TRAVELS INTO SEVERAL Remote Nations OF THE WORLD. In FOUR PARTS. By LEMUEL GULLIVER, To which are prefix'd, Several Copies of VERSES Expla- VOL. I. The SECOND EDITION. LONDON: Printed for BENJ. MOTTE, at the Middle A LETTER FROM CAPTAIN GULLIVER 1 TO HIS COUSIN SYMPSON 1 I HOPE you will be ready to own publicly, whenever you shall be called to it, that by your great and frequent urgency you prevailed on me to publish a very loose and uncorrect account of my travels; with direction to hire some young gentlemen of either university to put them in order, and correct the style, as my cousin Dampier did by my advice, in his book called A Voyage round the World. But I do not remember I gave you power to consent that any thing should be omitted, and much less that any thing should be inserted: therefore, as to the latter, I do here renounce every thing of that kind; particularly a paragraph about her Majesty the late Queen Anne, of most pious and glorious memory; although I did reverence and esteem her more than any of human species. But you, or your interpolator, ought to have considered, that as it was not my inclination, so was it not decent to praise any animal of our composition before my master Houyhnhnm: and besides the fact was altogether false; for to my knowledge,. being in England during some part of her Majesty's reign, she did govern by a chief minister; nay, even by two successively; the first whereof was the Lord of Godolphin, and the second the Lord of Oxford; so that you have made me say the thing that was not. Likewise, in the account of the Academy of Projectors, and several passages of my discourse to my master Houyhnhnm, you have either omitted some material circumstances, or minced or changed them in such a manner, that I do hardly know my own work. When I formerly hinted to 1 From the edition of 1735. |