BRYDONE.
(Vol. ix., pp 138. 255. 305. 432.)
Traveller having honoured me by alluding to a little work of mine, written thirty-five years ago, I may perhaps be permitted to correct a few errors (trifling, because personal) in his notice. My affinity was that of a cousin, not uncle, to the late lord my predecessor. I never had the military rank assigned to me, but was at the time like Traveller himself, a "youngster" freshly emancipated from Oxford to the Continent: and had little more pretension in printing the extracts from my Journal, than to comply with the kind wishes of many friends and relatives.
But to pass to what is more important, the character of Brydone, at the time I speak of there were no useful handbooks in existence; and tourists took for the purpose such volumes of travels as they could carry. Brydone, for this, was unfit. The French criticism (quoted Vol. ix., 306.) rightly says, that he sacrificed truth to piquancy in his narrations. Still it is a heavy charge to suspect so gross a deviation, as that of inventing the description of an ascent which he never accomplished; especially when the ascent is a feat not at all difficult. The evidence for this disbelief must be derived from a series of errors in the account, which I do not remember to have observed while reading him on the spot. The charitable supposition of Mr. Macray, that he mistook the summit, is hardly compatible with so defined a cone as that of Etna; but all must agree with his just estimate of that description, and which the Biographie Universelle itself terms "chef d'œuvre de narration." Brydone, no doubt, is as unsafe for the road as he is amusing for the study, and perhaps from that very reason.
Monson.
Gatton Park.