5.
shaken off. A highly critical review appeared in The British Quarterly Review for April 1,[1] and another, more moderate in tone, in The Saturday Review of April 30.[2] The subsequent history of the reception of Cornwallis' work is also interesting. Certain people were apparently taken in by Cornwallis' work, since in 1860 at least two incidents fabricated by Cornwallis were being accepted as genuine and had found their way into an avowed compilation on Japan by the writer S. B. Kemish.[3] But Englishmen who had actually been in Japan were by 1863 probably agreeing with the first British minister to Japan, Sir Rutherford Alcock, who in The Capital of the Tycoon stated that the Two Journeys to Japan contained "such marvellous adventures as can seldom have fallen to the lot of Paladin or Traveler since the days of Mendez Pinto."[4]
To revert to 1859, the peculiar nature of Cornwallis' work brought forth a number of reactions, which taken together afford us a picture of the state of knowledge concerning Japan
- ↑ The British Quarterly Review, XXIX, no.58 (Apr. 1, 1859), 483-506. Cornwallis' work is here reviewed in conjunction with the Narrative of the Perry expedition (see note 3), with Japan opened (The Religious Tract Society, 1858), and with Steinetz's book (see note 7).
- ↑ The Saturday Review, VII, no. 183 (Apr. 30, 1859), 533-534.
- ↑ Kemish, op cit. p.50 repeats the story of the harakiri which Cornwallis claimed to have seen; also on p.206 repeats Cornwallis' story of a Japanese child who had rapidly learnt the Arabic numbers. Cf. Cornwallis, I, i, 49-57 and 35-36 respectively.
- ↑ Alcock, op. cit., I, 172n.
