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Reinhard, in an answer to an attack made upon his hero for bringing out Munchausen as a pot-boiler in German and English simultaneously, definitely stated in the Berlin Gesellschafters of November 1824, that the real author of the original work was that disreputable genius, Rudolph Erich Raspe, and that the German work was merely a free translation made by Buerger from the fifth edition of the English work.
The Indians themselves could give no information of the route beyond the confined limits of their hunting ranges. The path which this pioneer party entered was existent only in the imagination of the book-making geographer, about as accurate and useful from its detail, as the route of Baron Munchausen to the icelands of the North Pole on the back of his eagle.
Why should I? It is but one astounding falsehood that is wanted to set me free. I will venture to say that Mendez Pinto, the Portuguese liar, that Sir John Mandeville, the traveller, that Baron Munchausen, the most philosophic of bold adventurers into the back settlements of lying, never soared into such an aerial bounce, never cleared such a rasper of a fence, as did Pope on this occasion.
Yeovil sat and listened to story after story of the men and women and horses of the neighbourhood; even the foxes seemed to have a personality, some of them, and a personal history. It was a little like Hans Andersen, he decided, and a little like the Reminiscences of an Irish R.M., and perhaps just a little like some of the more probable adventures of Baron Munchausen.
"My dear fellow," cried Steel, "and so, to be sure, I did! Why on earth did you let me rattle on? Let me see the point was ah, yes! Of course, my dear Langholm, you haven't really anything of any account to tell? I considered you a Quixote when you undertook your quest; but I shall begin to suspect a dash of Munchausen if you tell me you have found out anything in the inside of a week!"
"I mean that Munchausen beat him forty-seven up," said Boswell. "Were there any witnesses?" I demanded, for I had little faith in Munchausen's regard for the eternal verities, among which a golf-card must be numbered if the game is to survive. "Yes, a hundred," said Boswell. "There was only one trouble with 'em." Here the great biographer laughed. "They were all imaginary, like the colonel."
When Raspe was resident in Goettingen he obtained, in all probability through Gerlach Adolph von Munchausen, the great patron of arts and letters and of Goettingen University, an introduction to Hieronynimus Karl Friedrich von Munchausen, at whose hospitable mansion at Bodenwerder he became an occasional visitor.
"You'd look well going up to a man and saying, 'Excuse me, sir, but ah were you ever a monkey?" "To say nothing of catechising a man on the subject of an old and dreadful scandal," put in Munchausen. "I'm surprised at you, Livingstone. African etiquette seems to have ruined your sense of propriety." "I'd just as lief ask him," said Doctor Johnson. "Etiquette? Bah!
"Talking of the blank spaces of the map gives me an idea. What about exposing a fraud a modern Munchausen and making him rideeculous? You could show him up as the liar that he is! Eh, man, it would be fine. How does it appeal to you?" "Anything anywhere I care nothing." McArdle was plunged in thought for some minutes.
"Sir, it will make you more famous than you ever were before," replied the first speaker, evidently much enraged. "I am persuaded we are going into no such absurd place," said the Baron, exasperated. The sailor with the dreamy eye was fearfully angry. He drew himself up stiffiy and said: "Sir, you lie!" M. le Baron Munchausen took it in very good part.
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