Excerpt from The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins: A Cornish Man Although, since the first appearance of this work in 1751, it has been several times republished, and is to he found in our collections of standard novels, it has met with a very insufficient success and popularity. That this should be the case is indeed surprising; for, with an enchanting simplicity of narrative, a truthful minuteness of description, and an ingenuity of contrivance, that renders its Author no mean rival of the great Defoe himself; his "winged people" have been pronounced by Southey to be "the most beautiful creatures of imagination that were ever devised." But, above all, the work is admirable for the valuable lessons of morality it inculcates; and which are so interwoven with the incidents of the tale, that they can scarce escape the attention of the most careless reader, and will often make an impression, where more formal and didactic precepts would be delivered in vain. We should be at a loss to point out in any work in our language more charming pictures of connubial felicity and domestic happiness. Still, notwithstanding the general purity with which the book is composed, and the utter absence of indecent language, (too characteristic of the period in which it was written, ) it contains one or two incidents which have properly prevented its being employed for the amusement and instruction of the young. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.