without practice, and without preparation, I have no doubt, with the aid of a treatise or two, you will make a consummate naval commander, although you have never been at sea in the whole course of your life."
This is not exactly the destiny of the involuntary voyager,
but his luck is good. In due time he lands on the
shores of Vraibleusia, and forthwith meets Mr. Skindeep,
an instantaneous guide and friend, if not a philosopher,
whom he accompanies with implicit trust, "for, having
now known him nearly half a day, his confidence in his
honour and integrity was naturally unbounded."[1]
As Popanilla becomes introduced to the best people of Hubbadub, the capital, the resources of his own country arouse interest, and an expedition of vast commercial enterprise is headed for the Isle of Fantaisie. Failure to find it precipitates a panic and leads to the imprisonment of its representative, for exciting hopes under false pretenses. However, a happy ending is secured by a legal coup d'êtat, and a solution of all problems announced by Mr. Flummery Flam, who has discovered that "it was the great object of a nation not to be the most powerful, or the richest, or the best, or the wisest, but to be the most Flummery-Flammistical."[2]
In Disraeli's two little classical burlesques, published five years after Popanilla, still another device is used. There is neither an Englishman in Italy, nor an Italian in England, but the ancient stage of Greek mythology is made the background for a thinly disguised modern satiric drama. Familiar characters and incidents are seen masquerading in equally familiar costumes and scenes, but the former are local and current, and the latter revived from a far past.
