visit to Gibraltar we have evidence that the anonymous writer, in common
with the rest of the reading public, had been studying John Drinkwater's
"History of the Siege of Gibraltar" (completed in 1783), which had
with extreme rapidity established its reputation as a military classic.
Similarly, in the Polar adventures, the "Voyage towards the North Pole,"
1774, of Constantine John Phipps, afterwards Lord Mulgrave, is gently
ridiculed, and so also some incidents from Patrick Brydone's "Tour
through Sicily and Malta" (1773), are, for no obvious reason,
contemptuously dragged in. The exploitation of absurd and libellous
chap-book lives of Pope Clement XIV., the famous Ganganelli, can only
be described as a low bid for vulgar applause. A French translation
of Baron Friedrich von Trenck's celebrated Memoirs appeared at Metz in
1787, and it would certainly seem that in overlooking them the compiler
of Munchausen was guilty of a grave omission. He may, however, have
regarded Trenck's adventures less as material for ridicule than as a
series of _hâbleries_ which threatened to rival his own.

The Seventh Edition, published in 1793, with the supplement (pp. 142-
161), was, with the abominable proclivity to edification which marked
the publisher of the period (that of "Goody Two-Shoes" and "Sandford
and Merton"), styled "Gulliver Reviv'd: _or the Vice of Lying Properly
Exposed_." The previous year had witnessed the first appearance of the
sequel, of which the full title has already been given, "with twenty
capital copperplates, including the baron's portrait." The merit of
Munchausen as a mouthpiece for ridiculing traveller's tall-talk, or
indeed anything that shocked the incredulity of the age, was by this
time widely recognised. And hence with some little ingenuity the popular
character was pressed into the service of the vulgar clamour against
James Bruce, whose "Travels to Discover the Sources of the Nile" had
appeared in 1790. In particular Bruce's description of the Abyssinian