HISTOIRE DES SÉVARAMBES.

(Vol. iii., pp. 4. and 72.)

I am not sufficiently familiar with Vossius or his works to form any opinion as to the accuracy of the conclusion which Mr. Crossley has arrived at. There is at least much obscurity in the matter, to which I have long paid some little attention.

My Copy is entitled,—

"The History of the Sevarambians: A People of the South continent. In Five Parts. Containing an Account of the Government, &c. Translated from the Memoirs of Capt. Siden, who lived fifteen years amongst them. Lond. 1738." (8vo. pp. xxiii. and 412.)

I have given this to show how it differs from that spoken of by Mr. C. as being in two parts, by Capt. Thos. Liden, and not a reprint, but a translation from the French, which Lowndes says was "considerably altered and enlarged."

If this be so, we can hardly ascribe to Vossius the edition of 1738. The preface intimates that the papers were written in Latin, French, Italian, and Dutch, and placed in the editor's hands in England, on his promising to methodise them and put them all into one language; but I do not observe the slightest allusion to the work having previously appeared either in English or French, although we find that Barbier, in his Dict. des Anon., gives the French edit. 1 pt. Paris, 1677; 2 pt. Paris, 1678 et 1679, 2 vols. 12mo.; Nouvelle edit. Amsterdam, 1716, 2 vols. 12mo.; and ascribes it to Denis Vairasse d'Alais.

There is a long account of this work in Dict. Historique, par Marchand: à la Haye, 1758, fo. sub. nom., Allais, as the author, observing—

"Il y a diversité d'opinions touchant la langue en laquelle il a été écrit ou composé."

The earliest he mentions is the English one of 1675, and an edition in the French, "à Paris, 1677;" which states on the title, Traduit de l'Anglois, whereas the second part is "imprimée à Paris chez l'Auteur, 1678," from which Marchand concludes that Allais was the writer, adding,—

"On n'a peut-être jamais vu de Fiction composée avec plus d'art et plus d'industrie, et il faut avouer qu'il y en a peu où le vraisemblable soit aussi ingénieusement et aussi adroitement conservé."

Wm. Taylor, of Norwich, writes to Southey, asking,—

"Can you tell me who wrote the History of the Sevarambians? The book is to me curious. Wieland steals from it so often, that it must have been a favourite in his library; if I had to impute the book by guess, I would fix on Maurice Ashby, the translator of Xenophon's Cyropædia, as the author."

to which Southey replies,—

"Of the Sevarambians I know nothing!" (See Gent. Mag. N.S. xxi. p. 355.)

Sir W. Scott, in his Memoirs of Swift, p. 304. (edit. 1834), speaking of Gulliver's Travels, says—

"A third volume was published by an unblushing forger, as early as 1727, without printer's name, a great part of which is unacknowledged plunder from a work entitled Hist. des Sévarambes, ascribed to Mons. Alletz, suppressed in France and other Catholic kingdoms on account of its deistical opinions."

It would seem from this, that Sir Walter was not aware of the English work, or knew much of its origin or the author.

F. R. A.

Histoire des Sévarambes.—The second edition of Gulliver's Travels, entitled Travels into several Remote Nations of the World, by Lemuel Gulliver, 2 vols. 8vo., London, 1727, is accompanied with a spurious third volume, printed at London in the same year, with a similar title-page, but not professing to be a second edition. This third volume is divided into two parts: the first part consists, first, of an Introduction in pp. 20; next, of two chapters, containing a second voyage to Brobdingnag, which are followed by four chapters, containing a voyage to Sporunda. The second part consists of six chapters, containing a voyage to Sevarambia, a voyage to Monatamia, a voyage to Batavia, a voyage to the Cape, and a voyage to England. The whole of the third volume, with the exception of the introduction and the two chapters relating to Brobdingnag, is derived from the Histoire des Sévarambes, either in its English or French version.