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"Carolina, Reina de Inglaterra, muger de Jorge segundo, avia juntado, para su entretenimiento, una coleccion de libros de Inventiva, i la llamava La Bibliotheca del sabio Merlin, i aviendosela enseñado a Juan Baron Carteret, le dijo este sabio apreciador de los Escritores Españoles, que faltava en ella la Ficcion más agradable, que se avia escrito en el Mundo, que era la Vida de D. Quijote de la Mancha, i que él queria tener el mérito de colocarla" (p. xxv.).

This statement, it will be seen, was made more than fifty years after the event to which it refers. Nevertheless it may be true. Juan Antonio Mayáns may have had the story from Gregorio Mayáns. He was most unlikely to invent it, and the fact that he gives 1737 as the date of Gregorio's biography inclines one to believe in his general accuracy: all other writers give 1738 as the date, but it has recently been found that a tirage à part was struck off at Briga-Real (i.e. Madrid) a year before the Vida was printed in London. It must, however, be remembered that Gregorio Mayáns never met Carteret, and was never in England. Knowing that Carteret paid him for his share in the work, he might easily have imagined that Carteret also paid Tonson, and may have been understood to state this inference as a positive fact. In any case, the memory of an elderly man is not always trustworthy in such matters as these. Moreover, as Gregorio Mayáns died in 1781, we must allow for the possibility of error on the part of Juan Antonio, when repeating a tale that he had heard at least eleven years before.