n's
or of Mrs. Centlivre's) where this vice in a voyage-writer is finely
ridiculed. An ignorant pedant, to whose government, for I know not what
reason, the conduct of a young nobleman in his travels is committed, and
who is sent abroad to show my lord the world, of which he knows nothing
himself, before his departure from a town, calls for his Journal to
record the goodness of the wine and tobacco, with other articles of the
same importance, which are to furnish the materials of a voyage at his
return home. The humor, it is true, is here carried very far; and yet,
perhaps, very little beyond what is to be found in writers who profess
no intention of dealing in humor at all. Of one or other, or both of
these kinds, are, I conceive, all that vast pile of books which pass
under the names of voyages, travels, adventures, lives, memoirs,
histories, etc., some of which a single traveler sends into the world in
many volumes, and others are, by judicious booksellers, collected into
vast bodies in folio, and inscribed with their own names, as if they
were indeed their own travels: thus unjustly attributing to themselves
the merit of others.

Now, from both these faults we have endeavored to steer clear in the
following narrative; which, however the contrary may be insinuated by
ignorant, unlearned, and fresh-water critics, who have never traveled
either in books or ships, I do solemnly declare doth, in my own
impartial opinion, deviate less from truth than any other voyage extant;
my lord Anson's alone being, perhaps, excepted. Some few embellishments
must be allowed to every historian; for we are not to conceive that the
speeches in Livy, Sallust, or Thucydides, were literally spoken in the
very words in which we now read them. It is sufficient that every fact
hath its foundation in truth, as I do seriously aver is the ease in
the ensuing pages; and when it is so, a good critic will be so far
from denying all kind of ornament of style or diction, or even of
circumstance, to his author, that he would be rather sorry if he omitted
it; for he could hence derive no other advantage than the loss of an
additional pleasure in the perusal.

Again, if any merely common incident should appear in this journal,
which will seldom I apprehend be the case, the candid reader will
easily perceive it is not introduced for its own sake, but for some
observations and reflections naturally resulting from it; and which,
if but little to his amuse