Note 1056 — WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10.
Reading edition
'If we know little of the ancient Highlanders, let us not fill the vacuity with Ossian. If we have not searched the Magellanick regions, let us however forbear to people them with Patagons.' Johnson's Works, ix. 116. Horace Walpole wrote on May 22, 1766 (Letters, iv. 500):—'Oh! but we have discovered a race of giants! Captain Byron has found a nation of Brobdignags on the coast of Patagonia; the inhabitants on foot taller than he and his men on horseback. I don't indeed know how he and his sailors came to be riding in the South Seas. However, it is a terrible blow to the Irish, for I suppose all our dowagers now will be for marrying Patagonians.'