voice of Leigh Hunt discoursing
daintily of men and books. So you will pass from Charles Lamb and Leigh
Hunt to the books they loved to praise. Exult in the full-blooded,
bracing life which pulses in the pages of Fielding; and if Smollett's
mirth is occasionally too riotous and his taste too coarse, yet confess
that all faults must be pardoned to the author of "Humphry Clinker."
Many a long evening you will spend pleasantly with Defoe; and then,
perchance, after a fresh reading of the thrice and four times wonderful
adventures of Robinson Crusoe, you will turn to the romance of "Peter
Wilkins." So may rheums and catarrhs be far from you, and may your
hearth be crowned with content!

A. H. B.

5 Willow Road, Hampstead, November 1883.

LIFE AND ADVENTURES

OF

PETER WILKINS.

A Cornish Man:

Relating particularly,

His Shipwreck near the South Pole; his wonderful Passage thro' a
subterraneous Cavern into a kind of new World; his there meeting with a
Gawry or flying woman, whose Life he preserv'd, and afterwards married
her; his extraordinary Conveyance to the Country of Glums and Gawrys, or
Men and Women that fly. Likewise a Description of this strange Country,
with the Laws, Customs, and Manners of its Inhabitants, and the Author's
remarkable Transactions among them.

Taken from his own Mouth, in his Passage to England from off Cape Horn
in America, in the ship Hector,

With an INTRODUCTION, giving an Account of the surprizing Manner of his
coming on board that Vessel, and his Death on his landing at Plymouth in
the Year 1739.

Illustrated with several Cuts, clearly and distinctly representing the
Structure and Mechanism of the Wings of the Glums and Gawrys, and the
Manner in which they use them either to swim or fly.

To the Right Honourable

ELIZABETH,

Countess of Northumberland, Madam,

Few Authors, I believe, who write in my Way (whatever View they may set
out with) can, in the Prosecution of their Works, forbear to dress their
fictitious Characters in the real Ornaments themselves have been most
delighted with.

THIS, I confess, hath been my Case, in the Person of _Youwarkee_, in
the following Sheets; for having formed her Body, I found myself at an
inexpressible Loss how to adorn her Mind in the masterly Sentiments
I coveted to endue her with; 'till I recollected the most aim[i]able
Pattern in your Ladyship; a single View of which, at a Time of the
utmost fatigue to his Lordship,