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tion to me for bringing them again into his remembrance, by closing this paper with a citation.

"When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divide the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together." *

THE OLLA PODRIDA, No. 26, September 8, 1787.

* Spectator, vol. i. No. 26.

No. CXXVII.

Πολλῶν δ ̓ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄφεα, καὶ νέον ἔγνω.

HOMER.

Providus urbes

Et mores hominum inspexit.

HORAT.

Mirabile dictu!

And, with sagacious ken,

Saw various towns and policies of men.

A wonderful relation.

For the entertainment of my readers this day, I purpose laying before them a short account of a very great literary curiosity, which I have. no doubt will appear as important to them as it does to myself. It is, in fact, a regular journal kept by Omai, the native of one of the islands in the South Seas, during his residence in England. The short limits of a periodical paper will not permit me to particularise the exact manner in which it came into my possession; but that the literary world may not be hereafter torn into factions by disputes respecting its authenticity, I am determined to deposit the original in the archives of the Royal Society, because I have reason to think, that that learned body will hold it in as much estimation, as they

would do the most ingenious and elaborate disquisition on the constituent principles of the atmosphere, or any other dark and recondite subject.

It appears from this journal, that Omai had picked up a smattering of reading and writing from our sailors during his passage to England; which (unknown to any person) he had afterwards improved during his hours of retirement. I must refer my readers to the journal itself for the motives of his voyage, and for a long and tedious description of the same, that I may be able to dwell longer on those parts which are most interesting to us; and, in particular, his observations on the manners and customs peculiar to this country. It is worth while, en passant, to remark how soon he had begun to philosophise; for he spends more than one hundred pages in accounting for the manner in which the various places, where he arrived, had been first peopled from his own country, the most remote traditions of which give no account of their people having ever sailed further than Bola Bola, or some of the adjacent islands. After a great number of deep disquisitions and curious conjectures, he is obliged, at last, to suppose, that many ages ago a large war-canoe and some small fishing proas had been forced

out to sea, and had gradually peopled all the countries in the world. As to the difference of colour which he observes in the inhabitants of Europe, he accounts for that in a very easy and natural manner, from the coldness of the climate having occasioned a degeneracy in the human species, rendering them less vigorous, and consequently of a pale, meagre, sickly, disagreeable complexion. For the truth of this, he appeals to the fact of the late circumnavigators, during their voyage to the South Seas, in some measure gradually recovering the natural pristine complexion of that place. It is true, he passes over the circumstance of the natives of the cold and inhospitable regions of Terra del Fuego, being darker than himself; but this not suiting his system, like many other philosophers he deems it unworthy of his notice. But lest any of his contemporary philosophers at home should doubt that the natives, as he calls us, of Pretane, are actually derived from those of Otaheite and Ulietea, he assures them that he can prove it from several words in the language of Pretane, still retaining a similarity of sound with others of the same signification in his own. He here enters into several curious etymological discussions, which I shall not detail, as the subject may again occur, when he treats of

some peculiar customs of the English. I shall, therefore, refer my readers to his vocabulary, in which there are some very striking marks of resemblance. I shall, also, pass over the first five hundred pages, that I may directly speak of his arrival in England; where, he says, he no sooner landed, than he was put into a handsome painted house, together with some of his companions, and that four large animals went off with the house, and them in it, faster than he could have run upon level ground at Ulietea; carrying him an immense way up the country. He gives a curious description of these animals, comparing them to large dogs, the only things, we are told, which can possibly convey a faint idea of them. But he endeavours to make up for the deficiency of his description by a picture of a stage coach and six horses, with passengers inside and out, which he hath fixed into his. journal; and which, no doubt, with the help of his comments upon it, will be a wonderful curiosity amongst the ladies and grandees of Otaheite. He reprobates our method of living in houses huddled as close together as they can possibly stand, in what are called towns; with which, he adds, these foolish people are not satisfied, for they pile three or four of these towns upon the top of each other.

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