4 .
Swift strongly resented this scheme and was intensely involved in defeating it.
Again we see an example of how Swift gives Gulliver an opinion that ironically contradicts his own personal view. Swift was born in Dublin and spent most of his life in Ireland, and although he was a Protestant with English parents, he was prepared to defend the Irish Catholics against what the English government was doing in Ireland. Wood's patent was withdrawn in August of 1925, not long before Gulliver's Travels was published. It was obviously important that this work was published under a pseudonym to protect Swift against prosecution.
Swift makes European pomps and vanities satirical targets in Gulliver's Travels. The narrator Lemuel Gulliver makes four journeys to different and unknown corners of the world and after each and every journey returns to his home country England. The traveller in itself is a key satiric technique. As he sets out on his first journey to Lilliput, we recognise as contemporary readers that he is an average civilized human being with whom we can identify. The strange new country in which he arrives, would have been recognizably similar to the contemporary reader's own culture. Swift creates in Lilleput a comic distortion of life in Europe, concentrating on the pride Europeans take in public ceremonies, titles, court preferment and all sorts of celebrations of their powers and magnificence.5.
In the beginning of chapter 4, Gulliver describes Mildendo, the Metropolis of Lilliput as capable of holding five hundred thousand souls. 6.
Five hundred thousand was approximately the population of London in 1700. 7 The word order of Mildendo also brings to mind Mile End, then a poorer place east of the city proper. Swift here uses irony to prove a point that perhaps London is not such a 'great' city after all?.
Another satiric point is aimed not at the Lilleputians but at Gulliver's enthusiastic participation in their silliness.