206 
LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
yet the merit of the discovery was not a tittle the less, for how 
was he to be held accountable for the gross stupidity of other 
people, who, although he had so clearly and perspicuously 
pointed out the road to them, by which inexhaustible riches 
could be obtained, were yet so absolutely blind to their own 
interest, as not only to reject the golden opportunity, but to 
treat his discovery with derision and contempt. 
It is however a very rare discovery to meet with a great genius 
who is not also in many respects a great fool, and this is said 
from the purest spirit of charity to Capt. Ross, for the laudable 
purpose of putting the best possible construction upon any act 
which he might commit, and which if measured by the regular 
standard of human action, might carry with it the stamp of ex¬ 
treme foliy. His claim to the possession of extraordinary genius 
has been established in many instances throughout the present 
work, and no one who is the least acquainted with the results of 
his first voyage, will expose their own folly so much as to dis¬ 
pute his claim to be ranked amongst the most eminent of Britains 
sons, in the extent of his maritime discoveries. Still however 
it would be a difficult task to discover in what particular, whether 
in the aggregate or the detail, his genius displayed itself in the 
collection of a vast number of Esquimaux dresses, and other 
articles of the manufacture of the country, which in his own 
could not be attended with any advantage or utility, unless he 
had in his own mind a remote intention of establishing an em¬ 
porium in Monmouth Street, where the frequenters of masquerades 
and fancy balls; the captains of the Greenland ships and all future 
voyagers to the Arctic seas, might supply themselves at once with 
the choicest articles manufactured in the Esquimaux country, and 
where they could depend upon them being genuine, as imported. 
Let it not however be supposed that Capt. Ross stands singly in 
the world, in the collection of an almost indefinite number of 
useless articles, for he is able to appeal to the acts of some of 
the greatest men who have ever adorned this or any other country, 
as an example and excuse, for his predilection for the jackets, 
trowsers and boots of the Esquimaux ladies. Philip the second 
of Spam was a collector of clocks and watches ; Sir Isaac Newton 
of tobacco pipes; George the fourth, of great and virtuous 
