INTRODUCTION. XXVU 



against this Preface. But as they concern personal quarrels 

 in which the Public has no interest, I have not thought fit 

 to insert them in my Keview, especially the Memoir, in which 

 the attacks of the Author are warmly repulsed. I have al- 

 ready, elsewhere, advertised that, if I cared to utilise all 

 the writings which concern the personal disputes of Authors, 

 I should have room for nothing else. I repeat my notice 

 again, that unless the IMemoirs sent to me contain something 

 useful to the Public, I cannot publish them. 



" A person very well informed on all subjects of which the 

 narrative is given in this book of travels tells me that there 

 are some facts exaggerated, that some essential points have 

 been omitted, and that some others are inserted which are 

 absolutely false. In this last class may be placed a certain 

 argument of some length on the advantages and disadv^an- 

 tages of marriage, which is, to my taste, the most uninteresting 

 reading in the whole book ; the fictitious columns on which 

 were engraved the names of the voyagers, said to have been 

 left in the Island of Bodrir/iie, and the Epitaph on Sieur 

 Isaac Boyer, which may be said to be both ridiculous and 

 slightly fanatical. It is asserted that the author blames 

 without reason the design which the voyagers had in leaving 

 the spot where they were wasting their youth miserably in 

 idleness. It is said that he has had little consideration for a 

 distinguished family (Benelle ?) in attributing to one of its 

 members frivolous schemes which he most^ assuredly never 

 advanced. In short we are told that the whole Book is a 

 tissue of rubbish {fatras), which so obscures the real adven- 

 tures that it is necessary to recast it altogether in order to 

 correct it, which someone will, perhaps, be able to do some 

 day. 



" It is astonishing that a stranger's hand should thus have 

 disfigured a Voyage which was perfectly capable of attracting 

 interest by the mere recital of the actual adventures, of which 

 it could have been composed. Those who have met with 

 some of the persons mentioned in it know that it was not 

 necessary to exaggerate these adventures to render them 



