All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
Page 40
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*One can cure oneself of the not un- formation by memorizing this sentence: A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field [Orwell's footnote].
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*Houyhnhnms too old to walk are described as being carried in "sledges" or in "a kind of vehicle, drawn like a sledge." Presumably these had no wheels [Orwell's footnote].
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*The physical decadence which Swift claims to have observed may have been a reality at that date. He attributes it to syphilis, which was a new disease in Europe and may have been more virulent than it is now. Distilled liquors, also, were a novelty in the seventeenth century and must have led at first to a great increase in drunkenness [Orwell's footnote].
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*Tower [Orwell's footnote].
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*At the end of the book, as typical specimens of human folly and viciousness, Swift names "a Lawyer, a Pickpocket, a Colonel, a Fool, a Lord, a Gamester, a Politician, a Whore-master, a Physician, an Evidence, a Suborner, an Attorney, a Traitor, or the like." One sees here the irresponsible violence of the powerless. The list lumps together those who break the conventional code, and those who keep it. For instance, if you automatically condemn a colonel, as such, on what grounds do you condemn a traitor? Or again, if you want to suppress pickpockets, you must have laws, which means that you must have lawyers. But the whole closing passage, in which the hatred is so authentic, and the reason given for it so inadequate, is somehow unconvincing. One has the feeling that personal animosity is at work [Orwell's footnote].
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*Shakespeare and the Drama. Written about 1903 as an introduction to another pamphlet, Shakespeare and the Working Classes, by Ernest Crosby [Orwell's footnote].
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*The Story of my Experiments with Truth, by M. K. Gandhi. Translated from the Gujarati by Mahadev Desai. Public Affairs Press, $5.00 [Orwell's footnote].
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