soldiers, horses and cannon, present themselves en miniature , the size of pins and thimbles.
“But the immortal passion of love, with all its attributes, he burlesques by magnifying to a monstrous, a fabulous scale the persons of the lovers and their mistresses, and such charms of the human body as are elsewhere praised and sung. His adventurous traveler, Gulliver, ascends the bosoms of the amorous dames d’honneur as an alpine climber scales a snow-white mountain. Under their languishing sighs he totters as under an earthquake, and he comes near to drowning in the beads of sweat which the rapture of the rendezvous makes start out on their skin. The faint perfumeswhich surround a woman’s body are turned into exhalations which nearly stifle him; nay, I will not detail to you, my graceful and gallant listeners, this poet’s sinister representation of what other poets have made the subject of sonnets.
“Father Jacopo more than once, he told me, discussed this remarkable book with Lady Flora. She evidently knew it by heart, and made use of it to deride in toto the Almighty’s work of creation.
“ ‘Look, Reverend Father,’ she said to him, ‘how little is needed, what slight transposition of dimensions suffices to reveal to us the true nature of your noble and beautiful universe!’
“Father Jacopo in his heart was horrified at her heresy, but he answered her, as he always did, discreetly and meekly. ‘Unless, Signora,’ he said, ‘these same observations will reveal to us with what subtle precision the harmony of our universe is adjusted and balanced. Unless they will tell us with what reverence we must eye the ordinance of the creator, so that not even in imagination do we presume to alter or transpose any jot or title thereof. The shortening or lengthening of a single string of an instrument may enable us to distort, aye, to annihilate its music. But surely, surely the fact does not justify us in blaming that master who built the violin.’
“It now appears as if Lady Flora’s father, when exasperated by his lady’s jealousy, was wont to quote to her the book of this English poet, and that he would even with cruel fantasy and wit add to it and invent and recount new adventures of Lemuel Gulliver. Verily, when we consider the lady’s situation we cover our eyes, as if invited to gaze into an abyss of suffering and injury. A small young woman, who had her slightness and scantiness made an object of mockery and complaints from her husband, might well feel personally hurt and mortified. Yet in her case it would not be the insignia of womanhood itself which were blasphemously discussed.This Scots lady, to whom her husband would recite hexameters describing the adventures of the Prophet Jonah, his tremblings and final engulfment, will have suffered not only in her personal dignity, but in that of her sex. It is not to be wondered at that through the years she was changed, until the friends of her childhood and youth no longer found in her any trace of the maiden’s or the new-married wife’s rich and innocent nature. The incessant, burning wish to grow smaller had acted as a corrosive on her heart.
“It furthermore appears that Lady Flora’s mother, while heroically keeping silent on her misfortune to the whole outer world, in the end failed to suppress all articulation of her misery. She made her daughter her confidante! Young Flora, while growing up, and month by month approaching the measures and weight of the elder woman, had heard her father’s sallies repeated by the mouth of her mother. And yet the girl was like her father in courage and wit, and this handsome and gay father of hers, at the time when she was still a pretty, nimble little girl, had taken pleasure in galloping with her across the Scottish heather and in training her to the arts of dance and sword-play. She could not possibly wish him any ill. But with the lamentations of her mother in her mind she yearned to annihilate the small,
“But the immortal passion of love, with all its attributes, he burlesques by magnifying to a monstrous, a fabulous scale the persons of the lovers and their mistresses, and such charms of the human body as are elsewhere praised and sung. His adventurous traveler, Gulliver, ascends the bosoms of the amorous dames d’honneur as an alpine climber scales a snow-white mountain. Under their languishing sighs he totters as under an earthquake, and he comes near to drowning in the beads of sweat which the rapture of the rendezvous makes start out on their skin. The faint perfumeswhich surround a woman’s body are turned into exhalations which nearly stifle him; nay, I will not detail to you, my graceful and gallant listeners, this poet’s sinister representation of what other poets have made the subject of sonnets.
“Father Jacopo more than once, he told me, discussed this remarkable book with Lady Flora. She evidently knew it by heart, and made use of it to deride in toto the Almighty’s work of creation.
“ ‘Look, Reverend Father,’ she said to him, ‘how little is needed, what slight transposition of dimensions suffices to reveal to us the true nature of your noble and beautiful universe!’
“Father Jacopo in his heart was horrified at her heresy, but he answered her, as he always did, discreetly and meekly. ‘Unless, Signora,’ he said, ‘these same observations will reveal to us with what subtle precision the harmony of our universe is adjusted and balanced. Unless they will tell us with what reverence we must eye the ordinance of the creator, so that not even in imagination do we presume to alter or transpose any jot or title thereof. The shortening or lengthening of a single string of an instrument may enable us to distort, aye, to annihilate its music. But surely, surely the fact does not justify us in blaming that master who built the violin.’
“It now appears as if Lady Flora’s father, when exasperated by his lady’s jealousy, was wont to quote to her the book of this English poet, and that he would even with cruel fantasy and wit add to it and invent and recount new adventures of Lemuel Gulliver. Verily, when we consider the lady’s situation we cover our eyes, as if invited to gaze into an abyss of suffering and injury. A small young woman, who had her slightness and scantiness made an object of mockery and complaints from her husband, might well feel personally hurt and mortified. Yet in her case it would not be the insignia of womanhood itself which were blasphemously discussed.This Scots lady, to whom her husband would recite hexameters describing the adventures of the Prophet Jonah, his tremblings and final engulfment, will have suffered not only in her personal dignity, but in that of her sex. It is not to be wondered at that through the years she was changed, until the friends of her childhood and youth no longer found in her any trace of the maiden’s or the new-married wife’s rich and innocent nature. The incessant, burning wish to grow smaller had acted as a corrosive on her heart.
“It furthermore appears that Lady Flora’s mother, while heroically keeping silent on her misfortune to the whole outer world, in the end failed to suppress all articulation of her misery. She made her daughter her confidante! Young Flora, while growing up, and month by month approaching the measures and weight of the elder woman, had heard her father’s sallies repeated by the mouth of her mother. And yet the girl was like her father in courage and wit, and this handsome and gay father of hers, at the time when she was still a pretty, nimble little girl, had taken pleasure in galloping with her across the Scottish heather and in training her to the arts of dance and sword-play. She could not possibly wish him any ill. But with the lamentations of her mother in her mind she yearned to annihilate the small,
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