From The Expedition of Humphry Clinker:
You must remember the account I once gave you of a curious dispute he had at Constantinople, with a couple of Turks, in defence of the Christian religion; a dispute from which he acquired the epithet of Demonstrator—The truth is, H— owns no religion but that of nature; but, on this occasion, he was stimulated to shew his parts, for the honour of his country….
From the notes to the Norton Critical Edition:
Colonel William Hewett (1693–1766) was a well-known traveler and eccentric. This is a delicate allusion to an indelicate story. Samuel Pegge in Anonymiana (2nd ed., London, 1818, p. 196) suppresses the story while essentially revealing it. Hewett’s argument with the Turks concerned the Paradise of Mahomet, which was said to provide faithful Muslim men with beautiful women called houris, and Hewett argued that Christians were better qualified to enjoy them than either Jews or Turks. Apparently he then demonstrated the superiority in the form of an uncircumcised penis.
Why I love annotated editions.
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