ment, tend directly to the instruction of
the reader or to the information of the public; to whom if I choose to
convey such instruction or information with an air of joke and laughter,
none but the dullest of fellows will, I believe, censure it; but if
they should, I have the authority of more than one passage in Horace to
allege in my defense. Having thus endeavored to obviate some censures,
to which a man without the gift of foresight, or any fear of the
imputation of being a conjurer, might conceive this work would be
liable, I might now undertake a more pleasing task, and fall at once to
the direct and positive praises of the work itself; of which indeed, I
could say a thousand good things; but the task is so very pleasant that
I shall leave it wholly to the reader, and it is all the task that I
impose on him. A moderation for which he may think himself obliged to me
when he compares it with the conduct of authors, who often fill a whole
sheet with their own praises, to which they sometimes set their own real
names, and sometimes a fictitious one. One hint, however, I must give
the kind reader; which is, that if he should be able to find no sort of
amusement in the book, he will be pleased to remember the public utility
which will arise from it. If entertainment, as Mr. Richardson observes,
be but a secondary consideration in a romance; with which Mr. Addison, I
think, agrees, affirming the use of the pastry cook to be the first; if
this, I say, be true of a mere work of invention, sure it may well be
so considered in a work founded, like this, on truth; and where the
political reflections form so distinguishing a part. But perhaps I may
hear, from some critic of the most saturnine complexion, that my vanity
must have made a horrid dupe of my judgment, if it hath flattered me
with an expectation of having anything here seen in a grave light, or of
conveying any useful instruction to the public, or to their guardians. I
answer, with the great man whom I just now quoted, that my purpose is
to convey instruction in the vehicle of entertainment; and so to
bring about at once, like the revolution in the Rehearsal, a
perfect reformation of the laws relating to our maritime affairs: an
undertaking, I will not say more modest, but surely more feasible, than
that of reforming a whole people, by making use of a vehicular story, to
wheel in among them worse manners than their own.

INTRODUCTION

In the beginning of Aug