Dunton, John (1659-1732)

A Voyage Round the World: or, a Pocket-Library, Divided into several Volumes.

London

Printed for Richard Newcome

1691

"How the greatest part on't is an arrant cheat, and a mischievous one besides,--how little a while we generally stay in't, and yet how unfit to go out on't;--all these Reflections are now so strongly imprinted on my mind, that indeed I wonder how I could be perswaded to come abroad into Light."

Now the Reader will think me a meer Thracian, thus to Celebrate my own Nativity with Tears.--But I cannot avoid it,--when e're I reflect what a nasty World I then came into, how crowded with Fools and Knaves; how much pain for a little tast of what we call pleasure:--How the greatest part on't is an arrant cheat, and a mischievous one besides,--how little a while we generally stay in't, and yet how unfit to go out on't;--all these Reflections are now so strongly imprinted on my mind, that indeed I wonder how I could be perswaded to come abroad into Light; and had not the innate Sympathetical Love I had for Rambling even before I knew what either that or my self was, toll'd me on; I might possibly have staid as long in my Mother's Lodgings, as the Physitians tell us the Child of a certain French Woman did, who went sixteen years before she was Delivered.
(I. , pp. 34-5)

Impressions::Imprint

C-H Lion

John Dunton, A Voyage Round the World: or, a Pocket-Library, Divided into several Volumes. The First of which contains the Rare Adventures of Don Kainophilus, From his Cradle to his 15th. Year. The like Discoveries in such a Method never made by any Rambler before. The whole Work intermixt with Essays, Historical, Moral and Divine; and all other kinds of Learning. Done into English by a Lover of Travels. Recommended by the Wits of both Universities. 3 vols. (London: Printed for Richard Newcome, 1691). <Link to EEBO-TCP>

06/18/2013