang about the garden, gazing at the trees and
flowers. He was satisfied thus roaming about and preferred this to the sweet flavours of peaches,
nectarines, and such like common habits of children.
Though great grand-mother Field loved all her grand-children, she had a special favour for
their uncle John Lamb, because he was a handsome and spirited lad He was dashing sort of fellow.
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While others would have preferred a secluded corner, he used to mount on horses and ride around the
country and join the hunters. Their uncle John Lamb was really a brave man, and when he grew up to
be a man, he won the admiration of every one. When our author was a lame-footed boy, John who was
few years senior to him used to carry him on his back for many miles. In after-life, John, however,
became lame-footed. Lamb now fears that perhaps he had not been considerate enough to bear the
impatient pains of John, or to remember his childhood, when he was carried by John. But when Juhn
died, Lamb came to miss him very much, and remembered his kindness and his crossness, and wished
him to be alive again. The children then demanded that Lamb should say something about their dead
mother. Then Lamb began telling them how for seven long years he patiently courted the fair Alice
Winterton. As he was relating these experiences of his, he, ’suddenly felt that the eyes of that old Alice
were gazing from the face of the little Alice, sitting before him. As Lamb looked, and looked, it seemed
that the two chitdren, John and Alice, were receding from him. At last just two mournful features were
left of them, and they told him that they were neither of Alice, nor of Lamb, that they were not
children. For, the children of Alice, had Bartrum for their father. So they were merely dreams. At this
point. Lamb woke up and found himself sitting in his bachelor arm-chair, where he had fallen asleep
with the faithful Bridget by his side.
7.6 STYLE AND TECHNIQUE OF CHARLES LAMB
Lamb’s place in literature is unique. He is a f i n e
imaginative critic and something of a poet; but he lives, and will
live, by virtue of being himself and expressing that self in a series
of prose essays unsurpassed in their charm, prodigality of fancy and
literary artifice, marked by a distinguished common sense, starred
with passages of great beauty and profound insight, and suffused with
a kindly and capricious humour. The “Essays of Elia” are a complete
revelation of their writer’s character and, with his correspondence,
constitute an autobiography.
Lamb is fond of a kind of reversed irony. He makes a
statement or uses a phrase which at first is unpleasing, but becomes
pleasing when we consider it more carefully. For instance, he writes
of “the rational antipathies of the great English and French
nations.” He says of himself and his sister, “We are generally is
harmony, with occasional bickerings, as it should be among near
relations,” and describes the coast-guard men as carrying on “a
legitimated civil war in the deplorable absence of foreign one.”
The Essays of Elia reveal the charm and endurance of a
personality with a turn for quaint and fantastic humour, melting into
pathos, with sober delight in the things of life, which even the
overshadowing tragedy of his sister’s fatal malady can hardly
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repress. In reading his essays the tragic background of his life is
highlighted but there is no track of self-pity to our sympathy, nor
any bravado, nor the hashing of teeth in important range. By the
alchemy of his sweeteners of disposition and by the alchemy of
poetry, he seems to have metamorphosed all his troubles into the
fancy realm of dreams, reminiscence, unfulfilled longings, things
stored up in the memory, experiences that should have been forgotten
long ago, sketches of incidents which one would have passed over in
life, the bizarre and fantastic which he seem to have an miscanny
sense of perceiving – all these enter into his essays.
Lamb lives mostly in the world of memories, the has a brooding
fantasy and it ponders and meditates, softening the outlines of the
past and presenting a clear, though sad picture. Pathos becomes a
necessary element of each writing. It reveals his infinite capacity
for compassion. He converts his personal experiences into the
universal suffering of mankind. His style owes its grace and charm
to this unfailing sense of pathos.
The romantic essence of things and personalities which he
very stuffily brings out is a part of his humorous understanding and
sensibility. It is love of life – of things essentially human,
including weakness and even vices – that lifts him above the
calamities of life.
“As a contributor to the London Magazine, he evolved the
Essays of Elia, incomparable meditations, reveries, fantasies, on the
accidents and essentials of life and death. There the tenderness,
pathos, and ineffable lavish humour of one of the most lovable
personalities in literature find an expression steeped in rich
allusiveness, quaint with freaks, starting with sudden child like
felicities, and sweet with sighing cadavers. RemarksG.L. Craik”.
In his essays there is a hint, now and then, of things painful
Dream children, can be cited as an example but the painful relatives
o f l i f e form the back drop, a n d are transmitted to us in shadowy
renaissance, “He does not deal with problems, but in memories of
simple things and simple people, often with the pathos of death on
oblivion dinging about these; the sights of common London the
chimney – sweepers and the Jews and the actors, the choice savours of
beasts and of fish, the street arise and the changing bells” (C.H.
Herford)
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Humour and pathos which are allied in Lamb’s essays. Humour in
an essential part of his nature. He could just get away from his own
tragic experiences and dispassionately view human affairs. Sometimes
he indulges such humour to spite realities.
Lamb’s humour keeps him human and makes up a large part of
his benign personalities. He could never have cherished any bitter
feelings in his heart. The tender watchfulness with which his humour
invests everything is a quality unique in Lamb. Wh a t s u d d e n
unexpected touches of pathos in him! He is represented by the fine
shade of perception and sensibility expressing itself in delicate
humour, which is rendered in language subtle and perfect. His
humour makes a sense appraisement of life.
“How admirably, he has sketched the former of the south – sea
house; what fair fretwork be makes of their double and single
entries. “With that a firm, yet subtle peril, he has embodied Mrs.
Battle’s opinion on what! How notably he embalms a battered bearer;
how delightfully an armour, that was cold forty years ago revives in
his pages ! With what evil distinguished humour he introduces us to
his relation, and how freely leaves up his friends!”
It reflects Lamb's epicurean tastes, his liking of delicious dishes,
like that of a roast pig. Though Lamb calls the essay 'a dissertation*,
it is not a formal treatise. Throughout the essay can be seen a vein of
humour and fun.
The essay, Dissertation upon a roast pig, is full of fun and
humour. The story of accidental discovery of cooking or burning is
quite humorous. The various anecdotes narrated by Lamb provide
occasions of fun and humour which was an essential trait of Lamb's
nature. The roasted pig is humorously called 'mundus edibilis' and
'the chief of the dainties'. There can be nothing but humour in
remarks, such as 'See him in the dish', his second cradle, how meek he
looks. The pine-apple is a humorous simile for the pig. In short, the
essay is full of fun and humour. The essay should be read with a
spirit of light fun and laughter.
Lamb explains the principles of his diction “ Diligent care
has been taken to select such words as might least interrupt the
effect of the beautiful English tongue in which he wrote ; those few
words introduced into our language since his time have been as far as
possible avoided.”
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“ Some things are of that nature as to make one’s fancy chuckle
while his heart doth ache,” wrote Bunyan. The nature of things mostly
appealed to Lamb in that way. Humour with him is never far from
tragedy ; through his tears you may see the rainbow iii the sky ; for
his humour and pathos are really inseparable from one another, they
are different facets of the same gem ; or to change the simile, one
may say that Lamb’s moods, whether grave or gay, are equally the
natural effervescence of an exquisitely mobile imagination.
As a rule he tells the world more about himself than he tells
his friend. This is due to no morbid egotism, no mere loquacity, it
is a necessity of his nature to express himself. In fiction it is the
least apparent, because of the exigencies of this particular art
form. A novelist may dramatize his moods and experiences, and this to
an extent disguises his selfrevelation ; but in the essay form the
intimate confidential note is the most obtrusive, and the disregard
for classical standards and rigidity of form that is peculiar to
romantic literature of all kinds, necessarily helps this self-
revealing process.
For this reason the Essays of Elia especially, and the critical
essays to a less extent, are practically autobiographical fragments,
from which we may reconstruct with little difficulty the inner life
and no little of the outer life of Lamb. In spite of his apparent
carelessness as to the comfort of his brother and sister, Charles
had always retained a strong affection for him. This most
pathetically expressed in Dream Children. The streets of London are
his fairy-land, teeming with wonder – with life and interest to his
retrospective glance, as it did to the eager eye of childhood; he has
contrived to weave its tritest traditions into a bright and endless
romance. To one chief feature of city life, Lamb was indifferent. He
took no interest in politics. Lamb was so thoroughly a lover of the
town.
In the underlying melancholy of his character Lamb resembles
many of the Elizabethans, for melancholy is a common accompaniment of
habits of deep thought, but in Lamb’s case his melancholy was due to
a hereditary taint. His father’s dotage and his sister’s madness have
been mentioned already, and though no actual evidence of madness has
been recorded of his brother John, we find Lamb writing on one
occasion that he has fears for his mind.
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O n e c a n notice the usual wit and humour in this essay. The
description of how a young-chimney sweeper disappears into a chimney
and emerges at the top, is interesting. Similarly, the description of
"Sassafras" tea and the Chimney-sweeper's liking for that is
humorous. Then follows the incident of Lamb's stumbling and falling
on his back in the street causing laughter of a young chimney-
sweeper. The odd reference to young beautiful ladies showing their
"white and shining ossifications" is satirical as well as humorous.
Then the whole account of Jem White is also very interesting. Thus
humour is the chief quality of the essay. As pathos also runs beside
humour in Lamb's writing, mean find moving references about chimney-
sweepers' poverty and fate. He writes, "Reader, if thou meetest one
of these small gentry in thy early rambles, it is good to give him a
penny." Pathos is present also in the description of how these young
chimney-sweepers might have been kidnapped from their aristocratic
homes in their infancy and left to suffer the whole life.
7.7 HUMOUR AND PATHO7S IN CHARLES LAMB’S ESSAYS
Lamb is the supreme essayist of the period and in
English literature because the true art of the essay was born with
him. He ranks very high as an essayist and critic. He is compared
to Addison but he is far, superior to Addison in depth and tenderness
of feeling, and in richness of fancy. Goldsmith comes nearer to Lamb
in delicacy of feeling and sentiment, and also in pathos and humour,
but does not posses Lamb’s exquisiteness and quaintness of fancy.
After all, Lamb is the true inventor of the essay. He was fond of
“out-of the-way humours and opinions – heads with some diverting
twists in them – things quaint, irregular and out of the road of
common sympathy.” In his own style he was woven together into one
charming whole the quaintness’ of the Elizabethan manner, and the
clearness and common source of modern times.
The essays of Elia reveal the charm and endurance of a
personality with a turn for quaint and fantastic humour, melting into
pathos, with sober delight in the things of life, which even the
overshadowing tragedy of his sister’s fabal malady can hardly
repress. In reading his essays we feeling the tragic background of
his life but there is no truck of self-pity to evilest our sympathy,
nor any bravado, nor the garnishing of teeth in important range. His
life is a tragic history “dashed tremendously with gloom,” suffered
with tears, but when read as a whole, it is a tale of conquest and of
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triumph. There is little direct hint of all in his essays. By the
alchemy of his sweeteners of disposition, by the alchemy of poetry,
be seems to have metamorphosed all his troubles into the fancy realm
of dreams, reminiscence, unfulfilled longings, things stored up in
the memory, experiences that should have been forgotten long ago,
sketches of incidents which one would have passed over in life, the
bizarre and fantastic which he seem to have all these enter into his
essays.
“As a contributor to the London Magazine, he evolved the Essays
of Elia, incomparable meditations, reveries, fantasies, on the
accidents and essentials of life and death. There the tenderness,
pathos, and ineffable lavish humour of one of the most lovable
personalities in literature find an expression steeped in rich
allusiveness, quaint with freaks, starting with sudden child like
felicities, and sweet with sighing cadavers. There is no more in
describable book in literature” says G.L. Craik.
The south sea House, Oxford in the vacation, Chief’s hospital
are some of the many essays that reveal the essentially human
interest of the prices. In his essays there may be a hint, now and
then, of things painful (e.g. Dream children), but the painful
realities of life are kept in the region of memory, and are
transmitted to us in shadowy renaissance, “He does not deal with
problems, but in memories of simple things and simple people, often
with the pathos of death on oblivion dinging about these; the sights
of common London and what else is a great city but a collection of
sights?” the chimney – sweepers and the Jews and the actors, the
choice savours of beasts and of fish, the street arise and the
changing bells” (C.H. Herford)
Lamb lives mostly in the world of memories, that has a
brooding fantasy and it ponders softening the outlines of the past
and presenting a clear, through sad picture, which we may think
romantically coloured, but which in tree relatively to the author’s
experience. Pathos becomes a necessary element of each writing. It
reveals his infinite capacity for compassion. He read his personal
experience into the universal suffering of mankind. His style owes
its software grace and charm to this unfailing sense of pathos.
Then again humour in an essential part of his nature. Humour
grace him the detachment of an onlookers – and he could just get away
from his own tragic experience and dispassionately view human
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affairs. The pre-environment gift to humour, most akin to pathos,
touches everything be writes in all its shifting colours. The
romantic essence of things and personalities which he very stuffily
beings out is a part of him humorous understanding and sensibility.
It is love of life – of things essentially human, including weakness
and even vices – that lifts him above the calamities of life.
Lamb’s humour that keeps him human and makes up a large part of
his benign personalities. His humour in a mingling of laughter and
tears. and they are again acrylic laughter tears. He had a comic
view o f l i f e and he could see life and see it steadily and as a
w h o l e . Lamb is represented by the finer shade of perception and
sensibility expressing itself in delicate humour, which in rendered
in language subtle and perfect. What largely describes as a
“ghastly make – believe of humour as a gross judgment. It is rather
diving a veil over the ghastliness of his experience in life. His
humour makes a sense appraisement of life. He does not jest with
life; he cannot for he has known all that is grim in life; but his
humour relieves him of the painfulness and tendencies of life.
“How admirably, he has sketched the former of the south – sea
house; what fair fretwork be makes of their double and single
entries. “With that a firm, yet subtle peril, he has embodied Mrs.
Battle’s opinion on what! How notably he embalms a battered bearer;
how delightfully an armour, that was cold forty years ago revives in
his pages ! With what evil distinguished humour he introduces us to
his relation, and how freely leaves up his friends!
Humour is a necessary equipment of a writer like Lamb who
perforce of black out all that troubles in spirit and turn his
attention to men and things outside himself; now when doing so be
must assessable incongracious elementary in life and he must laugh
inspite of tears. The tender watchfulness with which his humour
invests everything is a quality unique in Lamb – and we look for it
elsewhere in vain “… what sudden unexpected touches of pathos in him!
- beauty witness how the sorrow of humanity the welf schemers, the
constant asking of the wounds, is ever present with him; but what a
gift also for the enjoy of life in its suffleties, of enjoyment
actuality refined by the need of some thoughtful economies and
making.
Lamb’s humour, in all its shifting colours, touches everything he writes. The romantic essence
of things and personalities which he very subtly brings out is a part of his humorous understanding and
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sensibility. His humour, his wistful longing, his haunting sense of the painful realities of life, his loving
interest in his habitat and neighbors, as well as in things that are gone or going and lastly his style and
fancy are all moulded together by his essentially human personality are all of a piece. Hence we cannot
separate his style from his humour. His essays are alive with his being and iridescent with his character
and sensibility, and fully develop all the graces, nobility, tenderness and whimsicality that make Lamb
what he is. Humour lends enchantment to all his reveries, fantasies and speculations, and humour is a
very important element in his character as well as in his writings.
7.8 Let us Sum Up
The genius of Lamb lay in his power of visualizing memories. As
a stylist does he walk in the past, gathering to himself the pleasant
tricks and mannerisms of bygone writers. Passing through Lamb’s
imagination, they become something fresh and individual. The matter
harmonizes with the manner. It also belongs to the past; its charm,
too, is a retrospective one. In his dearly loved haunts it is the
shadow of bygone times that he sees, rather than present actualities;
a vanished face, a hushed voice, a recollected gesture, some familiar
friend from book, the memory of some treasured joyance. But Lamb’ a
memories are not like Wordsworth’s, “ emotions recollected in
tranquility.” He recalls them not to wring from them some spiritual
rapture, or ethical significance, but merely as material for his
intellect and fancy to play upon. He plays with his thoughts the
atmosphere of his mind reflects the pictures that he conjures up
Lamb belonged externally very little to his own time. He
cared nothing for politics on public events, although he was not
sorry when the death of a royal personage gave him a holiday. He
preferred, as he put it, to “write for antiquity.” His life is a
tragic history “dashed tremendously with gloom,” suffered with
tears, but when read as a whole, it is a tale of conquest and of
triumph. There is little direct hint of all in his essays.
7.9 LESSON – END ACTIVITIES:
1. Analyse the distinctive features of Lamb’s essay with reference
to the essays prescribed.
2. Comment on the humour and pathos in Lamb’s essays.
3. Consider Lamb as an Essayist.
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7.10 REFERENCES
Lamb, Charles Essays of Elia, Bombay: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.,
1970.
Lucas; E.V.
Park, Roy The Best Lamb London: Methuea and Co. Ltd., 1966
Lamb as Critic. London: Routledge & Thegan Paul,
1980.
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LESSON - 8
JOHN BUNYAN
THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
Contents
8.0 Aims and Objectives
8.1 The Life of John Bunyan
8.2 Outline of The Pilgirm’s Progress
8.3 Style and Technique
8.4 Pilgrim’s Progress as an Allegory
8.5 Let Us Sum Up
8.6 Lesson – End Activities
8.7 References
8.0 Aims and Objectives
This lesson costs light on one of the works of John Bunyan,
entitled “The Pilgrim’s Progress” By reading this lesson, you will be
aware of the life history of Bunyan and his contributions with style
and techniques.
8.1 The Life of John Bunyan
John Bunyan was born at Elstow near Bedford in 1628. His father
was a tinker by trade, and he brought up his son also in the same
job. There is no record of his having gone to any school, but in the
years of the Civil War, lie was drafted into the army, but stayed in
it for little more than a year. For he returned to his native village
in 1645 while the Civil War was still in progress, and married in
1649—the year of the king's trial and execution—a poor girl who
brought him curiously enough two old books as her dowry! These were
well-known religious tracts entitled ' Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven'
and ' The Practice of Piety." In 1653 he became a member of a small
Christian oommumfes-whioh had no other dogma except to follow the
teachings of Christ implicitly. Thereafter Bunyan began to address
small groups of his acquaintances and the public on the message of
Christianity as he understood it.
There were severe laws enacted against unofficial and
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unauthorised preachers who began to multiply in all parts of the land.
Bunyan was arrested in 1660 for disobeying the law and sent to
Bedford jail where he dwelt till the year 1679. In those twelve years
he wrote in jail a number of religious discourses such as ' Christian
Behaviour,' ' The Holy City', 'The Resurrection of the Dead* and
'Grace Abounding.' From 1672 to 1675 he laboured as a licensed
preacher, but in the latter year the freedom given to Dissenters was
withdrawn and he was again sent to jail for six months in 1675. It
was during the period of his second imprisonment that he wrote in
Bedford jail the first part of ' The Pilgrim's Progress.' It was
published in 1678 .
Then followed a series of other books from his pen in
too-following years. Chief of them were ' The Life and Death of Mr.
Badman (1680). 'The Holy War' (1682), and the second part of ' The
Pilgrim's Progress ' (1684). After labouring zealously as a preacher
among his fellow-townsmen, he at last died in 1688. Altogether he
wrote about sixty books, all of religious appeal. But ' The Pilgrim's
Pro g r e s s ' became a best seller even in his life-time, and has
remained one of the world's classics ever since. It has since been
translated into almost all the languages of the world. "
8.2 OUTLINE OF THE PILGIRM’S PROGRESS
The journey of the Christian occurs in three different stages
and stands a good comparison to the life journey of every individual
with the temporal things of the world and secondly he is pre-occupied
with self love. The last stage deals with the Christian’s full and
victorious living with God, his total surrender and sanctification
and the heavenly bliss accruing to him from his intimate association
with him.
At the very outset Christian is seeking deliverance from the
enmeshing and enervating influences o f t h e City of Destruction.
Though obstinate resolves to pursue him, to change his purpose,
Christian is able to overcome him because he is firm in seeking an
inheritance, which is incorruptible and undefiled. The company of
Pliable is responsible for driving him to the Slough of Despond.
There arises in him fears, doubts and discouraging apprehensions.
For the deliverance from the burden of sin that he is carrying
on the back the Evangelist leads him to Calvary and throws light upon
the meaning of the death of Jesus Christ. The Worldly wise man of the
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town of Carnal Policy, Legality of the village called Morality and
Civility try to mislead and misguide Christian.
During the course of his pilgrimage in the way of the cross,
there are numerous temptations for him to burn back. The love of
earthly comforts, the priority of tender family ties, are some of the
primary hindrances to his true discipleship. As he walks through the
wicket gate and reaches the house of Interpreter, many truths about
Christ and Satan, Salvation, sanctification, Second coming and about
the life of this world, and that of which is to come are revealed to
him.
The First stage of Christian’s spiritual-journey ends with his
thrilling experience of Salvation. The load of sins rolls away at
the vision of the cross. The redemption which is in Christ Jesus has
a specific beginning, a specific working out in Christian’s life and
ultimately a specific conclusion, a goal, a mark towards which he is
pressing. Since his assurance of salvation is securely based, his
progress is not deterred by Simple, Sloth, Presumption, Formalist,
Hypocrisy and Vain glory who come along his way.
As Christian climbs up the Hill of Difficulty, clambering upon
his hands and his knees, life seems to be filled with innumerable
cares and disappointments, penetrating care and sorrow which become a
heavy weight and impede him and make him grow slack in his running
race and reaching the goal. As a result Timorous and Mistrust
encounter him, and a sense of fear and guilt arise in him making him
feel helpless.
In the early stages of his journey Christian moves through an
inhospitable terrain, where he must take refuge in a way station such
as House Beautiful and where evidences of divine favor are fleeting
and mysterious for example, the hand that appears with leaves from
the Tree of Life to heal Christian’s wounds when he is in the Valley
of Humiliation. When Christian keeps on his way and faces Apollyon,
he is not inspired by any martial ardour. He goes on because he
remembers that he has armour for his chest but not for his back, so
that turning tail would be the most dangerous thing he could do.
The way of the cross involves Christian passing through the
valley of Humiliation, with a direct encounter with Apollyon, the
devil, whom Christian successfully overcomes him. The Valley of the
Shadow of Death is an inevitable place in the way of the
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cross.Chsristian accompanied by Faithful reaches the town of Vanity
Fair, where all worldly things, transactions, places, honours,
desires, titles, kingdoms, lust, pleasure and all kinds of delights
and evils prevail. The people of the town sentence faithful to death
and imprison Christian who finally manages to escape with the help of
God. Hopeful is another interesting character who joins Christian.
Though they encounter Mr. Hold-The-World, Mr. Money-love and Mr.
Save-All, whom successfully overcome.
In the progress of Christian the field of Ease is another
barrier. Though he is trapped and imprisoned in the Doubting Castle
by giant Despair, he makes use of the key of promise and successfully
escapes from the Doubting Castle. As he reaches the Immanuel’s land,
he gains more knowledge, experience and become more watchful and
sincere. In the continuation of their journey, despite the words of
Flatterer, ignorance and the Atheist they never waver in their faith.
Christian is in inclined to be impulsive and passionate. He
runs part of the way up the Hill of Difficulty, and it is he who, by
overruling Hopeful’s good advice and taking a short cut, leads them
both into By-Path Meadow and to Doubting Castle. He is too ready to
jump to conclusions, fearing that all hope is gone when he loses his
roll of election in the Arbour, or beginning to sink when his doubts
return upon him in the crossing of the River.
Christian’s actions describe a progression through stages of
spiritual life proceeds from an initial conviction of sin that lands
him in the Slough of Despond to the instruction in Scripture that he
receives in the Interpreter’s House and through the various trials of
the major part of the journey until he finally arrives at the
assurance of God’s mercy represented by Beulah. The more violent,
and dramatic, assaults on Christian’s faith come early – the most
violent, that of Apollyon, soon after he has put on the Pauline
armour of the solider of Christ. The transition from the Valley of
Humiliation to the Valley of the Shadow of Death makes sense in terms
o f C hristian’s experience; he has just faced the prospect of
annihilation in the battle with Apollyon. After escaping the fiends
of the Valley of the Shadow, Christian must face the hostile society
of Vanity Fair. Later Christian encounters more subtle kinds o f
temptations, involving fraud or deceptive appearances Demas, By-Path
Meadow, Flatterer, the seductive appeal of the Enchanted Ground for
the pilgrim nearing the end of his journey.
The Delectable Mountains constitute a spiritual height
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attained only by the stalwart ‘For but few of them that begin to come
hither, do shew their face on these Mountains,’ remark the shepherds
on which Christian and Hopeful anticipate pleasures to be realized
more fully in Beulah. The ‘Gardens, and Orchards, the Vineyards, and
Fountains of water’ serve as tangible proof of God’s marvellous
bounty. When Christian reaches Beulah the gate of the New Jerusalem
is ‘within sight’ and he is able to solace himself with delights of
the place: flowers, singing birds, ‘abundance’ of corn and wine, and
, not least, the presence of ‘Shining Ones’.
The Delectable Mountains suggest a large region named
Immanuel’s land that embodies the promise of salvation, Beulah a
whole ‘country’. By the time Christian and Hopeful have reached the
River of Life the landscape itself sustains them; it is an oasis
where they may ‘lie down safely’ and enjoy the life giving fruit and
water of the place.
In addition to the River of Life the springs and fountains
that Christian encounters in his journey, beginning with the spring
at the foot of the hill Difficulty, embody the ‘Spirit of grace’. As
Christian drinks these waters, and eats the fruit of the Tree of Life
and of the vineyards of Beulah and the Delectable Mountains, he may
be said to grow in spiritual strength and vitality.
The delights of Beulah suggest the high level of spiritual
satisfaction that can be attained by the faithful in this life, but
Chrisitian must cross the river, a spiritual Jordan to reach the true
promised land.
Bunyan shows his pilgrims, ‘transfigured’ by their heavenly
garments, entering into a state of bliss and rest that surpasses
anything they could have known in the world and justifies all the
trials they have endured there. The holy joy that they experience can
be attained only in the presence of God, in the act of praising him.
We last see Christian and Hopeful as they blend into the festive
chorus of angels and saints singing: ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord’
(p.162).
Pilgrim’s Progress consists of two parts, each complete in
itself. The first recounts the full journey of the pilgrim, who was
called Graceless and is now known as Christian, from the City of
Destruction to the Celestial City. Concerned as it is with the
individual, this first part presents one facet of the Christian life,
and does not deal primarily with the larger life of the Christian
community.
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“The second part of The Pilgrim’s Progress (1684), which is
the story of Christian’s wife and children on their way to Paradise,
is much inferior to Part I. At the outset, it was Bunyan’s idea to
have Mr. Sagacity tell the story to the Dreamer; then, apparently, he
realized the clumsiness of this plan, and Sagacity was summarily
dropped. Bunyan seems now to be writing for women and children. But
a picturesque narrative needs a hero, not a heroine.
“At the outset, Bunyan substituted an assault on Christina’s
chastity for the physical combats in which her husband had
participated. But he unable to do much with it, and in any event
such a device could not very well have been repeated. When combats do
occur, it is not Christina but her guide, Greatheart, who is involved
in them. There is a adventure and more exposition in Part II, then in
Part I and much of it is dismal. Even the death of Giant Despair,
which ought to have been a climax to the thrilling adventure of Part
I, is comparatively tame.
“Yet there are touches as fine as anything in Bunyan.
Greatheart himself,
Mr. Valiant for Truth, Mr. Honest, and Madame Bubble are all
memorable characters. Abstractions come to life as of old in those
weak Christians, Mr. Fearing and Mr. Fearing and Mr. Feeblemind –
how wise, how tender, and how deeply Christian Bunyan is in his
treatment of them! When Ready to Halt dances with Despondency’s
daughter, Much-Afraid, there is a w e l c o m e touch of humour. When
Mercy falls in love with Christian’s son, Matthew, and marries him
and bears him a child, we are coming close to the novel of domestic
life. Finally they cross the River. Despondency’s daughter went over
singing, ‘but none could understand what she said.’ With Mr. Valiant-
for-Truth the situation was different ‘all the Trumpets sounded for
him on the other side.’
8.3 STYLE AND TECHNIQUE
Considering the real qualities of the novel, ocean find it very hard
to discover one which is not eminently present in Pilgrim’s Progress.
It has a sufficient and regular plot in each of its parts, the two
being duly connected – a plot rather of the continuous or straight –
line than of the interwoven or circular order, but still amply
sufficient. The action and interest of this plot rather of the
continuous or straight – line than of the interwoven or circular
order, but still amply sufficient. The action and interest of this
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plot are quite lavishly supported by character; indeed, the Pilgrim’s
Progress is the first prose work of fiction in which this all-
powerful tool, which had hitherto been chiefly used by the dramatist,
and to a less intense, but more extensive, degree by the poet, was
applied.
The description and the dialogue are used to further the
narrative, in the precise way in which novel differs from Drama – the
description being given by the author, not by the characters or the
stage directions – and are mixed and tempered with an art only
inferior to that shown in the projection of character which they
help.
In his relations with Faithful and Hopeful there is some room
for the play of temperament as well as a generalised picture of
Christian comradeship. The theological passages have a firm
intellectual structure. In contrast, in the minor characters
something that can be called literary art is displayed in its full
subtlety it is the art of the traditional popular sermon judiciously
fusing moral doctrine and dramatic reality into economical vignettes.
In the portraits of heretics and backsliders, after we have taken in
the introductory catch-word of a moralised name, Ignorance or Ready –
to – halt, we slip from allegory to genre studies of flesh and blood.
Ignorance is ‘a very brisk lad’. Talkative is ‘a tall man, and
something more comely at a distance than at hand.
The skilful, dissecting humour of the portrait of Ignorance may
serve to illustrate the quality of all these studies of heretics and
backsliders Ignorance is young and some what ingenuous; he is not a
corrupt old time-server like By-Ends, or a pompous authoritarian prig
like Worldly Wiseman.
The grammatical arrangement is loose but never sloppy, a series
of parallel clauses and sentences; if they naively run on, they are
never allowed to pile up too much and cause confusion. An emphatic
pause, like that before the last sentence, serves to make the
structure of meaning absolutely clear. The slight but pleasing music
of the short clauses, varying in length but only varying a little,
creates a transparent medium for dramatic effects. The simpler the
prose statement, the more humorous or poignant implications can show
through it.
The prose has a range extending through this serviceable,
fairly neutral medium, to a rough, vivid colour in words and phrases
from racy, country speech. The language is studded with popular
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proverbs sometimes it is hard to tell whether a phrase not recorded
elsewhere is a rare proverb or simply the creation of the proverbial
imagination.
Major force is Bunyan’s own speech and tone of voice, modified
by the use he had put it to in order to express personal religious
experience and by his training as a popular preacher. Where the
Bible is dominant is in the though and structure of the work. First,
in the great metaphors of wayfaring and struggle, but also in nearly
every important episode.
The Valley of the Shadow, Vanity Fair, the houses of
entertainment for pilgrims modeled on the life of the apostles in the
Acts, the final bourne of the Heavenly City – all by the creative
ferment of the native imagination expand hints and suggestions into
full-scale drama. The dream is frame; it is also the process by
which the native imagination was able to crack the narrow sectarian
pattern and free the Biblical truths to describe the way of the
people of God in living terms. Christian undertakes his journey
because he believes his hometown is going to be destroyed by fire.
Lively characterization, of course, constitutes a major
strength of The Pilgrim’s Wiseman and Talkative and Pliable. But the
spirit and quality of Bunyan’s art in this respect are not adequately
suggested in terms of the characters in the book that are observed
satirically; there is no lack in his characterization of sympathetic
perception and rendering or of warm human feeling.
The encounter of Christian and Hopeful with the shepherds of
the Delectable Mountains provides a revealing illustration of
Bunyan’s ability to combine the two basic senses of the metaphor of
the way. This episode offers one of the best examples in T h e
Pilgrim’s Progress of the subjectivity of the individual way of
faith:
Christian . Is this the way to the Celestial City?
Shepherd . You are just in your way.
Christian. How far is it thither?
Shepherd. Too far for any, but those that shall get thither
indeed.
Christian. Is the way safe, or dangerous?
Shepherd. Safe for those for whom it is to be safe, but
transgressors shall fall therein.
The deliberate ambiguity forces one to recognize that the
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nature of the way its length and the specific dangers to be
encountered depends upon the faith of the individual pilgrim.
Christian’s faith exists only in this ‘time present’ because faith
must be renewed continuously.
One cannot overemphasize the importance of his final episode
to the structure of The Pilgrim’s Progress and the experience of its
contemporary readers. The emotional intensity of Bunyan’s narrative,
as it rises to a series of peaks leading up to the moment of
Christian’s and Hopeful’s reception into the New Jerusalem, registers
in unmistakable fashion his own estimation of how far his pilgrims
have progressed.
Bunyan’s rendering of the glory of heaven, and of the
preliminary delights of Beulah, is one of the great triumphs of the
Puritan imagination and the ultimate justification of his use of the
metaphor of the journey. The climatic episodes of The Pilgrim’s
Progress bring the reader all the way from the ‘carnal’ world in
which the narrative began up to the contemplation of a transcendent
world whose reality is validated by the word.
In the terms of Bunyan’s narrative one can gain entrance to
heaven only by learning to understand the visible world of ordinary
experience in the metaphoric terms established by the Word: as an
alien, and ultimately insubstantial country through which God’s
people must journey until they attain the ultimate satisfaction of
communion with God. To accept this mode of thought is to see in the
Exodus a pattern explaining and assuring the deliverance of the
faithful of all items.
8.4 PILGRIM’S PROGRESS AS AN ALLEGORY
The allegory in “The Pilgrim’s Progress” helps to give us a
clear idea of the various difficulties and obstacles, temptations
that lie in the path of any one who wants to reach God. Christian is
the personification of an ideal Christian, simple, honest and good,
who has an earnest desire to save his soul and secure eternal life in
Heaven.
Christian in a restless frame of mind, is weighed down by the
consciousness of his sins. Domestic happiness leaves him cold. He
is sick of the world and its sins. His thoughts are on salvation.
His family and his friends first treat this as a physical ailment and
later deride him as crazy. Thus the path to salvation is shown to
him and all alone he sets out to seek it.
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Christian’s dramatic flight from his family-with his fingers
in his ears and crying, Life, Life, Eternal Life the expect the
Gospel demands that one loses his life in order to save it (Mark
8:35) and further that one leaves his family in order to follow
Christ(Luke 15:26) if one chooses the way of Christ, one will
necessarily appear foolish in the eyes of the world.
The world tries to drag him back. Very soon despondency
overtakes him. This is natural as he is mentally lonely. Soon
however he gets over it. The world in the shape of Mr. Wiseman tries
to claim him back. For a short while he is taken in by Mr. Wiseman,
Soon he recollects the worlds of God’s Interpreter and cleanses his
mind of all thoughts of self-indulgence.
He receives good advice and directions from men of good will
and this encourages him. He meets one who interprets to him God’s
ways and illustrates the dangers of worldly temptations. This
spiritual guidance from one well versed in the spirit of God’s
teachings is of great help to him. And soon his conscience is
cleared of its sins and he feels very free and light-hearted. But he
is yet open to attacks from the world. Formalism and hypocrisy try
to show him short-cuts to heaven. But he sufficiently developed to
discard such devices as signs of self-deception.
The process acquiring spiritual exaltation is very rigorous.
Christian has his weakness in him. He relaxes and indulges in sloth.
This weakens his moral tone and so he becomes a prey to timidity and
lack of confidence. But his better nature asserts itself and be soon
repents his temporary lapse. He bravely faces the dangers on the way
and this matures new aspects in his mind. In the Palace, Beautiful,
Discretion, Prudence, Pity and Charity enlighten him and give him a
new armour to resist the physical terrors of the world in the shape
of Appollyon. Then for a while he has to grope along amidst the
fogs, pitfalls and dangers of the world, through the valley of the
Sh a d o w o f Death. By keeping his mind resolutely on God he wins
through. And with this be acquires a great mental equipment,
unshakable faith in God. He easily sees through. And with this he
acquires a great mental equipment, unshakable faith in God. He
easily sees through Talkative who cares only for the form and not the
spirit of religion.
T h e w o rldly forces beset him again in another guise. In the
Vanity Fair all the allurements, wiles and wickedness of the world
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beset him. With staunch faith he overcomes these. He develops in
this process another noble quality, Hope. He is by now morally well
developed and is able to nail By-ends lies. Wealth ceases to hold
any allurement for him. He ignores the call of wealth as reflected in
the episode with Demas.
He indulges himself and pays the price of easy by getting his
mind clouded over with doubt. Soon he becomes very desperate.
Despair and hope wage a war in his heart. Despair is driven off and
hope triumphs. Now he is on an elevated mental plane from which he is
able to glimpse the truth of heaven and also understand the danger of
worldly indulgence and ignorance. The delectable mountains depict
his high mental and moral development.
He is proof against ignorance. But flattery leads him astray
and lands him in trouble. He however gets over this weakness too.
Yet another obstacle in the shape of Atheism confronts him. But this
has no power over Christian. Still the danger of falling a pray to
self-indulgence remains a constant threat. Christian gets over this
by concentrating on God and His teachings.
And finally he faces death. He has still some worldly
weakness in him. His hope of salvation is shaken and he begins to be
afraid of death. But ultimately hope sustains him and he faces death
with courage. Thus he reaches heaven. The entire pilgrimage is a
figurative illustration of the psychological struggle inside man who
wants to attain God. Man can attain mental and moral eminence only
by battling against his base inclinations i.e. by conquering his
thirst for worldly pleasures. Fortitude, austerity, faith, hope are
the primary qualities needed by man to attain salvation.
The Doubting Castle episode proves that Christian can lose the
way at a relatively late point in the journey through overconfidence,
not that he has failed to grow in faith and understanding. In
Doubting Castle Christian is baffled and dismayed by the fact that it
seems impossible either to defeat his enemy or to get his key. The
brilliance of the episode lies in the fact that Bunyan makes escape
seemingly so difficult yet paradoxically so easy; Christian has only
to remember that Scripture has provided him with his own key, a
solution that comes to him as a result of prayer.
Christian again lapses into doubt at the River of Death, this
time a paralyzing ‘ darkness and horror’ that causes him to forget
temporarily the ‘ sweet refreshments’ he had met with in the way and
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the assurance they had given him of reaching the ‘ Land that flows
with Milk and Honey’. Bunyan’s emphasis upon the ‘ sorrows of
death’ does not subvert the metaphor of the journey it merely
indicates his acute sense of the dangers of this final obstacle, even
for those who have persevered in the way of holiness. Reaching the
plane of assurance represented by Beulah does not relieve one of the
necessity of making the crossing.
Christian continues to be vulnerable to doubt throughout his
pilgrimage because Bunyan believed that faith could never be
completely secure in this world. But his doubts are prompted by very
different kinds of trials, appropriate to different stages of the
journey, and in each case we are reminded of what has gone before.
Christiana’s journey presents a clearer, less interrupted sense of
progress, of course, because her way is so much easier.
To understand the nature of Christian’s spiritual progress
one must look more closely at the stages of his journey, particularly
at his experience in such places as the Delectable Mountains and
the land of Beulah. Those episodes that mark Christians growing
awareness of divine favour serve to establish the truth embodied
in the biblical metaphor of the journey and hence to convince the
reader that the goal for which Christian strives is real.
Bunyan’s narrative insists that the claims of the way and
those of the world are mutually exclusive. The pilgrim must set his
course ‘against Wind and Tide’ as Christian increasingly realizes.
Faithful relates that he has learned to ignore the ‘ hectoring
spirits of the world’ because he recognizes that ‘ what God says, is
best, though all the men in the world are against it.
The Vanity Fair episode constitutes the most important
statement of the warfare between spirit and flesh in The Pilgrim’s
Progress. The whole episode illustrates the necessity of choosing
between two modes of life that are irreconcilable, between ‘ carnal
sense’ and ‘things to come’, to use the distinction made for
Christian by Interpreter. All the assumptions about the end of human
activity that underlie Vanity Fair, and the indulgence of ‘ fleshly
appetite’ that they allow, can be comprehended in the term ‘ carnal
sense’.
The Valley of Humiliation, the Valley of the Shadow of Death,
the Delectable Mountains, and the other landscapes that Christian
must traverse define a world that is open only to those who believe
in the Word sufficiently to seek the goal that he does. These
landscapes do not exist for Pliable, who refuses to enter the
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spiritual country to which they belong, or for Atheist, who cannot
find it. The topography of this country is determined largely by
Bunyan’s experience of Scripture, and the key to Christian’s progress
through it is his understanding of the power of the word.
Christian’s near disaster in his struggle with Apollyon
suggests that this understanding does not come easily. The education
in the Gospel that he has received from Evangelist, Interpreter, and
the inhabitants of House Beautiful prepares him to resist Apolyon’s
arguments successfully. Yet his failure in the physical combat that
follows suggests that Christian is deficient in faith and needs the
intervention of the Spirit to be able to manage his sword.
The Gate by which the pilgrim enters upon the way is Christ,
according to the symbolism by which Jesus had declared, ‘I am the
door’. This identification of Christ with the Gate is explicit in
Part II (‘the Gate which is Christ’) of The Pilgrim’s Progress but is
clearly implicit here, so that the Christian begins with the
incarnation and moves on toward God. Men tend to assume they can know
God as he is, often judging Christ by his conformity to a prior human
image of God. Christianity, however, denies that finite and sinful
creatures can know God, with any great clarity, apart from Christ.
Bunyan thus indicates that the pilgrim knows virtually nothing of God
until he enters the Gate which God has provided, and that henceforth,
his knowledge increases as he advances along the route of pilgrimage.
From the total number of the pilgrims in both parts of the
allegory, we see the various types of Christian life and t h e
problems, temptations, and joys incident to each. Not all the
pilgrims set out for the same reason, and each has a somewhat
different experience of the way. Christian leaves the City of
Destruction because of a compelling sense of doom, and a sort of
numinous fear, so that he sets out with less sense of his goal than
of his need.
As Augustine put it, ‘Christ as God is the fatherland where we
are going; Christ as man is the way by which we go’. The way is the
same, but the wayfarers differ and, therefore, so does the wayfaring.
Each learns for himself and in terms of his own character ‘how to act
faith’ (213), to use the words of Christiana, and each increases in
the love for God and for God’s people, which is the only ultimately
satisfactory motive for acting the Christian faith.
The pilgrims who complete the journey from destruction to
fulfillment do so out of ‘the love that they bear to the King of this
place’(172), and they continue in the way only because, like
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Christian, they prefer the person, company, and servants of Christ
over the enticements of Apollyon (6I-2). No other motivation is
ultimately sufficient to sustain the pilgrims in the completion of so
difficult a way. Each who perseveres does so in order that, as young
Samuel puts it, ‘I may see God, and serve him without weariness; that
I may see Christ and love him everlastingly; that I may have that
fullness of the Holy Spirit in me, that I can by no means here
enjoy’(238). Heaven is sought not because it is ‘a palace and state
most blessed’, but because God is the center of heaven, and it is
only for that reason that heaven is the palace and state most
blessed(238).
The love of God, then, is clearly central. Without it, man’s
alienation cannot be overcome, or his fulfillment attained. We have
developed in some detail, in Chapter 3, the threefold alienation from
which Adams suffers, as his sin sets him at odds with God, with his
neighbour, and with himself. This isolation of the self is overcome,
as we have seen, only by reconciliation with God, and this
reconciliation comes in its turn only through the action of God
himself, in and through Christ.
In Christ, God acts so that his justice and mercy, his power
and his love, are at one, and it is only through such divine action
that man can be rescued from imprisonment to his own self-critical or
self-satisfied self. No merely human efforts will suffice, for, as
Hopeful says of himself, man commits enough sin in one duty to seal
his own isolation; Augustine says, our greatest virtues are but
splendid vices (149). Man, then, must enter through the one Gate.
8.5 Let us Sum Up
The reader is led through his own stages of pilgrimage in the
way of the cross as he reads “The Pilgrim’s Progress”. The Pilgrim’s
Progress” is one of the very few books, which may be read over
repeatedly at different times and each time with a new and different
pleasures for it is a lively portrait of everyman’s life in
pilgrimage for it is a lively portrait of everyman’s life in
pilgrimage in the way of the cross.
8.6 Lesson – End Activities:
1. Account for the popularity of Bunyan’s on the Pilgrim’s
Progress.
2. Write an essay on the Pilgrim’s Progress as an allegory.
3. What are the significant features of Bunyan’s writing?
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8.7 References
Raju, Anand Kumar The Pilgrims’ Progress New Delhi, Macmillan Indian
Ltd., 1999.
Keeble. N.H. John Banyan : The Pilgrims Progress Oxford :
Oxford University Press 1984.
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Unit – IV
Lesson - 9
JONATHAN SWIFT
GULLIVER’S TRAVELS
Contents
9.0 Aims and Objectives
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Life & Works of Swift
9.3 Outline of the Story
9.4 Gulliver’s Travels as an Allegory
9.5 The Moral Vision of Swift
9.6 Gulliver’s Travels as a Satire on Man.
9.7 Gulliver’s Travels as a Political Satire
9.8 Gulliver’s Travels as a Satire on Humanity
9.9 Style and Technique of Gulliver’s Travels
9.10 Let Us Sum Up
9.11 Lesson – End Activities
9.12 References
9.0 Aims and Objectives
This lesson aims at presenting you all things about Jonathan
Swift; a greatest prose satirist of the eighteenth century. That
includes his life and works, outline of the Gulliver’s Travels, his
style and techniques, and his moral vision.
9.1 Introduction
Swift is the greatest prose satirist of the eighteenth
century. No other major English writer is so charged with the spirit
of satire as Swift. His entire work is satirical in tone. “Swift's
apparent malignity arose from a great love of his fellow-creatures,
soured by continual disappointment in their nobility, and from a
love of truth and of righteousness that on every hand he saw trampled
under foot." His personal life also contributed in making him a
ferocious satirist. "He was disappointed in material ambition, a
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victim of hope deferred ; far sadder, he was debarred from conjugal
love, either by his fear of madness or by some other and more
mysterious ban." His works are a satire on humanity. He uses irony to
drive home a point. He sounds profounder depths and exhibits a cosmic
humour.
9.2 LIFE & WORKS OF SWIFT
Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin on the 30th of
November, 1667, of English parents living in Ireland.
He was graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, with
some difficulty because of his refusal to study logic
and he left Ireland for England at the time of the
Revolution (1688). His writings rather strangely
began with a group of Pindaric Odes, of which he
published only one. At Moor Park he wrote his first
and very important prose. A Tale of a Tub and The
Battle of the Books, which he published in 1704.
Gulliveer’s Travels was published in 1726.
The Demands of the reading public during the
Augustan age was met by the growth of periodicals
like “The Idler”, “The Tatler”, “The Spectator”, “The
Examiner”. This age was marked by a love of reason,
proportion and balance. Thus this era has been
rightly named. The Age of Prose and Reason.
Swift’s early prose masterpieces – A Tale of a
Tub and The Battle of the Books had their origin in
the so called quarrel between the Ancients and the
Moderns, which Temple’s essay of Ancient and Modern
Learning (1690) had fanned into flame. Swift
completed his masterpiece Guliver’s Travels in 1725.
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As a whole Gulliver’s Travels has the multiple
intention of a masterpiece; it can be read by
children for its narrative and descriptive charm; it
can be read by learned historians as an allegory of
the political life of Swift’s time; it can be read as
a burlesque of voyage literature; it can be read as a
masterpiece of misanthropy; it is perhaps best read
as the ingenious reflections of a thoughtful man on
the abuses of human reason.
..2..
In the first voyage a complex political allegory
is at work based on Swift’s own experience of
politics in Queen Ann’s reign. It focuses attention
on the corruptions of court life. The second voyage
takes Gulliver to the land of giants where the human
body seems loathsome when seen in its magnified form.
The satire reaches its climax in the denunciation of
the entire human race by the king. In the third
Voyage Swift attacks every kind of impractical
scholarship and vain philosophy and the absurd and
pretentious schemes of economist and promoters. The
fourth voyage to Hounhmland, where animal man, the
Yahoo, is contrasted with the “Perfection of nature”
seen in the Houyhnhnms who are figured as horses.
9.3 Outline of the Story
Gulliver”s Travels records four voyages of one
Lemuel Gulliver, and his adventures in four
astounding countries. The first book tells of his
voyage and shipwreck in Lilliput, where the
inhabitants are about as tall as one’s thumb, and all
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their acts and motives are on the same dwarfish
scale. In the petty quarrels of these dwarfs the
littleness of humanity is highlighted. The statesmen
who obtain place and favor by cutting monkey capers
on the tight rope before their sovereign, and the two
great parties, the Littleendians and Bigendians, who
plunge the country into civil war over the momentous
question of whether an egg should be broken on its
big or on its little end, are satires on the politics
of Swift’s own day and generation. The style is
simple and convincing; the surprising situations and
adventures are as absorbing as those of Defoe’s
masterpiece ; and altogether it is the most
interesting of Swift’s satires.
On the Second voyage Gulliver is abandoned in
Brobdingnag, where the inhabitants are giants, and
everything is done upon an enormous scale. The
meanness of humanity seems all the more detestable in
view of the greatness of these superior beings. When
Gulliver tells about his own people, their ambitions
and was and conquests, the giants can only wonder
that such great venom could exist in such little
insects.
In the third voyage Gulliver continue s h i s
adventures in Laputa, and this is a satire upon all
the scientists and philosophers. Laputa is a flying
island, held up in the air by a loadstone ; and all
the professors of the famous academmy at Lagado are
of the same airy constitution. The philospher who
worked eight years to extract sunshine from cucumbers
is typical of Swift’s satirtic treatment of all
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scientific problems.
It is in this voyage that we hear of the
Struldbrugs, a ghastly race of men wtio are doomed to
live upon earth after losing hope and the desire for
life. The picture is all the more terrible in view
of the last years of Swift’s own life, in which he
was completed to live on, a burden to himself and his
friends.
In these three voyages the evident purpose is to
strip off the veil of habit and custom, with which
men deceive themselves, and show the crude vices of
humanity as Swift fancies he sees them. In the
fourth voyage the merciless satire is carried out to
its logical conclusion. This brings us to the land
of the Houyhnhnms, in which horses, superior and
intelligent creatures, are the ruling animals. All
our interest, however, is centered on the Yahoos, a
frightful race, having the form and appearance of
men, but living in unspeakable degradation.
There are four ‘books’ in Gulliver’s Travels:
the story of the ships doctor who goes first to the
land of people six inches tall to Lilliput, then to
Bobaingnay a land of giants seventy two feet tall to
Brobdingnag next to Laputa a Floating island and
other places and finally to the land of horses. As
he wrote to Pope : The chief end and purpose of my
labour is to vex the world rather than divert it.
In this satire Swift aims shrewd blows at
personal enemies, especially Robert Walpole, the
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first Prime Minister a Whig, a man known for
permitting and indulging in corruption and one who,
Swift felt sure, was keeping him from advancing. In
Lilliput Swift’s shows Walpole walking the tight-rope
an inch higher than the other ministers and managing
to keep his equilibrium, ridiculi n g w a l p o l e ’ s
‘agility’ in retaining office.
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9.4 GULLIVER’S TRAVELS AS AN ALLEGORY
In the words of Kathleen Williams, “Its sharp
contrast in method, with the grotesque figures of the
Laputans and the excursions into magic and
immortality, certainly breaks the atmosphere of moral
realism which pervades the voyages to Lilliput,
Brobdingnag, and Houyhnhnm-land; even the rational
horses belong to a world of morality, not of
fantasy…. "Voyage to Laputa" can be considered as an
allegorical presentation of the evils of a frivolous
attitude to life.” The flying island presents a
political philosophy and a comment on man’s
relationship to nature.
The balance of power, and the delicate relation-
ships which subsist between a monarch and those whom
he governs, could scarcely be better represented than
by conditions in Laputa and Balnibarbi. The Laputan
king, for all his knowledge of cosmic circumstance,
for all the ingenuity of his flying island, is yet
dependent upon the firm earth beneath him for every
movement Laputa can make; for all his theoretic
achievement man is, in practice, dependent upon and
circumscribed by other men and by laws of nature, of
which he can take a certain limited advantage but
which he can neither alter nor, finally, explain.
For example, the astronomers of Laputa,
although they have written "large Systems concerning
the Stone" whose movements control the course of the
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flying island, can give no better reason for the
inability of Laputa to rise above four miles, or to
move beyond the extent of the King's continental
dominions, than the self-evident one "That the
Magnetick Virtue does not extend beyond the Distance
of four Miles, and that the Mineral which acts upon
the Stone in the Bowels of the Earth, and in the Sea
about Six Leagues distant from the Shoar, is not
diffused through the whole Globe, but terminated with
the Limits of the King's Dominions. Their pursuit of
second causes ends in inscrutable mystery, which
their confident exposition can only conceal, not
clarify.
The Laputans have indeed lost their human
quality in their abnormal absorption in things remote
from the concerns of men. They make little physical
effect upon us, for their outer aspect is as
unnatural, as purely emblematic, as that of a
personification like Spenser's Occasion: "One of
their Eyes turned inward, and the other directly up
to the Zenith" because they are completely absorbed
in their own speculations and in the study of the
stars. Their interests are entirely abstract, and
they see nothing of the everyday practical world,
ignoring the knowledge of the senses.
They scorn the evidence of the sences, the
Laputans are “very bad Reasoners”. These strange
figures are akin not only to the mechanical operators
but more closely to the spider-like world-makers. One
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eye looks outward, but only to a remote world of
abstractions where, in the regular motions of the
heavens, mathematics and music join. One eye looks
inward, to the mind where systems are spun out of a
"Native Stock," not built up from that basis of
observed fact which, however faulty our senses, is
yet the only material upon which our reason can work
constructively and practically. Laputan thinking
produces results as flimsy and useless as a cobweb—
G u l l i v e r ' s i l l -fitting soil/file devastated
countryside of Balnibarbi.
The Laputans are absorbed in music, mathematics and
astronomy. They spend hours at their instruments,
preparing themselves to join in the music of the
spheres, which they claim to be able to hear. Since
mankind is traditionally deaf to this music because
of the grossness of the senses through sin, the claim
implies that the Laputans believe themselves to have
escaped from such tyranny.
The Laputans cut themselves off completely from all
that is humanly creative and constructive. Even their
food approaches as nearly as possible to the rarefied
atmosphere in which they live, for their meat is
carved into geometrical shapes and their poultry
trussed up "into the Form of Fiddles." 6 Nor have
they any conception of physical or sensuous beauty,
since they see beauty only in mathematical
abstractions, and judge not by sense impressions but
by an arbitrary relation of animal forms to abstract
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shapes existing in their minds: "If they would, for
Example, praise the Beauty of a Woman, or any other
Animal, they describe it by Rhombs, Circles,
Parallelograms, Ellipses, and other Geometrical
Terms; or else by Words of Art drawn from Musick . .
. the whole Compass of their Thoughts and Mind, being
shut up within the two forementioned Sciences."
They do not realize that the world of human
beings cannot be adequately dealt with in
mathematical terms, and their wives, as a
consequence, have fallen into matter, escaping
whenever possible into a life altogether physical and
degraded, as exaggeratedly animal as that of their
husbands is exaggeratedly intellectual king has no
interest in "the Laws, Government, History, Religion,
or Manners of the Countries" Gulliver has visited,
and his realm of Balnibarbi is chaotic. Gulliver
"could not discover one Ear of Corn, or Blade of
Grass" except in a few places, during his journeys,
and our minds revert to the kingdom of Brobdingnag,
the land which has been called a "simple Utopia of
abundance," where government is conducted with
practical good will and a due regard for traditional
wisdom, and where the King regards his task as one of
promoting increase and life, making "two Ears of
Corn, or two Blades of Grass, to grow where only one
grew before." The Laputans, on the other hand,
produce a world of death, and the results of their
efforts are purely destructive because their aims are
impossibly high and are unrelated to real conditions.
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Some day, they say, "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
chose, and increase an Hundred Fold more than they do
at present; with innumerable other happy Proposals."
10 I n t h e meantime, houses are ruined, land
uncultivated, and people starving, and the only
result of Laputan enterprise on the prosperous estate
of the old-fashioned Lord Munodi has been to destroy
the mill which had long provided his family and
tenants, in order to make way for one which should,
on scientific principles, be better, but which
somehow fails to work. . . . That Munodi, the one
successful landowner in Balnibarbi, should be a
traditionalist is only to be expected; "being not of
an enterprizing 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."
The projects of Lagado are, in fact, conducted
in an atmosphere similar to that of A Tale of a Tub,
an atmosphere of aimless activity, distorted values,
and a perversion of things from their proper purpose
even to the point of removing all life and meaning
from them. The results produced are woolless sheep,
dead dogs, horses whose living hooves are turned t o
stone. The mechanism of the Tale exists in Lagado
too, in the machine which is to replace the thinking
and creating mind of man and will, by pure chance,
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FROM AGE OF CHAUCER
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