allow
them to be really ranked among novels, even if they had taken the
trouble to clothe themselves with more of the novel-garb.

With _Gulliver_ it is different. It is a commonplace on its subject
(but like many other commonplaces a thing ill to forget or ignore) that
natural and unsophisticated children always _do_, and that almost
anybody who has a certain power of turning blind eyes when and where he
chooses _can_, read it simply as a story of adventure and enjoy it
hugely. It would be a most preternatural child or a most singularly
constituted adult who could read _Utopia_ or _Oceana_, or even Cyrano's
_Voyages_, "for the story" and enjoy them hugely. This means that Swift
had either learnt from Defoe or--and considering those earlier
productions of his own much more probably--had independently developed
the knack of _absorbing_ the reader--the knack of telling a story. But
of course there is in one sense much more, and in another much less,
than a story in _Gulliver_: and the finest things in it are independent
of story, though (and this once more comes in for our present purpose)
they are quite capable of adaptation to story-purposes, and have been so
adapted ever since by the greatest masters of the art. These are strokes
of satire, turns of phrase, little illuminations of character, and
seasonings of description. But the great point of _Gulliver_ is that,
like Defoe's work, though in not quite the same way, it is
_interesting_--that it takes hold of its reader and gives him its
"peculiar pleasure." When a work of art does this, it is pretty near
perfection.

There is, however, another book of Swift's which, though perhaps seldom
mentioned or even thought of in connection with the novel, is of real
importance in that connection, and comes specially in with our present
main consideration--the way in which the several parts of the completed
novel were being, as it were, separately got ready and set apart for the
use of the accomplished novelist. This is the very curious and
agreeable piece called _Polite Conversation_ (1738), on which, though it
was not printed till late in his life and close on _Pamela_ itself,
there is good reason for thinking that he had been for many years
engaged. The importance of dialogue in the novel has been often
mentioned and will scarcely be contested: while frequent occasion has
been taken to point out that it had hitherto been very ill-achieved.
Swift's "conversation" though desi