Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)

Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, An African

London

Printed by J. Nichols

1782

"No! why then thou art a silly fellow--incumbered with three abominable inmates;--to wit--Conscience--Honesty--and Good-nature--I hate thee (as the Jew says) because thou art a Christian."

No! you have not the least grain of genius--alas! description is a science--a man should in some measure be born with the knack of it.--Poor blundering M--, I pity thee--once more I tell thee--thou art a bungler in every thing--ask the girls else.--You know nothing of figures--you write a wretched hand--thou hast a nonsensical style--almost as disagreeable as thy heart--thy heart, though better than thy head--and which I wish from my soul (as it now is) was the worst heart in the three kingdoms--thy heart is a silly one--a poor cowardly heart--that would shrink at mere trifles--though there were no danger of fine or imprisonment:--for example--come, confess now--could you lie with the wife of your friend? could you debauch his sister? could you defraud a poor creditor? could you by gambling rejoice in the outwitting a novice of all his possessions?--No! why then thou art a silly fellow--incumbered with three abominable inmates;--to wit--Conscience--Honesty--and Good-nature--I hate thee (as the Jew says) because thou art a Christian.
(II.xliii pp. 104-5; pp. 183-4 in Carretta)

Population::Inmates

Reading; text from DocSouth

Five entries in ESTC (1782, 1783, 1784). [Second edition in 1783, third in 1784.]

See Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, An African. In Two Volumes. To Which Are Prefixed, Memoirs of His Life (London: Printed by J. Nichols, 1782). <Link to text from Documenting the American South at UNC>

Reading Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, ed. Vincent Carretta (New York: Penguin, 1998).

07/11/2013