Thus
Gulliver keeps the reader informed of the most minute details
interesting to himself. "I took part of a small house in the Old Jewry;
and being advised to alter my condition, I married Mrs. Mary Burton,
second daughter to Mr. Edmund Burton, hosier, in Newgate Street, with
whom I received four hundred pounds for a portion." In the same way he
informs us carefully that the date of his sailing on the first voyage
was May 4, 1699, from Bristol, and the storm which destroyed the ship
arose when in the latitude of 30 degrees 2 minutes south. In a work of
fiction only such events are expected as have a direct bearing upon the
development of the plot, and when immaterial details are introduced,
the reader is likely to be impressed with their truth. In this way the
personality of Gulliver is kept up, and he remains, through whatever
strange scenes he passes, the same honest, blunt English sailor.
Yet more remarkable is the skill of the author in maintaining the
probability of the allegory. When living among the Lilliputians,
Gulliver insensibly adopts their ideas of size. He admires as much as
they the prowess of the horseman who clears his shoe at a single leap.
When the committee of the Lilliputian king examine Gulliver's pockets,
they describe his handkerchief as a "great piece of coarse cloth, large
enough to be a foot-cloth to your majesty's chief room of state"; his
purse is "a net, almost large enough for a fisherman," containing
"several massy pieces of yellow metal, which, if they be real gold,
must be of immense value.
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