Would not,perhaps,be a more pleasant or profitable study,among those which have their principal end in amusement,than that of travels or voyages,if they were wrote as they might be and ought to be,with a joint view to the entertainment and information of mankind.If the conversation of travelers be so eagerly sought after as it is,we may believe their books will be still more agreeable company,as they will in general be more instructive and more entertaining.But when I say the conversation of travelers is usually so welcome,I must be understood to mean that only of such as have had good sense enough to apply their peregrinations to a proper use,so as to acquire from them a real and valuable knowledge of men and things,both which are best known by comparison.If the customs and manners of men were everywhere the same,there would be no office so dull as that of a traveler,for the difference of hills,valleys,rivers,in short,the various views of which we may see the face of the earth,would scarce afford him a pleasure worthy of his labor;and surely it would give him very little opportunity of communicating any kind of entertainment or improvement to others.
To make a traveler an agreeable companion to a man of sense,it is necessary,not only that he should have seen much,but that he should have overlooked much of what he hath seen.Nature is not,any more than a great genius,always admirable in her productions,and therefore the traveler,who may be called her commentator,should not expect to find everywhere subjects worthy of his notice.It is certain,indeed,that one may be guilty of omission,as well as of the opposite extreme;but a fault on that side will be more easily pardoned,as it is better to be hungry than surfeited;and to miss your dessert at the table of a man whose gardens abound with the choicest fruits,than to have your taste affronted with every sort of trash that can be picked up at the green-stall or the wheel-barrow.If we should carry on the analogy between the traveler and the commentator,it is impossible to keep one's eye a moment off from the laborious much-read doctor Zachary Gray,of whose redundant notes on Hudibras I shall only say that it is,I am confident,the single book extant in which above five hundred authors are quoted,not one of which could be found in the collection of the late doctor Mead.
As there are few things which a traveler is to record,there are fewer on which he is to offer his observations:this is the office of the reader;and it is so pleasant a one,that he seldom chooses to have it taken from him,under the pretense of lending him assistance.Some occasions,indeed,there are,when proper observations are pertinent,and others when they are necessary;but good sense alone must point them out.I shall lay down only one general rule;which I believe to be of universal truth between relator and hearer,as it is between author and reader;this is,that the latter never forgive any observation of the former which doth not convey some knowledge that they are sensible they could not possibly have attained of themselves.
But all his pains in collecting knowledge,all his judgment in selecting,and all his art in communicating it,will not suffice,unless he can make himself,in some degree,an agreeable as well as an instructive companion.The highest instruction we can derive from the tedious tale of a dull fellow scarce ever pays us for our attention.There is nothing,I think,half so valuable as knowledge,and yet there is nothing which men will give themselves so little trouble to attain;unless it be,perhaps,that lowest degree of it which is the object of curiosity,and which hath therefore that active passion constantly employed in its service.This,indeed,it is in the power of every traveler to gratify;but it is the leading principle in weak minds only.
To render his relation agreeable to the man of sense,it is therefore necessary that the voyager should possess several eminent and rare talents;so rare indeed,that it is almost wonderful to see them ever united in the same person.And if all these talents must concur in the relator,they are certainly in a more eminent degree necessary to the writer;for here the narration admits of higher ornaments of style,and every fact and sentiment offers itself to the fullest and most deliberate examination.It would appear,therefore,I think,somewhat strange if such writers as these should be found extremely common;since nature hath been a most parsimonious distributor of her richest talents,and hath seldom bestowed many on the same person.But,on the other hand,why there should scarce exist a single writer of this kind worthy our regard;and,whilst there is no other branch of history (for this is history)which hath not exercised the greatest pens,why this alone should be overlooked by all men of great genius and erudition,and delivered up to the Goths and Vandals as their lawful property,is altogether as difficult to determine.And yet that this is the case,with some very few exceptions,is most manifest.Of these I shall willingly admit Burnet and Addison;if the former was not,perhaps,to be considered as a political essayist,and the latter as a commentator on the classics,rather than as a writer of travels;which last title,perhaps,they would both of them have been least ambitious to affect.Indeed,if these two and two or three more should be removed from the mass,there would remain such a heap of dullness behind,that the appellation of voyage-writer would not appear very desirable.I am not here unapprised that old Homer himself is by some considered as a voyage-writer;and,indeed,the beginning of his Odyssey may be urged to countenance that opinion,which I shall not controvert.
But,whatever species of writing the Odyssey is of,it is surely at the head of that species,as much as the Iliad is of another;and so far the excellent Longinus would allow,I believe,at this day.