The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

Upon this foundation this book is recommended to the reader as a work

from every part of which something may be learned, and some just and

religious inference is drawn, by which the reader will have something

of instruction, if he pleases to make use of it.

All the exploits of this lady of fame, in her depredations upon

mankind, stand as so many warnings to honest people to beware of them,

intimating to them by what methods innocent people are drawn in,

plundered and robbed, and by consequence how to avoid them. Her

robbing a little innocent child, dressed fine by the vanity of the

mother, to go to the dancing-school, is a good memento to such people

hereafter, as is likewise her picking the gold watch from the young

lady's side in the Park.

Her getting a parcel from a hare-brained wench at the coaches in St.

John Street; her booty made at the fire, and again at Harwich, all give

us excellent warnings in such cases to be more present to ourselves in

sudden surprises of every sort.

Her application to a sober life and industrious management at last in

Virginia, with her transported spouse, is a story fruitful of

instruction to all the unfortunate creatures who are obliged to seek

their re-establishment abroad, whether by the misery of transportation

or other disaster; letting them know that diligence and application

have their due encouragement, even in the remotest parts of the world,

and that no case can be so low, so despicable, or so empty of prospect,

but that an unwearied industry will go a great way to deliver us from

it, will in time raise the meanest creature to appear again the world,

and give him a new case for his life.

There are a few of the serious inferences which we are led by the hand

to in this book, and these are fully sufficient to justify any man in

recommending it to the world, and much more to justify the publication

of it.

There are two of the most beautiful parts still behind, which this

story gives some idea of, and lets us into the parts of them, but they

are either of them too long to be brought into the same volume, and

indeed are, as I may call them, whole volumes of themselves, viz.: 1.

The life of her governess, as she calls her, who had run through, it

seems, in a few years, all the eminent degrees of a gentlewoman, a

whore, and a bawd; a midwife and a midwife-keeper, as they are called;

a pawnbroker, a childtaker, a receiver of thieves, and of thieves'

purchase, that is to say, of stolen goods; and in a word, herself a

thief, a breeder up of thieves and the like, and yet at last a penitent.