Transcribed from the 1888 Cassell & Co. edition by DavidPrice,
CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY.
London in 1731
BY
DON MANOEL GONZALES.
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
LONDON, PARIS,NEW YORK &MELBOURNE.
1888.
INTRODUCTION.
Don Manoel Gonzales is the assumedname of the writer of a “Voyage to Great Britain,containing an Account of England and Scotland,” which wasfirst printed in the first of the two folio volumes of “ACollection of Voyages and Travels, compiled from the Library ofthe Earl of Oxford” (Robert Harley, who died in 1724, butwhose industry in collection was continued by his son Edward, thesecond Earl), “interspersed and illustrated withNotes.” These volumes, known as the “HarleianCollection,” were published in 1745 and 1746. Thenarrative was reproduced early in the present century in thesecond of the seventeen quartos of John Pinkerton’s“General Collection of the best and the most interestingVoyages and Travels of the World” (1808–1814), fromwhich this account of London is taken. The writer doeshere, no doubt, keep up his character of Portuguese by a lightallusion to “our extensive city of Lisbon,” but heforgets to show his nationality when speaking of Portugal amongthe countries with which London has trade, and he writes ofLondon altogether like one to the City born, when he describesits inner life together with its institutions and itsbuildings.
The book is one of those that have been attributed to Defoe,who died in 1731, and the London it describes was dated byPinkerton in the last year of Defoe’s life. This isalso the latest date to be found in the narrative. On page93 of this volume, old buildings at St. Bartholomew’s aresaid to have been pulled down in the year 1731, “and amagnificent pile erected in the room of them, about 150 feet inlength, faced with a pure white stone, besides other additionsnow building.” That passage was written, therefore,after 1731, and could not possibly have been written byDefoe. But if the book was in Robert Harley’scollection, and not one of the additions made by his son thesecond earl, the main body of the account of London must be of adate earlier than the first earl’s death in 1724. Note, for instance, the references on pages 27, 28, to “thelate Queen Mary,” and to “her Majesty” QueenAnne, as if Anne were living. It would afterwards have beenbrought to date of publication by additions made in or before1745. The writer, whoever he may have been, was an ableman, who joined to the detail of a guide-book the clearobservation of one who writes like an educated and notuntravelled London merchant, giving a description of his nativetown as it was in the reign of George the First, with addition ofa later touch or two from the beginning of the reign of Georgethe Second.
His London is London of the time when Pope published histranslation of the “Iliad,” and was nettled at thereport that Addison, at Button’s Coffee House, had given toTickell’s little venture in the sam