r or verdant fields on the land. Every one of them would prefer
his ship and his hammock to all the sweets of Arabia the Happy; but,
unluckily for them, there are in every seaport in England certain
houses whose chief livelihood depends on providing entertainment for the
gentlemen of the jacket. For this purpose they are always well furnished
with those cordial liquors which do immediately inspire the heart with
gladness, banishing all careful thoughts, and indeed all others,
from the mind, and opening the mouth with songs of cheerfulness and
thanksgiving for the many wonderful blessings with which a seafaring
life overflows.

For my own part, however whimsical it may appear, I confess I have
thought the strange story of Circe in the Odyssey no other than an
ingenious allegory, in which Homer intended to convey to his countrymen
the same kind of instruction which we intend to communicate to our own
in this digression. As teaching the art of war to the Greeks was the
plain design of the Iliad, so was teaching them the art of navigation
the no less manifest intention of the Odyssey. For the improvement of
this, their situation was most excellently adapted; and accordingly we
find Thucydides, in the beginning of his history, considers the Greeks
as a set of pirates or privateers, plundering each other by sea.
This being probably the first institution of commerce before the Ars
Cauponaria was invented, and merchants, instead of robbing, began to
cheat and outwit each other, and by degrees changed the Metabletic,
the only kind of traffic allowed by Aristotle in his Politics, into the
Chrematistic.

By this allegory then I suppose Ulysses to have been the captain of a
merchant-ship, and Circe some good ale-wife, who made his crew drunk
with the spirituous liquors of those days. With this the transformation
into swine, as well as all other incidents of the fable, will notably
agree; and thus a key will be found out for unlocking the whole mystery,
and forging at least some meaning to a story which, at present, appears
very strange and absurd.

Hence, moreover, will appear the very near resemblance between the
sea-faring men of all ages and nations; and here perhaps may be
established the truth and justice of that observation, which will occur
oftener than once in this voyage, that all human flesh is not the same
flesh, but that there is one kind of flesh of landmen, and another of
seamen.

Philosophers, divines, and other