utation of the author of the _"Travels of Gulliver"_ to be
extended to every portion of the civilized globe. Since the appearance
of this celebrated satire, no one sufficiently comprehensive to lash
the follies of the age--the _quicquid agunt homines_--has made
its appearance: we have had numerous ephemeral productions, inflicting
severe castigations upon particular vices or absurdities; but the
visionary conceits of the many, constantly promulgated in the
progressive advancement of human knowledge, although legitimate
objects of censure, have not, since the time of Swift, been embodied
into one publication.

The evident aim of the author of the Satirical Romance before us, is
to fulfil for the present age, what _Swift_ so successfully
accomplished for that which has passed by:--to attack, by the weapons
of ridicule, those votaries of knowledge, who may have sought to avail
themselves of the universal love of novelty amongst mankind, to acquire
celebrity; or who may have been misled by their own ill-regulated
imaginations, to obtrude upon the world their crude and imperfect
theories and systems, to the manifest retardation of knowledge:--an
effect, too, liable to be induced in a direct ratio with the degree
of talent and ingenuity by which their views may have been supported.
Several of these may always be more successfully attacked by ridicule
than by reason; inasmuch as they are, in this way, more likely to become
the subjects of popular animadversion; and many, who could withstand
the serious arguments of their fraternity, cannot placidly endure their
ridicule. Satire has, indeed, often done more service to the cause of
religion and morality than a sermon, since the remedy is agreeable,
whilst it at the same time communicates indignation or fear:--

"Of all the ways that wisest men could find,
To mend the age and mortify mankind,
Satire, well writ, has most successful prov'd.
And cures, because the remedy is lov'd."

To produce, however, the full effect, satire must possess a certain
degree of impartiality, and be levelled in all instances at the vices
or follies, and not at the man. The first sketch of Gulliver's Travels
occurs in the proposed Travels of Martinus Scriblerus, devised in that
pleasing society where most of Swift's miscellanies were planned. Had
the work, however, been executed under the same auspices, it would
probably, as Sir Walter Scott has suggested,[1] "have been occupied by
t