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

To make a traveler an agreeablecompanion 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 instructivecompanion. 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, and yet there is nothing which men will give

themselves so little trouble to attain; unless it be, perhaps,
that lowest degree of it which is the object of curiosity, and

which hath therefore that active passionconstantly employed in
its service. This, indeed, it is in the power of every traveler

to gratify; but it is the leading principle in weak minds only.
To render his relation agreeable to the man of sense, it is

therefore necessary that the voyager should possess several
eminent and rare talents; so rare indeed, that it is almost

wonderful to see them ever united in the same person. And if all
these talents must concur in the relator, they are certainly in a

more eminent degree necessary to the writer; for here the
narration admits of higher ornaments of style, and every fact and

sentiment offers itself to the fullest and most deliberate
examination. It would appear, therefore, I think, somewhat

strange if such writers as these should be found extremely
common; since nature hath been a most parsimonious distributor of

her richest talents, and hath seldom bestowed many on the same
person. But, on the other hand, why there should scarce exist a

single writer of this kind worthy our regard; and, whilst there
is no other branch of history (for this is history) which hath

not exercised the greatest pens, why this alone should be
overlooked by all men of great genius and erudition, and

delivered up to the Goths and Vandals as their lawful property,
is altogether as difficult to determine. And yet that this is

the case, with some very few exceptions, is most manifest. Of
these I shall willingly admit Burnet and Addison; if the former

was not, perhaps, to be considered as a political essayist, and
the latter as a commentator on the classics, rather than as a

writer of travels; which last title, perhaps, they would both of
them have been least ambitious to affect. Indeed, if these two

and two or three more should be removed from the mass, there
would remain such a heap of dullness behind, that the appellation

of voyage-writer would not appear very desirable. I am not here
unapprised that old Homer himself is by some considered as a

voyage-writer; and, indeed, the beginning of his Odyssey may be
urged to countenance that opinion, which I shall not controvert.

But, whateverspecies of writing the Odyssey is of, it is surely
at the head of that species, as much as the Iliad is of another;

and so far the excellent Longinus would allow, I believe, at this day.
But, in reality, the Odyssey, the Telemachus, and all of that

kind, are to the voyage-writing I here intend, what romance is to
true history, the former being the confounder and corrupter of

the latter. I am far from supposing that Homer, Hesiod, and the
other ancient poets and mythologists, had any settled design to

pervert and confuse the records of antiquity; but it is certain
they have effected it; and for my part I must confess I should

have honored and loved Homer more had he written a true history
of his own times in humble prose, than those noble poems that

have so justly collected the praise of all ages; for, though I
read these with more admiration and astonishment, I still read

Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon with more amusement and more
satisfaction. The original poets were not, however, without

excuse. They found the limits of nature too straight for the
immensity of their genius, which they had not room to exert

without extending fact by fiction: and that especially at a time
when the manners of men were too simple to afford that variety

which they have since offered in vain to the choice of the
meanest writers. In doing this they are again excusable for the

manner in which they have done it.
Ut speciosa dehine miracula promant.

They are not, indeed, so properly said to turn reality into
fiction, as fiction into reality. Their paintings are so bold,

their colors so strong, that everything they touch seems to exist
in the very manner they represent it; their portraits are so

just, and their landscapes so beautiful, that we acknowledge the
strokes of nature in both, without inquiring whether Nature

herself, or her journeyman the poet, formed the first pattern of
the piece. But other writers (I will put Pliny at their head)