ome my readers from ever engaging in those
paths which necessarily have so fatal an end. In the work itself I have,
as well as I am able, painted in a proper light those vices which induce
men to fall into those courses which are so justly punished by the
Legislature._

_I flatter myself that however contemptible the_ Lives of the Criminals,
_etc., may seem in the eyes of those who affect great wisdom and put on
the appearance of much learning, yet it will not be without its uses
amongst the middling sort of people, who are glad to take up with books
within the circle of their own comprehension. It ought to be the care of
all authors to treat their several subjects so that while they are read
for the sake of amusement they may, as it were imperceptibly, convey
notions both profitable and just. The adventures of those who, for the
sake of supplying themselves with money for their debaucheries, have
betaken themselves to the desperate trade of knights of the road, often
have in them circumstances diverting enough and such as serve to show us
what sort of amusements they are by which vice betrays us to ruin, and
how the fatal inclination to gratify our passions hurries us finally to
destruction._

_I would not have my readers imagine however, because I talk of
rendering books of this kind useful, that I have thrown out any part of
what may be styled interesting. On the contrary, I have carefully
preserved this and as far as the subject would give me leave, improved
it, but with this caution always, that I have set forth the
entertainments of vice in their proper colours, lest young people might
be led to take them for innocent diversions, and from figures not
uncommon in modern authors, learn to call lewdness gallantry, and the
effects of unbridled lust the starts of too warm an imagination. These
are notions which serve to cheat the mind and represent as the road of
pleasure that which is indeed the highway to the gallows. This, I
conceived, was the use proper to be made of the lives, or rather the
deaths of malefactors, and if I have done no other good in writing them,
I shall have at least this satisfaction, that I have preserved them from
being presented to the world in such a dress as might render the_
Academy of Thieving _their proper title, a thing once practised before,
and if one may guess from the general practice of mankind, might
probably have been attempted again, with success. How a different method
will fa