place before your
eyes a true picture in that of a hand trembling in almost its
latest hour, of a body emaciated with pains, yet struggling for your
entertainment; and let this affecting picture open each tender heart,
and call forth a melting tear, to blot out whatever failings may be
found in a work begun in pain, and finished almost at the same period
with life. It was thought proper by the friends of the deceased that
this little piece should come into your hands as it came from the hands
of the author, it being judged that you would be better pleased to have
an opportunity of observing the faintest traces of a genius you have
long admired, than have it patched by a different hand, by which means
the marks of its true author might have been effaced. That the success
of the last written, though first published, volume of the author's
posthumous pieces may be attended with some convenience to those
innocents he hath left behind, will no doubt be a motive to encourage
its circulation through the kingdom, which will engage every future
genius to exert itself for your pleasure. The principles and spirit
which breathe in every line of the small fragment begun in answer to
Lord Bolingbroke will unquestionably be a sufficient apology for its
publication, although vital strength was wanting to finish a work so
happily begun and so well designed. PREFACE THERE would not, perhaps,
be a more pleasant or profitable study, among those which have their
principal end in amusement, than that of travels or voyages, if they
were wrote as they might be and ought to be, with a joint view to
the entertainment and information of mankind. If the conversation of
travelers be so eagerly sought after as it is, we may believe their
books will be still more agreeable company, as they will in general be
more instructive and more entertaining. But when I say the conversation
of travelers is usually so welcome, I must be understood to mean that
only of such as have had good sense enough to apply their peregrinations
to a proper use, so as to acquire from them a real and valuable
knowledge of men and things, both which are best known by comparison. If
the customs and manners of men were everywhere the same, there would be
no office so dull as that of a traveler, for the difference of hills,
valleys, rivers, in short, the various views of which we may see the
face of the earth, would scarce afford him a pleasure worthy of
his labor; and surely it wo