In this way, then, came to be written the first delightful chapters of Baron Munchausen’s “Narrative of his Travels and Campaigns in Russia.”  It was not primarily intended as a satire, nor was it specially designed to take of the extravagant flights of contemporary travellers.  It was rather a literary frivolity, thrown off at one effort by a tatterdemalion genius in sore need of a few guineas.

The remainder of the book is a melancholy example of the fallacy of enlargements and of sequels.  Neither Raspe nor the baron can be seriously held responsible for a single word of it.  It must have been written by a bookseller’s hack, whom it is now quite impossible to identify, but who was evidently of native origin; and the book is a characteristically English product, full of personal and political satire, with just a twang of edification.  The first continuation (chapters one and seven, to twenty, inclusive), which was supplied with the third edition, is merely a modern rechauffe, with “up to date” allusions, of Lucian’s Vera Historia.  Prototypes of the majority of the stories may either be found in Lucian or in the twenty volumes of Voyages Imaginaires, published at Paris in 1787.  In case, however, any reader should be sceptical as to the accuracy of this statement he will have no very great difficulty in supposing, as Dr. Johnson supposed of Ossian, that anybody could write a great amount of such stuff if he would only consent to abandon his mind to the task.

With the supplementary chapters commence topical allusions to the recently issued memoirs of Baron de Tott, an enterprising Frenchman who had served the Great Turk against the Russians in the Crimea (an English translation of his book had appeared in 1785).  The satire upon this gallant soldier’s veracity appears to be quite undeserved, though one can hardly read portions of his adventures without being forcibly reminded of the Baron’s laconic style.  It is needless to add that the amazing account of De Tott’s origin is grossly libellous.  The amount of public interest excited by the aeronautical exploits of Montgolfier and Blanchard was also playfully satirised.  Their first imitator in England, Vincenzo Lunardi, had made a successful ascent from Moorfields as recently as 1784, while in the following year Blanchard crossed the channel in a balloon and earned the sobriquet Don Quixote de la Manche.  His grotesque appropriation of the motto “Sic itur ad astra” made him, at least, a fit object for Munchausen’s gibes.  In the Baron’s visit to Gibraltar we have evidence that the anonymous writer, in common with the rest of the reading public, had been studying John Drinkwater’s “History of the Siege of Gibraltar” (completed in 1783), which had with extreme rapidity established its reputation as a military classic.  Similarly, in the Polar adventures, the “Voyage towards the North Pole,” 1774, of Constantine John Phipps, afterwards Lord Mulgrave,