TRAVELS INTO SEVERAL REMOTE NATIONS OF THE WORLD

BY LEMUEL GULLIVER, FIRST A SURGEON, 
THEN A CAPTAIN OF SEVERAL SHIPS.

LONDON: PRINTED FOR BENJ. MOTTE,
AT THE MIDDLE TEMPLE-GATE IN FLEET-STREET.
M,DCC,XXVI.

A LETTER from Capt. Gulliver, to his Cousin Sympson 

I HOPE you will be ready to own publickly, whenever you shall be called 
to it, that by your great and frequent Urgency you prevailed on me to 
publish a very loose and uncorrect Account of my Travels; with Direction 
to hire some young Gentlemen of either University to put them in Order, 
and correct the Style, as my Cousin Dampier did by my Advice, in his 
Book calledA Voyage round the World. But I do not remember I gave you 
Power to consent that any thing should be omitted, and much less that any 
thing should be inserted: therefore, as to the latter, I do here renounce 
every thing of that Kind; particularly a Paragraph about her Majesty the 
late Queen Anne, of most pious and glorious Memory; although I did 
reverence and esteem her more than any of human Species. But you, or 
your Interpolator, ought to have considered, that as it was not my 
Inclination, so was it not decent to praise any Animal of our Composition 
before my Master Houyhnhnm: And besides the Fact was altogether false; 
for to my Knowledge, being in England during some Part of her Majesty's 
Reign, she did govern by a chief Minister; nay, even by two successively; 
the first whereof was the Lord of Godolphin, and the second the Lord of 
Oxford; so that you have made me say the thing that was not. Likewise, in 
the Account of the Academy of Projectors, and several Passages of my 
Discourse to my Master Houyhnhnm, you have either omitted some 
material Circumstances, or minced or changed them in such a Manner, that 
I do hardly know mine own Work. When I formerly hinted to you 
something of this in a Letter, you were pleased to answer that you were 
afraid of giving Offense; that People in Power were very watchful over the 
Press, and apt not only to interpret, but to punish every thing which looked 
like an Innuendo (as I think you called it.) But pray, how could that which 
I spoke so many Years ago, and at about five Thousand leagues distance, in 
another Reign, be applied to any of the Yahoos who now are said to govern 
the Herd; especially at a time when I little thought on or feared the 
Unhappiness of living under them. Have not I the most reason to complain, 
when I see these very Yahoos carried by Houyhnhnms in a Vehicle, as if 
these were Brutes, and those the rational Creatures? And indeed, to avoid 
so monstrous and detestable a Sight was one principal Motive of my 
Retirement hither. 

Thus much I thought proper to tell you in Relation to yourself, and to the 
Trust I reposed in you. 

I do in the next Place complain of my own great Want of Judgement, in 
being prevailed upon by the Intreaties and false Reasonings of you and 
some others, very much against mine own Opinion, to suffer my Travels to 
be published. Pray bring to your Mind how often I desired you to consider, 
when you insisted on the Motive of publick good; that the Yahoos were a 
species of Animals utterly incapable of Amendment by Precepts or 
Examples: And so it hath proved; for instead of seeing a full Stop put to all 
Abuses and Corruptions, at least in this little Island, as I had Reason to 
expect: Behold, after above six Months Warning, I cannot learn that my 
Book hath produced one single Effect according to mine Intentions: I 
desired you would let me know by a Letter, when Party and Faction were 
extinguished; Judges learned and upright; Pleaders honest and modest, with 
some Tincture of common Sense; and Smithfield blazing with Pyramids of 
Law-Books; the young Nobility's Education entirely changed; the 
Physicians banished; the female Yahoos abounding in Virtue, Honour, 
Truth and good Sense; Courts and Levees of great Ministers thoroughly 
weeded and swept; Wit, Merit and Learning rewarded; all Disgracers of 
the Press in Prose and Verse condemned to eat nothing but their own 
Cotten, and quench their Thirst with their own Ink. These, and a Thousand 
other Reformations, I firmly counted upon by your Encouragement; as 
indeed they were plainly deducible from the Precepts delivered in my 
Book. And, it must be owned that seven Months were a sufficient Time to 
correct every Vice and Folly to which Yahoos are subject, if their Natures 
had been capable of the least Disposition to Virtue or Wisdom: Yet so far 
have you been from answering mine Expectation in any of your Letters; 
that on the contrary you are loading our Carrier every Week with Libels, 
and Keys, and Reflections, and Memoirs, and Second Parts; wherein I see 
myself accused of reflecting upon great States-Folk, of degrading human 
Nature (for so they have still the Confidence to stile it), and of abusing the 
Female Sex. I find likewise that the Writers of those Bundles are not 
agreed among themselves; for some of them will not allow me to be 
Author of my own Travels; and others make me Author of Books to which 
I am wholly a Stranger. 

I find likewise that your Printer hath been so careless as to confound the 
Times, and mistake the Dates of my several Voyages and Returns; neither 
assigning the true Year, or the true Month, or Day of the Month: And I 
hear the original Manuscript is all destroyed, since the Publication of my 
Book. Neither have I any Copy left; however, I have sent you some 
Corrections, which you may insert, if ever there should be a second 
Edition: And yet I cannot stand to them, but shall leave that Matter to my 
judicious and candid Readers, to adjust it as they please. 

I hear some of our Sea-Yahoos find Fault with my Sea-Language, as not 
proper in many Parts, nor now in use. I cannot help it. In my first 
Voyages, while I was young, I was instructed by the oldest Mariners, and 
learned to speak as they did. But I have since found that the Sea-Yahoos are 
apt, like the Land ones, to become new fangled in their Words, which the 
latter change every Year, insomuch as I remember upon each Return to 
mine own Country their old Dialect was so altered that I could hardly 
understand the new. And I observe, when any Yahoo comes from London