astonishment that I witnessed these creatures playing the flute and dancing a Viennese waltz. To my mind, they seemed like the greatest humans ever seen in court, even more dexterous than the Lord Edmund Burke"
             As this quote demonstrates, Gulliver is terribly impressed, but his admiration for the Houyhnhnms
             is short-lived because of their intense pride. For instance, the leader of the Houyhnhnms claims that he has
             read all the works of Charles Dickens, and that he can single handily recite the names of all the Kings and
             Queens of England up to George II. Swift subtly shows that this Houyhnhnms pride is misplaced when, in
             the middle of the intellectual competition, he forgets the name of Queen Elizabeth's husband. If he intended for the Houyhnhnms to be the medium in which his satire was to be based he would not show them to be capable of error.
             Swifts satire of the Houyhnhnms comes out in other ways as well. One of the most memorable scenes is when the mare attempts to woo the horse. First she acts flirtatiously, parading around the bewildered horse. But when this does not have the desired effect, she gets another idea:
             "As I watched in amazement from my perch in the top of a tree, the sorrel nag dashed off and returned with a yahoo on her back who was yet more monstrous than Mr. Pope being fitted by a clothier. She dropped this creature before my nag as if offering up a sacrifice. My horse sniffed the creature and turned away."
             It might seem that we should take this scene seriously as a failed attempt at courtship, and that
             consequently we should see the gray mares attempt as just a failure. But it makes more sense if we see that
             Swift is being satiric here: it is the female Houyhnhnm who makes the move, which would not have
             happened in eighteenth-century England. Is this Swifts way of expressing his views on women's liberation by making their...