[COYER, G.F.]

Lettre au docteur Maty...

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"A Bruxelles",, 1767. Octavo; a fine copy in recent marbled boards, morocco spine label. First edition: very scarce. This is a most interesting contribution to the myth of the Patagonian Giants. Coyer's satirical letter to the very real Dr Maty argues that it is not so much that the Patagonians are giants, but that Europeans have become stunted by debauchery and corruption.

In the late-1760s the question of the enormous Patagonians obsessed Europe, largely as the result of the return of Commodore Byron's Dolphin: it was reported in various journals that the crew had encountered a tribe of giants in South America. The story was generally believed, but it also proved fertile ground for the satirist, notably with Horace Walpole's An Account of the Geantz recently discovered in which he playfully upbraided Byron for not bringing some of them back to London to improve English breeding stock.

Coyer begins his Lettre with an abstract of various accounts of the Patagonians, as reported by the likes of Magellan, Frezier, Bougainville and Buffon. But most of his account is an extension and partial refutation of Walpole's work, in which Coyer firmly confirms the existence of the giant Patagonians, who live in a society of concord and peace, where the vices of European society are unknown. Coyer's simple and elegant contention is that if the horribly corrupted Europeans lived instead with the simplicity and humility of the Patagonians, they too would be giants.
Leclerc, 1973; not in Hartig; Versins, 210.

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