ABSTRACT
‘I did not expect to have found myself mentioned by name in the work which you have just published,’ Dalrymple informed Dr Hawkesworth in 1773; ‘I concluded that the same influence which prevented me from going in the Endeavour… would impose silence concerning the merit of every attempt of mine to throw light on former discoveries in the South Seas, and I thought that attempt could not be mentioned without a certain degree of approbation which is due to every performance intended for the publick information, however ill that performance may be executed; in this, however, I was mistaken, since I find myself attacked by implication as having misrepresented the Spanish and Dutch voyages to support my own ill-grounded conjectures; you have indeed passed over in silence whatever you thought could do me any credit.’
