LONDON IN 1710
From the Travels of Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach This is the most myopic, and in some ways the funniest, of all the foreigner-in-England publications of the last few years. Possibly von Uffenbach had a duller reception than he deserved : possibly, on the other hand, he deserved. what he got. Here is London in the dramatic days of 1710. " What monstrous sums of money the English pay for coins.", Apothecary Petiver " had some charming insects," but
everything is kept in true English fashion in one wretched cabinet and in boxes." " I inquired after the man who is- said to have crowed all day long exactly like a cock (this was at Bedlam), but they knew nothing abouthim." Nearer the end of the heel-fitting (this was at Greenwich Observatory) was an upright nut E, with which the machine F could be screwed up and down after turning screw G within it." Coins, glass-cutting, pencils, curious instruments, historical books, and beetles, interested—or at any rate pleased—the gentle- man a good deal more than did the Londoners themselves. They dine in the Middle Temple, he grumbles " in as slovenly a fashion as they do in the colleges in Oxford." The English have no respect for good books, no skill at foreign languages, and no manners. One man, it is true, was, " for an English- man, most polite and discreet." English catalogues are artful and superficial ; ignorance and pedantry are' fairly'. preys- lent " ; and " one is certainly astonished " at the tumult and hubbub made by the English at the races on Banstead Downs. London in 1710 (Faber and Faber, 7s. M.), like its predecessor about Oxford, is niggling and displeased, yet in its curious ways it is well worth reading. It proves, at any rate, that von Uffenbach went away from England even better pleased with himself than he arrived.
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