The Adventures of Roderick Random

By Tobias Smollett





THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE




Of all kinds of satire, there is none so entertaining and universally
improving, as that which is introduced, as it were occasionally,
in the course of an interesting story, which brings every incident
home to life, and by representing familiar scenes in an uncommon and
amusing point of view, invests them with all the graces of novelty,
while nature is appealed to in every particular. The reader
gratifies his curiosity in pursuing the adventures of a person in
whose favour he is prepossessed; he espouses his cause, he sympathises
with him in his distress, his indignation is heated against the
authors of his calamity: the humane passions are inflamed; the
contrast between dejected virtue and insulting vice appears with
greater aggravation, and every impression having a double force
on the imagination, the memory retains the circumstance, and the
heart improves by the example. The attention is not tired with a
bare catalogue of characters, but agreeably diverted with all the
variety of invention; and the vicissitudes of life appear in their
peculiar circumstances, opening an ample field for wit and humour.