red under the title
of "Les Hommes Volants, ou les Aventures de Pierre Wilkins," which was
included in vols. xxii.-xxiii. of DePerthe's "Voyages Imaginaires" (
1788-89). A German translation was published in 1767, having for title
"Die fliegenden Menschen, oder wunderbare Begebenheiten Peter Wilkins."
Whether the author lived to see the translations of this work cannot
be ascertained. A Robert Paltock was buried at Ryme Intrinseca Church,
Dorset, in 1767, aged seventy (Hutchin's "Dorset," iv. 493-494, third
edition), but it is very doubtful whether he was the author of the
romance.

Paltock's fame may be said to be firmly established. An American writer,
it is true, in a recent "History of Fiction," says not a word about
"Peter Wilkins;" but, we must remember, another American wrote a
"History of Caricature" without mentioning Rowlandson. Coleridge admired
the book, and is reported to have said: "Peter Wilkins is, to my mind, a
work of uncommon beauty.... I believe that 'Robinson Crusoe' and 'Peter
Wilkins' could only have been written by islanders. No continentalist
could have conceived either tale.... It would require a very peculiar
genius to add another tale _ejusdem generis_ to 'Robinson Crusoe' and
'Peter Wilkins.' I once projected such a thing, but the difficulty of
the preoccupied ground stopped me. Perhaps La Motte Fouque might effect
something; but I should fear that neither he nor any other German could
entirely understand what may be called the _desert island_ feeling.
I would try the marvellous line of 'Peter Wilkins' if I attempted it
rather than the real fiction of 'Robinson Crusoe'" ("Table-Talk," 1851,
pp. 331-332). Southey, in a note on a passage of the "Curse of Kehama,"
went so far as to say that Paltock's winged people "are the most
beautiful creatures of imagination that ever were devised," and added
that Sir Walter Scott was a warm admirer of the book. With Charles Lamb
at Christ's Hospital the story was a favourite. "We had classics of our
own," he says, "without being beholden to 'insolent Greece or haughty
Rome,' that passed current among us--'Peter Wilkins,' the 'Adventures of
the Hon. Captain Robert Boyle,' the 'Fortunate Blue-Coat Boy,' and the
like." But nobody loved the old romance with such devotion as Leigh
Hunt. He was never tired of discoursing about its beauties, and he wrote
with such thorough appreciation of his subject that he left little or
nothing for another to add. "It is inter