of precision, and has no margin over. When in Gulliver he increases or diminishes the scale of life, that he may represent the small follies of his countrymen or picture their grosser, larger vices, he does it with a sort of mathematical accuracy which is wholly alien to the careless genius of Rabelais. In brief, the Frenchman and the Englishman fulfilled themselves, each in keeping with his own temper. They stand upon equal pinnacles of fame, and no good can come of their inapposite comparison.
The mathematical accuracy, with which in Gulliver Swift takes the measure of mankind, is allied to another faculty, which he shares with none other except Defoe. And that is the faculty of authentic and plausible narrative. By a hundred small touches, accurately designed, he renders the story of Gulliver's travels credible to its readers. Neither the dwarfs nor the giants make too great a demand upon our faith. And thus Swift achieves, in the face of far greater difficulties, the difficulties of the supernatural, the same sort of triumph of reality which Defoe achieved
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