Latest / Classic Adventure Books Collection / 26 - Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
Transcript
- Chapter ten, the Lagnagians commended a particular description of the stroledbrugs, with many conversations between the author and some eminent persons upon that subject. The Lagnugians are a polite and generous people, and although they are not without some share of that pride which is peculiar to all Eastern countries, yet they show themselves courteous to strangers, especially such who were countenanced by the court. I had many acquaintance and among persons of the best fashion, and being always attended by my interpreter, the conversation we had was not disagreeable. One day, in much good company, I was asked by a person of quality whether I had seen any of their strolled brugs or immortals. I said I had not, and desired he would explain to me what he meant by such an appellation applied to a mortal creature. He told me that some time, though very rarely, a child happened to be born in a family with a red circular spot on the forehead directly over the left eyebrow, which was an infallible mark that it should never die. The spot, as he described it, was about the compass of a silver threepence, but in the course of time grew larger and changed its color. For at twelve years old it became green, so continued till five and twenty, then turned to a deep blue. At five and forty it grew coal black and as large as an English shilling, but never omitted any further alteration. He said these berths were so rare that he did not believe there could be above eleven hundred stroldbrugs of both sexes in the whole kingdom, of which he computed about fifteen the metropolis, and among the rest. A young girl born about three years ago, that these productions were not peculiar to any family, but a mere effect of chance, and the children of the Strolsbergs themselves were equally mortal with the rest of the people. I freely own myself to being struck with inexpressible delight upon hearing this account, and the person who gave it to me, happening to understand the Balnabarbian language, which I spoke very well, I could not forbear breaking out into expressions perhaps a little too extravagant. I cried out, as in a rapture happy nation where every child hath at least a chance for being immortal. Happy people who enjoy so many living examples of ancient virtue and of masters really to instruct them in the wisdom of all former ages. But happiest beyond all comparison are those excellent strolbrugs, who, being born exempt from that universal calamity of human nature, have their minds free and disengaged, without the weight and depression of spirits caused by the continual apprehensions of death. I discovered, my admiration that I had not observed any of these illustrious persons at court, the black spot on the forehead being so remarkable a distinction that I could not have easily overlooked it. And it was impossible that His Majesty, a most judicious prince, should not provide himself with a good number of such wise and able counselors. Yet, perhaps the virtue of those reverend sages was too far stretched for the corrupt and liberty manners of a court, And we often find by experience that young men are too opinionated and volatile to be guided by the sober dictates of their seniors. However, since the king was pleased to allow me access to his royal person. I was resolved, upon the very first occasion, to deliver my opinion to him on this matter freely and at large, by the help of my interpreter, and whether he would be pleased to take my advice or not. Yet in one thing, I was determined that his Majesty, having frequently offered me an establishment in this country, I would with great thankfulness accept the favor and pass my life here in the conversation of these superior beings, the Strauldbruggs, if they were pleased to admit me. The gentleman to whom I addressed my discourse, because as I have already observed, he spoke the language of Aunibarbie, said to me, with a sort of smile which usually arises from pity to the ignorant, that he was glad of any occasion to keep me among them, and desired my permission to explain to the company what I had spoke. He did so, and they talked together for some time in their own language, whereof I understood not a syllable. Neither could I observe by their countenances what impression my discourse had made on them. After a short silence, the same person told me that his friends and mine, so he thought fit to express himself, were very much pleased with the judicious remarks I had made on the great happiness and advantages of immortal life, and they were desirous to know in a particular manner what scheme of living I should have formed to myself if it had fallen to my lot to have been born a Stroldbrugg. I answered, it was easy to be eloquent on so copious and delightful a subject, especially to me, who had been at an apt to amuse myself with visions of what I should do if I were a king, a general, or a great lord. And upon this very case I had frequently run over the whole system how I should employ myself and pass the time if I were sure to live for ever, that if it had been my good fortune to come into the world a stoldbrugg, as soon as I could discover my own happiness by understanding the difference between life and death, I would first resolve, by all arts and methods whatsoever, to procure myself riches, in the pursuit of which, by thrift and management I might reasonably expect in about two hundred years to be the wealthiest man in the kingdom. In the second place, I would from my earliest youth apply myself to the study of arts and sciences, by which I should arrive in time to excel all others in learning. Lastly, I would carefully record every action and event of consequence that happened in the public impartially draw the characters of the several successions of princes and great ministers of state with my own observations. On every point, I would exactly set down the several changes in customs, language, fashion of dress, diet and diversions, by all which acquirements I should be a living treasure of knowledge and wisdom, and certainly become the oracle of the nations. I would never marry after threescore, but live in a hospitable manner. Yet still on the saving side, I would entertain myself in forming and directing the minds of hopeful young men by convincing them from my own remembrance, experience, and observation, fortified by numerous examples of the usefulness of virtue in public and private life. But my choice and constant companions should be a set of my own immortal brotherhood, among whom I would elect a dozen from the most ancient down to my own contemporaries. Were any of these wonted fortunes, I would provide them with convenient lodges round my own estate, and have some of them always at my table, only mingling a few of the most valuable among new mortals, whom length of time would harden me to lose with little or no reluctance, and treat your posterity after the same manner, just as a man diverts himself with the annual succession of pinks and tulips in his garden, without regretting the loss of those which withered the preceding year. These straldebrugs and eye would mutually communicate our observations and memorials through the course of time, remark that several gradations by which corruption steals into the world, and oppose it in every step, by giving perpetual warning and instruction to mankind, which added to the strong influence of our own example, would probably prevent that continual degeneracy of human nature so justly complained of in all ages. Add to this the pleasure of seeing the various revolutions of states and empires, the changes in the lower and upper world, Ancient cities in ruins and obscure villages becoming the seats of kings, famous rivers lessening into shallow brooks, the ocean leaving one coast dry and overwhelming another. The discovery of many countries yet unknown, barbarity of running, the politest nations, and the most barbarous becoming civilized. I should then see the discovery of the longitude, the perpetual motion, the universal medicine, and many other great inventions brought to the utmost perfection. What wonderful discovery should we make in astronomy by outliving and confirming our own predictions, by observing the progress and return of comets, With the changes of motion in the sun, moon, and stars, I enlarged upon many other topics. With the natural desire of entless life and sublunary happiness could easily furnish me with. When I had ended and the summer, my discourse had been interpreted as before to the rest of the company, there was a good deal of talk among them in the language of the country, not without some laughter at my expense. At last, the same gentleman who had been my interpreter, said he was desired by the rest set me right in a few mistakes which I had fallen into through the common imbecility of human nature, and upon them that allowance was less answerable for them that this breed of Straldbruggs was peculiar to their country, for there were no such people in Bowna Barbie or Japan, where he had the honor to be ambassador for his majesty, and found the natives in both those kingdoms very hard to believe that the fact was possible. And it appeared, from my astonishment when he first mentioned the matter to me, that I received it as a thing wholly new and scarcely to be credited. That in the two kingdoms above mentioned, where during his residence he had conversed very much, he observed a long life to be the universal desire and wish of mankind, That whoever had one foot in the grave was sure to hold back the other as strongly as he could, that the oldest had still hopes of living one day longer, and looked on death as the greatest evil, from which nature always prompted him to retreat. Only in this island of Lugnag, the appetite for living was not so eager from the continual example of the stoldbrugs before their eyes. That the system of living contrived by me was unreasonable and unjust, because it supposed a perpetuity of youth, health, and vigor, which no man could be so foolish to hope, however extravagant he may be in his wishes. That the question therefore was not whether a man would choose to be always in the prime of youth, attended with prosperity and health, but how he would pass a perpetual life under all the usual disadvantages which old age brings along with it. For although few men will avow their desires of being a mortal upon such hard conditions, yet in the two kingdoms before mentioned, of Balnibabi and Japan, he observed that every man desired to put of death sometimes longer let it approach, ever so late. And he rarely heard of any man who died willingly, except he were incited by the extremis of grief or torture. And he appealed to me whether in those countries I had traveled, as well as my own, I had not observed the same general disposition. After this preface, it gave me a particular account of the Stoldbrugs. Among them, he said, they commonly acted like mortals till about thirty years old, after which by degrees they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to forescore. This he learned from their own confession, for otherwise, their not being above two or three of that species born in the same age, there were too few to form a general observation by when they came to fourscore years, which has reckoned the extremity of living in this country. They had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more, which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish Covitus Morrose vain talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former. They find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure, and whenever they see a funeral they lament and repine that others have gone to a harbor of rest to which they themselves can never hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and middle age, and even this is very imperfect, and for the truth of particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition than upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage and entirely lose their memories. These meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which are bound in others. If a stralsbrugg happen to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is dissolved, of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger of the two comes to be forescore, for the law thinks it a reasonable indulgence that those who are condemned, without any fault of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world should not have the misery doubled by the load of a wife. As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are looked on as dead in law. Their heirs immediately succeeded to their estates. Only a small pittance is reserved for their support, and the poor ones are maintained at the public charge. After that period they are held incapable of any employment of trust or profit. They cannot purchase lands or take leases. Neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any cause, either civil or criminal, not even for the decision of merees and bounds. At ninety they lose their teeth and hair. They have at that age no distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get without relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to still continue without increasing or diminishing. In talking, they forget the common appellation of things and the names of persons, even those who are their nearest friends and relations. For the same reason, they can never amuse themselves with reading, because their memory will not serve to carry them from the beginning of a sentence to the end. And by this defect they are deprived of the only entertainment whereof they might otherwise be capable the language of this country, being always upon the flux, the strolled brugs of one age do not understand those of another. Neither are they able, after two hundred years, to hold any conversation farther than by a few general words with their neighbors, the mortals. And thus they lie under the disadvantage of living like foreigners in their own country. This was the account given me of the stroldbrugs, as near as I can remember. I afterwards saw five or six of different ages, the youngest not above two hundred years old, who were brought to me at several times by some of my friends. But although they were told that I was a great traveler and had seen all the world, they had not the least curiosity to ask me a question. Only desired, I would give them slum scudesque, or a token of remembrance, which is a modest way of begging, to avoid the law that strictly forbids it. Because they are provided for by the public, although indeed with a very scanty allowance. They are despised and hated by all sorts of people. When one of them is born, it is recondominous, and their birth is recorded very pretty, so that you may know their age by consulting the register, which however, has not been kept above a thousand years past, or at least has been destroyed by time or public disturbances. But the usual way of computing how old they are is by asking them what kings or great persons they can remember, and then consulting history, for infallibly, the last prince, in their mind, did not begin his reign after they were fourscore years old. They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld, and the women more horrible than the men. Besides the usual deformities in extreme old age, they acquired an additional ghastliness in proportion to their number of years, which is not to be described. And among half a dozen I soon distinguished which was the eldest, Although there was not above a century or two between them. The reader will easily believe that from what I had heard and seen, my keen appetite for perpetuity of life was much abated. I grew heartily ashamed of the pleasing visions I had formed, and thought no tyrant could invent a death into which I would not run with pleasure from such a life. The King heard of all that had passed between me and my friends upon this occasion, and rallied me very pleasantly, wishing I could send a couple of Stoldbrugs to my own country to arm our people against the fear of death. But this it seems as forbidden by the fundamental laws of the kingdom, or else I should have been well content with the trouble and expense of transporting them. I could not but agree that the laws of this kingdom relative to the Stoldbruggs were founded upon the strongest reasons, and such as any other country would be under the necessity of enacting in the like circumstances. Otherwise, as avoris is the necessary consequence of old age, those immortals would in time become proprietors of the whole nation and engross the civil power, which, for want of abilities to manage, must end in the ruin of the public. End Apart Three, Chapter ten.