upposed
of Ossian, that anybody could write a great amount of such stuff if he
would only consent to abandon his mind to the task.

With the supplementary chapters commence topical allusions to the
recently issued memoirs of Baron de Tott, an enterprising Frenchman who
had served the Great Turk against the Russians in the Crimea (an English
translation of his book had appeared in 1785). The satire upon this
gallant soldier's veracity appears to be quite undeserved, though
one can hardly read portions of his adventures without being forcibly
reminded of the Baron's laconic style. It is needless to add that the
amazing account of De Tott's origin is grossly libellous. The amount of
public interest excited by the aeronautical exploits of Montgolfier and
Blanchard was also playfully satirised. Their first imitator in England,
Vincenzo Lunardi, had made a successful ascent from Moorfields as
recently as 1784, while in the following year Blanchard crossed the
channel in a balloon and earned the sobriquet _Don Quixote de la
Manche_. His grotesque appropriation of the motto "_Sic itur ad astra_"
made him, at least, a fit object for Munchausen's gibes. In the Baron's
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 _hableries_ 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