author's preface. Ixxxvii 



exquisite Pleasure, and content in being deliver'd from an 

 infinity uf Temptations to Sin, to which Men are liable in 

 other Places. Collected in my self, 1 had seen there by 

 serious Pteflection, as plain as if it was within reach of my 

 Hand or Eye; what Nothings the Inhabitants of this 

 wretched World admire; of this World, I say, where Art 

 almost always destroys^ Nature under pretence of adorning- 

 it; Where Artifice worse than Art, Hypocrisy, Fraud, 

 Superstition and Eapine exercise a Tyrannical Empire over 

 Mankind; where in short, every thing is Error, Vanity, 

 Disorder, Corruption, Malice and Misery.''^ 



1 cannot help adding here by way of Advance, that what- 

 ever inconveniences might have attended a longer stay in 

 this Island, I had never left it, had I not been forc'd to do 

 it : And nothing but the boisterous Humour, the wild 

 Precipitation, and the rash attempt of Seven, in that, 

 Inconsiderate young Men, cou'd have constrain'd me to have 

 abandon'd that sweet Abode. 



What do I say,— No, 'twas not Llan but Providence that 

 conducted me thither, and that brought me thence. 'Twas 



1 " Too nicely Jonson knew the critic's part, 



Nature in him was almost lost in Art." {W. Collins. 1750.) 



2 "These few lines suffice, we believe," writes M. Eugene Muller, 

 " to characterise the author and the principal hero of the narrative 

 about to be related. We here recognise one of those pure but rigid 

 individualities which have so often been engendered by the pious spirit 

 of enquiry amidst the fires of intolerant persecution." " Franfois 

 Leguat personifies in all his austerity, imposing yet simple, tho&e 

 puritans of Frauce, who, obliged by conviction to profess the primitive 

 faith, openly repudiate with energy all practices both civil and 

 religious, which according to their ideas are incompatible with ancient 

 Christian simplicity. Absolutely humble before God, and full of 

 charity towards their neighbours, they do not regard as vain the 

 examples of putting away all vanities given by the Divine Saviour ; 

 but freed by the renouncement of the world, they obtain from the 

 divine revelation th(! great precept of human equality. A strange 

 and bizarre type, and we cannot help adding, not without a semblance 

 of the ridiculous." 



