To a Friend. 1799
To a Friend. 1799
To a Friend. 1799
You, and many other of my friends, were informed of my motives for quitting my native country, and residing some few years abroad: till more peaceable times should again render that country to me what it once was; admirable for its general industry, manners, and morality; and undisturbed by the suspicions and persecutions, with which other countries were, and too often still continue to be, afflicted. Nothing but the strange terror which had seized the public mind could have engendered that spirit of individual rancour so foreign to the English character, which suddenly spread through the nation; and nothing but the stupor of mind, under such an impulse, could have made me suspected as one of the heads of the abominable Hydra, to extirpate which every Englishman was summoned. The fear was itself ridiculous: but, in their consequences, such fears have been fatal to many a worthy man.
I cannot recollect these things unmoved: neither can I hear various false reports of my being obliged to quit England, and of my not being suffered to return, without wishing that those who give them credit may be undeceived. My departure from England was voluntary; as is my absence. I cannot live in danger from Laws which I have not violated, or power with which I do not contend. I carefully shun the acrimony of political dispute, and the circles in which it is indulged. To the utmost of the little ability I have, it is my desire to inform, with the hopes of benefiting mankind; and this end cannot be attained by making them angry. In action, heart, and principle, I am, or would become, the friend of man. The only enemy I encounter is error; and that with no weapon but words: my constant theme has been, let it be taught, not whipped.
The letters I mean to address to you are intended for the public; and of these facts I wish the public to be informed and reminded.You must not, therefore, be surprised that I speak of them in this place. Whatever fable may invent, or credulity believe, I pledge my veracity to the world, that what I have above said is literally true: and may the world treat my memory with that ignominy, which a falsehood so solemn and gratuitous would deserve, if I prevaricate.
Avoiding the pursuit of this painful subject, the busy memory recurs to another, equally ungrateful: I did not quit the circle of friends, in whose intercourse I found so much benefit, and took so much delight, but with the bitterness of regret. I could not sit in apathy; and see the few effects I had collected become the scattered prey of brokers and dealers; and chiefly my library, on which so much of my money and time had been bestowed, squandered, twenty and more books in a lot: several of them individually of greater worth than the price paid for the whole. It seemed the dissolution of my social life; and something like the entrance into a wild and savage state. What multitudes of such thoughts did my afflicted heart suffer without giving them utterance! It would but have communicated and increased affliction.
I wish not to dwell on these dark parts of the picture. Who quits the country of his fathers without a sigh? Yet, who journeys forward to lands unexplored without hopes of strange and unexpected pleasures? It is a season full of apprehensive emotions, flutterings of the heart, and hopes and fears too numerous to be defined. At least it is such to those to whom travelling is not become a habit.
Some people have asked, why are books of travel so much read? It is because they are so often entertaining. Customs, when they differ but little from our own, seldom fail to excite our surprise, our laughter, or our contempt. Without crossing the seas, a man who has the faculty of noticing the remarkable, the whimsical, and the absurd, in his daily walks at home, never fails to entertain, if he think proper to narrate and to comment; and the traveller who wants this faculty of observation journeys to little purpose, and is heard with little pleasure. He sometimes even endeavours to falsify the true reports of his predecessors; and to offer the dulness of his discernment as a proof of his impartiality. Thus much by way of introduction.