ERRATA.
p. xxxv. l. 29. for left, read lest.
p. 149. in the notes, second column, l. 4, for where, read and.
p. 156. l. 9. for spear-staff, read spear-staffs.
p. 204. second column of notes, for faces, read foes.
p. 224. l. 14. for streams, read steams.
p. 256. l. 8. for closen, read cloven.
And in p. 293. first column of the notes, and first line, in place of ten thousand, read ten millions. Some other errors, mostly of punctuation and orthography, will be obvious to the reader; who will perceive, that the note on p. 279, and p. vii. of the Introduction, were at press ere the peace between the Russians and Turks, and ere the present unhappy commotions in America.
In p. xxxiv. of the Introduction, l. 16. first column of the notes, after this sentence, All a mistake———the reader is desired to add the following: Nor is the Author of History Philophique, &c. less unhappy. Misled by the common opinion of Columbus, he has thus pompously cloathed it in the dress of imagination — Un homme obscur, says he, plus avancè que son siecle &c.—thus literally, an obscure man, more advanced than his age in the knowledge of astronomy and navigation, proposed to Spain, happy in her internal dominion, to aggrandise herself abroad. Christopher Columbus felt, as if by instinct, that there must be another continent, and that he was to discover it. The Antipodes, treated by reason itself as a chimera, and by superstition, as error and impiety, were in the eyes of this man of genius an incontestible truth. Full of this idea, one of the grandest which could enter the human mind, he proposed, &c.———The ministers of this Princess (Isabel of Spain) esteemed at first as a visionary, a man who pretended to discover a world——Thus the Abbe R—— But be it our's to restore his due honours to the Prince of Portugal. Henry, &c.
In p. clvii. of the Introduction, l. 11. after, a Hector and a Priam, the reader is also desired to add: If Camoens has happily avoided the exhausted contrast of fierce and mild heroes, he has nevertheless been able to give his poem more manners than the Eneid. And if his subject obliged him to have less action than the Iliad, it has allowed him to display more empressement and fire, more of the real action of the conduct, divested of the episodes, than the Odyssey, though the Odyssey be esteemed the most perfect model of Epic composition.
