Chapter 299

Berkeley Square, Jan. 2, 1787. (page 389)

Your ladyship tells me, that you have kept a journal of your travels: you know not when your friends at Paris will give you time to put it au net; that is, I conclude and hope, prepare it for the press. I do not wonder that those friends, whether talismanic or others, are so assiduous, if you indulge them - but, unless they are of the former description, they are unpardonable, if they know what they interrupt; and deserve much more that you should wish they had fallen into a ditch, than the poor gentlemen who sigh more to see you in sheets of holland than of paper. To me the mischief is enormous. How proud I should be to register a noble authoress of my own country, who has travelled over more regions and farther than any female in print! Your ladyship has visited those islands and shores whence formerly issued those travelling sages and legislators who sought and imported wisdom, laws, and religion into Greece; and though we are so perfect as to want none Of those commodities, the fame of those philosophers is certainly diminished when a fair lady has gone so far in quest of knowledge. You have gone in an age when travels are brought to a juster standard, by narrations being limited to truth. Formerly the performers of the longest voyages destroyed half the merit of their expeditions by relating, not what they had, but had not seen; a sort of communication that they might have imparted without stirring a foot from home. Such exaggerations drew discredit on travels, till people would not believe that there existed in other countries any thing very different from- what they saw in their own; and because no Patagonians, or gentry seven or eight feet high, were really discovered, they would not believe that there were Laplanders or pigmies of three and four. Incredulity went so far, that at last it Was doubted whether China so much as existed; and our countryman Sir John Mandeville(581) got an ill name, because, though he gave an account of it, he had not brought back its right name:(582) at least if I do not mistake, this was the case; but it is long since I read any thing about the matter, and I am willing to begin my travels again under your ladyship's auspices. I am sorry to hear, Madam, that by your account Lady Mary Wortley was not so accurate and faithful as modern travellers. The invaluable art of inoculation, which she brought from Constantinople, so dear to all admirers of beauty, and to which we owe, perhaps, the preservation of yours, stamps her an universal benefactress; and as you rival her in poetic talents, I had rather you would employ them to celebrate her for her nostrum, than detect her for romancing. However, genuine accounts of the interior of seraglios would be precious; and I was in hopes would become the greater rarities, as I flattered myself that your friends the Empress of Russia and the Emperor were determined to level Ottoman tyranny. His Imperial Majesty, who has demolished the prison bars of so many nunneries, would perform a stilt more Christian act in setting free so many useless sultanas; and her Czarish Majesty, I trust, would be as great a benefactress to our sex, by ,abolishing The barbarous practice that reduces us to be of none. Your ladyship's indefatigable peregrinations should have such great objects in view, when you have the ear of sovereigns.

Peter the Hermit conjured up the first crusadoes against the infidels by running about from monarch to monarch. Lady Craven should ,be as zealous and as renowned; and every fair Circassian would acknowledge, that one English lady had repaid their country for the secret which another had given to Europe from their practice.

(581) As an instance of the monstrous exaggerations of this ancient Munchausen, take the following:--"I am a liar if I have not seen in Java, a single shell in which three men might completely hide themselves, and all white!" He also states himself to have met with whole nations of giants, twenty-fie feet high; and of pigmies, as many inches.-E.

(582) In a conversation with Mr. Windham, Dr. Johnson, a few days before his death, recommended, for an account of China, Sir John Mandeville's Travels." See Boswell's Johnson, vol. ix. p. 317, ed. 1835.-E.