APPENDIX.

THE misfortunes of De Foe, at a former period, observes Mr Wilson, had thrown him into circumstances which subjected him to the sight of human nature in its lowest and most degraded forms. Whilst immured in prison, he was necessarily brought into contact with persons who were competent to let him into those scenes of crime and misery of which his fertile genius availed itself in this and similar publications. The various incidents in the eventful life of Moll Flanders, from the time of her seduction to that of her becoming a convict and a quiet settler in Maryland, are those of real life, as exemplified by multitudes of individuals who have run the career of their vicious propensities. The artless disposition of the narrative, the lively interest excited by unlooked for coincidences, the rich natural painting, the moral reflections, are all so many proofs of the knowledge and invention of the writer; but the facts were furnished him by the annals of Newgate.

From the character of the incidents that compose the present narrative, De Foe was fully aware of the objections that would be urged against it by the scrupulous. To conceal a single fact would have taken so much from the fidelity of the portrait; all that he could do, therefore, was to neutralize the poison by furnishing the strongest antidotes. Accordingly, whilst he paints the courses of an every-day profligate in their natural colours, he shows us with the same faithfulness their natural tendency; and that, first or last, vice is sure to bring down its own punishment. His villains never prosper, but either come to an untimely end, or are brought to be penitents. In dressing up the present story, he tells us he had taken care to exclude everything that might be offensive; but conscious that he had a bad subject to work upon, he endeavours to interest the reader in the reflections arising out of it, that the moral might be more enticing than the fable.

The story of Moll Flanders must be allowed to be executed in strict conformity with the writer's intentions. The events of her life are indeed coarse and disgusting, but they are exactly those of a person in her situation, led on from one degree of crime to another, and participating in all the miseries that may be expected to accompany such courses.

If the sale of a book were any criterion of its merit, De Foe had every reason to be satisfied with the work. Two editions were printed in 1721, and a third edition was published by the same booksellers in 1722, and another in the following year. There were two editions by J. Brotherton; the second in 1741. There is also one with wood-cuts, by C. Simpson, in Stone Cutter street, Fleet market, without a date. These were all in octavo, and there are many in a smailer size. An edition of the work, with many omissions and alterations, was published in 1776, by Francis Noble, who kept a circulating library in Holborn, and reprinted several of De Foe's pieces, with castrations. It professes to be taken from a corrected manuscript of De Foe's, dated Islington, December 20, 1730, in which he omitted some parts as unfit for perusal, and gave the whole a new dress. But this is a mere deception. There is no reason for supposing that De Foe left any such papers, nor that he intended his work to be mutilated in the manner performed by his anonymous editor. Besides abridging other parts of her story, the whole of her practices as a thief are omitted, and, consequently, those fine passages that describe her mental conflicts in the silent hour of reflection. She is no convict herself, but accompanies her husband to Virginia, from whence they both return to Ireland, purchase an estate, and pass a sober and religious life. She survives her husband, makes her will, leaving the whole of her property to her brother-in-law, and departs this life a great penitent, the 10th of December, 1722, in the 75th year of her age. The work concluding in this happy manner is entitled "The history of Lætitia Atkins, vulgarly called Moll Flanders. Published by Mr Daniel De Foe. And from papers found since his decease, it appears greatly altered by himself; and from the said papers the present work is produced. London: printed for the editor, and sold by F. Noble, Holborn, and T. Lowndes, in Fleet street. 1770. 12mo." It contains little more than half the quantity of the original work. The account given of it by the editor is as follows:-" My father was an intimate acquaintance of Mr Daniel De Foe. I had frequently heard him speak of his friend highly to his advantage as a moral writer in many of his publications, and wondered much, after my reading his Robinson Crusoe,' to find both in his Roxana' and in his Moll Flanders' expressions so much beneath him; but upon a perusal, when I came into possession of the manuscripts of his alterations of both those histories, I acquiesced in the opinion of my father, and, in that opinion, have thought it proper, in their new dress, to introduce them for the entertainment of those who are admirers of nature."

MEMOIRS

OF

A CAVALIER;

OR,

A MILITARY JOURNAL OF THE WARS IN GERMANY AND THE WARS IN ENGLAND;

FROM THE YEAR 1632 TO THE YEAR 1648.

WRITTEN ABOVE THREE-SCORE YEARS AGO BY AN ENGLISH GENTLEMAN :

WHO SERVED FIRST IN THE ARMY OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS,

THE GLORIOUS KING OF SWEDEN, TILL HIS DEATH; AND AFTER THAT IN THE
ROYAL ARMY OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST, FROM THE BEGINNING OF

THE REBELLION TO THE END OF THAT WAR.

PRINTED FOR A. BELL, AT THE Cross Keys in CORNHILL; J. Osborn, at the Oxford ARMS IN LOMBARD STREET; W. TAYLOR, AT THE SHIP AND SWAN; AND T. WARNER, AT THE BLACK BOY IN PATERNOSTER ROW.

THE

PRESENT EDITION.

WHETHER this interesting work is considered as a romance, or as a series of authentic memoirs, in which the only fabulous circumstance is the existence of the hero, it must undoubtedly be allowed to be of the best description of either species of composition, and to reflect additional lustre, even on the Author of Robinson Crusoe.

There is so much simplicity and apparent fidelity of statement throughout the narrative, that the feelings are little indebted to those who would remove the veil; and the former editors, perhaps, have acted not unwisely in leaving the circumstances of its authenticity in their original obscurity. The Memoirs of a Cavalier have long, however, been ascertained to be the production of Daniel De Foe. Both the first and second editions were published without date; but, from other evidence, the work appears to have been written shortly after Robinson Crusoe, in 1720-1.

A few Notes have been added to the present edition, collected from the periodical publications of the time (now rare and curious), to exhibit the exact coincidence of the facts themselves, with the transactions narrated in these Memoirs. Edinburgh, 1809.

THE PREFACE TO

THE

FIRST EDITION.

As an evidence that it is very probable these memorials were written many years ago, the persons now concerned in the publication assure the reader that they have had them in their possession finished, as they now appear, above twenty years. That they were so long ago found by great accident, among other valuable papers, in the closet of an eminent public minister, of no less figure than one of King William's secretaries

of state.

As it is not proper to trace them any farther, so neither is there any need to trace them at all, to give reputation to the story related, seeing the actions here mentioned have a sufficient sanction from all the histories of the times to which they relate, with this addition, that the admirable manner of relating them, and the wonderful variety of incidents with which they are beautified in the course of a private gentleman's story, add such delight in the reading, and give such a lustre, as well to the accounts themselves as to the person who was the actor, that no story, we believe, extant in the world, ever came abroad with such advantage.

It must naturally give some concern in the reading, that the name of a person of so much gallantry and honour, and so many ways valuable to the world, should be lost