ADVERTISEMENT TO THE PRESENT EDITION. THE Author gladly avails himself of the opportunity offered by a new Edition of this part of his Work, to acknowledge his obligation to a very celebrated traveller, John Hawkins, Esq. for a valuable communication, respecting La Guilletiere; whose account of Athens, published in Paris in 1675, the Reader will find mentioned in the twelfth chapter. It seems that the criticisms made by Spon upon that publication did not pass unregarded by the editor of La Guilletiere's narrative; but that they elicited an answer, full of very bitter animadversion, and severe satire, upon Spon's own work to which the latter replied with even greater asperity; and he endeavoured to prove that the pretended La Guilletiere was a fictitious character, and that no such person had ever set his foot in Athens; but that the account of its antiquities, which bears his name, was nothing more than a spurious publication, made from the observations of the Missionaries. of Athens" had been edited by his brother, Guillet; and it is this Guillet who attacked Spon, after the publication of his work, in a critique entitled, "Lettres écrites sur une Dissertation d'un Voyage de Grèce publié par M. Spon, Médecin Antiquaire; avec des Remarques sur les Médailles, les Inscriptions, l'Histoire Ancienne et Moderne, la Géographie, la Chronologie, et une Carte des Détroits de Constantinople, selon les nouvelles Découvertes de l'Antiquaire:" à Paris, 1679. 12mo. pp. 288.-In this critique, which is evidently the production of a writer of talents, and which abounds with the liveliest: sallies of wit, its author refutes the objectious thade by Spon against the accuracy of Lu Gilletiere; and he adduces, with great force of raillery, several blunders which the former trad ̈committed, in history, in chronology, and in geography. During the same year, Spon published his answer to Guillet, with this title, "Réponse à la Critique publiée par M. Guillet, sur le Voyage de Grèce de Jacob Spon: avec Quatre Lettres sur le mesme sujet, le Journal d'Angleterre du Sieur Vernon, et la Liste de Erreurs commises par M. Guillet dans son Athènes ancienne et nouvelle." à Lyon, 1679. 12mo. pp. 322. This controversy excited considerable sensation at the time; but La Guilletiere's "Account so little is known of it at present, that, with the exception of the two copies in the valuable Library of Mr. Hawkins, there is not, perhaps, another in any collection of Great Britain. Although they served to throw considerable light upon the state of Greece, wheu that country had been little visited by modern travellers, no allusion to these two publications has anywhere occurred. Indeed, so entirely unexpected was the communication respecting them, and so great the gratification which the writer of these pages felt in perusing the pleadings of the rival disputants, that it seemed to him as if the two authors had been called from their graves to talk of the travels they had performed near a century and a half ago; or as if he had, in reality, been admitted to a "dialogue in the shades." A few general observations concerning the two publications are, however, all that the limits of this advertisement will allow. It must therefore be sufficient, for the present, briefly to state, that if Guillet had the advantage in the first instance, by his successful irony, and by the address he manifested in ridiculing the errors he had detected in Spon's work, the latter finally triumphed, by his greater learning and more judicious criticism. He has made out a list of one hundred and twelve errors, which he pretended to have discovered in La Guilletiere's Athens: but many of these hardly deserve the name of errors; they are such as may be found in any book of travels, especially in his own; and in one instance his charge against La Guilletiere is founded upon an untruth, for he affirms that there are no remains of a graduated Coilon in the Stadium at Athens: " Il n'y reste," says he', "pourtant, que la situation du lieu et quelques restes des doubles murailles, mais point de degrés." The principal charge brought against Guilletiere, respects his autopsy; but this charge is by no means satisfactorily supported. Another relates to his having maintained that an inscription 'Ayvóσry Oε existed in the Parthenon; yet, for the existence of this inscription in the year 1669, La Guilletiere adduces the testimonies of four persons; namely, Barnaby and Simon, two Capuchins, who resided long at Athens; and Monsieur De Monceaux and Monsieur L'Ainé, “qui lûrent plusieurs fois la mesme inscription." Spon did not arrive in Athens until the year 1676; and his antagonist, mentioning this circumstance, says3, (1) Réponse à la Critique du Voyage de Grèce, p. 316. à Lyon, 1679. (2) Dissertation sur une Voyage de Grèce, p. 128. Paris, 1679. (3) Ibid. p. 130. |