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
custom of feeding upon "live bulls and kava" provoked a chorus of
incredulity. The traveller was ridiculed upon the stage as Macfable, and
in a cloud of ephemeral productions; nor is the following allusion in
Peter Pindar obscure:--

"Nor have I been where men (what loss alas!)
Kill half a cow, then send the rest to grass."

The way in which Bruce resented the popular scepticism is illustrated
by the following anecdote told by Sir Francis Head, his biographer. A
gentleman once observed, at a country house where Bruce was staying,
that it was not possible that the natives of Abyssinia could eat raw
meat! "Bruce said not a word, but leaving the room, shortly returned
from the kitchen with a piece of raw beef-steak, peppered and salted in
the Abyssinian fashion. 'You will eat that, sir, or fight me,' he said.
When the gentleman had eaten up the raw flesh (most willingly would he
have eaten his words instead), Bruce calmly observed, 'Now, sir, you
will never again say it is _impossible_.'" In reality, Bruce seems to
have been treated with much the same injustice as Herodotus. The truth
of the bulk of his narrative has been fully established, although a
passion for the picturesque may certainly have led him to embellish many
of the minor particulars. And it must be remembered, that his book was
not dictated until twelve years after the events narrated.

Apart from Bruce, however, the sequel, like the previous continuation,
contains a great variety of political, literary, and other allusions of
the most purely topical character--Dr. Johnson's Tour in the Hebrides,
Mr. Pitt, Burke's famous pamphlet upon the French Revolution, Captain
Cook, Tippoo Sahib (who had been brought to bay by Lord Cornwallis
betwee