Sayfa 627 / 1391

He is gifted with far greater dramatic invention than any one who

succeeded him, with the exception of Swift. In the art of

feigning he is a worthy disciple of Plato. Like him, starting

from a small portion of fact, he founds his tale with admirable

skill on a few lines in the Latin narrative of the voyages of

Amerigo Vespucci. He is very precise about dates and facts, and

has the power of making us believe that the narrator of the tale

must have been an eyewitness. We are fairly puzzled by his manner

of mixing up real and imaginary persons; his boy John Clement and

Peter Giles, citizen of Antwerp, with whom he disputes about the

precise words which are supposed to have been used by the

(imaginary) Portuguese traveller, Raphael Hythloday.