Letters from England - (Volume 1 of 3) #430468

Note: Authorship and translation fictitious; by Robert Southey.

The remarks of Foreign Travellers upon our own country have always been so well received by the Public, that no apology can be necessary for offering to it the present Translation, The Author of this work seems to have enjoyed more advantages than most of his predecessors, and to have availed himself of them with remarkable diligence. He boasts also of his impartiality: to this praise, in general, he is entitled; but there are some things which he has seen with a jaundiced eye. It is manifest that he is bigotted to the deplorable superstitions of his country; and we may well suppose that those parts of the work in which this bigotry is most apparent, have not been improved by the aid for which he thanks his Father Confessor. The Translator has seldom thought it necessary to offer any comments upon the palpable errors and mis-statements which this spirit has sometimes occasioned: the few notes which he has annexed are distinguished by the letters Tr.

A volume of Travels rarely or never, in our days, appears in Spain: in England, on the contrary, scarcely any works are so numerous. If an Englishman spends the summer in any of the mountainous provinces, or runs over to Paris for six weeks, he publishes the history of his travels; and if a work of this kind be announced in France, so great a competition is excited among the London booksellers, that they import it sheet by sheet as it comes from the press, and translate and print it piece-meal. The greater number of such books must necessarily be of little value: all, however, find readers, and the worst of them adds something to the stock of general information.