Japan and the Japanese

564 APPENDIX.
narrator has by no means been left entirely in the lurch. Though little read
now, he has enjoyed, in his day, a popularity such as few authors uttain to.
To the first edition of his " Peregrin aliens," in the original Portuguese, suc-
ceeded others in 1G78, 1711 and 1725; and second, third and fourth editions are
compliments which Portugal very rarely pays to her authors. A Spanish
translation appeared at Madrid in 1(520, in which, however, great and very
unwarrantable liberties were taken by the translator. A French translation
was published at Paris in 1628, and an English translation in 1668. To the
Spanish and French translation defences of Pinto's veracity are prefixed, and
both passed through several editions. Purchas, who gives a synopsis of that
part of Pinto's book relating to China and Japan, strongly defends his credibiU
ity,observing that he little spares his own company and nation, but often and
eagerly lays open their vices. " I find in him," says Purchas, " little boast-
ing, except of other nations, none at all of himself, but as if he intended to
express God's glory, and man's merit of nothing but misery. And, however
it seems incredible to remember such infinite particulars as this book is
full of, yet an easy memory holdeth strong impressions of good and bad,
especially new-whetted, filed, furbushed, with so many companions in misery,
their best music in their chains and wanderings being the mutual
recounting of things seen, done and suffered. More marvel is it, if a liar,
that he should not forget himself and contradict his own relations.
" I would not have an author rejected for fit speeches framed by the writer,
in which many historians have taken liberty ; nor if sometimes he doth
mendacia dicere [say false things], so as that he doth not menliri [lie] ; ns
I will not sware but of himself he might mistake, and by others be misled.
The Chinese might, in relating their rarities to him, enlarge and de maynit
najora loqui [exaggerate things really great], so as he still might be religious
in a just and true delivery of what himself hath seen, and belei not his
own eyes.
* * * All China authors, how diversified in their lines, yet
all concur in a certain centre of Admiranda Sinarum [admirable things of
the Chinese],* which if others have not so largely related as this, they may
thank God they paid not so dear a price to see them ; and, for me, I will
rather believe, where reason evicts not, ejt.ctione firma [with a firm ejection],
than seek to see at the author's rate ; and if he hath robbed the altars of
truth, as he did those of the Calumplay idols, yet, in Pekin equity, we will
not cut off his thumbs (according to Nanquin rigor), upon bare surmise,
without any evidence against him."
The countries in which Pinto's adventures chiefly lay, still remain, for the
most part, very little known ; but the more they have been explored, the
more has the general correctness of Pinto's statements been admitted. The
editor of the great French collection, Annales des Voyages, who gives a full
abstract of Pinto, remarks that, having had occasion, in preparing the vol-
* The title of a work ascribed to Valif?nani, the same visitor of the Jesuit missions in the
Fart, repeatedly mentioned In p. 84, et ieq., of the text, and whom Purcha elsewhere call*
to* "grt JetuiL"