The history of the life and adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell ; a gentleman who, though deaf and dumb, writes down any stranger's name at first sight / [Daniel Defoe].

  • Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731.
Date:
1840]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The history of the life and adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell ; a gentleman who, though deaf and dumb, writes down any stranger's name at first sight / [Daniel Defoe]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    EPISTLE DEDICATORY, TO THE LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF GREAT BRITAIN. I am not unacquainted that, ever since this book was first promised by way of advertisement to the world, it was greedily coveted by a great many persons of airy tempers, for the same reason that it has been condemned by those of a more formal class, who thought it was calculated partly to introduce a great many new and diverting curiosities in the way of superstition, and partly to divulge the secret intrigues and amours of one part of the sex, to give the other part room to make favourite scandal the subject of their discourse, and so to make one-half of the fair species very merry over the blushes and the mortifications of the other half. But when they come to read the following sheets, they will find their expectations disappointed (but I hope I may say too), very agreeably disappointed. They will find a much more elegant entertainment than they expected. Instead of making them a bill of fare out of patchwork romances of polluting scandal, the good old gentleman who wrote the adventures of my life has made it his business to treat them with a great variety of entertaining passages which always terminate in morals that tend to the edification of all readers, of whatsoever sex, age, or profession. Instead of seducing young, innocent, unwary minds, into the vicious delight which is too often taken in reading the gay and bewitching chimeras of the caballists, and in perusing the enticing fables of new-invented tricks of superstition, my ancient friend, the writer, strikes at the very root of these superstitions, and shows them how they may be satisfied in their several curiosities, by having recourse to time, who by the talent of the second-sight (which he so beautifully represents, how nature is so kind frequently to im¬ plant in the minds of men born in the same climate with myself) can tell you those things naturally, which, when you try to learn yourselves, you either run the hazard of being imposed upon in your pockets by cheats, gypsies, and common fortune-tellers, or else of being imposed upon in a still worse way, in your most lasting welfare, by having recourse to conjurers or enchanters that deal in black arts, and involve all their consulters in one general partnership of their execrable guilt; or lastly, of imposing worst of all on your OAvn selves,