aching heart."--_In May, 1719._

48 Perhaps the most melancholy satire in the whole of the dreadful
book, is the description of the very old people in the Voyage to
Laputa. At Lugnag, Gulliver hears of some persons who never die,
called the Struldbrugs, and expressing a wish to become acquainted
with men who must have so much learning and experience, his
colloquist describes the Struldbrugs to him.

"He said, They commonly acted like mortals, till about thirty years
old, after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected,
increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from
their own confession: for otherwise there not being above two or
three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a
general observation by. When they came to fourscore years, which is
reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only
all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more,
which arose from the prospect of never dying. They were not only
opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but
incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which
never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires
are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their
envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort
and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find
themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever
they see a funeral, they lament, and repent that others are gone to
a harbour of rest, to which they themselves never can hope to
arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned
and observed in their youth and middle age, and even that is very
imperfect. And for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer
to depend on common tradition than upon their best recollections.
The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to
dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet with more pity
and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in
others.

"If a Struldbrug happened to marry one of his own kind, the marriage
is dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as
the younger of the two comes to be fourscor