Читать книгу Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: With His Vision of the Angelick World - Даниэль Дефо, Данієль Дефо, Даниэль Дефо - Страница 2

The publishing this extraordinary volume will appear to be no presumption, when it shall be remembered with what unexpected good and evil will the former volumes have been accepted in the world.

If the foundation has been so well laid, the structure cannot but be expected to bear a proportion; and while the parable has been so diverting, the moral must certainly be equally agreeable.

The success the two former parts have met with has been known by the envy it has brought upon the editor, expressed in a thousand hard words from the men of trade – the effect of that regret which they entertained at their having no share in it. And I must do the author the justice to say, that not a dog has wagged his tongue at the work itself, nor has a word been said to lessen the value of it, but which has been the visible effect of that envy at the good fortune of the bookseller.

The riddle is now expounded, and the intelligent reader may see clearly the end and design of the whole work; that it is calculated for, and dedicated to, the improvement and instruction of mankind in the ways of virtue and piety, by representing the various circumstances to which mankind is exposed, and encouraging such as fall into ordinary or extraordinary casualties of life, how to work through difficulties with unwearied diligence and application, and look up to Providence for success.

The observations and reflections, that take up this volume, crown the work; if the doctrine has been accepted, that application must of necessity please; and the author shows now, that he has learned sufficient experience how to make other men wise and himself unhappy.

The moral of the fable, as the author calls it, is most instructing; and those who challenged him most maliciously, with not making his pen useful, will have leisure to reflect, that they passed their censure too soon, and, like Solomon’s fool, judged of the matter before they heard it.

Those whose avarice, prevailing over their honesty, had invaded the property of this book by a corrupt abridgment, have both failed in their hope and been ashamed of the fact; shifting off the guilt, as well as they could, though weakly, from one another. The principal pirate is gone to his place, and we say no more of him – De mortuis nil nisi bonum: it is satisfaction enough that the attempt has proved abortive, as the baseness of the design might give them reason to expect it would.