The credit attachable to _Madagascar: or Robert Drury's Journal during
fifteen Years' Captivity on that Island_, has always appeared to me a
subject worth a Note in your pages; but more particularly since the recent
publication of Burton's _Narratives from the Criminal Trials of Scotland_.
In this latter work the author gives us an interesting account of the trial
of Captain Green and his associates, in Edinburgh, for the murder of one
Captain Drummond (a very memorable case, as it bore upon the Union of the
kingdoms, at the time under discussion); and in course of his inquiries Mr.
Burton has brought forth Drury's _Journal_ to prove the existence of the
said Captain Drury for many years subsequent to Green's execution for his
murder!
It becomes, therefore, a serious question to ascertain whether Drury was a
real or a fictitious character, and his book what it pretends to be, or the
speculation of some clever writer, envious of the fame and profit derived
by Defoe from the publication of a similar work. I would not take the
subject out of such good hands as those of MR. CROSSLEY, who has evidently
something to offer us thereon; but would merely observe, by way of
interesting your readers generally in the matter, that Drury, by the old
octavo of 1729, now before me, did not flinch from inquiry, as he announces
the book for sale "by the Author, at Old Tom's Coffee House in Birchin
Lane," where, he says, "I am every day to be spoken with, and where I shall
be ready to gratify any Gentleman with a further Account of any Thing
herein contained; {534} to stand the strictest Examination, or to confirm
those Things which to some may seem doubtful."
"Old Tom's" is still a right good chop-house in the locality named; and it
would be interesting to know if there is any contemporaneous note existing
of an evening with Robert Drury there. But for the misfortune of living a
century and a quarter too late, I should doubtless often have found myself
in the same box with the mysterious man, with his piles of books, and his
maps of Madagascar, invitingly displayed for the examination of the
curious, and the satisfaction of the sceptical.