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_.