He Now Comes Again Abroad With Considerable Additions, Not Foisted In, But Taken From His Own Original Manuscript, Of Which It Would Appear That Purchas Only Had An Imperfect Copy.

These additions, it is true, are not great in bulk, but they are valuable for the subject; and several matters, which in the other collection are brought in abruptly, are here continued in a more methodical manner."

After an attentive comparison of these two former editions, it obviously appears that the edition by Purchas, in 1625, is in general more circumstantial and more satisfactory than that of Churchill, in 1744, notwithstanding its superior pretensions, as above stated. Yet, on several occasions, the edition in Churchill gives a more intelligible account of particulars, and has enabled us, on these occasions, to restore what Purchas, by careless abbreviation, had left an obscure and almost unintelligible jumble of words. The present edition, therefore, is formed upon a careful collation of these two former, supplying from each what was defective in the other. On the present occasion, the nautical and other observations made by Sir Thomas Roe during the voyage from England to Surat, are omitted, having been already inserted into the account of that voyage by Captain Peyton.

It were much to be desired that this first account of the political intercourse between Britain and Hindoostan could have been given at full length, more especially as that extensive, rich, populous, and fertile country is now almost entirely reduced under the dominion of the British crown; and as Sir Thomas Roe, even in the garbled state in which we are forced to present his observations, clearly shews the inherent vices of the Mogul government, through which it so rapidly fell into anarchy, and was torn in pieces by its own cumbrous and ill-managed strength.

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