The wretches, trusting to this, lost their lives and money too. Peter, however, became outrageously proud. He has been seen to take three old high-crowned hats and clap them on his head three-storey high, with a huge bunch of keys at his girdle, and an angling-rod in his hand. In which guise, whoever went to take him by the hand in the way of salutation, Peter, with much grace, like a well-educated spaniel, would present them with his foot; and if they refused his civility, then he would raise it as high as their chops, and give them a damned kick in the mouth, which has ever since been called a salute. _The Tale of a Tub_ The next period of his life (1704–14) was occupied mainly in the composition of political tracts, some of which are of great power. Several of them were written for _The Examiner_, a Tory journal. They include _Remarks on the Barrier Treaty_ (1712) and _The Public Spirit of the Whigs_ (1714). To this period also belongs the _Journal to Stella_, which is a kind of informal private log-book written by him and sent regularly to Esther Johnson. It has all Swift’s shrewdness and vivacity, without much of the usual scorn and coarseness. It is not as intimate and revealing as the diary of Pepys, yet it gives us many glimpses of the inner man: vain and arrogant, ambitious and crafty, but none the less a generous and considerate friend and a loyal ally. During the third period--that of his final stay in Ireland--the shadow deepens. The earlier years produce one of the most compelling efforts of his pen. He supported the Irish in their revolt against “Wood’s halfpence,” writing in their cause his _Drapier’s Letters_ (1724). This gained for him an almost embarrassing popularity. Then followed some miscellaneous political work, and then his longest and most famous book, _Gulliver’s Travels_ (1726). The main idea of this book is an old one, being at least as old as the time of Lucian, a Greek writer of the second century: it deals with imaginary voyages, in Gulliver’s case among the pigmies (Lilliputians), the giants (Brobdingnagians), the moonstruck philosophers (Laputans), and the race of horses, with their human serfs the Yahoos.