uld give him very little opportunity of
communicating any kind of entertainment or improvement to others.

To make a traveler an agreeable companion to a man of sense, it is
necessary, not only that he should have seen much, but that he should
have overlooked much of what he hath seen. Nature is not, any more than
a great genius, always admirable in her productions, and therefore the
traveler, who may be called her commentator, should not expect to find
everywhere subjects worthy of his notice. It is certain, indeed, that
one may be guilty of omission, as well as of the opposite extreme; but
a fault on that side will be more easily pardoned, as it is better to
be hungry than surfeited; and to miss your dessert at the table of a man
whose gardens abound with the choicest fruits, than to have your
taste affronted with every sort of trash that can be picked up at the
green-stall or the wheel-barrow. If we should carry on the analogy
between the traveler and the commentator, it is impossible to keep one's
eye a moment off from the laborious much-read doctor Zachary Gray, of
whose redundant notes on Hudibras I shall only say that it is, I am
confident, the single book extant in which above five hundred authors
are quoted, not one of which could be found in the collection of the
late doctor Mead.

As there are few things which a traveler is to record, there are fewer
on which he is to offer his observations: this is the office of the
reader; and it is so pleasant a one, that he seldom chooses to have
it taken from him, under the pretense of lending him assistance. Some
occasions, indeed, there are, when proper observations are pertinent,
and others when they are necessary; but good sense alone must point them
out. I shall lay down only one general rule; which I believe to be of
universal truth between relator and hearer, as it is between author and
reader; this is, that the latter never forgive any observation of the
former which doth not convey some knowledge that they are sensible they
could not possibly have attained of themselves.

But all his pains in collecting knowledge, all his judgment in
selecting, and all his art in communicating it, will not suffice,
unless he can make himself, in some degree, an agreeable as well as an
instructive companion. The highest instruction we can derive from the
tedious tale of a dull fellow scarce ever pays us for our attention.
There is nothing, I think, half so valuable as knowledge