Paul Gavarni, ca. 1862
The best-known episode from Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" involves a
sojourn amongst the tiny Lilliputians. Subsequently, the hapless
Gulliver sails to the island of Brobdingnag, whose inhabitants are as
giant as the Lilliputians were tiny. This drawing depicts an episode
that Swift uses to satirize the learned conventions of his day. Gavarni
accordingly clothes the scholars of the Brobdingnagian court in a parody
of the academic robes of his own era.
"His Majesty sent for three great scholars. . . . These gentlemen, after
they had a while examined my shape with much nicety, were of different
opinions concerning me. They all agreed that I could not be produced
according to the regular laws of nature, because I was not framed with a
capacity of preserving my life, either by swiftness, or climbing of
trees, or digging holes in the earth. They observed by my teeth, which
they viewed with great exactness, that I was a carnivorous animal; yet
most quadrupeds being an overmatch for me, and field mice, with some
others, too nimble, they could not imagine how I should be able to
support myself, unless I fed upon snails and other insects, which they
offered, by many learned arguments, to evince that I could not possibly
do. One of these virtuosi seemed to think that I might be an embryo. . .
. But this opinion was rejected by the other two, who observed my limbs
to be perfect and finished, and that I had lived several years, as it
was manifested from my beard, the stumps whereof they plainly discovered
through a magnifying-glass. . . ."
➔ The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore
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