/ · 1894 Brewer’s · A · Amaurote
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
a bridge in Utopia. Sir Thomas More says he could not recollect whether Raphael Hyghloday told him it was 500 paces or 300 paces long; and he requested his friend Peter Giles, of Antwerp, to put the question to the adventurer.
“I cannot recollect whether the reception room of the Spaniard’s Castle in the Air is 200 or 300 feet long. I will get the next aeronaut who journeys to the moon to take the exact dimensions for me, and will memorialise the learned society of Laputa.”—Dean Swift: Gulliver’s Travels.
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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.