C. H. Cooper.
Cambridge.
Ferdinand Mendez Pinto (Vol. vii., p. 551.).—Inquirens will find the passage he quotes in Congreve's Love for Love, Act II. Sc. 5. Foresight, addressing Sir Sampson Legend, says:
"Thou modern Mandeville, Ferdinand Mendez Pinto was but a type," &c.
In the Tatler, No. 254. (a paper ascribed to Addison and Steele conjointly), these veracious travellers are thus pleasantly noticed:
"There are no books which I more delight in than in travels, especially those that describe remote countries, and give the writer an opportunity of showing his parts without incurring any danger of being examined and contradicted. Among all the authors of this kind, our renowned countryman, Sir John Mandeville, has distinguished himself by the copiousness of his invention, and the greatness of his genius. The second to Sir John I take to have been Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, a person of infinite adventure and unbounded imagination. One reads the voyages of these two great wits with as much astonishment as the travels of Ulysses in Homer, or of the Red Cross Knight in Spenser. All is enchanted ground and fairy land."
Biographical sketches of Mandeville and Pinto are attached to this paper in the excellent edition of the Tatler ("with Illustrations and Notes" by Calder, Percy, and Nichols), published in six volumes in 1786. Godwin selected this quotation from Congreve as a fitting motto for his Tale of St. Leon.
J. H. M.
The passage referred to occurs in Congreve's Love for Love, Act II. Sc. 5. Cervantes had before designated Pinto as the "prince of liars." It seems that poor Pinto did not deserve the ill language applied to him by the wits. Ample notices of his travels may be seen in the Retrospective Review, vol. viii. pp. 83-105., and Macfarlane's Romance of Travel, vol. ii. pp. 104-192.
C. H. Cooper.