Note 56 — APPENDIX TO LETTERS III. AND VII.[56]

The account in Letter VII. of the anxiety manifested by Charles III. on the occasion of sending to Rome a manuscript in the hand of a Spanish simpleton, whom the superstition of that country wished to invest with the honours of Saintship, was compiled from local tradition, and the recollections preserved from a former perusal of the present Appendix. Its noble author, whose love of the literature of Spain, and great acquaintance with that country, would be enough to designate him, were he not best known by a peculiar benevolence of heart, which no man ever expressed so faithfully in the affability of his manners; has subsequently favoured the writer of the preceding Letters with his permission to publish this sketch. The attentive reader will observe some slight variations between my story of Brother Sebastian and that given in this Appendix. But as they all relate to circumstances connected with the city of Seville, I am unwilling to omit or to alter what I have heard from my townsmen and the contemporaries of Sebastian himself.