The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

But as this work is chiefly recommended to those who know how to read

it, and how to make the good uses of it which the story all along

recommends to them, so it is to be hoped that such readers will be more

leased with the moral than the fable, with the application than with

the relation, and with the end of the writer than with the life of the

person written of.

There is in this story abundance of delightful incidents, and all of

them usefully applied. There is an agreeable turn artfully given them

in the relating, that naturally instructs the reader, either one way or

other. The first part of her lewd life with the young gentleman at

Colchester has so many happy turns given it to expose the crime, and

warn all whose circumstances are adapted to it, of the ruinous end of

such things, and the foolish, thoughtless, and abhorred conduct of both

the parties, that it abundantly atones for all the lively description

she gives of her folly and wickedness.

The repentance of her lover at the Bath, and how brought by the just

alarm of his fit of sickness to abandon her; the just caution given

there against even the lawful intimacies of the dearest friends, and

how unable they are to preserve the most solemn resolutions of virtue

without divine assistance; these are parts which, to a just

discernment, will appear to have more real beauty in them all the

amorous chain of story which introduces it.

In a word, as the whole relation is carefully garbled of all the levity

and looseness that was in it, so it all applied, and with the utmost

care, to virtuous and religious uses. None can, without being guilty

of manifest injustice, cast any reproach upon it, or upon our design in

publishing it.

The advocates for the stage have, in all ages, made this the great

argument to persuade people that their plays are useful, and that they

ought to be allowed in the most civilised and in the most religious

government; namely, that they are applied to virtuous purposes, and

that by the most lively representations, they fail not to recommend

virtue and generous principles, and to discourage and expose all sorts

of vice and corruption of manners; and were it true that they did so,

and that they constantly adhered to that rule, as the test of their

acting on the theatre, much might be said in their favour.

Throughout the infinite variety of this book, this fundamental is most

strictly adhered to; there is not a wicked action in any part of it,

but is first and last rendered unhappy and unfortunate; there is not a

superlative villain brought upon the stage, but either he is brought to

an unhappy end, or brought to be a penitent; there is not an ill thing

mentioned but it is condemned, even in the relation, nor a virtuous,

just thing but it carries its praise along with it. What can more

exactly answer the rule laid down, to recommend even those

representations of things which have so many other just objections

leaving against them? namely, of example, of bad company, obscene

language, and the like.