The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

The second is the life of her transported husband, a highwayman, who it

seems, lived a twelve years' life of successful villainy upon the road,

and even at last came off so well as to be a volunteer transport, not a

convict; and in whose life there is an incredible variety.

But, as I have said, these are things too long to bring in here, so

neither can I make a promise of the coming out by themselves.

We cannot say, indeed, that this history is carried on quite to the end

of the life of this famous Moll Flanders, as she calls herself, for

nobody can write their own life to the full end of it, unless they can

write it after they are dead. But her husband's life, being written by

a third hand, gives a full account of them both, how long they lived

together in that country, and how they both came to England again,

after about eight years, in which time they were grown very rich, and

where she lived, it seems, to be very old, but was not so extraordinary

a penitent as she was at first; it seems only that indeed she always

spoke with abhorrence of her former life, and of every part of it.

In her last scene, at Maryland and Virginia, many pleasant things

happened, which makes that part of her life very agreeable, but they

are not told with the same elegancy as those accounted for by herself;

so it is still to the more advantage that we break off here.