What I have here said, therefore, must not be interpreted as applicable to the concluding sheets of my work.] Yes, even in the present narrative, I have aimed at a certain kind of novelty--a novelty which may be aptly expressed by a parody on a well-known line of Pope; it relates: "Things often done, but never yet described." In selecting among common and ordinary adventures, I have endeavoured to avoid such as a thousand novels before mine have undertaken to develop.
Multitudes of readers have themselves passed through the very incidents I relate; but, for the most part, no work has hitherto recorded them.

If I have hold them truly, I have added somewhat to the stock of books which should enable a recluse, shut up in his closet, to form an idea of what is passing in the world.

It is inconceivable, meanwhile, how much, by this choice of a subject, I increased the arduousness of my task.

It is so easy to do, a little better, or a little worse, what twenty authors have done before! If I had foreseen from the first all the difficulty of my project, my courage would have failed me to undertake the execution of it.
Certain persons, who condescend to make my supposed inconsistencies the favourite object of their research, will perhaps remark with exultation on the respect expressed in this work for marriage, and exclaim, "It was not always thus!" referring to the pages in which this subject is treated in the "Enquiry concerning Political Justice" for the proof of their assertion.

The answer to this remark is exceedingly simple.