It contains a narrative of the endeavours of a
company of missionaries to convert the people of Abyssinia to the church
of Rome. In the preface to this work, Johnson observes, "that the
Portuguese traveller, contrary to the general view of his countrymen,
has amused his readers with no romantick absurdities, or incredible
fictions. He appears, by his modest and unaffected narration, to have
described things, as he saw them; to have copied nature from the life;
and to have consulted his senses, not his imagination. He meets with no
basilisks, that destroy with their eyes; his crocodiles devour their
prey, without tears; and his cataracts fall from the rock, without
deafening the neighbouring inhabitants. The reader will here find no
regions cursed with irremediable barrenness, or blessed with spontaneous
fecundity; no perpetual gloom, or unceasing sunshine; nor are the
nations, here described, either void of all sense of humanity, or
consummate in all private and social virtues; here are no Hottentots
without religion, polity or articulate language; no Chinese perfectly
polite, and completely skilled in all sciences; he will discover, what
will always be discovered by a diligent and impartial inquirer, that,
wherever human nature is to be found, there is a mixture of vice and
virtue, a contest of passion and reason; and that the Creator doth not
appear partial in his distributions, but has balanced, in most
countries, their particular inconveniencies, by particular favours.
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