The following relation is so curious and entertaining, and the
dissertations that accompany it so judicious and instructive, that
the translator is confident his attempt stands in need of no
apology, whatever censures may fall on the performance.
The Portuguese traveller, contrary to the general vein of his
countrymen, has amused his reader with no romantic absurdities or
incredible fictions; whatever he relates, whether true or not, is at
least probable; and he who tells nothing exceeding the bounds of
probability has a right to demand that they should believe him who
cannot contradict him.
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 devoid 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 inconveniences by particular favours.
In his account of the mission, where his veracity is most to be
suspected, he neither exaggerates overmuch the merits of the
Jesuits, if we consider the partial regard paid by the Portuguese to
their countrymen, by the Jesuits to their society, and by the
Papists to their church, nor aggravates the vices of the Abyssins;
but if the reader will not be satisfied with a Popish account of a
Popish mission, he may have recourse to the history of the church of
Abyssinia, written by Dr. Geddes, in which he will find the actions
and sufferings of the missionaries placed in a different light,
though the same in which Mr. Le Grand, with all his zeal for the
Roman church, appears to have seen them.
This learned dissertator, however valuable for his industry and
erudition, is yet more to be esteemed for having dared so freely in
the midst of France to declare his disapprobation of the Patriarch
Oviedo's sanguinary zeal, who was continually importuning the
Portuguese to beat up their drums for missionaries, who might preach
the gospel with swords in their hands, and propagate by desolation
and slaughter the true worship of the God of Peace.
