From the first of these, Swift has derived many hints in his voyage to Laputa, and improved them into those humorous and instructive allusions, which have caused the reputation of the author of the "Travels of Gulliver" to be extended to every portion of the civilized globe.

Again, Swift's flying Island of Laputa is a phenomenon so opposed to all scientific probability, and so directly at variance with natural laws, that it loses in interest in a direct ratio with the violence it does to our feelings.

This is probably an allusion to the flappers in Gulliver's Travelsthe servants who, in Laputa, carried bladders with which every now and then they flapped the mouths and ears of their employers, to recall them to themselves and disperse their meditations.

This source of anxiety may, perhaps, be thought to resemble that of the philosophers of Laputa, who feared lest the sun should be burnt out.

The present inhabitants of that island make a small quantity of excellent wine for their own use and are liberal of it to strangers who travel that way, but dare not, being under Turkish government, cultivate the vines well, or export the product of them. {81a} In the same manner as Gulliver's island of Laputa.

In the third voyage Gulliver continues his adventures in Laputa, and this is a satire upon all the scientists and philosophers.

Laputa is a flying island, held up in the air by a loadstone; and all the professors of the famous academy at Lagado are of the same airy constitution.

" The third voyage, which takes him to Laputa, satirizes the philosophers.

Misteaching N. misteaching^, misinformaton, misintelligence^, misguidance, misdirection, mispersuasion^, misinstruction^, misleading &c v.; perversion, false teaching; sophistry &c 477; college of Laputa; the blind leading the blind.

For, as we remember, in the realm of Laputa, he found a certain number of both sexes (about eleven hundred) who were called Struldbrugs, or Immortals, because, being born with a certain spot over the left eyebrow, they were destined never to know the common visitation of death.

It is a pity that the laws of Laputa stringently forbade the export of Struldbrugs, else, Gulliver tells us, he would gladly have brought a couple to this country, to arm our people against the fear of death.

The Voyage to Laputa, from which we give no selections, was not generally understood and hence was not popular.

More, the Atlantis of Lord Bacon, the Laputa of Dean Swift, and other places better known in story than in geography.

Children read the voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag, to the flying island of Laputa and the country of the Houyhnhnms, as they read Robinson Crusoe, as stories of wonderful adventure.

This source of anxiety may, perhaps, be thought to resemble that of the philosophers of Laputa, who feared lest the sun should be burnt out.

So, too, it is not the dagger-thrusts of the Drapier's Letters, but the broad ridicule of the Voyage to Laputa, the savage irony of the Voyage to the Houyhnhnms, that we associate with the name of Swift.

GULLIVER, the hero of Swift's satirical romance entitled "Gulliver's Travels," which records his adventures among the pigmies of Lilliput, the giants of Brobdingnag, the quacks of Laputa, and the HOUYHNHNMS (q. v.).

LAPUTA, a flying island inhabited by speculative philosophers, visited by Gulliver in his "Travels," who, when their minds began to be too much absorbed in their studies, were wakened up by a set of attendants called "Flappers" armed with dried bladders full of small pebbles or "dried peas" attached to the end of a stick, with which they struck them gently about the mouth and ears.

The town, at our feet, looked like the metropolis of Laputa.