the royal flight to Varennes in June 1791, and the loss of the "Royal
George" in 1782, all form the subjects of quizzical comments, and there
are many other allusions the interest of which is quite as ephemeral as
those of a Drury Lane pantomime or a Gaiety Burlesque.

Nevertheless the accretions have proved powerless to spoil "Munchausen."
The nucleus supplied by Raspe was instinct with so much energy that it
has succeeded in vitalising the whole mass of extraneous extravagance.

Although, like "Gulliver's Travels," "Munchausen" might at first sight
appear to be ill-suited, in more than one respect, for the nursery,
yet it has proved the delight of children of all ages; and there are
probably few, in the background of whose childish imagination the
astonishing Munchausen has not at one time or another, together with
Robinson Crusoe, Jack-the-Giant-Killer, and the Pied Piper of Hamelyn,
assumed proportions at once gigantic and seductively picturesque.

The work, as has been shown, assumed its final form before the close of
the eighteenth century; with the nineteenth it commenced its
triumphant progress over the civilised world. Some of the subsequent
transformations and migrations of the book are worthy of brief record.

A voluminous German continuation was published at Stendhal in three
volumes between 1794 and 1800. There was also a continuation comprising
exploits at Walcheren, the Dardanelles, Talavera, Cintra, and elsewhere,
published in London in 1811. An elaborate French translation, with
embellishments in the French manner, appeared at Paris in 1862.
Immerman's celebrated novel entitled "Munchausen" was published in four
volumes at Dusseldorf in 1841, and a very free rendering of the Baron's
exploits, styled "Munchausen's Lugenabenteuer," at Leipsic in 1846.