Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon..........................................................................................................................1

When it was determined to extend the present edition of Fielding, not merely by the addition of Jonathan

Wild to the three universally popular novels, but by two volumes of Miscellanies, there could be no doubt

about at least one of the contents of these latter. The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, if it does not rank in my

estimation anywhere near to Jonathan Wild as an example of our author's genius, is an invaluable and

delightful document for his character and memory. It is indeed, as has been pointed out in the General

Introduction to this series, our main source of indisputable information as to Fielding dans son naturel, and its

value, so far as it goes, is of the very highest. The gentle and unaffected stoicism which the author displays

under a disease which he knew well was probably, if not certainly, mortal, and which, whether mortal or not,

must cause him much actual pain and discomfort of a kind more intolerable than pain itself; his affectionate

care for his family; even little personal touches, less admirable, but hardly less pleasant than these, showing

an Englishman's dislike to be "done" and an Englishman's determination to be treated with proper respect, are

scarcely less noticeable and important on the biographical side than the unimpaired brilliancy of his satiric

There is, as is now well known since Mr. Dobson's separate edition of the Voyage, a little bibliographical

problem about the first appearance of this Journal in 1755. The best known issue of that year is much shorter

than the version inserted by Murphy and reprinted here, the passages omitted being chiefly those reflecting on

the captain, etc., and so likely to seem invidious in a book published just after the author's death, and for the

benefit, as was expressly announced, of his family. But the curious thing is that there is ANOTHER edition,

of date so early that some argument is necessary to determine the priority, which does give these passages

and is identical with the later or standard version. For satisfaction on this point, however, I must refer readers

There might have been a little, but not much, doubt as to a companion piece for the Journal; for indeed, after

we close this (with or without its "Fragment on Bolingbroke"), the remainder of Fielding's work lies on a

distinctly lower level of interest. It is still interesting, or it would not be given here. It still hasat least that

part which here appears seems to its editor to haveinterest intrinsic and "simple of itself." But it is

impossible for anybody who speaks critically to deny that we now get into the region where work is more

interesting because of its authorship than it would be if its authorship were different or unknown. To put the

same thing in a sharper antithesis, Fielding is interesting, first of all, because he is the author of Joseph

Andrews, of Tom Jones, of Amelia, of Jonathan Wild, of the Journal. His plays, his essays, his miscellanies

Yet of these works, the Journey from this World to the Next (which, by a grim trick of fortune, might have

served as a title for the more interesting Voyage with which we have yoked it) stands clearly first both in

scale and merit. It is indeed very unequal, and as the author was to leave it unfinished, it is a pity that he did

not leave it unfinished much sooner than he actually did. The first ten chapters, if of a kind of satire which

has now grown rather obsolete for the nonce, are of a good kind and good in their kind; the history of the

metempsychoses of Julian is of a less good kind, and less good in that kind. The date of composition of the

piece is not known, but it appeared in the Miscellanies of 1743, and may represent almost any period of its

author's development prior to that year. Its form was a very common form at the time, and continued to be so.

I do not know that it is necessary to assign any very special origin to it, though Lucian, its chief practitioner,

was evidently and almost avowedly a favorite study of Fielding's. The Spanish romancers, whether borrowing

it from Lucian or not, had been fond of it; their French followers, of whom the chief were Fontenelle and Le

Sage, had carried it northwards; the English essayists had almost from the beginning continued the process of

acclimatization. Fielding therefore found it ready to his hand, though the present condition of this example

would lead us to suppose that he did not find his hand quite ready to it. Still, in the actual "journey," there are

touches enough of the masternot yet quite in his stage of mastery. It seemed particularly desirable not to

close the series without some representation of the work to which Fielding gave the prime of his manhood,

and from which, had he not, fortunately for English literature, been driven decidedly against his will, we had

had in all probability no Joseph Andrews, and pretty certainly no Tom Jones. Fielding's periodical and

dramatic work has been comparatively seldom reprinted, and has never yet been reprinted as a whole. The

dramas indeed are open to two objectionsthe first, that they are not very "proper;" the second, and much

more serious, that they do not redeem this want of propriety by the possession of any remarkable literary

merit. Three (or two and part of a third) seemed to escape this double censurethe first two acts of the

Author's Farce (practically a piece to themselves, for the Puppet Show which follows is almost entirely

independent); the famous burlesque of Tom Thumb, which stands between the Rehearsal and the Critic, but

nearer to the former; and Pasquin, the maturest example of Fielding's satiric work in drama. These

accordingly have been selected; the rest I have read, and he who likes may read. I have read many worse

things than even the worst of them, but not often worse things by so good a writer as Henry Fielding. The

next question concerned the selection of writings more miscellaneous still, so as to give in little a complete

idea of Fielding's various powers and experiments. Two difficulties beset this part of the taskwant of space

and the absence of anything so markedly good as absolutely to insist on inclusion. The Essay on

Conversation, however, seemed pretty peremptorily to challenge a place. It is in a style which Fielding was

very slow to abandon, which indeed has left strong traces even on his great novels; and if its mannerism is not

now very attractive, the separate traits in it are often sharp and welldrawn. The book would not have been

complete without a specimen or two of Fielding's journalism. The Champion, his first attempt of this kind,

has not been drawn upon in consequence of the extreme difficulty of fixing with absolute certainty on

Fielding's part in it. I do not know whether political prejudice interferes, more than I have usually found it

interfere, with my judgment of the two Hanoverianpartisan papers of the '45 time. But they certainly seem

to me to fail in redeeming their dose of rancor and misrepresentation by any sufficient evidence of genius

such as, to my taste, saves not only the party journalism in verse and prose of Swift and Canning and Praed

on one side, but that of Wolcot and Moore and Sydney Smith on the other. Even the oftenquoted journal of

events in London under the Chevalier is overwrought and tedious. The best thing in the True Patriot seems to

me to be Parson Adams' letter describing his adventure with a young "bowe" of his day; and this I select,

together with one or two numbers of the Covent Garden Journal. I have not found in this latter anything more

characteristic than Murphy's selection, though Mr. Dobson, with his unfailing kindness, lent me an original

It is to the same kindness that I owe the opportunity of presenting the reader with something indisputably

Fielding's and very characteristic of him, which Murphy did not print, and which has not, so far as I know,

ever appeared either in a collection or a selection of Fielding's work. After the success of David Simple,

Fielding gave his sister, for whom he had already written a preface to that novel, another preface for a set of

Familiar Letters between the characters of David Simple and others. This preface Murphy reprinted; but he

either did not notice, or did not choose to attend to, a note towards the end of the book attributing certain of

the letters to the author of the preface, the attribution being accompanied by an agreeably warm and sisterly

denunciation of those who ascribed to Fielding matter unworthy of him. From these the letter which I have

chosen, describing a row on the Thames, seems to me not only characteristic, but, like all this miscellaneous

work, interesting no less for its weakness than for its strength. In hardly any other instance known to me can

we trace so clearly the influence of a suitable medium and form on the genius of the artist. There are some

writersDryden is perhaps the greatest of themto whom form and medium seem almost indifferent, their

allround craftsmanship being such that they can turn any kind and every style to their purpose. There are

others, of whom I think our present author is the chief, who are never really at home but in one kind. In

Fielding's case that kind was narrative of a peculiar sort, halfsentimental, halfsatirical, and almost wholly

sympatheticnarrative which has the singular gift of portraying the liveliest character and yet of admitting

Until comparatively late in his too short life, when he found this special path of his (and it is impossible to

say whether the actual finding was in the case of Jonathan or in the case of Joseph), he did but flounder and

slip. When he had found it, and was content to walk in it, he strode with as sure and steady a step as any

other, even the greatest, of those who carry and hand on the torch of literature through the ages. But it is

impossible to derive full satisfaction from his feats in this part of the race without some notion of his

performances elsewhere; and I believe that such a notion will be supplied to the readers of his novels by the

Your candor is desired on the perusal of the following sheets, as they are the product of a genius that has long

been your delight and entertainment. It must be acknowledged that a lamp almost burnt out does not give so

steady and uniform a light as when it blazes in its full vigor; but yet it is well known that by its wavering, as

if struggling against its own dissolution, it sometimes darts a ray as bright as ever. In like manner, a strong

and lively genius will, in its last struggles, sometimes mount aloft, and throw forth the most striking marks of

Wherever these are to be found, do you, the genuine patrons of extraordinary capacities, be as liberal in your

applauses of him who is now no more as you were of him whilst he was yet amongst you. And, on the other

hand, if in this little work there should appear any traces of a weakened and decayed life, let your own

imaginations place before your eyes a true picture in that of a hand trembling in almost its latest hour, of a

body emaciated with pains, yet struggling for your entertainment; and let this affecting picture open each

tender heart, and call forth a melting tear, to blot out whatever failings may be found in a work begun in pain,

and finished almost at the same period with life. It was thought proper by the friends of the deceased that 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

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

To make a traveler an agreeable companion 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 greenstall or the wheelbarrow. 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 muchread 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

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 instructive

companion. 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 passion constantly 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 voyagewriter would not appear very desirable. I am not here

unapprised that old Homer himself is by some considered as a voyagewriter; and, indeed, the beginning of

his Odyssey may be urged to countenance that opinion, which I shall not controvert. But, whatever species 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

But, in reality, the Odyssey, the Telemachus, and all of that kind, are to the voyagewriting 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

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) have no such pretensions to indulgence; they lie for lying

sake, or in order insolently to impose the most monstrous improbabilities and absurdities upon their readers

on their own authority; treating them as some fathers treat children, and as other fathers do laymen, exacting

their belief of whatever they relate, on no other foundation than their own authority, without ever taking the

pains or adapting their lies to human credulity, and of calculating them for the meridian of a common

understanding; but, with as much weakness as wickedness, and with more impudence often than either, they

assert facts contrary to the honor of God, to the visible order of the creation, to the known laws of nature, to

the histories of former ages, and to the experience of our own, and which no man can at once understand and

believe. If it should be objected (and it can nowhere be objected better than where I now write,[12] as there is

nowhere more pomp of bigotry) that whole nations have been firm believers in such most absurd

suppositions, I reply, the fact is not true. They have known nothing of the matter, and have believed they

knew not what. It is, indeed, with me no matter of doubt but that the pope and his clergy might teach any of

those Christian heterodoxies, the tenets of which are the most diametrically opposite to their own; nay, all the

doctrines of Zoroaster, Confucius, and Mahomet, not only with certain and immediate success, but without

What motive a man can have to sit down, and to draw forth a list of stupid, senseless, incredible lies upon

paper, would be difficult to determine, did not Vanity present herself so immediately as the adequate cause.

The vanity of knowing more than other men is, perhaps, besides hunger, the only inducement to writing, at

least to publishing, at all. Why then should not the voyagewriter be inflamed with the glory of having seen

what no man ever did or will see but himself? This is the true source of the wonderful in the discourse and

writings, and sometimes, I believe, in the actions of men. There is another fault, of a kind directly opposite to

this, to which these writers are sometimes liable, when, instead of filling their pages with monsters which

nobody hath ever seen, and with adventures which never have, nor could possibly have, happened to them,

waste their time and paper with recording things and facts of so common a kind, that they challenge no other

right of being remembered than as they had the honor of having happened to the author, to whom nothing

Of such consequence do his own actions appear to one of this kind, that he would probably think himself

guilty of infidelity should he omit the minutest thing in the detail of his journal. That the fact is true is

sufficient to give it a place there, without any consideration whether it is capable of pleasing or surprising, of

diverting or informing, the reader. I have seen a play (if I mistake not it is one of Mrs. Behn's or of Mrs.

Centlivre's) where this vice in a voyagewriter is finely ridiculed. An ignorant pedant, to whose government,

for I know not what reason, the conduct of a young nobleman in his travels is committed, and who is sent

abroad to show my lord the world, of which he knows nothing himself, before his departure from a town,

calls for his Journal to record the goodness of the wine and tobacco, with other articles of the same

importance, which are to furnish the materials of a voyage at his return home. The humor, it is true, is here

carried very far; and yet, perhaps, very little beyond what is to be found in writers who profess no intention of

dealing in humor at all. Of one or other, or both of these kinds, are, I conceive, all that vast pile of books

which pass under the names of voyages, travels, adventures, lives, memoirs, histories, etc., some of which a

single traveler sends into the world in many volumes, and others are, by judicious booksellers, collected into

vast bodies in folio, and inscribed with their own names, as if they were indeed their own travels: thus

Now, from both these faults we have endeavored to steer clear in the following narrative; which, however the

contrary may be insinuated by ignorant, unlearned, and freshwater critics, who have never traveled either in

books or ships, I do solemnly declare doth, in my own impartial opinion, deviate less from truth than any

other voyage extant; my lord Anson's alone being, perhaps, excepted. Some few embellishments must be

allowed to every historian; for we are not to conceive that the speeches in Livy, Sallust, or Thucydides, were

literally spoken in the very words in which we now read them. It is sufficient that every fact hath its

foundation in truth, as I do seriously aver is the ease in the ensuing pages; and when it is so, a good critic will

be so far from denying all kind of ornament of style or diction, or even of circumstance, to his author, that he

would be rather sorry if he omitted it; for he could hence derive no other advantage than the loss of an

Again, if any merely common incident should appear in this journal, which will seldom I apprehend be the

case, the candid reader will easily perceive it is not introduced for its own sake, but for some observations

and reflections naturally resulting from it; and which, if but little to his amusement, 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.

In the beginning of August, 1753, when I had taken the duke of Portland's medicine, as it is called, near a

year, the effects of which had been the carrying off the symptoms of a lingering imperfect gout, I was

persuaded by Mr. Ranby, the king's premier sergeantsurgeon, and the ablest advice, I believe, in all

branches of the physical profession, to go immediately to Bath. I accordingly wrote that very night to Mrs.

Bowden, who, by the next post, informed me she had taken me a lodging for a month certain. Within a few

days after this, whilst I was preparing for my journey, and when I was almost fatigued to death with several

long examinations, relating to five different murders, all committed within the space of a week, by different

gangs of streetrobbers, I received a message from his grace the duke of Newcastle, by Mr. Carrington, the

king's messenger, to attend his grace the next morning, in Lincoln'sinnfields, upon some business of

importance; but I excused myself from complying with the message, as, besides being lame, I was very ill

His grace, however, sent Mr. Carrington, the very next morning, with another summons; with which, though

in the utmost distress, I immediately complied; but the duke, happening, unfortunately for me, to be then

particularly engaged, after I had waited some time, sent a gentleman to discourse with me on the best plan

which could be invented for putting an immediate end to those murders and robberies which were every day

committed in the streets; upon which I promised to transmit my opinion, in writing, to his grace, who, as the

Though this visit cost me a severe cold, I, notwithstanding, set myself down to work; and in about four days

sent the duke as regular a plan as I could form, with all the reasons and arguments I could bring to support it,

drawn out in several sheets of paper; and soon received a message from the duke by Mr. Carrington,

acquainting me that my plan was highly approved of, and that all the terms of it would be complied with. The

principal and most material of those terms was the immediately depositing six hundred pound in my hands; at

which small charge I undertook to demolish the then reigning gangs, and to put the civil policy into such

order, that no such gangs should ever be able, for the future, to form themselves into bodies, or at least to

I had delayed my Bath journey for some time, contrary to the repeated advice of my physical acquaintance,

and to the ardent desire of my warmest friends, though my distemper was now turned to a deep jaundice; in

which case the Bath waters are generally reputed to be almost infallible. But I had the most eager desire of

demolishing this gang of villains and cutthroats, which I was sure of accomplishing the moment I was

enabled to pay a fellow who had undertaken, for a small sum, to betray them into the hands of a set of

thieftakers whom I had enlisted into the service, all men of known and approved fidelity and intrepidity.

After some weeks the money was paid at the treasury, and within a few days after two hundred pounds of it

had come to my hands, the whole gang of cutthroats was entirely dispersed, seven of them were in actual

custody, and the rest driven, some out of the town, and others out of the kingdom. Though my health was

now reduced to the last extremity, I continued to act with the utmost vigor against these villains; in

examining whom, and in taking the depositions against them, I have often spent whole days, nay, sometimes

whole nights, especially when there was any difficulty in procuring sufficient evidence to convict them;

which is a very common case in streetrobberies, even when the guilt of the party is sufficiently apparent to

satisfy the most tender conscience. But courts of justice know nothing of a cause more than what is told them

on oath by a witness; and the most flagitious villain upon earth is tried in the same manner as a man of the

best character who is accused of the same crime. Meanwhile, amidst all my fatigues and distresses, I had the

satisfaction to find my endeavors had been attended with such success that this hellish society were almost

utterly extirpated, and that, instead of reading of murders and streetrobberies in the news almost every

morning, there was, in the remaining part of the month of November, and in all December, not only no such

thing as a murder, but not even a streetrobbery committed. Some such, indeed, were mentioned in the public

papers; but they were all found on the strictest inquiry, to be false. In this entire freedom from

streetrobberies, during the dark months, no man will, I believe, scruple to acknowledge that the winter of

1753 stands unrivaled, during a course of many years; and this may possibly appear the more extraordinary to

those who recollect the outrages with which it began. Having thus fully accomplished my undertaking, I went

into the country, in a very weak and deplorable condition, with no fewer or less diseases than a jaundice, a

dropsy, and an asthma, altogether uniting their forces in the destruction of a body so entirely emaciated that it

had lost all its muscular flesh. Mine was now no longer what was called a Bath case; nor, if it had been so,

had I strength remaining sufficient to go thither, a ride of six miles only being attended with an intolerable

fatigue. I now discharged my lodgings at Bath, which I had hitherto kept. I began in earnest to look on my

case as desperate, and I had vanity enough to rank myself with those heroes who, of old times, became

voluntary sacrifices to the good of the public. But, lest the reader should be too eager to catch at the word

VANITY, and should be unwilling to indulge me with so sublime a gratification, for I think he is not too apt

to gratify me, I will take my key a pitch lower, and will frankly own that I had a stronger motive than the love

of the public to push me on: I will therefore confess to him that my private affairs at the beginning of the

winter had but a gloomy aspect; for I had not plundered the public or the poor of those sums which men, who

are always ready to plunder both as much as they can, have been pleased to suspect me of taking: on the

contrary, by composing, instead of inflaming the quarrels of porters and beggars (which I blush when I say

hath not been universally practiced), and by refusing to take a shilling from a man who most undoubtedly

would not have had another left, I had reduced an income of about five hundred pounds[13] ayear of the

dirtiest money upon earth to little more than three hundred pounds; a considerable proportion of which

remained with my clerk; and, indeed, if the whole had done so, as it ought, he would be but ill paid for sitting

almost sixteen hours in the twentyfour in the most unwholesome, as well as nauseous air in the universe,

and which hath in his case corrupted a good constitution without contaminating his morals.

[13] A predecessor of mine used to boast that he made one thousand pounds ayear in his office; but how he

did this (if indeed he did it) is to me a secret. His clerk, now mine, told me I had more business than he had

ever known there; I am sure I had as much as any man could do. The truth is, the fees are so very low, when

any are due, and so much is done for nothing, that, if a single justice of peace had business enough to employ

The public will not, therefore, I hope, think I betray a secret when I inform them that I received from the

Government a yearly pension out of the public service money; which, I believe, indeed, would have been

larger had my great patron been convinced of an error, which I have heard him utter more than once, that he

could not indeed say that the acting as a principal justice of peace in Westminster was on all accounts very

desirable, but that all the world knew it was a very lucrative office. Now, to have shown him plainly that a

man must be a rogue to make a very little this way, and that he could not make much by being as great a

rogue as he could be, would have required more confidence than, I believe, he had in me, and more of his

conversation than he chose to allow me; I therefore resigned the office and the farther execution of my plan to

my brother, who had long been myassistant. And now, lest the case between me and the reader should be the

same in both instances as it was between me and the great man, I will not add another word on the subject.

But, not to trouble the reader with anecdotes, contrary to my own rule laid down in my preface, I assure him I

thought my family was very slenderly provided for; and that my health began to decline so fast that I had

very little more of life left to accomplish what I had thought of too late. I rejoiced therefore greatly in seeing

an opportunity, as I apprehended, of gaining such merit in the eve of the public, that, if my life were the

sacrifice to it, my friends might think they did a popular act in putting my family at least beyond the reach of

necessity, which I myself began to despair of doing. And though I disclaim all pretense to that Spartan or

Roman patriotism which loved the public so well that it was always ready to become a voluntary sacrifice to

After this confession therefore, that the public was not the principal deity to which my life was offered a

sacrifice, and when it is farther considered what a poor sacrifice this was, being indeed no other than the

giving up what I saw little likelihood of being able to hold much longer, and which, upon the terms I held it,

nothing but the weakness of human nature could represent to me as worth holding at all; the world may, I

believe, without envy, allow me all the praise to which I have any title. My aim, in fact, was not praise, which

is the last gift they care to bestow; at least, this was not my aim as an end, but rather as a means of purchasing

some moderate provision for my family, which, though it should exceed my merit, must fall infinitely short

of my service, if I succeeded in my attempt. To say the truth, the public never act more wisely than when they

act most liberally in the distribution of their rewards; and here the good they receive is often more to be

considered than the motive from which they receive it. Example alone is the end of all public punishments

and rewards. Laws never inflict disgrace in resentment, nor confer honor from gratitude. "For it is very hard,

my lord," said a convicted felon at the bar to the late excellent judge Burnet, "to hang a poor man for stealing

a horse." "You are not to be hanged sir," answered my everhonored and beloved friend, "for stealing a

horse, but you are to be hanged that horses may not be stolen." In like manner it might have been said to the

late duke of Marlborough, when the parliament was so deservedly liberal to him, after the battle of Blenheim,

"You receive not these honors and bounties on account of a victory past, but that other victories may be

I was now, in the opinion of all men, dying of a complication of disorders; and, were I desirous of playing the

advocate, I have an occasion fair enough; but I disdain such an attempt. I relate facts plainly and simply as

they are; and let the world draw from them what conclusions they please, taking with them the following

facts for their instruction: the one is, that the proclamation offering one hundred pounds for the apprehending

felons for certain felonies committed in certain places, which I prevented from being revived, had formerly

cost the government several thousand pounds within a single year. Secondly, that all such proclamations,

instead of curing the evil, had actually increased it; had multiplied the number of robberies; had propagated

the worst and wickedest of perjuries; had laid snares for youth and ignorance, which, by the temptation of

these rewards, had been sometimes drawn into guilt; and sometimes, which cannot be thought on without the

highest horror, had destroyed them without it. Thirdly, that my plan had not put the government to more than

three hundred pound expense, and had produced none of the ill consequences above mentioned; but, lastly,

had actually suppressed the evil for a time, and had plainly pointed out the means of suppressing it for ever.

This I would myself have undertaken, had my health permitted, at the annual expense of the

After having stood the terrible six weeks which succeeded last Christmas, and put a lucky end, if they had

known their own interests, to such numbers of aged and infirm valetudinarians, who might have gasped

through two or three mild winters more, I returned to town in February, in a condition less despaired of by

myself than by any of my friends. I now became the patient of Dr. Ward, who wished I had taken his advice

earlier. By his advice I was tapped, and fourteen quarts of water drawn from my belly. The sudden relaxation

which this caused, added to my enervate, emaciated habit of body, so weakened me that within two days I

was thought to be falling into the agonies of death. I was at the worst on that memorable day when the public

lost Mr. Pelham. From that day I began slowly, as it were, to draw my feet out of the grave; till in two

months' time I had again acquired some little degree of strength, but was again full of water. During this

whole time I took Mr. Ward's medicines, which had seldom any perceptible operation. Those in particular of

the diaphoretic kind, the working of which is thought to require a great strength of constitution to support,

had so little effect on me, that Mr. Ward declared it was as vain to attempt sweating me as a deal board. In

this situation I was tapped a second time. I had one quart of water less taken from me now than before; but I

bore all the consequences of the operation much better. This I attributed greatly to a dose of laudanum

prescribed by my surgeon. It first gave me the most delicious flow of spirits, and afterwards as comfortable a

The month of May, which was now begun, it seemed reasonable to expect would introduce the spring, and

drive of that winter which yet maintained its footing on the stage. I resolved therefore to visit a little house of

mine in the country, which stands at Ealing, in the county of Middlesex, in the best air, I believe, in the whole

kingdom, and far superior to that of Kensington Gravelpits; for the gravel is here much wider and deeper,

the place higher and more open towards the south, whilst it is guarded from the north wind by a ridge of hills,

and from the smells and smoke of London by its distance; which last is not the fate of Kensington, when the

Obligations to Mr. Ward I shall always confess; for I am convinced that he omitted no care in endeavoring to

The powers of Mr. Ward's remedies want indeed no unfair puffs of mine to give them credit; and though this

distemper of the dropsy stands, I believe, first in the list of those over which he is always certain of

triumphing, yet, possibly, there might be something particular in my case capable of eluding that radical force

which had healed so many thousands. The same distemper, in different constitutions, may possibly be

attended with such different symptoms, that to find an infallible nostrum for the curing any one distemper in

every patient may be almost as difficult as to find a panacea for the cure of all.

But even such a panacea one of the greatest scholars and best of men did lately apprehend he had discovered.

It is true, indeed, he was no physician; that is, he had not by the forms of his education acquired a right of

applying his skill in the art of physic to his own private advantage; and yet, perhaps, it may be truly asserted

that no other modern hath contributed so much to make his physical skill useful to the public; at least, that

none hath undergone the pains of communicating this discovery in writing to the world. The reader, I think,

will scarce need to be informed that the writer I mean is the late bishop of Cloyne, in Ireland, and the

I then happened to recollect, upon a hint given me by the inimitable and shamefullydistressed author of the

Female Quixote, that I had many years before, from curiosity only, taken a cursory view of bishop Berkeley's

treatise on the virtues of tarwater, which I had formerly observed he strongly contends to be that real

panacea which Sydenham supposes to have an existence in nature, though it yet remains undiscovered, and

Upon the reperusal of this book I found the bishop only asserting his opinion that tarwater might be useful

in the dropsy, since he had known it to have a surprising success in the cure of a most stubborn anasarca,

which is indeed no other than, as the word implies, the dropsy of the flesh; and this was, at that time, a large

After a short trial, therefore, of a milk diet, which I presently found did not suit with my case, I betook myself

to the bishop's prescription, and dosed myself every morning and evening with half a pint of tarwater.

It was no more than three weeks since my last tapping, and my belly and limbs were distended with water.

This did not give me the worse opinion of tarwater; for I never supposed there could be any such virtue in

tarwater as immediately to carry off a quantity of water already collected. For my delivery from this I well

knew I must be again obliged to the trochar; and that if the tarwater did me any good at all it must be only

by the slowest degrees; and that if it should ever get the better of my distemper it must be by the tedious

Some visible effects, however, and far beyond what my most sanguine hopes could with any modesty expect,

I very soon experienced; the tarwater having, from the very first, lessened my illness, increased my appetite,

and added, though in a very slow proportion, to my bodily strength. But if my strength had increased a little

my water daily increased much more. So that, by the end of May, my belly became again ripe for the trochar,

and I was a third time tapped; upon which, two very favorable symptoms appeared. I had three quarts of

water taken from me less than had been taken the last time; and I bore the relaxation with much less (indeed

Those of my physical friends on whose judgment I chiefly depended seemed to think my only chance of life

consisted in having the whole summer before me; in which I might hope to gather sufficient strength to

encounter the inclemencies of the ensuing winter. But this chance began daily to lessen. I saw the summer

mouldering away, or rather, indeed, the year passing away without intending to bring on any summer at all.

In the whole month of May the sun scarce appeared three times. So that the early fruits came to the fullness

of their growth, and to some appearance of ripeness, without acquiring any real maturity; having wanted the

heat of the sun to soften and meliorate their juices. I saw the dropsy gaining rather than losing ground; the

distance growing still shorter between the tappings. I saw the asthma likewise beginning again to become

more troublesome. I saw the midsummer quarter drawing towards a close. So that I conceived, if the

Michaelmas quarter should steal off in the same manner, as it was, in my opinion, very much to be

apprehended it would, I should be delivered up to the attacks of winter before I recruited my forces, so as to

I now began to recall an intention, which from the first dawnings of my recovery I had conceived, of

removing to a warmer climate; and, finding this to be approved of by a very eminent physician, I resolved to

put it into immediate execution. Aix in Provence was the place first thought on; but the difficulties of getting

thither were insuperable. The Journey by land, beside the expense of it, was infinitely too long and fatiguing;

and I could hear of no ship that was likely to set out from London, within any reasonable time, for Marseilles,

Lisbon was presently fixed on in its room. The air here, as it was near four degrees to the south of Aix, must

It was not difficult to find a ship bound to a place with which we carry on so immense a trade. Accordingly,

my brother soon informed me of the excellent accommodations for passengers which were to be found on

board a ship that was obliged to sail for Lisbon in three days. I eagerly embraced the offer, notwithstanding

the shortness of the time; and, having given my brother full power to contract for our passage, I began to

But our great haste was needless; for the captain having twice put off his sailing, I at length invited him to

dinner with me at Fordhook, a full week after the time on which he had declared, and that with many

He dined with me according to his appointment; and when all matters were settled between us, left me with

positive orders to be on board the Wednesday following, when he declared he would fall down the river to

Gravesend, and would not stay a moment for the greatest man in the world. He advised me to go to

Gravesend by land, and there wait the arrival of his ship, assigning many reasons for this, every one of which

was, as I well remember, among those that had before determined me to go on board near the Tower.

WEDNESDAY, June 26, 1754.On this day the most melancholy sun I had ever beheld arose, and found

me awake at my house at Fordhook. By the light of this sun I was, in my own opinion, last to behold and take

leave of some of those creatures on whom I doted with a motherlike fondness, guided by nature and passion,

and uncured and unhardened by all the doctrine of that philosophical school where I had learned to bear pains

and to despise death. In this situation, as I could not conquer Nature, I submitted entirely to her, and she made

as great a fool of me as she had ever done of any woman whatsoever; under pretense of giving me leave to

enjoy, she drew me in to suffer, the company of my little ones during eight hours; and I doubt not whether, in

At twelve precisely my coach was at the door, which was no sooner told me than I kissed my children round,

and went into it with some little resolution. My wife, who behaved more like a heroine and philosopher,

though at the same time the tenderest mother in the world, and my eldest daughter, followed me; some

friends went with us, and others here took their leave; and I heard my behavior applauded, with many

murmurs and praises to which I well knew I had no title; as all other such philosophers may, if they have any

In two hours we arrived in Rotherhithe, and immediately went on board, and were to have sailed the next

morning; but, as this was the king's proclamationday, and consequently a holiday at the customhouse, the

captain could not clear his vessel till the Thursday; for these holidays are as strictly observed as those in the

popish calendar, and are almost as numerous. I might add that both are opposite to the genius of trade, and

To go on board the ship it was necessary first to go into a boat; a matter of no small difficulty, as I had no use

of my limbs, and was to be carried by men who, though sufficiently strong for their burden, were, like

Archimedes, puzzled to find a steady footing. Of this, as few of my readers have not gone into wherries on

the Thames, they will easily be able to form to themselves an idea. However, by the assistance of my friend,

Mr. Welch, whom I never think or speak of but with love and esteem, I conquered this difficulty, as I did

afterwards that of ascending the ship, into which I was hoisted with more ease by a chair lifted with pulleys. I

was soon seated in a great chair in the cabin, to refresh myself after a fatigue which had been more

intolerable, in a quarter of a mile's passage from my coach to the ship, than I had before undergone in a

This latter fatigue was, perhaps, somewhat heightened by an indignation which I could not prevent arising in

my mind. I think, upon my entrance into the boat, I presented a spectacle of the highest horror. The total loss

of limbs was apparent to all who saw me, and my face contained marks of a most diseased state, if not of

death itself. Indeed, so ghastly was my countenance, that timorous women with child had abstained from my

house, for fear of the ill consequences of looking at me. In this condition I ran the gauntlope (so I think I may

justly call it) through rows of sailors and watermen, few of whom failed of paying their compliments to me

by all manner of insults and jests on my misery. No man who knew me will think I conceived any personal

resentment at this behavior; but it was a lively picture of that cruelty and inhumanity in the nature of men

which I have often contemplated with concern, and which leads the mind into a train of very uncomfortable

and melancholy thoughts. It may be said that this barbarous custom is peculiar to the English, and of them

only to the lowest degree; that it is an excrescence of an uncontrolled licentiousness mistaken for liberty, and

never shows itself in men who are polished and refined in such manner as human nature requires to produce

that perfection of which it is susceptible, and to purge away that malevolence of disposition of which, at our

birth, we partake in common with the savage creation. This may be said, and this is all that can be said; and it

is, I am afraid, but little satisfactory to account for the inhumanity of those who, while they boast of being

made after God's own image, seem to bear in their minds a resemblance of the vilest species of brutes; or

rather, indeed, of our idea of devils; for I don't know that any brutes can be taxed with such malevolence. A

sirloin of beef was now placed on the table, for which, though little better than carrion, as much was charged

by the master of the little paltry alehouse who dressed it as would have been demanded for all the elegance

of the King's Arms, or any other polite tavern or eatinghouse! for, indeed, the difference between the best

house and the worst is, that at the former you pay largely for luxury, at the latter for nothing.

Thursday, June 27.This morning the captain, who lay on shore at his own house, paid us a visit in the

cabin, and behaved like an angry bashaw, declaring that, had he known we were not to be pleased, he would

not have carried us for five hundred pounds. He added many asseverations that he was a gentleman, and

despised money; not forgetting several hints of the presents which had been made him for his cabin, of

twenty, thirty, and forty guineas, by several gentlemen, over and above the sum for which they had

contracted. This behavior greatly surprised me, as I knew not how to account for it, nothing having happened

since we parted from the captain the evening before in perfect good humor; and all this broke forth on the

first moment of his arrival this morning. He did not, however, suffer my amazement to have any long

continuance before he clearly showed me that all this was meant only as an apology to introduce another

procrastination (being the fifth) of his weighing anchor, which was now postponed till Saturday, for such was

Besides the disagreeable situation in which we then lay, in the confines of Wapping and Rotherhithe, tasting a

delicious mixture of the air of both these sweet places, and enjoying the concord of sweet sounds of seamen,

watermen, fishwomen, oysterwomen, and of all the vociferous inhabitants of both shores, composing

altogether a greater variety of harmony than Hogarth's imagination hath brought together in that print of his,

which is enough to make a man deaf to look atI had a more urgent cause to press our departure, which

was, that the dropsy, for which I had undergone three tappings, seemed to threaten me with a fourth discharge

before I should reach Lisbon, and when I should have nobody on board capable of performing the operation;

but I was obliged to hearken to the voice of reason, if I may use the captain's own words, and to rest myself

contented. Indeed, there was no alternative within my reach but what would have cost me much too dear.

There are many evils in society from which people of the highest rank are so entirely exempt, that they have

not the least knowledge or idea of them; nor indeed of the characters which are formed by them. Such, for

instance, is the conveyance of goods and passengers from one place to another. Now there is no such thing as

any kind of knowledge contemptible in itself; and, as the particular knowledge I here mean is entirely

necessary to the well understanding and well enjoying this journal; and, lastly, as in this case the most

ignorant will be those very readers whose amusement we chiefly consult, and to whom we wish to be

supposed principally to write, we will here enter somewhat largely into the discussion of this matter; the

rather, for that no ancient or modern author (if we can trust the catalogue of doctor Mead's library) hath ever

undertaken it, but that it seems (in the style of Don Quixote) a task reserved for my pen alone.

When I first conceived this intention I began to entertain thoughts of inquiring into the antiquity of traveling;

and, as many persons have performed in this way (I mean have traveled) at the expense of the public, I

flattered myself that the spirit of improving arts and sciences, and of advancing useful and substantial

learning, which so eminently distinguishes this age, and hath given rise to more speculative societies in

Europe than I at present can recollect the names ofperhaps, indeed, than I or any other, besides their very

near neighbors, ever heard mentionedwould assist in promoting so curious a work; a work begun with the

same views, calculated for the same purposes, and fitted for the same uses, with the labors which those right

honorable societies have so cheerfully undertaken themselves, and encouraged in others; sometimes with the

highest honors, even with admission into their colleges, and with enrollment among their members.

From these societies I promised myself all assistance in their power, particularly the communication of such

valuable manuscripts and records as they must be supposed to have collected from those obscure ages of

antiquity when history yields us such imperfect accounts of the residence, and much more imperfect of the

travels, of the human race; unless, perhaps, as a curious and learned member of the young Society of

Antiquarians is said to have hinted his conjectures, that their residence and their travels were one and the

same; and this discovery (for such it seems to be) he is said to have owed to the lighting by accident on a

book, which we shall have occasion to mention presently, the contents of which were then little known to the

The king of Prussia, moreover, who, from a degree of benevolence and taste which in either case is a rare

production in so northern a climate, is the great encourager of art and science, I was well assured would

promote so useful a design, and order his archives to be searched on my behalf. But after well weighing all

these advantages, and much meditation on the order of my work, my whole design was subverted in a

moment by hearing of the discovery just mentioned to have been made by the young antiquarian, who, from

the most ancient record in the world (though I don't find the society are all agreed on this point), one long

preceding the date of the earliest modern collections, either of books or butterflies, none of which pretend to

go beyond the flood, shows us that the first man was a traveler, and that he and his family were scarce settled

in Paradise before they disliked their own home, and became passengers to another place. Hence it appears

that the humor of traveling is as old as the human race, and that it was their curse from the beginning. By this

discovery my plan became much shortened, and I found it only necessary to treat of the conveyance of goods

and passengers from place to place; which, not being universally known, seemed proper to be explained

before we examined into its original. There are indeed two different ways of tracing all things used by the

The former shows you how things are, and leaves to others to discover when they began to be so. The latter

shows you how things were, and leaves their present existence to be examined by others. Hence the former is

more useful, the latter more curious. The former receives the thanks of mankind; the latter of that valuable

In explaining, therefore, this mystery of carrying goods and passengers from one place to another, hitherto so

profound a secret to the very best of our readers, we shall pursue the historical method, and endeavor to show

by what means it is at present performed, referring the more curious inquiry either to some other pen or to

Now there are two general ways of performing (if God permit) this conveyance, viz., by land and water, both

of which have much variety; that by land being performed in different vehicles, such as coaches, caravans,

wagons, etc.; and that by water in ships, barges, and boats, of various sizes and denominations. But, as all

these methods of conveyance are formed on the same principles, they agree so well together, that it is fully

sufficient to comprehend them all in the general view, without descending to such minute particulars as

Common to all of these is one general principle that, as the goods to be conveyed are usually the larger, so

they are to be chiefly considered in the conveyance; the owner being indeed little more than an appendage to

his trunk, or box, or bale, or at best a small part of his own baggage, very little care is to be taken in stowing

or packing them up with convenience to himself; for the conveyance is not of passengers and goods, but of

Secondly, from this conveyance arises a new kind of relation, or rather of subjection, in the society, by which

the passenger becomes bound in allegiance to his conveyer. This allegiance is indeed only temporary and

local, but the most absolute during its continuance of any known in Great Britain, and, to say truth, scarce

consistent with the liberties of a free people, nor could it be reconciled with them, did it not move

downwards; a circumstance universally apprehended to be incompatible to all kinds of slavery; for Aristotle

in his Politics hath proved abundantly to my satisfaction that no men are born to be slaves, except barbarians;

and these only to such as are not themselves barbarians; and indeed Mr. Montesquieu hath carried it very

little farther in the case of the Africans; the real truth being that no man is born to be a slave, unless to him

Thirdly, this subjection is absolute, and consists of a perfect resignation both of body and soul to the disposal

of another; after which resignation, during a certain time, his subject retains no more power over his own will

than an Asiatic slave, or an English wife, by the laws of both countries, and by the customs of one of them. If

I should mention the instance of a stagecoachman, many of my readers would recognize the truth of what I

have here observed; all, indeed, that ever have been under the dominion of that tyrant, who in this free

country is as absolute as a Turkish bashaw. In two particulars only his power is defective; he cannot press

you into his service, and if you enter yourself at one place, on condition of being discharged at a certain time

at another, he is obliged to perform his agreement, if God permit, but all the intermediate time you are

absolutely under his government; he carries you how he will, when he will, and whither he will, provided it

be not much out of the road; you have nothing to eat or to drink, but what, and when, and where he pleases.

Nay, you cannot sleep unless he pleases you should; for he will order you sometimes out of bed at midnight

and hurry you away at a moment's warning: indeed, if you can sleep in his vehicle he cannot prevent it; nay,

indeed, to give him his due, this he is ordinarily disposed to encourage: for the earlier he forces yon to rise in

the morning, the more time he will give you in the heat of the day, sometimes even six hours at an alehouse,

or at their doors, where he always gives you the same indulgence which he allows himself; and for this he is

generally very moderate in his demands. I have known a whole bundle of passengers charged no more than

halfacrown for being suffered to remain quiet at an alehouse door for above a whole hour, and that even

in the hottest day in summer. But as this kind of tyranny, though it hath escaped our political writers, hath

been I think touched by our dramatic, and is more trite among the generality of readers; and as this and all

other kinds of such subjection are alike unknown to my friends, I will quit the passengers by land, and treat of

those who travel by water; for whatever is said on this subject is applicable to both alike, and we may bring

them together as closely as they are brought in the liturgy, when they are recommended to the prayers of all

Christian congregations; and (which I have often thought very remarkable) where they are joined with other

miserable wretches, such as women in labor, people in sickness, infants just born, prisoners and captives.

Goods and passengers are conveyed by water in divers vehicles, the principal of which being a ship, it shall

suffice to mention that alone. Here the tyrant doth not derive his title, as the stagecoachman doth, from the

vehicle itself in which he stows his goods and passengers, but he is called the captaina word of such

various use and uncertain signification, that it seems very difficult to fix any positive idea to it: if, indeed,

there be any general meaning which may comprehend all its different uses, that of the head or chief of any

body of men seems to be most capable of this comprehension; for whether they be a company of soldiers, a

crew of sailors, or a gang of rogues, he who is at the head of them is always styled the captain.

The particular tyrant whose fortune it was to stow us aboard laid a farther claim to this appellation than the

bare command of a vehicle of conveyance. He had been the captain of a privateer, which he chose to call

being in the king's service, and thence derived a right of hoisting the military ornament of a cockade over the

button of his hat. He likewise wore a sword of no ordinary length by his side, with which he swaggered in his

cabin, among the wretches his passengers, whom he had stowed in cupboards on each side. He was a person

of a very singular character. He had taken it into his head that he was a gentleman, from those very reasons

that proved he was not one; and to show himself a fine gentleman, by a behavior which seemed to insinuate

he had never seen one. He was, moreover, a man of gallantry; at the age of seventy he had the finicalness of

Sir Courtly Nice, with the roughness of Surly; and, while he was deaf himself, had a voice capable of

Now, as I saw myself in danger by the delays of the captain, who was, in reality, waiting for more freight,

and as the wind had been long nested, as it were, in the southwest, where it constantly blew hurricanes, I

began with great reason to apprehend that our voyage might be long, and that my belly, which began already

to be much extended, would require the water to be let out at a time when no assistance was at hand; though,

indeed, the captain comforted me with assurances that he had a pretty young fellow on board who acted as his

surgeon, as I found he likewise did as steward, cook, butler, sailor. In short, he had as many offices as Scrub

in the play, and went through them all with great dexterity; this of surgeon was, perhaps, the only one in

which his skill was somewhat deficient, at least that branch of tapping for the dropsy; for he very ingenuously

and modestly confessed he had never seen the operation performed, nor was possessed of that chirurgical

Friday, June 28.By way of prevention, therefore, I this day sent for my friend, Mr. Hunter, the great

surgeon and anatomist of Coventgarden; and, though my belly was not yet very full and tight, let out ten

quarts of water; the young seasurgeon attended the operation, not as a performer, but as a student.

I was now eased of the greatest apprehension which I had from the length of the passage; and I told the

captain I was become indifferent as to the time of his sailing. He expressed much satisfaction in this

declaration, and at hearing from me that I found myself, since my tapping, much lighter and better. In this, I

believe, he was sincere; for he was, as we shall have occasion to observe more than once, a very

goodnatured man; and, as he was a very brave one too, I found that the heroic constancy with which I had

borne an operation that is attended with scarce any degree of pain had not a little raised me in his esteem.

That he might adhere, therefore, in the most religious and rigorous manner to his word, when he had no

longer any temptation from interest to break it, as he had no longer any hopes of more goods or passengers,

he ordered his ship to fall down to Gravesend on Sunday morning, and there to wait his arrival.

Sunday, June 30.Nothing worth notice passed till that morning, when my poor wife, after passing a night

in the utmost torments of the toothache, resolved to have it drawn. I despatched therefore a servant into

Wapping to bring in haste the best toothdrawer he could find. He soon found out a female of great eminence

in the art; but when he brought her to the boat, at the waterside, they were informed that the ship was gone;

for indeed she had set out a few minutes after his quitting her; nor did the pilot, who well knew the errand on

which I had sent my servant, think fit to wait a moment for his return, or to give me any notice of his setting

out, though I had very patiently attended the delays of the captain four days, after many solemn promises of

weighing anchor every one of the three last. But of all the petty bashaws or turbulent tyrants I ever beheld,

this sourfaced pilot was the worst tempered; for, during the time that he had the guidance of the ship, which

was till we arrived in the Downs, he complied with no one's desires, nor did he give a civil word, or indeed a

The toothdrawer, who, as I said before, was one of great eminence among her neighbors, refused to follow

the ship; so that my man made himself the best of his way, and with some difficulty came up with us before

we were got under full sail; for after that, as we had both wind and tide with us, he would have found it

The morning was fair and bright, and we had a passage thither, I think, as pleasant as can be conceived: for,

take it with all its advantages, particularly the number of fine ships you are always sure of seeing by the way,

there is nothing to equal it in all the rivers of the world. The yards of Deptford and of Woolwich are noble

sights, and give us a just idea of the great perfection to which we are arrived in building those floating castles,

and the figure which we may always make in Europe among the other maritime powers. That of Woolwich,

at least, very strongly imprinted this idea on my mind; for there was now on the stocks there the Royal Anne,

supposed to be the largest ship ever built, and which contains ten carriageguns more than had ever yet

It is true, perhaps, that there is more of ostentation than of real utility in ships of this vast and unwieldy

burden, which are rarely capable of acting against an enemy; but if the building such contributes to preserve,

among other nations, the notion of the British superiority in naval affairs, the expense, though very great, is

well incurred, and the ostentation is laudable and truly political. Indeed, I should be sorry to allow that

Holland, France, or Spain, possessed a vessel larger and more beautiful than the largest and most beautiful of

ours; for this honor I would always administer to the pride of our sailors, who should challenge it from all

their neighbors with truth and success. And sure I am that not our honest tars alone, but every inhabitant of

this island, may exult in the comparison, when he considers the king of Great Britain as a maritime prince, in

opposition to any other prince in Europe; but I am not so certain that the same idea of superiority will result

from comparing our land forces with those of many other crowned heads. In numbers they all far exceed us,

and in the goodness and splendor of their troops many nations, particularly the Germans and French, and

perhaps the Dutch, cast us at a distance; for, however we may flatter ourselves with the Edwards and Henrys

of former ages, the change of the whole art of war since those days, by which the advantage of personal

strength is in a manner entirely lost, hath produced a change in military affairs to the advantage of our

enemies. As for our successes in later days, if they were not entirely owing to the superior genius of our

general, they were not a little due to the superior force of his money. Indeed, if we should arraign marshal

Saxe of ostentation when he showed his army, drawn up, to our captive general, the day after the battle of La

Val, we cannot say that the ostentation was entirely vain; since he certainly showed him an army which had

not been often equaled, either in the number or goodness of the troops, and which, in those respects, so far

exceeded ours, that none can ever cast any reflection on the brave young prince who could not reap the

laurels of conquest in that day; but his retreat will be always mentioned as an addition to his glory.

In our marine the case is entirely the reverse, and it must be our own fault if it doth not continue so; for

continue so it will as long as the flourishing state of our trade shall support it, and this support it can never

want till our legislature shall cease to give sufficient attention to the protection of our trade, and our

magistrates want sufficient power, ability, and honesty, to execute the laws; a circumstance not to be

apprehended, as it cannot happen till our senates and our benches shall be filled with the blindest ignorance,

Besides the ships in the docks, we saw many on the water: the yachts are sights of great parade, and the king's

body yacht is, I believe, unequaled in any country for convenience as well as magnificence; both which are

consulted in building and equipping her with the most exquisite art and workmanship.

These are, I believe, the largest and finest vessels which are anywhere employed in commercial affairs. The

colliers, likewise, which are very numerous, and even assemble in fleets, are ships of great bulk; and if we

descend to those used in the American, African, and European trades, and pass through those which visit our

own coasts, to the small craft that lie between Chatham and the Tower, the whole forms a most pleasing

object to the eye, as well as highly warming to the heart of an Englishman who has any degree of love for his

country, or can recognize any effect of the patriot in his constitution. Lastly, the Royal Hospital at

Greenwich, which presents so delightful a front to the water, and doth such honor at once to its builder and

the nation, to the great skill and ingenuity of the one, and to the no less sensible gratitude of the other, very

properly closes the account of this scene; which may well appear romantic to those who have not themselves

seen that, in this one instance, truth and reality are capable, perhaps, of exceeding the power of fiction. When

we had passed by Greenwich we saw only two or three gentlemen's houses, all of very moderate account, till

we reached Gravesend: these are all on the Kentish shore, which affords a much dryer, wholesomer, and

pleasanter situation, than doth that of its opposite, Essex. This circumstance, I own, is somewhat surprising to

me, when I reflect on the numerous villas that crowd the river from Chelsea upwards as far as Shepperton,

where the narrower channel affords not half so noble a prospect, and where the continual succession of the

small craft, like the frequent repetition of all things, which have nothing in them great, beautiful, or

admirable, tire the eye, and give us distaste and aversion, instead of pleasure. With some of these situations,

such as Barnes, Mortlake, etc., even the shore of Essex might contend, not upon very unequal terms; but on

the Kentish borders there are many spots to be chosen by the builder which might justly claim the preference

How shall we account for this depravity in taste? for surely there are none so very mean and contemptible as

to bring the pleasure of seeing a number of little wherries, gliding along after one another, in competition

with what we enjoy in viewing a succession of ships, with all their sails expanded to the winds, bounding

And here I cannot pass by another observation on the deplorable want of taste in our enjoyments, which we

show by almost totally neglecting the pursuit of what seems to me the highest degree of amusement; this is,

the sailing ourselves in little vessels of our own, contrived only for our ease and accommodation, to which

such situations of our villas as I have recommended would be so convenient, and even necessary.

This amusement, I confess, if enjoyed in any perfection, would be of the expensive kind; but such expense

would not exceed the reach of a moderate fortune, and would fall very short of the prices which are daily paid

The truth, I believe, is, that sailing in the manner I have just mentioned is a pleasure rather unknown, or

unthought of, than rejected by those who have experienced it; unless, perhaps, the apprehension of danger or

seasickness may be supposed, by the timorous and delicate, to make too large deductionsinsisting that all

their enjoyments shall come to them pure and unmixed, and being ever ready to cry out,

This, however, was my present case; for the ease and lightness which I felt from my tapping, the gayety of

the morning, the pleasant sailing with wind and tide, and the many agreeable objects with which I was

constantly entertained during the whole way, were all suppressed and overcome by the single consideration

of my wife's pain, which continued incessantly to torment her till we came to an anchor, when I dispatched a

messenger in great haste for the best reputed operator in Gravesend. A surgeon of some eminence now

appeared, who did not decline toothdrawing, though he certainly would have been offended with the

appellation of toothdrawer no less than his brethren, the members of that venerable body, would be with that

of barber, since the late separation between those longunited companies, by which, if the surgeons have

gained much, the barbers are supposed to have lost very little. This able and careful person (for so I sincerely

believe he is) after examining the guilty tooth, declared that it was such a rotten shell, and so placed at the

very remotest end of the upper jaw, where it was in a manner covered and secured by a large fine firm tooth,

He said, indeed, more to my wife, and used more rhetoric to dissuade her from having it drawn, than is

generally employed to persuade young ladies to prefer a pain of three moments to one of three months'

continuance, especially if those young ladies happen to be past forty and fifty years of age, when, by

submitting to support a racking torment, the only good circumstance attending which is, it is so short that

scarce one in a thousand can cry out "I feel it," they are to do a violence to their charms, and lose one of those

beautiful holders with which alone Sir Courtly Nice declares a lady can ever lay hold of his heart. He said at

last so much, and seemed to reason so justly, that I came over to his side, and assisted him in prevailing on

my wife (for it was no easy matter) to resolve on keeping her tooth a little longer, and to apply palliatives

only for relief. These were opium applied to the tooth, and blisters behind the ears.

Whilst we were at dinner this day in the cabin, on a sudden the window on one side was beat into the room

with a crash as if a twentypounder had been discharged among us. We were all alarmed at the suddenness of

the accident, for which, however, we were soon able to account, for the sash, which was shivered all to

pieces, was pursued into the middle of the cabin by the bowsprit of a little ship called a codsmack, the

master of which made us amends for running (carelessly at best) against us, and injuring the ship, in the

seaway; that is to say, by damning us all to hell, and uttering several pious wishes that it had done us much

more mischief. All which were answered in their own kind and phrase by our men, between whom and the

other crew a dialogue of oaths and scurrility was carried on as long as they continued in each other's hearing.

It is difficult, I think, to assign a satisfactory reason why sailors in general should, of all others, think

themselves entirely discharged from the common bands of humanity, and should seem to glory in the

language and behavior of savages! They see more of the world, and have, most of them, a more erudite

education than is the portion of landmen of their degree. Nor do I believe that in any country they visit

(Holland itself not excepted) they can ever find a parallel to what daily passes on the river Thames. Is it that

they think true courage (for they are the bravest fellows upon earth) inconsistent with all the gentleness of a

humane carriage, and that the contempt of civil order springs up in minds but little cultivated, at the same

time and from the same principles with the contempt of danger and death? Is it? in short, it is so; and how

it comes to be so I leave to form a question in the Robin Hood Society, or to he propounded for solution

Monday, July 1.This day Mr. Welch took his leave of me after dinner, as did a young lady of her sister,

who was proceeding with my wife to Lisbon. They both set out together in a postchaise for London. Soon

after their departure our cabin, where my wife and I were sitting together, was visited by two ruffians, whose

appearance greatly corresponded with that of the sheriffs, or rather the knightmarshal's bailiffs. One of these

especially, who seemed to affect a more than ordinary degree of rudeness and insolence, came in without any

kind of ceremony, with a broad gold lace on his hat, which was cocked with much military fierceness on his

head. An inkhorn at his buttonhole and some papers in his hand sufficiently assured me what he was, and I

asked him if he and his companion were not customhouse officers: he answered with sufficient dignity that

they were, as an information which he seemed to conclude would strike the hearer with awe, and suppress all

further inquiry; but, on the contrary, I proceeded to ask of what rank he was in the customhouse, and,

receiving an answer from his companion, as I remember, that the gentleman was a riding surveyor, I replied

that he might be a riding surveyor, but could be no gentleman, for that none who had any title to that

denomination would break into the presence of a lady without an apology or even moving his hat. He then

took his covering from his head and laid it on the table, saying, he asked pardon, and blamed the mate, who

should, he said, have informed him if any persons of distinction were below. I told him he might guess by our

appearance (which, perhaps, was rather more than could be said with the strictest adherence to truth) that he

was before a gentleman and lady, which should teach him to be very civil in his behavior, though we should

not happen to be of that number whom the world calls people of fashion and distinction. However, I said, that

as he seemed sensible of his error, and had asked pardon, the lady would permit him to put his hat on again if

he chose it. This he refused with some degree of surliness, and failed not to convince me that, if I should

condescend to become more gentle, he would soon grow more rude. I now renewed a reflection, which I have

often seen occasion to make, that there is nothing so incongruous in nature as any kind of power with lowness

of mind and of ability, and that there is nothing more deplorable than the want of truth in the whimsical

notion of Plato, who tells us that "Saturn, well knowing the state of human affairs, gave us kings and rulers,

not of human but divine original; for, as we make not shepherds of sheep, nor oxherds of oxen, nor goatherds

of goats, but place some of our own kind over all as being better and fitter to govern them; in the same

manner were demons by the divine love set over us as a race of beings of a superior order to men, and who,

with great ease to themselves, might regulate our affairs and establish peace, modesty, freedom, and justice,

and, totally destroying all sedition, might complete the happiness of the human race. So far, at least, may

even now be said with truth, that in all states which are under the government of mere man, without any

divine assistance, there is nothing but labor and misery to be found. From what I have said, therefore, we may

at least learn, with our utmost endeavors, to imitate the Saturnian institution; borrowing all assistance from

our immortal part, while we pay to this the strictest obedience, we should form both our private economy and

public policy from its dictates. By this dispensation of our immortal minds we are to establish a law and to

call it by that name. But if any government be in the hands of a single person, of the few, or of the many, and

such governor or governors shall abandon himself or themselves to the unbridled pursuit of the wildest

pleasures or desires, unable to restrain any passion, but possessed with an insatiable bad disease; if such shall

attempt to govern, and at the same time to trample on all laws, there can be no means of preservation left for

It is true that Plato is here treating of the highest or sovereign power in a state, but it is as true that his

observations are general and may be applied to all inferior powers; and, indeed, every subordinate degree is

immediately derived from the highest; and, as it is equally protected by the same force and sanctified by the

same authority, is alike dangerous to the wellbeing of the subject. Of all powers, perhaps, there is none so

sanctified and protected as this which is under our present consideration. So numerous, indeed, and strong,

are the sanctions given to it by many acts of parliament, that, having once established the laws of customs on

merchandise, it seems to have been the sole view of the legislature to strengthen the hands and to protect the

persons of the officers who became established by those laws, many of whom are so far from bearing any

resemblance to the Saturnian institution, and to be chosen from a degree of beings superior to the rest of

human race, that they sometimes seem industriously picked out of the lowest and vilest orders of mankind.

There is, indeed, nothing, so useful to man in general, nor so beneficial to particular societies and individuals,

as trade. This is that alma mater at whose plentiful breast all mankind are nourished. It is true, like other

parents, she is not always equally indulgent to all her children, but, though she gives to her favorites a vast

proportion of redundancy and superfluity, there are very few whom she refuses to supply with the

Such a benefactress as this must naturally be beloved by mankind in general; it would be wonderful,

therefore, if her interest was not considered by them, and protected from the fraud and violence of some of

her rebellious offspring, who, coveting more than their share or more than she thinks proper to allow them,

are daily employed in meditating mischief against her, and in endeavoring to steal from their brethren those

At length our governor came on board, and about six in the evening we weighed anchor, and fell down to the

Nore, whither our passage was extremely pleasant, the evening being very delightful, the moon just past the

Tuesday, July 2.This morning we again set sail, under all the advantages we had enjoyed the evening

before. This day we left the shore of Essex and coasted along Kent, passing by the pleasant island of Thanet,

which is an island, and that of Sheppy, which is not an island, and about three o 'clock, the wind being now

full in our teeth, we came to an anchor in the Downs, within two miles of Deal.My wife, having suffered

intolerable pain from her tooth, again renewed her resolution of having it drawn, and another surgeon was

sent for from Deal, but with no better success than the former. He likewise declined the operation, for the

same reason which had been assigned by the former: however, such was her resolution, backed with pain,

that he was obliged to make the attempt, which concluded more in honor of his judgment than of his

operation; for, after having put my poor wife to inexpressible torment, he was obliged to leave her tooth in

statu quo; and she had now the comfortable prospect of a long fit of pain, which might have lasted her whole

voyage, without any possibility of relief. In these pleasing sensations, of which I had my just share, nature,

overcome with fatigue, about eight in the evening resigned her to resta circumstance which would have

given me some happiness, could I have known how to employ those spirits which were raised by it; but,

unfortunately for me, I was left in a disposition of enjoying an agreeable hour without the assistance of a

companion, which has always appeared to me necessary to such enjoyment; my daughter and her companion

were both retired seasick to bed; the other passengers were a rude schoolboy of fourteen years old and an

illiterate Portuguese friar, who understood no language but his own, in which I had not the least smattering.

The captain was the only person left in whose conversation I might indulge myself; but unluckily, besides a

total ignorance of everything in the world but a ship, he had the misfortune of being so deaf, that to make him

hear, I will not say understand, my words, I must run the risk of conveying them to the ears of my wife, who,

though in another room (called, I think, the stateroombeing, indeed, a most stately apartment, capable of

containing one human body in length, if not very tall, and three bodies in breadth), lay asleep within a yard of

me. In this situation necessity and choice were one and the same thing; the captain and I sat down together to

a small bowl of punch, over which we both soon fell fast asleep, and so concluded the evening.

Wednesday, July 3.This morning I awaked at four o'clock for my distemper seldom suffered me to sleep

later. I presently got up, and had the pleasure of enjoying the sight of a tempestuous sea for four hours before

the captain was stirring; for he loved to indulge himself in morning slumbers, which were attended with a

windmusic, much more agreeable to the performers than to the hearers, especially such as have, as I had, the

privilege of sitting in the orchestra. At eight o 'clock the captain rose, and sent his boat on shore. I ordered my

man likewise to go in it, as my distemper was not of that kind which entirely deprives us of appetite. Now,

though the captain had well victualled his ship with all manner of salt provisions for the voyage, and had

added great quantities of fresh stores, particularly of vegetables, at Gravesend, such as beans and peas, which

had been on board only two days, and had possibly not been gathered above two more, I apprehended I could

provide better for myself at Deal than the ship's ordinary seemed to promise. I accordingly sent for fresh

provisions of all kinds from the shore, in order to put off the evil day of starving as long as possible. My man

returned with most of the articles I sent for, and I now thought myself in a condition of living a week on my

own provisions. I therefore ordered my own dinner, which I wanted nothing but a cook to dress and a proper

fire to dress it at; but those were not to be had, nor indeed any addition to my roast mutton, except the

pleasure of the captain's company, with that of the other passengers; for my wife continued the whole day in a

state of dozing, and my other females, whose sickness did not abate by the rolling of the ship at anchor,

seemed more inclined to empty their stomachs than to fill them. Thus I passed the whole day (except about an

hour at dinner) by myself, and the evening concluded with the captain as the preceding one had done; one

comfortable piece of news he communicated to me, which was, that he had no doubt of a prosperous wind in

the morning; but as he did not divulge the reasons of this confidence, and as I saw none myself besides the

wind being directly opposite, my faith in this prophecy was not strong enough to build any great hopes upon.

Thursday, July 4.This morning, however, the captain seemed resolved to fulfill his own predictions,

whether the wind would or no; he accordingly weighed anchor, and, taking the advantage of the tide when the

wind was not very boisterous, he hoisted his sails; and, as if his power had been no less absolute over Aeolus

But as all men who have ever been at sea well know how weak such attempts are, and want no authorities of

Scripture to prove that the most absolute power of a captain of a ship is very contemptible in the wind's eye,

so did it befall our noble commander, who, having struggled with the wind three or four hours, was obliged to

give over, and lost in a few minutes all that he had been so long againing; in short, we returned to our

Here, though we lay near the shore, that we might promise ourselves all the emolument which could be

derived from it, we found ourselves deceived; and that we might with as much conveniency be out of the

sight of land; for, except when the captain launched forth his own boat, which he did always with great

reluctance, we were incapable of procuring anything from Deal, but at a price too exorbitant, and beyond the

reach even of modern luxurythe fare of a boat from Deal, which lay at two miles' distance, being at least

three halfcrowns, and, if we had been in any distress for it, as many halfguineas; for these good people

consider the sea as a large common appendant to their manor; in which when they find any of their

fellowcreatures impounded, they conclude that they have a full right of making them pay at their own

discretion for their deliverance: to say the truth, whether it be that men who live on the seashore are of an

amphibious kind, and do not entirely partake of human nature, or whatever else may be the reason, they are

so far from taking any share in the distresses of mankind, or of being moved with any compassion for them,

that they look upon them as blessings showered down from above, and which the more they improve to their

own use, the greater is their gratitude and piety. Thus at Gravesend a sculler requires a shilling for going less

way than he would row in London for threepence; and at Deal a boat often brings more profit in a day than it

can produce in London in a week, or perhaps in a month; in both places the owner of the boat founds his

demand on the necessity and distress of one who stands more or less in absolute want of his assistance, and

with the urgency of these always rises in the exorbitancy of his demand, without ever considering that, from

these very circumstances, the power or ease of gratifying such demand is in like proportion lessened. Now, as

I am unwilling that some conclusions, which may be, I am aware, too justly drawn from these observations,

should be imputed to human nature in general, I have endeavored to account for them in a way more

consistent with the goodness and dignity of that nature. However it be, it seems a little to reflect on the

governors of such monsters that they do not take some means to restrain these impositions, and prevent them

from triumphing any longer in the miseries of those who are, in many circumstances at least, their

fellowcreatures, and considering the distresses of a wretched seaman, from his being wrecked to his being

barely windbound, as a blessing sent among them from above, and calling it by that blasphemous name.

Friday, July 5.This day I sent a servant on board a manofwar that was stationed here, with my

compliments to the captain, to represent to him the distress of the ladies, and to desire the favor of his

longboat to conduct us to Dover, at about seven miles' distance; and at the same time presumed to make use

of a great lady's name, the wife of the first lord commissioner of the admiralty, who would, I told him, be

pleased with any kindness shown by him towards us in our miserable condition. And this I am convinced was

The captain returned a verbal answer to a long letter acquainting me that what I desired could not be

complied with, it being a favor not in his power to grant. This might be, and I suppose was, true; but it is as

true that, if he was able to write, and had pen, ink, and paper on board, he might have sent a written answer,

and that it was the part of a gentleman so to have done; but this is a character seldom maintained on the

watery element, especially by those who exercise any power on it. Every commander of a vessel here seems

to think himself entirely free from all those rules of decency and civility which direct and restrain the conduct

of the members of a society on shore; and each, claiming absolute dominion in his little wooden world, rules

by his own laws and his own discretion. I do not, indeed, know so pregnant an instance of the dangerous

consequences of absolute power, and its aptness to intoxicate the mind, as that of those petty tyrants, who

become such in a moment, from very welldisposed and social members of that communion in which they

affect no superiority, but live in an orderly state of legal subjection with their fellowcitizens.

Saturday, July 6.This morning our commander, declaring he was sure the wind would change, took the

advantage of an ebbing tide, and weighed his anchor. His assurance, however, had the same completion, and

his endeavors the same success, with his formal trial; and he was soon obliged to return once more to his old

quarters. Just before we let go our anchor, a small sloop, rather than submit to yield us an inch of way, ran

foul of our ship, and carried off her bowsprit. This obstinate frolic would have cost those aboard the sloop

very dear, if our steersman had not been too generous to exert his superiority, the certain consequence of

which would have been the immediate sinking of the other. This contention of the inferior with a might

capable of crushing it in an instant may seem to argue no small share of folly or madness, as well as of

impudence; but I am convinced there is very little danger in it: contempt is a port to which the pride of man

submits to fly with reluctance, but those who are within it are always in a place of the most assured security;

for whosoever throws away his sword prefers, indeed, a less honorable but much safer means of avoiding

danger than he who defends himself with it. And here we shall offer another distinction, of the truth of which

much reading and experience have well convinced us, that as in the most absolute governments there is a

regular progression of slavery downwards, from the top to the bottom, the mischief of which is seldom felt

with any great force and bitterness but by the next immediate degree; so in the most dissolute and anarchical

states there is as regular an ascent of what is called rank or condition, which is always laying hold of the head

of him who is advanced but one step higher on the ladder, who might, if he did not too much despise such

efforts, kick his pursuer headlong to the bottom. We will conclude this digression with one general and short

observation, which will, perhaps, set the whole matter in a clearer light than the longest and most labored

harangue. Whereas envy of all things most exposes us to danger from others, so contempt of all things best

secures us from them. And thus, while the dungcart and the sloop are always meditating mischief against

the coach and the ship, and throwing themselves designedly in their way, the latter consider only their own

Monday, July 8.Having passed our Sunday without anything remarkable, unless the catching a great

number of whitings in the afternoon may be thought so, we now set sail on Monday at six o'clock, with a

little variation of wind; but this was so very little, and the breeze itself so small, but the tide was our best and

indeed almost our only friend. This conducted us along the short remainder of the Kentish shore. Here we

passed that cliff of Dover which makes so tremendous a figure in Shakespeare, and which whoever reads

without being giddy, must, according to Mr. Addison's observation, have either a very good head or a very

bad, one; but which, whoever contracts any such ideas from the sight of, must have at least a poetic if not a

Shakesperian genius. In truth, mountains, rivers, heroes, and gods owe great part of their existence to the

poets; and Greece and Italy do so plentifully abound in the former, because they furnish so glorious a number

of the latter; who, while they bestowed immortality on every little hillock and blind stream, left the noblest

rivers and mountains in the world to share the same obscurity with the eastern and western poets, in which

they are celebrated. This evening we beat the sea of Sussex in sight of Dungeness, with much more pleasure

than progress; for the weather was almost a perfect calm, and the moon, which was almost at the full, scarce

Tuesday, Wednesday, July 9, 10.These two days we had much the same fine weather, and made much the

same way; but in the evening of the latter day a pretty fresh gale sprung up at N.N.W., which brought us by

Thursday, July 11.This gale continued till towards noon; when the east end of the island bore but little

ahead of us. The captain swaggered and declared he would keep the sea; but the wind got the better of him, so

that about three he gave up the victory, and making a sudden tack stood in for the shore, passed by Spithead

A most tragical incident fell out this day at sea. While the ship was under sail, but making as will appear no

great way, a kitten, one of four of the feline inhabitants of the cabin, fell from the window into the water: an

alarm was immediately given to the captain, who was then upon deck, and received it with the utmost

concern and many bitter oaths. He immediately gave orders to the steersman in favor of the poor thing, as he

called it; the sails were instantly slackened, and all hands, as the phrase is, employed to recover the poor

animal. I was, I own, extremely surprised at all this; less indeed at the captain's extreme tenderness than at his

conceiving any possibility of success; for if puss had had nine thousand instead of nine lives, I concluded

they had been all lost. The boatswain, however, had more sanguine hopes, for, having stripped himself of his

jacket, breeches, and shirt, he leaped boldly into the water, and to my great astonishment in a few minutes

returned to the ship, bearing the motionless animal in his mouth. Nor was this, I observed, a matter of such

great difficulty as it appeared to my ignorance, and possibly may seem to that of my freshwater reader. The

kitten was now exposed to air and sun on the deck, where its life, of which it retained no symptoms, was

The captain's humanity, if I may so call it, did not so totally destroy his philosophy as to make him yield

himself up to affliction on this melancholy occasion. Having felt his loss like a man, he resolved to show he

could bear it like one; and, having declared he had rather have lost a cask of rum or brandy, betook himself to

threshing at backgammon with the Portuguese friar, in which innocent amusement they had passed about

But as I have, perhaps, a little too wantonly endeavored to raise the tender passions of my readers in this

narrative, I should think myself unpardonable if I concluded it without giving them the satisfaction of hearing

that the kitten at last recovered, to the great joy of the good captain, but to the great disappointment of some

of the sailors, who asserted that the drowning a cat was the very surest way of raising a favorable wind; a

supposition of which, though we have heard several plausible accounts, we will not presume to assign the

Friday, July 12.This day our ladies went ashore at Ryde, and drank their afternoon tea at an alehouse

there with great satisfaction: here they were regaled with fresh cream, to which they had been strangers since

Saturday, July 13.The wind seeming likely to continue in the same corner where it had been almost

constantly for two months together, I was persuaded by my wife to go ashore and stay at Ryde till we sailed. I

approved the motion much; for though I am a great lover of the sea, I now fancied there was more pleasure in

breathing the fresh air of the land; but how to get thither was the question; for, being really that dead luggage

which I considered all passengers to be in the beginning of this narrative, and incapable of any bodily motion

without external impulse, it was in vain to leave the ship, or to determine to do it, without the assistance of

others. In one instance, perhaps, the living, luggage is more difficult to be moved or removed than an equal or

much superior weight of dead matter; which, if of the brittle kind, may indeed be liable to be broken through

negligence; but this, by proper care, may be almost certainly prevented; whereas the fractures to which the

living lumps are exposed are sometimes by no caution avoidable, and often by no art to be amended.

I was deliberating on the means of conveyance, not so much out of the ship to the boat as out of a little

tottering boat to the land; a matter which, as I had already experienced in the Thames, was not extremely

easy, when to be performed by any other limbs than your own. Whilst I weighed all that could suggest itself

on this head, without strictly examining the merit of the several schemes which were advanced by the captain

and sailors, and, indeed, giving no very deep attention even to my wife, who, as well as her friend and my

daughter, were exerting their tender concern for my ease and safety, Fortune, for I am convinced she had a

hand in it, sent me a present of a buck; a present welcome enough of itself, but more welcome on account of

the vessel in which it came, being a large hoy, which in some places would pass for a ship, and many people

I was pretty easily conveyed on board this hoy; but to get from hence to the shore was not so easy a task; for,

however strange it may appear, the water itself did not extend so far; an instance which seems to explain

In fact, between the sea and the shore there was, at low water, an impassable gulf, if I may so call it, of deep

mud, which could neither be traversed by walking nor swimming; so that for near one half of the twentyfour

hours Ryde was inaccessible by friend or foe. But as the magistrates of this place seemed more to desire the

company of the former than to fear that of the latter, they had begun to make a small causeway to the

lowwater mark, so that foot passengers might land whenever they pleased; but as this work was of a public

kind, and would have cost a large sum of money, at least ten pounds, and the magistrates, that is to say, the

churchwardens, the overseers, constable, and tithingman, and the principal inhabitants, had every one of them

some separate scheme of private interest to advance at the expense of the public, they fell out among

themselves; and, after having thrown away one half of the requisite sum, resolved at least to save the other

half, and rather be contented to sit down losers themselves than to enjoy any benefit which might bring in a

greater profit to another. Thus that unanimity which is so necessary in all public affairs became wanting, and

every man, from the fear of being a bubble to another, was, in reality, a bubble to himself.

However, as there is scarce any difficulty to which the strength of men, assisted with the cunning of art, is not

equal, I was at last hoisted into a small boat, and being rowed pretty near the shore, was taken up by two

sailors, who waded with me through the mud, and placed me in a chair on the land, whence they afterwards

conveyed me a quarter of a mile farther, and brought me to a house which seemed to bid the fairest for

We brought with us our provisions from the ship, so that we wanted nothing but a fire to dress our dinner,

and a room in which we might eat it. In neither of these had we any reason to apprehend a disappointment,

our dinner consisting only of beans and bacon; and the worst apartment in his majesty's dominions, either at

Unluckily, however, we were disappointed in both; for when we arrived about four at our inn, exulting in the

hopes of immediately seeing our beans smoking on the table, we had the mortification of seeing them on the

table indeed, but without that circumstance which would have made the sight agreeable, being in the same

state in which we had dispatched them from our ship. In excuse for this delay, though we had exceeded,

almost purposely, the time appointed, and our provision had arrived three hours before, the mistress of the

house acquainted us that it was not for want of time to dress them that they were not ready, but for fear of

their being cold or overdone before we should come; which she assured us was much worse than waiting a

few minutes for our dinner; an observation so very just, that it is impossible to find any objection in it; but,

indeed, it was not altogether so proper at this time, for we had given the most absolute orders to have them

ready at four, and had been ourselves, not without much care and difficulty, most exactly punctual in keeping

to the very minute of our appointment. But tradesmen, innkeepers, and servants, never care to indulge us in

matters contrary to our true interest, which they always know better than ourselves; nor can any bribes

corrupt them to go out of their way while they are consulting our good in our own despite.

Our disappointment in the other particular, in defiance of our humility, as it was more extraordinary, was

more provoking. In short, Mrs. Francis (for that was the name of the good woman of the house) no sooner

received the news of our intended arrival than she considered more the gentility than the humanity of her

guests, and applied herself not to that which kindles but to that which extinguishes fire, and, forgetting to put

As the messenger who had brought my venison was impatient to be dispatched, I ordered it to be brought and

laid on the table in the room where I was seated; and the table not being large enough, one side, and that a

very bloody one, was laid on the brick floor. I then ordered Mrs. Francis to be called in, in order to give her

instructions concerning it; in particular, what I would have roasted and what baked; concluding that she

would be highly pleased with the prospect of so much money being spent in her house as she might have now

reason to expect, if the wind continued only a few days longer to blow from the same points whence it had

I soon saw good cause, I must confess, to despise my own sagacity. Mrs. Francis, having received her orders,

without making any answer, snatched the side from the floor, which remained stained with blood, and,

bidding a servant to take up that on the table, left the room with no pleasant countenance, muttering to herself

that, "had she known the litter which was to have been made, she would not have taken such pains to wash

her house that morning. If this was gentility, much good may it do such gentlefolks; for her part she had no

notion of it." From these murmurs I received two hints. The one, that it was not from a mistake of our

inclination that the good woman had starved us, but from wisely consulting her own dignity, or rather

perhaps her vanity, to which our hunger was offered up as a sacrifice. The other, that I was now sitting in a

damp room, a circumstance, though it had hitherto escaped my notice from the color of the bricks, which was

My wife, who, besides discharging excellently well her own and all the tender offices becoming the female

character; who, besides being a faithful friend, an amiable companion, and a tender nurse, could likewise

supply the wants of a decrepit husband, and occasionally perform his part, had, before this, discovered the

immoderate attention to neatness in Mrs. Francis, and provided against its ill consequences. She had found,

though not under the same roof, a very snug apartment belonging to Mr. Francis, and which had escaped the

mop by his wife's being satisfied it could not possibly be visited by gentlefolks. This was a dry, warm,

oakenfloored barn, lined on both sides with wheaten straw, and opening at one end into a green field and a

beautiful prospect. Here, without hesitation, she ordered the cloth to be laid, and came hastily to snatch me

Mrs. Francis, who could not trust her own ears, or could not believe a footman in so extraordinary a

phenomenon, followed my wife, and asked her if she had indeed ordered the cloth to be laid in the barn? She

answered in the affirmative; upon which Mrs. Francis declared she would not dispute her pleasure, but it was

the first time she believed that quality had ever preferred a barn to a house. She showed at the same time the

most pregnant marks of contempt, and again lamented the labor she had undergone, through her ignorance of

At length we were seated in one of the most pleasant spots I believe in the kingdom, and were regaled with

our beans and bacon, in which there was nothing deficient but the quantity. This defect was however so

deplorable that we had consumed our whole dish before we had visibly lessened our hunger. We now waited

with impatience the arrival of our second course, which necessity, and not luxury, had dictated. This was a

joint of mutton which Mrs. Francis had been ordered to provide; but when, being tired with expectation, we

ordered our servants TO SEE FOR SOMETHING ELSE, we were informed that there was nothing else; on

which Mrs. Francis, being summoned, declared there was no such thing as mutton to be had at Ryde. When I

expressed some astonishment at their having no butcher in a village so situated, she answered they had a very

good one, and one that killed all sorts of meat in season, beef two or three times a year, and mutton the whole

year round; but that, it being then beans and peas time, he killed no meat, by reason he was not sure of selling

it. This she had not thought worthy of communication, any more than that there lived a fisherman at next

door, who was then provided with plenty of soles, and whitings, and lobsters, far superior to those which

adorn a city feast. This discovery being made by accident, we completed the best, the pleasantest, and the

merriest meal, with more appetite, more real solid luxury, and more festivity, than was ever seen in an

It may be wondered at, perhaps, that Mrs. Francis should be so negligent of providing for her guests, as she

may seem to be thus inattentive to her own interest; but this was not the case; for, having clapped a polltax

on our heads at our arrival, and determined at what price to discharge our bodies from her house, the less she

suffered any other to share in the levy the clearer it came into her own pocket; and that it was better to get

twelve pence in a shilling than ten pence, which latter would be the case if she afforded us fish at any rate.

Thus we passed a most agreeable day owing to good appetites and good humor; two hearty feeders which

will devour with satisfaction whatever food you place before them; whereas, without these, the elegance of

St. James's, the charde, the perigordpie, or the ortolan, the venison, the turtle, or the custard, may titillate the

throat, but will never convey happiness to the heart or cheerfulness to the countenance.

As the wind appeared still immovable, my wife proposed my lying on shore. I presently agreed, though in

defiance of an act of parliament, by which persons wandering abroad and lodging in alehouses are decreed

to be rogues and vagabonds; and this too after having been very singularly officious in putting that law in

execution. My wife, having reconnoitered the house, reported that there was one room in which were two

beds. It was concluded, therefore, that she and Harriot should occupy one and myself take possession of the

other. She added likewise an ingenious recommendation of this room to one who had so long been in a cabin,

which it exactly resembled, as it was sunk down with age on one side, and was in the form of a ship with

For my own part, I make little doubt but this apartment was an ancient temple, built with the materials of a

wreck, and probably dedicated to Neptune in honor of THE BLESSING sent by him to the inhabitants; such

blessings having in all ages been very common to them. The timber employed in it confirms this opinion,

being such as is seldom used by ally but shipbuilders. I do not find indeed any mention of this matter in

Hearn; but perhaps its antiquity was too modern to deserve his notice. Certain it is that this island of Wight

was not an early convert to Christianity; nay, there is some reason to doubt whether it was ever entirely

converted. But I have only time to touch slightly on things of this kind, which, luckily for us, we have a

Sunday, July 19.This morning early I summoned Mrs. Francis, in order to pay her the preceding day's

account. As I could recollect only two or three articles I thought there was no necessity of pen and ink. In a

single instance only we had exceeded what the law allows gratis to a footsoldier on his march, viz., vinegar,

salt, etc., and dressing his meat. I found, however, I was mistaken in my calculation; for when the good

Now that five people and two servants should live a day and night at a publichouse for so small a sum will

appear incredible to any person in London above the degree of a chimneysweeper; but more astonishing will

it seem that these people should remain so long at such a house without tasting any other delicacy than bread,

small beer, a teacupful of milk called cream, a glass of rum converted into punch by their own materials, and

one bottle of wind, of which we only tasted a single glass though possibly, indeed, our servants drank the

This wind is a liquor of English manufacture, and its flavor is thought very delicious by the generality of the

English, who drink it in great quantities. Every seventh year is thought to produce as much as the other six. It

is then drank so plentifully that the whole nation are in a manner intoxicated by it; and consequently very

little business is carried on at that season. It resembles in color the red wine which is imported from Portugal,

as it doth in its intoxicating quality; hence, and from this agreement in the orthography, the one is often

confounded with the other, though both are seldom esteemed by the same person. It is to be had in every

parish of the kingdom, and a pretty large quantity is consumed in the metropolis, where several taverns are

set apart solely for the vendition of this liquor, the masters never dealing in any other. The disagreement in

our computation produced some small remonstrance to Mrs. Francis on my side; but this received an

immediate answer: "She scorned to overcharge gentlemen; her house had been always frequented by the very

best gentry of the island; and she had never had a bill found fault with in her life, though she had lived

upwards of forty years in the house, and within that time the greatest gentry in Hampshire had been at it; and

that lawyer Willis never went to any other when he came to those parts. That for her part she did not get her

livelihood by travelers, who were gone and away, and she never expected to see them more, but that her

neighbors might come again; wherefore, to be sure, they had the only right to complain."

She was proceeding thus, and from her volubility of tongue seemed likely to stretch the discourse to an

This morning our ladies went to church, more, I fear, from curiosity than religion; they were attended by the

captain in a most military attire, with his cockade in his hat and his sword by his side. So unusual an

appearance in this little chapel drew the attention of all present, and probably disconcerted the women, who

were in dishabille, and wished themselves dressed, for the sake of the curate, who was the greatest of their

beholders. While I was left alone I received a visit from Mr. Francis himself, who was much more

considerable as a farmer than as an innholder. Indeed, he left the latter entirely to the care of his wife, and

he acted wisely, I believe, in so doing. As nothing more remarkable passed on this day I will close it with the

account of these two characters, as far as a few days' residence could inform me of them. If they should

appear as new to the reader as they did to me, he will not be displeased at finding them here. This amiable

couple seemed to border hard on their grand climacteric; nor indeed were they shy of owning enough to fix

their ages within a year or two of that time. They appeared to be rather proud of having employed their time

well than ashamed of having lived so long; the only reason which I could ever assign why some fine ladies,

and fine gentlemen too, should desire to be thought younger than they really are by the contemporaries of

their grandchildren. Some, indeed, who too hastily credit appearances, might doubt whether they had made so

good a use of their time as I would insinuate, since there was no appearance of anything but poverty, want,

and wretchedness, about their house; nor could they produce anything to a customer in exchange for his

money but a few bottles of wind, and spirituous liquors, and some very bad ale, to drink; with rusty bacon

and worse cheese to eat. But then it should be considered, on the other side, that whatever they received was

almost as entirely clear profit as the blessing of a wreck itself; such an inn being the very reverse of a

coffeehouse; for here you can neither sit for nothing nor have anything for your money.

Again, as many marks of want abounded everywhere, so were the marks of antiquity visible. Scarce anything

was to be seen which had not some scar upon it, made by the hand of Time; not an utensil, it was manifest,

had been purchased within a dozen years last past; so that whatever money had come into the house during

that period at least must have remained in it, unless it had been sent abroad for food, or other perishable

commodities; but these were supplied by a small portion of the fruits of the farm, in which the farmer allowed

he had a very good bargain. In fact, it is inconceivable what sums may be collected by starving only, and how

Nor is there in this kind of starving anything so terrible as some apprehend. It neither wastes a man's flesh nor

robs him of his cheerfulness. The famous Cornaro's case well proves the contrary; and so did farmer Francis,

who was of a round stature, had a plump, round face, with a kind of smile on it, and seemed to borrow an air

The truth is, there is a certain diet which emaciates men more than any possible degree of abstinence; though

I do not remember to have seen any caution against it, either in Cheney, Arbuthnot, or in any other modern

Nay, the very name is not, I believe, in the learned Dr. James's Dictionary; all which is the more

extraordinary as it is a very common food in this kingdom, and the college themselves were not long since

very liberally entertained with it by the present attorney and other eminent lawyers in Lincoln'sinnhall, and

But though it should not be found among our English physical writers, we may be assured of meeting with it

among the Greeks; for nothing considerable in nature escapes their notice, though many things considerable

in them, it is to be feared, have escaped the notice of their readers. The Greeks, then, to all such as feed too

voraciously on this diet, give the name of HEAUTOFAGI, which our physicians will, I suppose, translate

As nothing is so destructive to the body as this kind of food, so nothing is so plentiful and cheap; but it was

perhaps the only cheap thing the farmer disliked. Probably living much on fish might produce this disgust; for

Diodorus Siculus attributes the same aversion in a people of Ethiopia to the same cause; he calls them the

fisheaters, and asserts that they cannot be brought to eat a single meal with the Heautofagi by any

persuasion, threat, or violence whatever, not even though they should kill their children before their faces.

What hath puzzled our physicians, and prevented them from setting this matter in the clearest light, is

possibly one simple mistake, arising from a very excusable ignorance; that the passions of men are capable of

swallowing food as well as their appetites; that the former, in feeding, resemble the state of those animals

who chew the cud; and therefore, such men, in some sense, may be said to prey on themselves, and as it were

to devour their own entrails. And hence ensues a meager aspect and thin habit of body, as surely as from what

is called a consumption. Our farmer was one of these. He had no more passion than an Ichthuofagus or

Ethiopian fisher. He wished not for anything, thought not of anything; indeed, he scarce did anything or said

anything. Here I cannot be understood strictly; for then I must describe a nonentity, whereas I would rob him

of nothing but that free agency which is the cause of all the corruption and of all the misery of human nature.

No man, indeed, ever did more than the farmer, for he was an absolute slave to labor all the week; but in

truth, as my sagacious reader must have at first apprehended, when I said he resigned the care of the house to

his wife, I meant more than I then expressed, even the house and all that belonged to it; for he was really a

farmer only under the direction of his wife. In a word, so composed, so serene, so placid a countenance, I

never saw; and he satisfied himself by answering to every question he was asked, "I don't know anything

Now, as a couple of this kind would, like two vessels of oil, have made no composition in life, and for want

of all savor must have palled every taste; nature or fortune, or both of them, took care to provide a proper

quantity of acid in the materials that formed the wife, and to render her a perfect helpmate for so tranquil a

husband. She abounded in whatsoever he was defective; that is to say, in almost everything. She was indeed

as vinegar to oil, or a brisk wind to a standingpool, and preserved all from stagnation and corruption.

Quin the player, on taking a nice and severe survey of a fellowcomedian, burst forth into this

exclamation:"If that fellow be not a rogue, God Almighty doth not write a legible hand."

Whether he guessed right or no is not worth my while to examine; certain it is that the latter, having wrought

his features into a proper harmony to become the characters of Iago, Shylock, and others of the same cast,

gave us a semblance of truth to the observation that was sufficient to confirm the wit of it. Indeed, we may

remark, in favor of the physiognomist, though the law has made him a rogue and vagabond, that Nature is

seldom curious in her works within, without employing some little pains on the outside; and this more

particularly in mischievous characters, in forming which, as Mr. Derham observes, in venomous insects, as

the sting or saw of a wasp, she is sometimes wonderfully industrious. Now, when she hath thus completely

armed our hero to carry on a war with man, she never fails of furnishing that innocent lambkin with some

means of knowing his enemy, and foreseeing his designs. Thus she hath been observed to act in the case of a

rattlesnake, which never meditates a human prey without giving warning of his approach. This observation

will, I am convinced, hold most true, if applied to the most venomous individuals of human insects. A tyrant,

a trickster, and a bully, generally wear the marks of their several dispositions in their countenances; so do the

vixen, the shrew, the scold, and all other females of the like kind. But, perhaps, nature hath never afforded a

stronger example of all this than in the case of Mrs. Francis. She was a short, squat woman; her head was

closely joined to her shoulders, where it was fixed somewhat awry; every feature of her countenance was

sharp and pointed; her face was furrowed with the smallpox; and her complexion, which seemed to be able to

turn milk to curds, not a little resembled in color such milk as had already undergone that operation. She

appeared, indeed, to have many symptoms of a deep jaundice in her look; but the strength and firmness of her

voice overbalanced them all; the tone of this was a sharp treble at a distance, for I seldom heard it on the

same floor, but was usually waked with it in the morning, and entertained with it almost continually through

Though vocal be usually put in opposition to instrumental music, I question whether this might not be

thought to partake of the nature of both; for she played on two instruments, which she seemed to keep for no

other use from morning till night; these were two maids, or rather scoldingstocks, who, I suppose, by some

means or other, earned their board, and she gave them their lodging gratis, or for no other service than to keep

She differed, as I have said, in every particular from her husband; but very remarkably in this, that, as it was

impossible to displease him, so it was as impossible to please her; and as no art could remove a smile from

his countenance, so could no art carry it into hers. If her bills were remonstrated against she was offended

with the tacit censure of her fairdealing; if they were not, she seemed to regard it as a tacit sarcasm on her

folly, which might have set down larger prices with the same success. On this lather hint she did indeed

improve, for she daily raised some of her articles. A pennyworth of fire was today rated at a shilling,

tomorrow at eighteenpence; and if she dressed us two dishes for two shillings on the Saturday, we paid

halfacrown for the cookery of one on the Sunday; and, whenever she was paid, she never left the room

without lamenting the small amount of her bill, saying, "she knew not how it was that others got their money

by gentlefolks, but for her part she had not the art of it." When she was asked why she complained, when

she was paid all she demanded, she answered, "she could not deny that, nor did she know she had omitted

anything; but that it was but a poor bill for gentlefolks to pay." I accounted for all this by her having heard,

that it is a maxim with the principal innholders on the continent, to levy considerable sums on their guests,

who travel with many horses and servants, though such guests should eat little or nothing in their houses; the

method being, I believe, in such cases, to lay a capitation on the horses, and not on their masters. But she did

not consider that in most of these inns a very great degree of hunger, without any degree of delicacy, may be

satisfied; and that in all such inns there is some appearance, at least, of provision, as well as of a mancook to

dress it, one of the hostlers being always furnished with a cook's cap, waistcoat, and apron, ready to attend

gentlemen and ladies on their summons; that the case therefore of such inns differed from hers, where there

was nothing to eat or to drink, and in reality no house to inhabit, no chair to sit upon, nor any bed to lie in;

that one third or fourth part therefore of the levy imposed at inns was, in truth, a higher tax than the whole

was when laid on in the other, where, in order to raise a small sum, a man is obliged to submit to pay as many

various ways for the same thing as he doth to the government for the light which enters through his own

window into his own house, from his own estate; such are the articles of bread and beer, firing, eating and

The foregoing is a very imperfect sketch of this extraordinary couple; for everything is here lowered instead

of being heightened. Those who would see them set forth in more lively colors, and with the proper

ornaments, may read the descriptions of the Furies in some of the classical poets, or of the Stoic philosophers

Monday, July 20.This day nothing remarkable passed; Mrs. Francis levied a tax of fourteen shillings for

the Sunday. We regaled ourselves at dinner with venison and good claret of our own; and in the afternoon,

the women, attended by the captain, walked to see a delightful scene two miles distant, with the beauties of

which they declared themselves most highly charmed at their return, as well as with the goodness of the lady

of the mansion, who had slipped out of the way that my wife and their company might refresh themselves

Tuesday, July 21.This day, having paid our taxes of yesterday, we were permitted to regale ourselves with

more venison. Some of this we would willingly have exchanged for mutton; but no such flesh was to be had

nearer than Portsmouth, from whence it would have cost more to convey a joint to us than the freight of a

Portugal ham from Lisbon to London amounts to; for though the watercarriage be somewhat cheaper here

than at Deal, yet can you find no waterman who will go on board his boat, unless by two or three hours'

And here I have an opportunity, which possibly may not offer again, of publishing some observations on that

political economy of this nation, which, as it concerns only the regulation of the mob, is below the notice of

our great men; though on the due regulation of this order depend many emoluments, which the great men

themselves, or at least many who tread close on their heels, may enjoy, as well as some dangers which may

some time or other arise from introducing a pure state of anarchy among them. I will represent the case, as it

appears to me, very fairly and impartially between the mob and their betters. The whole mischief which

infects this part of our economy arises from the vague and uncertain use of a word called liberty, of which, as

scarce any two men with whom I have ever conversed seem to have one and the same idea, I am inclined to

doubt whether there be any simple universal notion represented by this word, or whether it conveys any

clearer or more determinate idea than some of those old Punic compositions of syllables preserved in one of

the comedies of Plautus, but at present, as I conceive, not supposed to be understood by any one.

By liberty, however, I apprehend, is commonly understood the power of doing what we please; not

absolutely, for then it would be inconsistent with law, by whose control the liberty of the freest people, except

But, indeed, however largely we extend, or however moderately we confine, the sense of the word, no

politician will, I presume, contend that it is to pervade in an equal degree, and be, with the same extent,

enjoyed by, every member of society; no such polity having been ever found, unless among those vile people

just before commemorated. Among the Greeks and Romans the servile and free conditions were opposed to

each other; and no man who had the misfortune to be enrolled under the former could lay any claim to liberty

till the right was conveyed to him by that master whose slave he was, either by the means of conquest, of

This was the state of all the free nations in the world; and this, till very lately, was understood to be the case

I will not indeed say this is the case at present, the lowest class of our people having shaken off all the

shackles of their superiors, and become not only as free, but even freer, than most of their superiors. I believe

it cannot be doubted, though perhaps we have no recent instance of it, that the personal attendance of every

man who hath three hundred pounds per annum, in parliament, is indispensably his duty; and that, if the

citizens and burgesses of any city or borough shall choose such a one, however reluctant he appear, he may

be obliged to attend, and be forcibly brought to his duty by the sergeantatarms.

Again, there are numbers of subordinate offices, some of which are of burden, and others of expense, in the

civil governmentall of which persons who are qualified are liable to have imposed on them, may be

obliged to undertake and properly execute, notwithstanding any bodily labor, or even danger, to which they

may subject themselves, under the penalty of fines and imprisonment; nay, and what may appear somewhat

hard, may be compelled to satisfy the losses which are eventually incident, to that of sheriff in particular, out

of their own private fortunes; and though this should prove the ruin of a family, yet the public, to whom the

price is due, incurs no debt or obligation to preserve its officer harmless, let his innocence appear ever so

clearly. I purposely omit the mention of those military or military duties which our old constitution laid upon

its greatest members. These might, indeed, supply their posts with some other ablebodied men; but if no

such could have been found, the obligation nevertheless remained, and they were compellable to serve in

their own proper persons. The only one, therefore, who is possessed of absolute liberty is the lowest member

of the society, who, if he prefers hunger, or the wild product of the fields, hedges, lanes, and rivers, with the

indulgence of ease and laziness, to a food a little more delicate, but purchased at the expense of labor, may

lay himself under a shade; nor can be forced to take the other alternative from that which he hath, I will not

Here I may, perhaps, be reminded of the last Vagrant Act, where all such persons are compellable to work for

the usual and accustomed wages allowed in the place; but this is a clause little known to the justices of the

peace, and least likely to be executed by those who do know it, as they know likewise that it is formed on the

ancient power of the justices to fix and settle these wages every year, making proper allowances for the

scarcity and plenty of the times, the cheapness and dearness of the place; and that THE USUAL AND

ACCUSTOMED WAGES are words without any force or meaning, when there are no such; but every man

spunges and raps whatever he can get; and will haggle as long and struggle as hard to cheat his employer of

twopence in a day's labor as an honest tradesman will to cheat his customers of the same sum in a yard of

It is a great pity then that this power, or rather this practice, was not revived; but, this having been so long

omitted that it is become obsolete, will be best done by a new law, in which this power, as well as the

consequent power of forcing the poor to labor at a moderate and reasonable rate, should be well considered

and their execution facilitated; for gentlemen who give their time and labor gratis, and even voluntarily, to the

public, have a right to expect that all their business be made as easy as possible; and to enact laws without

doing this is to fill our statutebooks, much too full already, still fuller with dead letter, of no use but to the

printer of the acts of parliament. That the evil which I have here pointed at is of itself worth redressing, is, I

apprehend, no subject of dispute; for why should any persons in distress be deprived of the assistance of their

fellowsubjects, when they are willing amply to reward them for their labor? or, why should the lowest of the

people be permitted to exact ten times the value of their work? For those exactions increase with the degrees

of necessity in their object, insomuch that on the former side many are horribly imposed upon, and that often

in no trifling matters. I was very well assured that at Deal no less than ten guineas was required, and paid by

the supercargo of an Indiaman, for carrying him on board two miles from the shore when she was just ready

to sail; so that his necessity, as his pillager well understood, was absolute. Again, many others, whose

indignation will not submit to such plunder, are forced to refuse the assistance, though they are often great

sufferers by so doing. On the latter side, the lowest of the people are encouraged in laziness and idleness;

while they live by a twentieth part of the labor that ought to maintain them, which is diametrically opposite to

the interest of the public; for that requires a great deal to be done, not to be paid, for a little. And moreover,

they are confirmed in habits of exaction, and are taught to consider the distresses of their superiors as their

own fair emolument. But enough of this matter, of which I at first intended only to convey a hint to those

who are alone capable of applying the remedy, though they are the last to whom the notice of those evils

would occur, without some such monitor as myself, who am forced to travel about the world in the form of a

passenger. I cannot but say I heartily wish our governors would attentively consider this method of fixing the

price of labor, and by that means of compelling the poor to work, since the due execution of such powers

will, I apprehend, be found the true and only means of making them useful, and of advancing trade from its

present visibly declining state to the height to which Sir William Petty, in his Political Arithmetic, thinks it

In the afternoon the lady of the abovementioned mansion called at our inn, and left her compliments to us

with Mrs. Francis, with an assurance that while we continued windbound in that place, where she feared we

could be but indifferently accommodated, we were extremely welcome to the use of anything which her

garden or her house afforded. So polite a message convinced us, in spite of some arguments to the contrary,

that we were not on the coast of Africa, or on some island where the few savage inhabitants have little of

human in them besides their form. And here I mean nothing less than to derogate from the merit of this lady,

who is not only extremely polite in her behavior to strangers of her own rank, but so extremely good and

charitable to all her poor neighbors who stand in need of her assistance, that she hath the universal love and

praises of all who live near her. But, in reality, how little doth the acquisition of so valuable a character, and

the full indulgence of so worthy a disposition, cost those who possess it! Both are accomplished by the very

offals which fall from a table moderately plentiful. That they are enjoyed therefore by so few arises truly

from there being so few who have any such disposition to gratify, or who aim at any such character.

Wednesday, July 22.This morning, after having been mulcted as usual, we dispatched a servant with

proper acknowledgments of the lady's goodness; but confined our wants entirely to the productions of her

garden. He soon returned, in company with the gardener, both richly laden with almost every particular which

a garden at this most fruitful season of the year produces. While we were regaling ourselves with these,

towards the close of our dinner, we received orders from our commander, who had dined that day with some

inferior officers on board a manofwar, to return instantly to the ship; for that the wind was become

favorable and he should weigh that evening. These orders were soon followed by the captain himself, who

was still in the utmost hurry, though the occasion of it had long since ceased; for the wind had, indeed, a little

shifted that afternoon, but was before this very quietly set down in its old quarters.

This last was a lucky hit for me; for, as the captain, to whose orders we resolved to pay no obedience, unless

delivered by himself, did not return till past six, so much time seemed requisite to put up the furniture of our

bedchamber or diningroom, for almost every article, even to some of the chairs, were either our own or the

captain's property; so much more in conveying it as well as myself, as dead a luggage as any, to the shore,

and thence to the ship, that the night threatened first to overtake us. A terrible circumstance to me, in my

decayed condition; especially as very heavy showers of rain, attended with a high wind, continued to fall

incessantly; the being carried through which two miles in the dark, in a wet and open boat, seemed little less

than certain death. However, as my commander was absolute, his orders peremptory, and my obedience

necessary, I resolved to avail myself of a philosophy which hath been of notable use to me in the latter part of

The meaning of which, if Virgil had any, I think I rightly understood, and rightly applied. As I was therefore

to be entirely passive in my motion, I resolved to abandon myself to the conduct of those who were to carry

But before this, the captain, perceiving what had happened in the clouds, and that the wind remained as much

his enemy as ever, came upstairs to me with a reprieve till the morning. This was, I own, very agreeable

news, and I little regretted the trouble of refurnishing my apartment, by sending back for the goods.

As she understood the reprieve to be only till the morning, she saw nothing but lodging to be possibly added,

out of which she was to deduct fire and candle, and the remainder, she thought, would scarce pay her for her

trouble. She exerted therefore all the illhumor of which she was mistress, and did all she could to thwart and

Thursday, July 23.Early in the morning the captain, who had remained on shore all night, came to visit us,

and to press us to make haste on board. "I am resolved," says he, "not to lose a moment now the wind is

coming about fair: for my own part, I never was surer of a wind in all my life." I use his very words; nor will

I presume to interpret or comment upon them farther than by observing that they were spoke in the utmost

We promised to be ready as soon as breakfast was over, but this was not so soon as was expected; for, in

removing our goods the evening before, the teachest was unhappily lost. Every place was immediately

searched, and many where it was impossible for it to be; for this was a loss of much greater consequence than

it may at first seem to many of my readers. Ladies and valetudinarians do not easily dispense with the use of

this sovereign cordial in a single instance; but to undertake a long voyage, without any probability of being

supplied with it the whole way, was above the reach of patience. And yet, dreadful as this calamity was, it

seemed unavoidable. The whole town of Ryde could not supply a single leaf; for, as to what Mrs. Francis and

the shop called by that name, it was not of Chinese growth. It did not indeed in the least resemble tea, either

in smell or taste, or in any particular, unless in being a leaf; for it was in truth no other than a tobacco of the

mundungus species. And as for the hopes of relief in any other port, they were not to be depended upon, for

the captain had positively declared he was sure of a wind, and would let go his anchor no more till he arrived

When a good deal of time had been spent, most of it indeed wasted on this occasion, a thought occurred

which every one wondered at its not having presented itself the first moment. This was to apply to the good

lady, who could not fail of pitying and relieving such distress. A messenger was immediately despatched with

an account of our misfortune, till whose return we employed ourselves in preparatives for our departure, that

we might have nothing to do but to swallow our breakfast when it arrived. The teachest, though of no less

consequence to us than the militarychest to a general, was given up as lost, or rather as stolen, for though I

would not, for the world, mention any particular name, it is certain we had suspicions, and all, I am afraid,

The man returned from the worthy lady with much expedition, and brought with him a canister of tea,

despatched with so true a generosity, as well as politeness, that if our voyage had been as long again we

should have incurred no danger of being brought to a short allowance in this most important article. At the

very same instant likewise arrived William the footman with our own teachest. It had been, indeed, left in

the hoy, when the other goods were relanded, as William, when he first heard it was missing, had suspected;

and whence, had not the owner of the hoy been unluckily out of the way, he had retrieved it soon enough to

have prevented our giving the lady an opportunity of displaying some part of her goodness. To search the hoy

was, indeed, too natural a suggestion to have escaped any one, nor did it escape being mentioned by many of

us; but we were dissuaded from it by my wife's maid, who perfectly well remembered she had left the chest

in the bedchamber; for that she had never given it out of her hand in her way to or from the hoy; but

William perhaps knew the maid better, and best understood how far she was to be believed; for otherwise he

would hardly of his own accord, after hearing her declaration, have hunted out the hoyman, with much pains

and difficulty. Thus ended this scene, which began with such appearance of distress, and ended with

becoming the subject of mirth and laughter. Nothing now remained but to pay our taxes, which were indeed

laid with inconceivable severity. Lodging was raised sixpence, fire in the same proportion, and even candles,

which had hitherto escaped, were charged with a wantonness of imposition, from the beginning, and placed

under the style of oversight. We were raised a whole pound, whereas we had only burned ten, in five nights,

Lastly, an attempt was made which almost as far exceeds human credulity to believe as it did human patience

to submit to. This was to make us pay as much for existing an hour or two as for existing a whole day; and

dressing dinner was introduced as an article, though we left the house before either pot or spit had approached

the fire. Here I own my patience failed me, and I became an example of the truth of the observation, "That all

tyranny and oppression may be carried too far, and that a yoke may be made too intolerable for the neck of

the tamest slave." When I remonstrated, with some warmth, against this grievance, Mrs. Francis gave me a

look, and left the room without making any answer. She returned in a minute, running to me with pen, ink,

and paper, in her hand, and desired me to make my own bill; "for she hoped," she said "I did not expect that

her house was to be dirtied, and her goods spoiled and consumed for nothing. The whole is but thirteen

shillings. Can gentlefolks lie a whole night at a publichouse for less? If they can I am sure it is time to give

off being a landlady: but pay me what you please; I would have people know that I value money as little as

other folks. But I was always a fool, as I says to my husband, and never knows which side my bread is

buttered of. And yet, to be sure, your honor shall be my warning not to be bit so again. Some folks knows

better than other some how to make their bills. Candles! why yes, to be sure; why should not travelers pay for

candles? I am sure I pays for my candles, and the chandler pays the king's majesty for them; and if he did not

I must, so as it comes to the same thing in the end. To be sure I am out of sixteens at present, but these burn

as white and as clear, though not quite so large. I expects my chandler here soon, or I would send to

Portsmouth, if your honor was to stay any time longer. But when folks stays only for a wind, you knows there

can be no dependence on such!" Here she put on a little slyness of aspect, and seemed willing to submit to

interruption. I interrupted her accordingly by throwing down half a guinea, and declared I had no more

English money, which was indeed true; and, as she could not immediately change the thirtysix shilling

pieces, it put a final end to the dispute. Mrs. Francis soon left the room, and we soon after left the house; nor

would this good woman see us or wish us a good voyage. I must not, however, quit this place, where we had

been so illtreated, without doing it impartial justice, and recording what may, with the strictest truth, be said

First, then, as to its situation, it is, I think, most delightful, and in the most pleasant spot in the whole island.

It is true it wants the advantage of that beautiful river which leads from Newport to Cowes; but the prospect

here extending to the sea, and taking in Portsmouth, Spithead, and St. Helen's, would be more than a

recompense for the loss of the Thames itself, even in the most delightful part of Berkshire or

Buckinghamshire, though another Denham, or another Pope, should unite in celebrating it. For my own part,

I confess myself so entirely fond of a sea prospect, that I think nothing on the land can equal it; and if it be set

off with shipping, I desire to borrow no ornament from the terra firma. A fleet of ships is, in my opinion, the

noblest object which the art of man hath ever produced; and far beyond the power of those architects who

When the late Sir Robert Walpole, one of the best of men and of ministers, used to equip us a yearly fleet at

Spithead, his enemies of taste must have allowed that he, at least, treated the nation with a fine sight for their

money. A much finer, indeed, than the same expense in an encampment could have produced. For what

indeed is the best idea which the prospect of a number of huts can furnish to the mind, but of a number of

men forming themselves into a society before the art of building more substantial houses was known? This,

perhaps, would be agreeable enough; but, in truth, there is a much worse idea ready to step in before it, and

that is of a body of cutthroats, the supports of tyranny, the invaders of the just liberties and properties of

mankind, the plunderers of the industrious, the ravishers of the chaste, the murderers of the innocent, and, in a

word, the destroyers of the plenty, the peace, and the safety, of their fellowcreatures.

And what, it may be said, are these menofwar which seem so delightful an object to our eyes? Are they not

alike the support of tyranny and oppression of innocence, carrying with them desolation and ruin wherever

their masters please to send them? This is indeed too true; and however the ship of war may, in its bulk and

equipment, exceed the honest merchantman, I heartily wish there was no necessity for it; for, though I must

own the superior beauty of the object on one side, I am more pleased with the superior excellence of the idea

which I can raise in my mind on the other, while I reflect on the art and industry of mankind engaged in the

daily improvements of commerce to the mutual benefit of all countries, and to the establishment and

happiness of social life. This pleasant village is situated on a gentle ascent from the water, whence it affords

that charming prospect I have above described. Its soil is a gravel, which, assisted with its declivity, preserves

it always so dry that immediately after the most violent rain a fine lady may walk without wetting her silken

shoes. The fertility of the place is apparent from its extraordinary verdure, and it is so shaded with large and

flourishing elms, that its narrow lanes are a natural grove or walk, which, in the regularity of its plantation,

In a field in the ascent of this hill, about a quarter of a mile from the sea, stands a neat little chapel. It is very

small, but adequate to the number of inhabitants; for the parish doth not seem to contain above thirty houses.

At about two miles distant from this parish lives that polite and good lady to whose kindness we were so

much obliged. It is placed on a hill whose bottom is washed by the sea, and which from its eminence at top,

commands a view of great part of the island as well as it does that of the opposite shore. This house was

formerly built by one Boyce, who, from a blacksmith at Gosport, became possessed, by great success in

smuggling, of forty thousand pound. With part of this he purchased an estate here, and, by chance probably,

fixed on this spot for building a large house. Perhaps the convenience of carrying on his business, to which it

is so well adapted, might dictate the situation to him. We can hardly, at least, attribute it to the same taste

with which he furnished his house, or at least his library, by sending an order to a bookseller in London to

pack him up five hundred pounds' worth of his handsomest books. They tell here several almost incredible

stories of the ignorance, the folly, and the pride, which this poor man and his wife discovered during the short

continuance of his prosperity; for he did not long escape the sharp eyes of the revenue solicitors, and was, by

extents from the court of Exchequer, soon reduced below his original state to that of confinement in the Fleet.

All his effects were sold, and among the rest his books, by an auction at Portsmouth, for a very small price;

for the bookseller was now discovered to have been perfectly a master of his trade, and, relying on Mr.

Boyce's finding little time to read, had sent him not only the most lasting wares of his shop, but duplicates of

His estate and house were purchased by a gentleman of these parts, whose widow now enjoys them, and who

hath improved them, particularly her gardens, with so elegant a taste, that the painter who would assist his

imagination in the composition of a most exquisite landscape, or the poet who would describe an earthly

We left this place about eleven in the morning, and were again conveyed, with more sunshine than wind,

Whence our captain had acquired his power of prophecy, when he promised us and himself a prosperous

wind, I will not determine; it is sufficient to observe that he was a false prophet, and that the weathercocks

continued to point as before. He would not, however, so easily give up his skill in prediction. He persevered

in asserting that the wind was changed, and, having weighed his anchor, fell down that afternoon to St.

Helen's, which was at about the distance of five miles; and whither his friend the tide, in defiance of the wind,

Here, about seven in the evening, before which time we could not procure it, we sat down to regale ourselves

with some roasted venison, which was much better dressed than we imagined it would be, and an excellent

cold pasty which my wife had made at Ryde, and which we had reserved uncut to eat on board our ship,

whither we all cheerfully exulted in being returned from the presence of Mrs. Francis, who, by the exact

resemblance she bore to a fury, seemed to have been with no great propriety settled in paradise.

Friday, July 24.As we passed by Spithead on the preceding evening we saw the two regiments of soldiers

who were just returned from Gibraltar and Minorca; and this day a lieutenant belonging to one of them, who

was the captain's nephew, came to pay a visit to his uncle. He was what is called by some a very pretty

fellow; indeed, much too pretty a fellow at his years; for he was turned of thirtyfour, though his address and

conversation would have become him more before he had reached twenty. In his conversation, it is true, there

was something military enough, as it consisted chiefly of oaths, and of the great actions and wise sayings of

Jack, and Will, and Tom of our regiment, a phrase eternally in his mouth; and he seemed to conclude that it

conveyed to all the officers such a degree of public notoriety and importance that it entitled him like the head

of a profession, or a first minister, to be the subject of conversation among those who had not the least

personal acquaintance with him. This did not much surprise me, as I have seen several examples of the same;

but the defects in his address, especially to the women, were so great that they seemed absolutely inconsistent

with the behavior of a pretty fellow, much less of one in a red coat; and yet, besides having been eleven years

in the army, he had had, as his uncle informed me, an education in France. This, I own, would have appeared

to have been absolutely thrown away had not his animal spirits, which were likewise thrown away upon him

in great abundance, borne the visible stamp of the growth of that country. The character to which he had an

indisputable title was that of a merry fellow; so very merry was he that he laughed at everything he said, and

always before he spoke. Possibly, indeed, he often laughed at what he did not utter, for every speech begun

with a laugh, though it did not always end with a jest. There was no great analogy between the characters of

the uncle and the nephew, and yet they seemed entirely to agree in enjoying the honor which the redcoat did

to his family. This the uncle expressed with great pleasure in his countenance, and seemed desirous of

showing all present the honor which he had for his nephew, who, on his side, was at some pains to convince

us of his concurring in this opinion, and at the same time of displaying the contempt he had for the parts, as

well as the occupation of his uncle, which he seemed to think reflected some disgrace on himself, who was a

member of that profession which makes every man a gentleman. Not that I would be understood to insinuate

that the nephew endeavored to shake off or disown his uncle, or indeed to keep him at any distance. On the

contrary, he treated him with the utmost familiarity, often calling him Dick, and dear Dick, and old Dick, and

All this condescension on the part of the young man was received with suitable marks of complaisance and

obligation by the old one; especially when it was attended with evidences of the same familiarity with general

officers and other persons of rank; one of whom, in particular, I know to have the pride and insolence of the

devil himself, and who, without some strong bias of interest, is no more liable to converse familiarly with a

lieutenant than of being mistaken in his judgment of a fool; which was not, perhaps, so certainly the case of

the worthy lieutenant, who, in declaring to us the qualifications which recommended men to his countenance

and conversation, as well as what effectually set a bar to all hopes of that honor, exclaimed, "No, sir, by the

d I hate all fools No, dn me, excuse me for that. That's a little too much, old Dick. There are two or

three officers of our regiment whom I know to be fools; but dn me if I am ever seen in their company. If a

man hath a fool of a relation, Dick, you know he can't help that, old boy." Such jokes as these the old man not

only tools in good part, but glibly gulped down the whole narrative of his nephew; nor did he, I am

convinced, in the least doubt of our as readily swallowing the same. This made him so charmed with the

lieutenant, that it is probable we should have been pestered with him the whole evening, had not the north

wind, dearer to our seacaptain even than this glory of his family, sprung suddenly up, and called aloud to

him to weigh his anchor. While this ceremony was performing, the seacaptain ordered out his boat to row

the landcaptain to shore; not indeed on an uninhabited island, but one which, in this part, looked but little

better, not presenting us the view of a single house. Indeed, our old friend, when his boat returned on shore,

perhaps being no longer able to stifle his envy of the superiority of his nephew, told us with a smile that the

young man had a good five mile to walk before he could be accommodated with a passage to Portsmouth.

It appeared now that the captain had been only mistaken in the date of his prediction, by placing the event a

day earlier than it happened; for the wind which now arose was not only favorable but brisk, and was no

sooner in reach of our sails than it swept us away by the back of the Isle of Wight, and, having in the night

carried us by Christchurch and Peveralpoint, brought us the next noon, Saturday, July 25, oft the island of

Portland, so famous for the smallness and sweetness of its mutton, of which a leg seldom weighs four

pounds. We would have bought a sheep, but our captain would not permit it; though he needed not have been

in such a hurry, for presently the wind, I will not positively assert in resentment of his surliness, showed him

a dog's trick, and slyly slipped back again to his summerhouse in the southwest.

The captain now grew outrageous, and, declaring open war with the wind, took a resolution, rather more bold

than wise, of sailing in defiance of it, and in its teeth. He swore he would let go his anchor no more, but

would beat the sea while he had either yard or sail left. He accordingly stood from the shore, and made so

large a tack that before night, though he seemed to advance but little on his way, he was got out of sight of

Towards evening the wind began, in the captain's own language, and indeed it freshened so much, that before

ten it blew a perfect hurricane. The captain having got, as he supposed, to a safe distance, tacked again

towards the English shore; and now the wind veered a point only in his favor, and continued to blow with

such violence, that the ship ran above eight knots or miles an hour during this whole day and tempestuous

night till bedtime. I was obliged to betake myself once more to my solitude, for my women were again all

down in their seasickness, and the captain was busy on deck; for he began to grow uneasy, chiefly, I

believe, because he did not well know where he was, and would, I am convinced, have been very glad to have

Having contracted no great degree of goodhumor by living a whole day alone, without a single soul to

converse with, I took but ill physic to purge it off, by a bedconversation with the captain, who, amongst

many bitter lamentations of his fate, and protesting he had more patience than a Job, frequently intermixed

summons to the commanding officer on the deck, who now happened to be one Morrison, a carpenter, the

only fellow that had either common sense or common civility in the ship. Of Morrison he inquired every

quarter of an hour concerning the state of affairs: the wind, the care of the ship, and other matters of

navigation. The frequency of these summons, as well as the solicitude with which they were made,

sufficiently testified the state of the captain's mind; he endeavored to conceal it, and would have given no

small alarm to a man who had either not learned what it is to die, or known what it is to be miserable. And

my dear wife and child must pardon me, if what I did not conceive to be any great evil to myself I was not

much terrified with the thoughts of happening to them; in truth, I have often thought they are both too good

and too gentle to be trusted to the power of any man I know, to whom they could possibly be so trusted.

Can I say then I had no fear? indeed I cannot. Reader, I was afraid for thee, lest thou shouldst have been

deprived of that pleasure thou art now enjoying; and that I should not live to draw out on paper that military

From all these fears we were relieved, at six in the morning, by the arrival of Mr. Morrison, who acquainted

us that he was sure he beheld land very near; for he could not see half a mile, by reason of the haziness of the

weather. This land he said was, he believed, the Berryhead, which forms one side of Torbay: the captain

declared that it was impossible, and swore, on condition he was right, he would give him his mother for a

maid. A forfeit which became afterwards strictly due and payable; for the captain, whipping on his

nightgown, ran up without his breeches, and within half an hour returning into the cabin, wished me joy of

Sunday, July 26.Things now began to put on an aspect very different from what they had lately worn; the

news that the ship had almost lost its mizzen, and that we had procured very fine clouted cream and fresh

bread and butter from the shore, restored health and spirits to our women, and we all sat down to a very

cheerful breakfast. But, however pleasant our stay promised to be here, we were all desirous it should be

short: I resolved immediately to despatch my man into the country to purchase a present of cider, for my

friends of that which is called Southam, as well as to take with me a hogshead of it to Lisbon; for it is, in my

opinion, much more delicious than that which is the growth of Herefordshire. I purchased three hogsheads for

five pounds ten shillings, all which I should have scarce thought worth mentioning, had I not believed it

might be of equal service to the honest farmer who sold it me, and who is by the neighboring gentlemen

reputed to deal in the very best; and to the reader, who, from ignorance of the means of providing better for

himself, swallows at a dearer rate the juice of Middlesex turnip, instead of that Vinum Pomonae which Mr.

Giles Leverance of Cheeshurst, near Dartmouth in Devon, will, at the price of forty shillings per hogshead,

send in double casks to any part of the world. Had the wind been very sudden in shifting, I had lost my cider

by an attempt of a boatman to exact, according to custom. He required five shillings for conveying my man a

mile and a half to the shore, and four more if he stayed to bring him back. This I thought to be such

insufferable impudence that I ordered him to be immediately chased from the ship, without any answer.

Indeed, there are few inconveniences that I would not rather encounter than encourage the insolent demands

of these wretches, at the expense of my own indignation, of which I own they are not the only objects, but

rather those who purchase a paltry convenience by encouraging them. But of this I have already spoken very

largely. I shall conclude, therefore, with the leave which this fellow took of our ship; saying he should know

it again, and would not put off from the shore to relieve it in any distress whatever. It will, doubtless, surprise

many of my readers to hear that, when we lay at anchor within a mile or two of a town several days together,

and even in the most temperate weather, we should frequently want fresh provisions and herbage, and other

emoluments of the shore, as much as if we had been a hundred leagues from land. And this too while

numbers of boats were in our sight, whose owners get their livelihood by rowing people up and down, and

could be at any time summoned by a signal to our assistance, and while the captain had a little boat of his

This, however, hath been partly accounted for already by the imposing disposition of the people, who asked

so much more than the proper price of their labor. And as to the usefulness of the captain's boat, it requires to

be a little expatiated upon, as it will tend to lay open some of the grievances which demand the utmost regard

of our legislature, as they affect the most valuable part of the king's subjectsthose by whom the commerce

of the nation is carried into execution. Our captain then, who was a very good and experienced seaman,

having been above thirty years the master of a vessel, part of which he had served, so he phrased it, as

commander of a privateer, and had discharged himself with great courage and conduct, and with as great

success, discovered the utmost aversion to the sending his boat ashore whenever we lay windbound in any

of our harbors. This aversion did not arise from any fear of wearing out his boat by using it, but was, in truth,

the result of experience, that it was easier to send his men on shore than to recall them. They acknowledged

him to be their master while they remained on shipboard, but did not allow his power to extend to the shores,

where they had no sooner set their foot than every man became sui juris, and thought himself at full liberty to

return when he pleased. Now it is not any delight that these fellows have in the fresh air or verdant fields on

the land. Every one of them would prefer his ship and his hammock to all the sweets of Arabia the Happy;

but, unluckily for them, there are in every seaport in England certain houses whose chief livelihood depends

on providing entertainment for the gentlemen of the jacket. For this purpose they are always well furnished

with those cordial liquors which do immediately inspire the heart with gladness, banishing all careful

thoughts, and indeed all others, from the mind, and opening the mouth with songs of cheerfulness and

thanksgiving for the many wonderful blessings with which a seafaring life overflows.

For my own part, however whimsical it may appear, I confess I have thought the strange story of Circe in the

Odyssey no other than an ingenious allegory, in which Homer intended to convey to his countrymen the same

kind of instruction which we intend to communicate to our own in this digression. As teaching the art of war

to the Greeks was the plain design of the Iliad, so was teaching them the art of navigation the no less manifest

intention of the Odyssey. For the improvement of this, their situation was most excellently adapted; and

accordingly we find Thucydides, in the beginning of his history, considers the Greeks as a set of pirates or

privateers, plundering each other by sea. This being probably the first institution of commerce before the Ars

Cauponaria was invented, and merchants, instead of robbing, began to cheat and outwit each other, and by

degrees changed the Metabletic, the only kind of traffic allowed by Aristotle in his Politics, into the

By this allegory then I suppose Ulysses to have been the captain of a merchantship, and Circe some good

alewife, who made his crew drunk with the spirituous liquors of those days. With this the transformation

into swine, as well as all other incidents of the fable, will notably agree; and thus a key will be found out for

unlocking the whole mystery, and forging at least some meaning to a story which, at present, appears very

Hence, moreover, will appear the very near resemblance between the seafaring men of all ages and nations;

and here perhaps may be established the truth and justice of that observation, which will occur oftener than

once in this voyage, that all human flesh is not the same flesh, but that there is one kind of flesh of landmen,

Philosophers, divines, and others, who have treated the gratification of human appetites with contempt, have,

among other instances, insisted very strongly on that satiety which is so apt to overtake them even in the very

act of enjoyment. And here they more particularly deserve our attention, as most of them may be supposed to

speak from their own experience, and very probably gave us their lessons with a full stomach. Thus hunger

and thirst, whatever delight they may afford while we are eating and drinking, pass both away from us with

the plate and the cup; and though we should imitate the Romans, if, indeed, they were such dull beasts, which

I can scarce believe, to unload the belly like a dungpot, in order to fill it again with another load, yet would

the pleasure be so considerably lessened that it would scarce repay us the trouble of purchasing it with

swallowing a basin of camomile tea. A second haunch of venison, or a second dose of turtle, would hardly

allure a city glutton with its smell. Even the celebrated Jew himself, when well filled with calipash and

calipee, goes contentedly home to tell his money, and expects no more pleasure from his throat during the

next twentyfour hours. Hence I suppose Dr. South took that elegant comparison of the joys of a speculative

man to the solemn silence of an Archimedes over a problem, and those of a glutton to the stillness of a sow at

her wash. A simile which, if it became the pulpit at all, could only become it in the afternoon. Whereas in

those potations which the mind seems to enjoy, rather than the bodily appetite, there is happily no such

satiety; but the more a man drinks, the more he desires; as if, like Mark Anthony in Dryden, his appetite

increased with feeding, and this to such an immoderate degree, ut nullus sit desiderio aut pudor aut modus.

Hence, as with the gang of Captain Ulysses, ensues so total a transformation, that the man no more continues

what he was. Perhaps he ceases for a time to be at all; or, though he may retain the same outward form and

figure he had before, yet is his nobler part, as we are taught to call it, so changed, that, instead of being the

same man, he scarce remembers what he was a few hours before. And this transformation, being once

obtained, is so easily preserved by the same potations, which induced no satiety, that the captain in vain sends

or goes in quest of his crew. They know him no longer; or, if they do, they acknowledge not his power,

having indeed as entirely forgotten themselves as if they had taken a large draught of the river of Lethe.

Nor is the captain always sure of even finding out the place to which Circe hath conveyed them. There are

many of those houses in every porttown. Nay, there are some where the sorceress doth not trust only to her

drugs; but hath instruments of a different kind to execute her purposes, by whose means the tar is effectually

secreted from the knowledge and pursuit of his captain. This would, indeed, be very fatal, was it not for one

circumstance; that the sailor is seldom provided with the proper bait for these harpies. However, the contrary

sometimes happens, as these harpies will bite at almost anything, and will snap at a pair of silver buttons, or

buckles, as surely as at the specie itself. Nay, sometimes they are so voracious, that the very naked hook will

In vain, at such a season as this, would the vows of a pious heathen have prevailed over Neptune, Aeolus, or

any other marine deity. In vain would the prayers of a Christian captain be attended with the like success. The

wind may change how it pleases while all hands are on shore; the anchor would remain firm in the ground,

and the ship would continue in durance, unless, like other forcible prisonbreakers, it forcibly got loose for

no good purpose. Now, as the favor of winds and courts, and such like, is always to be laid hold on at the

very first motion, for within twentyfour hours all may be changed again; so, in the former case, the loss of a

day may be the loss of a voyage: for, though it may appear to persons not well skilled in navigation, who see

ships meet and sail by each other, that the wind blows sometimes east and west, north and south, backwards

and forwards, at the same instant; yet, certain it is that the land is so contrived, that even the same wind will

not, like the same horse, always bring a man to the end of his journey; but, that the gale which the mariner

prayed heartily for yesterday, he may as heartily deprecate tomorrow; while all use and benefit which would

have arisen to him from the westerly wind of tomorrow may be totally lost and thrown away by neglecting

Hence ensues grief and disreputation to the innocent captain, loss and disappointment to the worthy

merchant, and not seldom great prejudice to the trade of a nation whose manufactures are thus liable to lie

unsold in a foreign warehouse the market being forestalled by some rival whose sailors are under a better

discipline. To guard against these inconveniences the prudent captain takes every precaution in his power; he

makes the strongest contracts with his crew, and thereby binds them so firmly, that none but the greatest or

least of men can break through them with impunity; but for one of these two reasons, which I will not

determine, the sailor, like his brother fish the eel, is too slippery to be held, and plunges into his element with

perfect impunity. To speak a plain truth, there is no trusting to any contract with one whom the wise citizens

of London call a bad man; for, with such a one, though your bond be ever so strong, it will prove in the end

What then is to be done in this case? What, indeed, but to call in the assistance of that tremendous magistrate,

the justice of peace, who can, and often doth, lay good and bad men in equal durance; and, though he seldom

cares to stretch his bonds to what is great, never finds anything too minute for their detention, but will hold

the smallest reptile alive so fast in his noose, that he can never get out till he is let drop through it. Why,

therefore, upon the breach of those contracts, should not an immediate application be made to the nearest

magistrate of this order, who should be empowered to convey the delinquent either to ship or to prison, at the

election of the captain, to be fettered by the leg in either place? But, as the case now stands, the condition of

this poor captain without any commission, and of this absolute commander without any power, is much

worse than we have hitherto shown it to be; for, notwithstanding all the aforesaid contracts to sail in the good

ship the Elizabeth, if the sailor should, for better wages, find it more his interest to go on board the better ship

the Mary, either before their setting out or on their speedy meeting in some port, he may prefer the latter

without any other danger than that of "doing what he ought not to have done," contrary to a rule which he is

seldom Christian enough to have much at heart, while the captain is generally too good a Christian to punish

a man out of revenge only, when he is to be at a considerable expense for so doing. There are many other

deficiencies in our laws relating to maritime affairs, and which would probably have been long since

corrected, had we any seamen in the House of Commons. Not that I would insinuate that the legislature wants

a supply of many gentlemen in the seaservice; but, as these gentlemen are by their attendance in the house

unfortunately prevented from ever going to sea, and there learning what they might communicate to their

landed brethren, these latter remain as ignorant in that branch of knowledge as they would be if none but

courtiers and foxhunters had been elected into parliament, without a single fish among them. The following

seems to me to be an effect of this kind, and it strikes me the stronger as I remember the case to have

happened, and remember it to have been dispunishable. A captain of a trading vessel, of which he was part

owner, took in a large freight of oats at Liverpool, consigned to the market at Bearkey: this he carried to a

port in Hampshire, and there sold it as his own, and, freighting his vessel with wheat for the port of Cadiz, in

Spain, dropped it at Oporto in his way; and there, selling it for his own use, took in a lading of wine, with

which he sailed again, and, having converted it in the same manner, together with a large sum of money with

which he was intrusted, for the benefit of certain merchants, sold the ship and cargo in another port, and then

wisely sat down contented with the fortune he had made, and returned to London to enjoy the remainder of

The sum he brought home with him consisted of near six thousand pounds, all in specie, and most of it in that

He was not yet old enough to be past all sense of pleasure, nor so puffed up with the pride of his good fortune

as to overlook his old acquaintances the journeymen tailors, from among whom he had been formerly pressed

into the seaservice, and, having there laid the foundation of his future success by his shares in prizes, had

afterwards become captain of a trading vessel, in which he purchased an interest, and had soon begun to trade

in the honorable manner above mentioned. The captain now took up his residence at an alehouse in

Drurylane, where, having all his money by him in a trunk, he spent about five pounds a day among his old

friends the gentlemen and ladies of those parts. The merchant of Liverpool, having luckily had notice from a

friend during the blaze of his fortune, did, by the assistance of a justice of peace, without the assistance of the

law, recover his whole loss. The captain, however, wisely chose to refund no more; but, perceiving with what

hasty strides Envy was pursuing his fortune, he took speedy means to retire out of her reach, and to enjoy the

rest of his wealth in an inglorious obscurity; nor could the same justice overtake him time enough to assist a

This was a very extraordinary case, and the more so as the ingenious gentleman had steered entirely clear of

all crimes in our law. Now, how it comes about that a robbery so very easy to be committed, and to which

there is such immediate temptation always before the eyes of these fellows, should receive the

encouragement of impunity, is to be accounted for only from the oversight of the legislature, as that oversight

But I will dwell no longer on this subject. If what I have here said should seem of sufficient consequence to

engage the attention of any man in power, and should thus be the means of applying any remedy to the most

inveterate evils, at least, I have obtained my whole desire, and shall have lain so long windbound in the

ports of this kingdom to some purpose. I would, indeed, have this workwhich, if I should live to finish it, a

matter of no great certainty, if indeed of any great hope to me, will be probably the last I shall ever

Monday.This day our captain went ashore, to dine with a gentleman who lives in these parts, and who so

exactly resembles the character given by Homer of Axylus, that the only difference I can trace between them

is, the one, living by the highway, erected his hospitality chiefly in favor of landtravelers; and the other,

living by the waterside, gratified his humanity by accommodating the wants of the mariner.

In the evening our commander received a visit from a brother bashaw, who lay windbound in the same

harbor. This latter captain was a Swiss. He was then master of a vessel bound to Guinea, and had formerly

been a privateering, when our own hero was employed in the same laudable service. The honesty and

freedom of the Switzer, his vivacity, in which he was in no respect inferior to his near neighbors the French,

the awkward and affected politeness, which was likewise of French extraction, mixed with the brutal

roughness of the English tarfor he had served under the colors of this nation and his crew had been of the

samemade such an odd variety, such a hotchpotch of character, that I should have been much diverted

with him, had not his voice, which was as loud as a speakingtrumpet, unfortunately made my head ache.

The noise which he conveyed into the deaf ears of his brother captain, who sat on one side of him, the soft

addresses with which, mixed with awkward bows, he saluted the ladies on the other, were so agreeably

contrasted, that a man must not only have been void of all taste of humor, and insensible of mirth, but duller

than Cibber is represented in the Dunciad, who could be unentertained with him a little while; for, I confess,

such entertainments should always be very short, as they are very liable to pall. But he suffered not this to

happen at present; for, having given us his company a quarter of an hour only, he retired, after many

Tuesday.The wind being less boisterous than it had hitherto been since our arrival here, several

fishingboats, which the tempestuous weather yesterday had prevented from working, came on board us with

fish. This was so fresh, so good in kind, and so very cheap, that we supplied ourselves in great numbers,

among which were very large soles at fourpence a pair, and whitings of almost a preposterous size at

ninepence a score. The only fish which bore any price was a john doree, as it is called. I bought one of at least

four pounds weight for as many shillings. It resembles a turbot in shape, but exceeds it in firmness and flavor.

The price had the appearance of being considerable when opposed to the extraordinary cheapness of others of

value, but was, in truth, so very reasonable when estimated by its goodness, that it left me under no other

surprise than how the gentlemen of this country, not greatly eminent for the delicacy of their taste, had

discovered the preference of the doree to all other fish: but I was informed that Mr. Quin, whose

distinguishing tooth hath been so justly celebrated, had lately visited Plymouth, and had done those honors to

the doree which are so justly due to it from that sect of modern philosophers who, with Sir Epicure Mammon,

or Sir Epicure Quin, their head, seem more to delight in a fishpond than in a garden, as the old Epicureans

Unfortunately for the fishmongers of London, the doree resides only in those seas; for, could any of this

company but convey one to the temple of luxury under the Piazza, where Macklin the highpriest daily

serves up his rich offerings to that goddess, great would be the reward of that fishmonger, in blessings poured

down upon him from the goddess, as great would his merit be towards the highpriest, who could never be

And here, having mentioned the extreme cheapness of fish in the Devonshire sea, and given some little hint

of the extreme dearness with which this commodity is dispensed by those who deal in it in London, I cannot

pass on without throwing forth an observation or two, with the same view with which I have scattered my

several remarks through this voyage, sufficiently satisfied in having finished my life, as I have probably lost

it, in the service of my country, from the best of motives, though it should be attended with the worst of

Of all the animal foods with which man is furnished, there are none so plenty as fish. A little rivulet, that

glides almost unperceived through a vast tract of rich land, will support more hundreds with the flesh of its

inhabitants than the meadow will nourish individuals. But if this be true of rivers, it is much truer of the

seashores, which abound with such immense variety of fish that the curious fisherman, after he hath made

his draught, often culls only the daintiest part and leaves the rest of his prey to perish on the shore. If this be

true it would appear, I think, that there is nothing which might be had in such abundance, and consequently

so cheap, as fish, of which Nature seems to have provided such inexhaustible stores with some peculiar

design. In the production of terrestrial animals she proceeds with such slowness, that in the larger kind a

single female seldom produces more than one ayear, and this again requires three, for, or five years more to

bring it to perfection. And though the lesser quadrupeds, those of the wild kind particularly, with the birds, do

multiply much faster, yet can none of these bear any proportion with the aquatic animals, of whom every

female matrix is furnished with an annual offspring almost exceeding the power of numbers, and which, in

many instances at least, a single year is capable of bringing to some degree of maturity.

What then ought in general to be so plentiful, what so cheap, as fish? What then so properly the food of the

poor? So in many places they are, and so might they always be in great cities, which are always situated near

the sea, or on the conflux of large rivers. How comes it then, to look no farther abroad for instances, that in

our city of London the case is so far otherwise that, except that of sprats, there is not one poor palate in a

It is true indeed that this taste is generally of such excellent flavor that it exceeds the power of French

cookery to treat the palates of the rich with anything more exquisitely delicate; so that was fish the common

food of the poor it might put them too much upon an equality with their betters in the great article of eating,

in which, at present, in the opinion of some, the great difference in happiness between man and man consists.

But this argument I shall treat with the utmost disdain: for if ortolans were as big as buzzards, and at the same

time as plenty as sparrows, I should hold it yet reasonable to indulge the poor with the dainty, and that for

this cause especially, that the rich would soon find a sparrow, if as scarce as an ortolan, to be much the

Vanity or scarcity will be always the favorite of luxury; but honest hunger will be satisfied with plenty. Not

to search deeper into the cause of the evil, I should think it abundantly sufficient to propose the remedies of

it. And, first, I humbly submit the absolute necessity of immediately hanging all the fishmongers within the

bills of mortality; and, however it might have been some time ago the opinion of mild and temporizing men

that the evil complained of might be removed by gentler methods, I suppose at this day there are none who do

not see the impossibility of using such with any effect. Cuncta prius tentanda might have been formerly urged

with some plausibility, but cuncta prius tentata may now be replied: for surely, if a few monopolizing

fishmongers could defeat that excellent scheme of the Westminster market, to the erecting which so many

justices of peace, as well as other wise and learned men, did so vehemently apply themselves, that they might

be truly said not only to have laid the whole strength of their heads, but of their shoulders too, to the business,

it would be a vain endeavor for any other body of men to attempt to remove so stubborn a nuisance.

If it should be doubted whether we can bring this case within the letter of any capital law now subsisting, I

am ashamed to own it cannot; for surely no crime better deserves such punishment; but the remedy may,

nevertheless, be immediate; and if a law was made at the beginning of next session, to take place

immediately, by which the starving thousands of poor was declared to be felony, without benefit of clergy,

the fishmongers would be hanged before the end of the session. A second method of filling the mouths of the

poor, if not with loaves at least with fishes, is to desire the magistrates to carry into execution one at least out

of near a hundred acts of parliament, for preserving the small fry of the river of Thames, by which means as

few fish would satisfy thousands as may now be devoured by a small number of individnals. But while a

fisherman can break through the strongest meshes of an act of parliament, we may be assured he will learn so

to contrive his own meshes that the smallest fry will not be able to swim through them.

Other methods may, we doubt not, he suggested by those who shall attentively consider the evil here hinted

at; but we have dwelt too long on it already, and shall conclude with observing that it is difficult to affirm

whether the atrocity of the evil itself, the facility of curing it, or the shameful neglect of the cure, be the more

After having, however, gloriously regaled myself with this food, I was washing it down with some good

claret with my wife and her friend, in the cabin, when the captain's valetdechambre, head cook, house and

ship steward, footman in livery and out on't, secretary and foremast man, all burst into the cabin at once,

being, indeed, all but one person, and, without saying, by your leave, began to pack half a hogshead of small

beer in bottles, the necessary consequence of which must have been either a total stop to conversation at that

cheerful season when it is most agreeable, or the admitting that polyonymous officer aforesaid to the

participation of it. I desired him therefore to delay his purpose a little longer, but he refused to grant my

request; nor was he prevailed on to quit the room till he was threatened with having one bottle to pack more

than his number, which then happened to stand empty within my reach. With these menaces he retired at last,

but not without muttering some menaces on his side, and which, to our great terror, he failed not to put into

Our captain was gone to dinner this day with his Swiss brother; and, though he was a very sober man, was a

little elevated with some champagne, which, as it cost the Swiss little or nothing, he dispensed at his table

more liberally than our hospitable English noblemen put about those bottles, which the ingenious Peter

Taylor teaches a led captain to avoid by distinguishing by the name of that generous liquor, which all humble

While our two captains were thus regaling themselves, and celebrating their own heroic exploits with all the

inspiration which the liquor, at least, of wit could afford them, the polyonymous officer arrived, and, being

saluted by the name of Honest Tom, was ordered to sit down and take his glass before he delivered his

message; for every sailor is by turns his captain's mate over a cann, except only that captain bashaw who

presides in a manofwar, and who upon earth has no other mate, unless it be another of the same bashaws.

Tom had no sooner swallowed his draught than he hastily began his narrative, and faithfully related what had

happened on board our ship; we say faithfully, though from what happened it may be suspected that Tom

chose to add perhaps only five or six immaterial circumstances, as is always I believe the case, and may

possibly have been done by me in relating this very story, though it happened not many hours ago.

No sooner was the captain informed of the interruption which had been given to his officer, and indeed to his

orders, for he thought no time so convenient as that of his absence for causing any confusion in the cabin,

than he leaped with such haste from his chair that he had like to have broke his sword, with which he always

begirt himself when he walked out of his ship, and sometimes when he walked about in it; at the same time,

grasping eagerly that other implement called a cockade, which modern soldiers wear on their helmets with

the same view as the ancients did their creststo terrify the enemy he muttered something, but so

inarticulately that the word DAMN was only intelligible; he then hastily took leave of the Swiss captain, who

was too well bred to press his stay on such an occasion, and leaped first from the ship to his boat, and then

from his boat to his own ship, with as much fierceness in his looks as he had ever expressed on boarding his

defenseless prey in the honorable calling of a privateer. Having regained the middle deck, he paused a

moment while Tom and others loaded themselves with bottles, and then descending into the cabin exclaimed

with a thundering voice, "Dn me, why arn't the bottles stowed in, according to my orders?"

I answered him very mildly that I had prevented his man from doing it, as it was at an inconvenient time to

me, and as in his absence, at least, I esteemed the cabin to be my own. "Your cabin!" repeated he many times;

"no, dn me! 'tis my cabin. Your cabin! dn me! I have brought my hogs to a fair market. I suppose indeed

you think it your cabin, and your ship, by your commanding in it; but I will command in it, dn me! I will

show the world I am the commander, and nobody but I! Did you think I sold you the command of my ship for

that pitiful thirty pounds? I wish I had not seen you nor your thirty pounds aboard of her." He then repeated

the words thirty pounds often, with great disdain, and with a contempt which I own the sum did not seem to

deserve in my eye, either in itself or on the present occasion; being, indeed, paid for the freight of

weight of human flesh, which is above fifty per cent dearer than the freight of any other luggage, whilst in

In truth, the sum was paid for nothing more than for a liberty to six persons (two of them servants) to stay on

board a ship while she sails from one port to another, every shilling of which comes clear into the captain's

pocket. Ignorant people may perhaps imagine, especially when they are told that the captain is obliged to

sustain them, that their diet at least is worth something, which may probably be now and then so far the case

as to deduct a tenth part from the net profits on this account; but it was otherwise at present; for when I had

contracted with the captain at a price which I by no means thought moderate, I had some content in thinking I

should have no more to pay for my voyage; but I was whispered that it was expected the passengers should

find themselves in several things; such as tea, wine, and such like; and particularly that gentlemen should

stow of the latter a much larger quantity than they could use, in order to leave the remainder as a present to

the captain at the end of the voyage; and it was expected likewise that gentlemen should put aboard some

fresh stores, and the more of such things were put aboard the welcomer they would be to the captain.

I was prevailed with by these hints to follow the advice proposed; and accordingly, besides tea and a large

hamper of wine, with several hams and tongues, I caused a number of live chickens and sheep to be conveyed

aboard; in truth, treble the quantity of provisions which would have supported the persons I took with me,

had the voyage continued three weeks, as it was supposed, with a bare possibility, it might.

Indeed it continued much longer; but as this was occasioned by our being windbound in our own ports, it

was by no means of any ill consequence to the captain, as the additional stores of fish, fresh meat, butter,

bread, which I constantly laid in, greatly exceeded the consumption, and went some way in maintaining the

ship's crew. It is true I was not obliged to do this; but it seemed to be expected; for the captain did not think

himself obliged to do it, and I can truly say I soon ceased to expect it of him. He had, I confess, on board a

number of fowls and ducks sufficient for a West India voyage; all of them, as he often said, "Very fine birds,

and of the largest breed." This I believe was really the fact, and I can add that they were all arrived at the full

perfection of their size. Nor was there, I am convinced, any want of provisions of a more substantial kind;

such as dried beef, pork, and fish; so that the captain seemed ready to perform his contract, and amply to

provide for his passengers. What I did then was not from necessity, but, perhaps, from a less excusable

But, let the motive have been what it would, the consequence was still the same; and this was such that I am

firmly persuaded the whole pitiful thirty pounds came pure and neat into the captain's pocket, and not only so,

but attended with the value of ten pound more in sundries into the bargain. I must confess myself therefore at

a loss how the epithet PITIFUL came to be annexed to the above sum; for, not being a pitiful price for what it

was given, I cannot conceive it to be pitiful in itself; nor do I believe it is thought by the greatest men in the

kingdom; none of whom would scruple to search for it in the dirtiest kennel, where they had only a

reasonable hope of success. How, therefore, such a sum should acquire the idea of pitiful in the eyes of the

master of a ship seems not easy to be accounted for; since it appears more likely to produce in him ideas of a

different kind. Some men, perhaps, are no more sincere in the contempt for it which they express than others

in their contempt of money in general; and I am the rather inclined to this persuasion, as I have seldom heard

of either who have refused or refunded this their despised object. Besides, it is sometimes impossible to

believe these professions, as every action of the man's life is a contradiction to it. Who can believe a

tradesman who says he would not tell his name for the profit he gets by the selling such a parcel of goods,

when he hath told a thousand lies in order to get it? Pitiful, indeed, is often applied to an object not

absolutely, but comparatively with our expectations, or with a greater object: in which sense it is not easy to

set any bounds to the use of the word. Thus, a handful of halfpence daily appear pitiful to a porter, and a

handful of silver to a drawer. The latter, I am convinced, at a polite tavern, will not tell his name (for he will

not give you any answer) under the price of gold. And in this sense thirty pound may be accounted pitiful by

One difficulty only seems to occur, and that is this: how comes it that, if the profits of the meanest arts are so

considerable, the professors of them are not richer than we generally see them? One answer to this shall

suffice. Men do not become rich by what they get, but by what they keep. He who is worth no more than his

annual wages or salary, spends the whole; he will be always a beggar let his income be what it will, and so

will be his family when he dies. This we see daily to be the case of ecclesiastics, who, during their lives, are

extremely well provided for, only because they desire to maintain the honor of the cloth by living like

But, to return from so long a digression, to which the use of so improper an epithet gave occasion, and to

which the novelty of the subject allured, I will make the reader amends by concisely telling him that the

captain poured forth such a torrent of abuse that I very hastily and very foolishly resolved to quit the ship.

I gave immediate orders to summon a hoy to carry me that evening to Dartmouth, without considering any

consequence. Those orders I gave in no very low voice, so that those above stairs might possibly conceive

there was more than one master in the cabin. In the same tone I likewise threatened the captain with that

which, he afterwards said, he feared more than any rock or quicksand. Nor can we wonder at this when we

are told he had been twice obliged to bring to and cast anchor there before, and had neither time escaped

The most distant sound of law thus frightened a man who had often, I am convinced, heard numbers of

cannon roar round him with intrepidity. Nor did he sooner see the hoy approaching the vessel than he ran

down again into the cabin, and, his rage being perfectly subsided, he tumbled on his knees, and a little too

I did not suffer a brave man and an old man to remain a moment in this posture, but I immediately forgave

And here, that I may not be thought the sly trumpeter of my own praises, I do utterly disclaim all praise on

the occasion. Neither did the greatness of my mind dictate, nor the force of my Christianity exact, this

forgiveness. To speak truth, I forgave him from a motive which would make men much more forgiving if

Wednesday.This morning the captain dressed himself in scarlet in order to pay a visit to a Devonshire

squire, to whom a captain of a ship is a guest of no ordinary consequence, as he is a stranger and a gentleman,

who hath seen a great deal of the world in foreign parts, and knows all the news of the times.

The squire, therefore, was to send his boat for the captain, but a most unfortunate accident happened; for, as

the wind was extremely rough and against the hoy, while this was endeavoring to avail itself of great

seamanship in hauling up against the wind, a sudden squall carried off sail and yard, or at least so disabled

them that they were no longer of any use and unable to reach the ship; but the captain, from the deck, saw his

hopes of venison disappointed, and was forced either to stay on board his ship, or to hoist forth his own

longboat, which he could not prevail with himself to think of, though the smell of the venison had had

twenty times its attraction. He did, indeed, love his ship as his wife, and his boats as children, and never

To say truth, notwithstanding the strict rigor with which he preserved the dignity of his stations and the hasty

impatience with which he resented any affront to his person or orders, disobedience to which he could in no

instance brook in any person on board. he was one of the best natured fellows alive. He acted the part of a

father to his sailors; he expressed great tenderness for any of them when ill, and never suffered any the least

work of supererogation to go unrewarded by a glass of gin. He even extended his humanity, if I may so call

it, to animals, and even his cats and kittens had large shares in his affections.

An instance of which we saw this evening, when the cat, which had shown it could not be drowned, was

found suffocated under a featherbed in the cabin. I will not endeavor to describe his lamentations with more

prolixity than barely by saying they were grievous, and seemed to have some mixture of the Irish howl in

them. Nay, he carried his fondness even to inanimate objects, of which we have above set down a pregnant

example in his demonstration of love and tenderness towards his boats and ship. He spoke of a ship which he

had commanded formerly, and which was long since no more, which he had called the Princess of Brazil, as a

widower of a deceased wife. This ship, after having followed the honest business of carrying goods and

passengers for hire many years, did at last take to evil courses and turn privateer, in which service, to use his

own words, she received many dreadful wounds, which he himself had felt as if they had been his own.

Thursday.As the wind did not yesterday discover any purpose of shifting, and the water in my belly grew

troublesome and rendered me shortbreathed, I began a second time to have apprehensions of wanting the

assistance of a trochar when none was to be found; I therefore concluded to be tapped again by way of

precaution, and accordingly I this morning summoned on board a surgeon from a neighboring parish, one

whom the captain greatly recommended, and who did indeed perform his office with much dexterity. He was,

I believe, likewise a man of great judgment and knowledge in the profession; but of this I cannot speak with

perfect certainty, for, when he was going to open on the dropsy at large and on the particular degree of the

distemper under which I labored, I was obliged to stop him short, for the wind was changed, and the captain

in the utmost hurry to depart; and to desire him, instead of his opinion, to assist me with his execution. I was

now once more delivered from my burden, which was not indeed so great as I had apprehended, wanting two

While the surgeon was drawing away my water the sailors were drawing up the anchor; both were finished at

the same time; we unfurled our sails and soon passed the Berryhead, which forms the mouth of the bay.

We had not however sailed far when the wind, which, had though with a slow pace, kept us company about

six miles, suddenly turned about, and offered to conduct us back again; a favor which, though sorely against

Nothing remarkable happened this day; for as to the firm persuasion of the captain that he was under the spell

of witchcraft, I would not repeat it too often, though indeed he repeated it an hundred times every day; in

truth, he talked of nothing else, and seemed not only to be satisfied in general of his being bewitched, but

actually to have fixed with good certainty on the person of the witch, whom, had he lived in the days of Sir

Matthew Hale, he would have infallibly indicted, and very possibly have hanged, for the detestable sin of

witchcraft; but that law, and the whole doctrine that supported it, are now out of fashion; and witches, as a

learned divine once chose to express himself, are put down by act of parliament. This witch, in the captain's

opinion, was no other than Mrs. Francis of Ryde, who, as he insinuated, out of anger to me for not spending

more money in her house than she could produce anything to exchange for, or ally pretense to charge for, had

Though we were again got near our harbor by three in the afternoon, yet it seemed to require a full hour or

more before we could come to our former place of anchoring, or berth, as the captain called it. On this

occasion we exemplified one of the few advantages which the travelers by water have over the travelers by

land. What would the latter often give for the sight of one of those hospitable mansions where he is assured

THAT THERE IS GOOD ENTERTAINMENT FOR MAN AND HORSE; and where both may consequently

promise themselves to assuage that hunger which exercise is so sure to raise in a healthy constitution.

At their arrival at this mansion how much happier is the state of the horse than that of the master! The former

is immediately led to his repast, such as it is, and, whatever it is, he falls to it with appetite. But the latter is in

a much worse situation. His hunger, however violent, is always in some degree delicate, and his food must

have some kind of ornament, or, as the more usual phrase is, of dressing, to recommend it. Now all dressing

requires time, and therefore, though perhaps the sheep might be just killed before you came to the inn, yet in

cutting him up, fetching the joint, which the landlord by mistake said he had in the house, from the butcher at

two miles' distance, and afterwards warming it a little by the fire, two hours at least must be consumed, while

How different was the case with us! we carried our provision, our kitchen, and our cook with us, and we were

at one and the same time traveling on our road, and sitting down to a repast of fish, with which the greatest

Friday.As we were disappointed of our wind, and obliged to return back the preceding evening, we

resolved to extract all the good we could out of our misfortune, and to add considerably to our fresh stores of

meat and bread, with which we were very indifferently provided when we hurried away yesterday. By the

captain's advice we likewise laid in some stores of butter, which we salted and potted ourselves, for our use at

In the afternoon I persuaded my wife whom it was no easy matter for me to force from my side, to take a

walk on shore, whither the gallant captain declared he was ready to attend her. Accordingly the ladies set out,

and left me to enjoy a sweet and comfortable nap after the operation of the preceding day.

Thus we enjoyed our separate pleasures full three hours, when we met again, and my wife gave the foregoing

account of the gentleman whom I have before compared to Axylus, and of his habitation, to both which she

had been introduced by the captain, in the style of an old friend and acquaintance, though this foundation of

intimacy seemed to her to be no deeper laid than in an accidental dinner, eaten many years before, at this

Saturday.Early this morning the wind seemed inclined to change in our favor. Our alert captain snatched

its very first motion, and got under sail with so very gentle a breeze that, as the tide was against him, he

recommended to a fishing boy to bring after him a vast salmon and some other provisions which lay ready for

Our anchor was up at six, and before nine in the morning we had doubled the Berryhead, and were arrived

off Dartmouth, having gone full three miles in as many hours, in direct opposition to the tide, which only

befriended us out of our harbor; and though the wind was perhaps our friend, it was so very silent, and

exerted itself so little in our favor, that, like some cool partisans, it was difficult to say whether it was with us

or against us. The captain, however, declared the former to be the case during the whole three hours; but at

last he perceived his error, or rather, perhaps, this friend, which had hitherto wavered in choosing his side,

became now more determined. The captain then suddenly tacked about, and, asserting that he was bewitched,

submitted to return to the place from whence he came. Now, though I am as free from superstition as any

man breathing, and never did believe in witches, notwithstanding all the excellent arguments of my lord

chiefjustice Hale in their favor, and long before they were put down by act of parliament, yet by what power

a ship of burden should sail three miles against both wind and tide, I cannot conceive, unless there was some

supernatural interposition in the case; nay, could we admit that the wind stood neuter, the difficulty would

still remain. So that we must of necessity conclude that the ship was either bewinded or bewitched. The

captain, perhaps, had another meaning. He imagined himself, I believe, bewitched, because the wind, instead

of persevering in its change in his favor, for change it certainly did that morning, should suddenly return to its

favorite station, and blow him back towards the bay. But, if this was his opinion, he soon saw cause to alter;

for he had not measured half the way back when the wind again declared in his favor, and so loudly, that

there was no possibility of being mistaken. The orders for the second tack were given, and obeyed with much

more alacrity than those had been for the first. We were all of us indeed in high spirits on the occasion;

though some of us a little regretted the good things we were likely to leave behind us by the fisherman's

neglect; I might give it a worse name, for he faithfully promised to execute the commission, which he had

had abundant opportunity to do; but nautica fides deserves as much to be proverbial as ever Punica fides

could formerly have done. Nay, when we consider that the Carthaginians came from the Phenicians who are

supposed to have produced the first mariners, we may probably see the true reason of the adage, and it may

We were, however, too eager to pursue our voyage to suffer anything we left behind us to interrupt our

happiness, which, indeed, many agreeable circumstances conspired to advance. The weather was

inexpressibly pleasant, and we were all seated on the deck, when our canvas began to swell with the wind.

We had likewise in our view above thirty other sail around us, all in the same situation. Here an observation

occurred to me, which, perhaps, though extremely obvious, did not offer itself to every individual in our little

fleet: when I perceived with what different success we proceeded under the influence of a superior power

which, while we lay almost idle ourselves, pushed us forward on our intended voyage, and compared this

with the slow progress which we had made in the morning, of ourselves, and without any such assistance, I

could not help reflecting how often the greatest abilities lie windbound as it were in life; or, if they venture

out and attempt to beat the seas, they struggle in vain against wind and tide, and, if they have not sufficient

prudence to put back, are most probably cast away on the rocks and quicksands which are every day ready to

It was now our fortune to set out melioribus avibus. The wind freshened so briskly in our poop that the shore

appeared to move from us as fast as we did from the shore. The captain declared he was sure of a wind,

meaning its continuance; but he had disappointed us so often that he had lost all credit. However, he kept his

word a little better now, and we lost sight of our native land as joyfully, at least, as it is usual to regain it.

Sunday.The next morning the captain told me he thought himself thirty miles to the westward of

Plymouth, and before evening declared that the Lizard Point, which is the extremity of Cornwall, bore several

leagues to leeward. Nothing remarkable passed this day, except the captain's devotion, who, in his own

phrase, summoned all hands to prayers, which were read by a common sailor upon deck, with more devout

force and address than they are commonly read by a country curate, and received with more decency and

attention by the sailors than are usually preserved in city congregations. I am indeed assured, that if any such

affected disregard of the solemn office in which they were engaged, as I have seen practiced by fine

gentlemen and ladies, expressing a kind of apprehension lest they should be suspected of being really in

earnest in their devotion, had been shown here, they would have contracted the contempt of the whole

audience. To say the truth, from what I observed in the behavior of the sailors in this voyage, and on

comparing it with what I have formerly seen of them at sea and on shore, I am convinced that on land there is

nothing more idle and dissolute; in their own element there are no persons near the level of their degree who

They are, for much the greater part, perfect masters of their business, and always extremely alert, and ready

in executing it, without any regard to fatigue or hazard. The soldiers themselves are not better disciplined nor

more obedient to orders than these whilst aboard; they submit to every difficulty which attends their calling

with cheerfulness, and no less virtues and patience and fortitude are exercised by them every day of their

lives. All these good qualities, however, they always leave behind them on shipboard; the sailor out of water

is, indeed, as wretched an animal as the fish out of water; for though the former hath, in common with

amphibious animals, the bare power of existing on the land, yet if he be kept there any time he never fails to

become a nuisance. The ship having had a good deal of motion since she was last under sail, our women

returned to their sickness, and I to my solitude; having, for twentyfour hours together, scarce opened my lips

to a single person. This circumstance of being shut up within the circumference of a few yards, with a score

of human creatures, with not one of whom it was possible to converse, was perhaps so rare as scarce ever to

have happened before, nor could it ever happen to one who disliked it more than myself, or to myself at a

season when I wanted more food for my social disposition, or could converse less wholesomely and happily

with my own thoughts. To this accident, which fortune opened to me in the Downs, was owing the first

serious thought which I ever entertained of enrolling myself among the voyagewriters; some of the most

amusing pages, if, indeed, there be any which deserve that name, were possibly the production of the most

Monday.At noon the captain took an observation, by which it appeared that Ushant bore some leagues

northward of us, and that we were just entering the bay of Biscay. We had advanced a very few miles in this

bay before we were entirely becalmed: we furled our sails, as being of no use to us while we lay in this most

disagreeable situation, more detested by the sailors than the most violent tempest: we were alarmed with the

loss of a fine piece of salt beef, which had been hung in the sea to freshen it; this being, it seems, the strange

property of saltwater. The thief was immediately suspected, and presently afterwards taken by the sailors.

He was, indeed, no other than a huge shark, who, not knowing when he was well off, swallowed another

piece of beef, together with a great iron crook on which it was hung, and by which he was dragged into the

ship. I should scarce have mentioned the catching this shark, though so exactly conformable to the rules and

practice of voyagewriting, had it not been for a strange circumstance that attended it. This was the recovery

of the stolen beef out of the shark's maw, where it lay unchewed and undigested, and whence, being

conveyed into the pot, the flesh, and the thief that had stolen it, joined together in furnishing variety to the

During this calm we likewise found the mast of a large vessel, which the captain thought had lain at least

three years in the sea. It was stuck all over with a little shellfish or reptile, called a barnacle, and which

probably are the prey of the rockfish, as our captain calls it, asserting that it is the finest fish in the world; for

which we are obliged to confide entirely to his taste; for, though he struck the fish with a kind of

harpingiron, and wounded him, I am convinced, to death, yet he could not possess himself of his body; but

In the evening our wind returned, and so briskly, that we ran upwards of twenty leagues before the next day's

[Tuesday's] observation, which brought us to lat. 47 degrees 42'. The captain promised us a very speedy

passage through the bay; but he deceived us, or the wind deceived him, for it so slackened at sunset, that it

Wednesday.A gale struck up a little after sunrising, which carried us between three and four knots or miles

an hour. We were this day at noon about the middle of the bay of Biscay, when the wind once more deserted

us, and we were so entirely becalmed, that we did not advance a mile in many hours. My freshwater reader

will perhaps conceive no unpleasant idea from this calm; but it affected us much more than a storm could

have done; for, as the irascible passions of men are apt to swell with indignation long after the injury which

first raised them is over, so fared it with the sea. It rose mountains high, and lifted our poor ship up and down,

backwards and forwards, with so violent an emotion, that there was scarce a man in the ship better able to

stand than myself. Every utensil in our cabin rolled up and down, as we should have rolled ourselves, had not

our chairs been fast lashed to the floor. In this situation, with our tables likewise fastened by ropes, the

captain and myself took our meal with some difficulty, and swallowed a little of our broth, for we spilt much

the greater part. The remainder of our dinner being an old, lean, tame duck roasted, I regretted but little the

Our women, who began to creep out of their holes in the morning, retired again within the cabin to their beds,

and were no more heard of this day, in which my whole comfort was to find by the captain's relation that the

swelling was sometimes much worse; he did, indeed, take this occasion to be more communicative than ever,

and informed me of such misadventures that had befallen him within fortysix years at sea as might frighten

a very bold spirit from undertaking even the shortest voyage. Were these, indeed, but universally known, our

matrons of quality would possibly be deterred from venturing their tender offspring at sea; by which means

our navy would lose the honor of many a young commodore, who at twentytwo is better versed in maritime

affairs than real seamen are made by experience at sixty. And this may, perhaps, appear the more

extraordinary, as the education of both seems to be pretty much the same; neither of them having had their

courage tried by Virgil's description of a storm, in which, inspired as he was, I doubt whether our captain

doth not exceed him. In the evening the wind, which continued in the N.W., again freshened, and that so

briskly that Cape Finisterre appeared by this day's observation to bear a few miles to the southward. We now

indeed sailed, or rather flew, near ten knots an hour; and the captain, in the redundancy of his goodhumor,

declared he would go to church at Lisbon on Sunday next, for that he was sure of a wind; and, indeed, we all

firmly believed him. But the event again contradicted him; for we were again visited by a calm in the

But here, though our voyage was retarded, we were entertained with a scene, which as no one can behold

without going to sea, so no one can form an idea of anything equal to it on shore. We were seated on the

deck, women and all, in the serenest evening that can be imagined. Not a single cloud presented itself to our

view, and the sun himself was the only object which engrossed our whole attention. He did indeed set with a

majesty which is incapable of description, with which, while the horizon was yet blazing with glory, our eyes

were called off to the opposite part to survey the moon, which was then at full, and which in rising presented

us with the second object that this world hath offered to our vision. Compared to these the pageantry of

theaters, or splendor of courts, are sights almost below the regard of children. We did not return from the

deck till late in the evening; the weather being inexpressibly pleasant, and so warm that even my old

distemper perceived the alteration of the climate. There was indeed a swell, but nothing comparable to what

Friday.The calm continued till sunrising, when the wind likewise arose, but unluckily for us it came from

a wrong quarter; it was S.S.E., which is that very wind which Juno would have solicited of Aeolus, had

The captain now put on his most melancholy aspect, and resumed his former opinion that he was bewitched.

He declared with great solemnity that this was worse and worse, for that a wind directly in his teeth was

worse than no wind at all. Had we pursued the course which the wind persuaded us to take we had gone

directly for Newfoundland, if we had not fallen in with Ireland in our way. Two ways remained to avoid this;

one was to put into a port of Galicia; the other, to beat to the westward with as little sail as possible: and this

As for us, poor passengers, any port would have been welcome to us; especially, as not only our fresh

provisions, except a great number of old ducks and fowls, but even our bread was come to an end, and

nothing but seabiscuit remained, which I could not chew. So that now for the first time in my life I saw what

The wind however was not so unkind as we had apprehended; but, having declined with the sun, it changed at

the approach of the moon, and became again favorable to us, though so gentle that the next day's observation

carried us very little to the southward of Cape Finisterre. This evening at six the wind, which had been very

quiet all day, rose very high, and continuing in our favor drove us seven knots an hour.

This day we saw a sail, the only one, as I heard of, we had seen in our whole passage through the bay. I

mention this on account of what appeared to me somewhat extraordinary. Though she was at such a distance

that I could only perceive she was a ship, the sailors discovered that she was a snow, bound to a port in

Sunday.After prayers, which our good captain read on the deck with an audible voice, and with but one

mistake, of a lion for Elias, in the second lesson for this day, we found ourselves far advanced in 42 degrees,

and the captain declared we should sup off Porte. We had not much wind this day; but, as this was directly in

our favor, we made it up with sail, of which we crowded all we had. We went only at the rate of four miles an

hour, but with so uneasy a motion, continuing rolling from side to side, that I suffered more than I had done

in our whole voyage; my bowels being almost twisted out of my belly. However, the day was very serene and

bright, and the captain, who was in high spirits, affirmed he had never passed a pleasanter at sea.

The wind continued so brisk that we ran upward of six knots an hour the whole night.

Monday.In the morning our captain concluded that he was got into lat. 40 degrees, and was very little short

of the Burlings, as they are called in the charts. We came up with them at five in the afternoon, being the first

land we had distinctly seen since we left Devonshire. They consist of abundance of little rocky islands, a little

Here the Portuguese maintain a kind of garrison, if we may allow it that name. It consists of malefactors, who

are banished hither for a term, for divers small offensesa policy which they may have copied from the

Egyptians, as we may read in Diodorus Siculus. That wise people, to prevent the corruption of good manners

by evil communication, built a town on the Red Sea, whither they transported a great number of their

criminals, having first set an indelible mark on them, to prevent their returning and mixing with the sober part

of their citizens. These rocks lie about fifteen leagues northwest of Cape Roxent, or, as it is commonly called,

the Rock of Lisbon, which we passed early the next morning. The wind, indeed, would have carried us thither

sooner; but the captain was not in a hurry, as he was to lose nothing by his delay.

Tuesday.This is a very high mountain, situated on the northern side of the mouth of the river Tajo, which,

rising about Madrid, in Spain, and soon becoming navigable for small craft, empties itself, after a long

On the summit of the rock stands a hermitage, which is now in the possession of an Englishman, who was

formerly master of a vessel trading to Lisbon; and, having changed his religion and his manners, the latter of

which, at least, were none of the best, betook himself to this place, in order to do penance for his sins. He is

now very old, and hath inhabited this hermitage for a great number of years, during which he hath received

some countenance from the royal family, and particularly from the present queen dowager, whose piety

refuses no trouble or expense by which she may make a proselyte, being used to say that the saving one soul

would repay all the endeavors of her life. Here we waited for the tide, and had the pleasure of surveying the

face of the country, the soil of which, at this season, exactly resembles an old brickkiln, or a field where the

green sward is pared up and set aburning, or rather a smoking, in little heaps to manure the land. This sight

will, perhaps, of all others, make an Englishman proud of, and pleased with, his own country, which in

verdure excels, I believe, every other country. Another deficiency here is the want of large trees, nothing

At this place we took a pilot on board, who, being the first Portuguese we spoke to, gave us an instance of

that religious observance which is paid by all nations to their laws; for, whereas it is here a capital offense to

assist any person in going on shore from a foreign vessel before it hath been examined, and every person in it

viewed by the magistrates of health, as they are called, this worthy pilot, for a very small reward, rowed the

Portuguese priest to shore at this place, beyond which he did not dare to advance, and in venturing whither he

We did not enter the Tajo till noon, when, after passing several old castles and other buildings which had

greatly the aspect of ruins, we came to the castle of Bellisle, where we had a full prospect of Lisbon, and

Here we were saluted with a gun, which was a signal to pass no farther till we had complied with certain

ceremonies which the laws of this country require to be observed by all ships which arrive in this port. We

were obliged then to cast anchor, and expect the arrival of the officers of the customs, without whose passport

Here likewise we received a visit from one of those magistrates of health before mentioned. He refused to

come on board the ship till every person in her had been drawn up on deck and personally viewed by him.

This occasioned some delay on my part, as it was not the work of a minute to lift me from the cabin to the

deck. The captain thought my particular case might have been excused from this ceremony, and that it would

be abundantly sufficient if the magistrate, who was obliged afterwards to visit the cabin, surveyed me there.

But this did not satisfy the magistrate's strict regard to his duty. When he was told of my lameness, he called

out, with a voice of authority, "Let him be brought up," and his orders were presently complied with. He was,

indeed, a person of great dignity, as well as of the most exact fidelity in the discharge of his trust. Both which

are the more admirable as his salary is less than thirty pounds English per annum.

Before a ship hath been visited by one of those magistrates no person can lawfully go on board her, nor can

any on board depart from her. This I saw exemplified in a remarkable instance. The young lad whom I have

mentioned as one of our passengers was here met by his father, who, on the first news of the captain's arrival,

came from Lisbon to Bellisle in a boat, being eager to embrace a son whom he had not seen for many years.

But when he came alongside our ship neither did the father dare ascend nor the son descend, as the magistrate

of health had not yet been on board. Some of our readers will, perhaps, admire the great caution of this

policy, so nicely calculated for the preservation of this country from all pestilential distempers. Others will as

probably regard it as too exact and formal to be constantly persisted in, in seasons of the utmost safety, as

well as in times of danger. I will not decide either way, but will content myself with observing that I never yet

saw or heard of a place where a traveler had so much trouble given him at his landing as here. The only use

of which, as all such matters begin and end in form only, is to put it into the power of low and mean fellows

to be either rudely officious or grossly corrupt, as they shall see occasion to prefer the gratification of their

Of this kind, likewise, is that power which is lodged with other officers here, of taking away every grain of

snuff and every leaf of tobacco brought hither from other countries, though only for the temporary use of the

person during his residence here. This is executed with great insolence, and, as it is in the hands of the dregs

of the people, very scandalously; for, under pretense of searching for tobacco and snuff, they are sure to steal

whatever they can find, insomuch that when they came on board our sailors addressed us in the

Coventgarden language: "Pray, gentlemen and ladies, take care of your swords and watches." Indeed, I

never yet saw anything equal to the contempt and hatred which our honest tars every moment expressed for

At Bellisle lies buried Catharine of Arragon, widow of prince Arthur, eldest son of our Henry VII, afterwards

married to, and divorced from Henry VIII. Close by the church where her remains are deposited is a large

convent of Geronymites, one of the most beautiful piles of building in all Portugal.

In the evening, at twelve, our ship, having received previous visits from all the necessary parties, took the

advantage of the tide, and having sailed up to Lisbon cast anchor there, in a calm and moonshiny night, which

made the passage incredibly pleasant to the women, who remained three hours enjoying it, whilst I was left to

the cooler transports of enjoying their pleasures at secondhand; and yet, cooler as they may be, whoever is

totally ignorant of such sensation is, at the same time, void of all ideas of friendship.

Wednesday.Lisbon, before which we now lay at anchor, is said to be built on the same number of hills

with old Rome; but these do not all appear to the water; on the contrary, one sees from thence one vast high

hill and rock, with buildings arising above one another, and that in so steep and almost perpendicular a

As the houses, convents, churches, are large, and all built with white stone, they look very beautiful at a

distance; but as you approach nearer, and find them to want every kind of ornament, all idea of beauty

vanishes at once. While I was surveying the prospect of this city, which bears so little resemblance to any

other that I have ever seen, a reflection occurred to me that, if a man was suddenly to be removed from

Palmyra hither, and should take a view of no other city, in how glorious a light would the ancient architecture

appear to him! and what desolation and destruction of arts and sciences would he conclude had happened

I had now waited full three hours upon deck for the return of my man, whom I had sent to bespeak a good

dinner (a thing which had been long unknown to me) on shore, and then to bring a Lisbon chaise with him to

the seashore; but it seems the impertinence of the providore was not yet brought to a conclusion. At three

o'clock, when I was from emptiness, rather faint than hungry, my man returned, and told me there was a new

law lately made that no passenger should set his foot on shore without a special order from the providore, and

that he himself would have been sent to prison for disobeying it, had he not been protected as the servant of

the captain. He informed me likewise that the captain had been very industrious to get this order, but that it

was then the providore's hour of sleep, a time when no man, except the king himself, durst disturb him.

To avoid prolixity, though in a part of my narrative which may be more agreeable to my reader than it was to

me, the providore, having at last finished his nap, dispatched this absurd matter of form, and gave me leave to

What it was that gave the first hint of this strange law is not easy to guess. Possibly, in the infancy of their

defection, and before their government could be well established, they were willing to guard against the bare

possibility of surprise, of the success of which bare possibility the Trojan horse will remain for ever on

record, as a great and memorable example. Now the Portuguese have no walls to secure them, and a vessel of

two or three hundred tons will contain a much larger body of troops than could be concealed in that famous

machine, though Virgil tells us (somewhat hyperbolically, I believe) that it was as big as a mountain.

About seven in the evening I got into a chaise on shore, and was driven through the nastiest city in the world,

though at the same time one of the most populous, to a kind of coffeehouse, which is very pleasantly

situated on the brow of a hill, about a mile from the city, and hath a very fine prospect of the river Tajo from

Lisbon to the sea. Here we regaled ourselves with a good supper, for which we were as well charged as if the