====== Vorwort zu: 1745 Green general collection ======

===== Preface =====

===== V =====

THE first Volume of our Collection being now compleated, it may be expected, that something should be said concerning the Design and Manner of executing it.

IT would be needless to expatiate on the Advantages of Works of this Kind. Every body knows that their Use is to preserve valuable Books from being loft, render scarce Books common, and to bring the best Authors relating to all Parts of the into one Body. This has produced so many large Collections of Voyages and Travels in various Languages as Grinæus and de Bry in Latin, Ramusio in Italian and Thevenot in French, not to mention several other smaller Collections in the same Languages. But no Nation hath published so many Books of this Sort as our own: For we have already no fewer than three large general Collections in English, Hakluyt in three Volumes Folio, Purchas in four (exclusive of his Pilgrimage) and Harris in two.

AS to Churchill's though consisting of fix great Folios it is no more than an Assemblage of the Travels of about fifty particular Authors to a few Parts of the World and therefore we do not place it among the general Collections. Besides this essential Defect, the Authors made use of are, for the most Part, of very little Esteem. They seem to have been gathered without Judgment or Care, and chosen (if there was any Choice made at all) rather for their Imperfections than Merit. Some are swelled with scarce any Thing but the Transactions, and even the Disputes, of Missionaries: Others, though very bulky, consist of Matters foreign to the Subject, as Monson's naval Tracts, which take up the greater Part of the third Volume, and have no more Business in a Collection of Travels than any other naval History extant: So that the Substance, in effect, of the whole six Volumes might easily be comprized in two.

WHAT is still worse, the foreign Authors are very badly translated, and those employed for that Purpose have been religiously scrupulous to retain all Superstuities both in the Matter and Stile, though they have frequently made bold to mistake their Authors, Sense most egregiously and sometimes to castrate them greatly to their Disadvantage. The Part best executed in the Whole, though very dry, is the Introduction, which some People without the least Grounds, would fain persuade the Public was written by the great Mr Locke: But the manifold Imperfections of this Collection sufficiently confute that Pretence.
NOTWITHSTANDING there are so many Collections of Voyages already extant, yet as Materials for this Purpose are continually encreasing, and new Discoveries daily made, there will always be the same Necessity from Time to Time of publishing new Collections, or, at least, Additions to the old. This occasioned Hakluyt to set-forth his second Edition, with great Improvements in 1599, ten Years after his first, Purchas to exhibit a new Work in 1625, and Harris to do the like in 1705.

===== VI =====

THE Design of these several Collectors, was to publish in one Body all the best Authors from the Revival of Commerce, and Discoveries, about the thirteenth Age, to their own Times: But to avoid swelling their Work to too great a Bulk, they were obliged to omit many of the most valuable. Hakluyt for this Reason confined himself mostly to the English Travellers: But although he wrote within fifty Years of the first Navigations of this Nation, and added two thick Volumes in his second Edition, yet he was forced to leave-out a great Number of curious Tracts, which afterwards were published by Purchas. This Collector proposed to join many foreign Authors to the English, and as he enlarged his Plan so be augmented his Volumes in Bulk and Number: Yet still be found himself greatly stinted for Room, insomuch, that to bring those he had provided within the Compass of bis four Volumes of Pilgrims, he was under a Necessity of curtailing bis Authors in such a Manner as to retrench several of their most essential Parts, and consequently to render bis Work in great Measure useless.

THE Compilers of that which goes under the Name of Dr. Harris (for he only wrote the Dedication and Introduction) undertook, at fourscore Years Distance, in which Time Books of Voyages and Travels were confiderably multiplied, to execute the same Design in much the same Compass as Purchas had done: Or rather to give us the Shadow of a general Collection and the Skeletons of Authors, instead of the Substance; which, in effect, is the Case: For they have not only omitted a great Number of the most valuable Relations to be found in Hakluyt and Purchas, which do Honour to our Nation, as well as many of those published since they wrote, but have quite spoiled the rest by bad Abridgments: Those which Purchas had published entire, are by them miserably curtailed, and the Authors, which that Collector had mangled before, (that is all be abridged) are mangled over again.

BESIDES the above-mentioned Imperfections under which this last Collection labours, it being near forty Years since it was published, a great Number of curious Voyages and Travels have appeared, which want to be collected.
FOR these Reasons the Author of the present Undertaking judged a new general Collection to be necessary, which he proposed to execute according to the following Plan.

FIRST, To insert the Relations from Hakluyt and Purchas omitted in Harris's Collection, as well as those taken from them. Secondly, To restore all the Authors castrated in Harris as well as those maimed by Purchas, so far as he hath been able to come at the Originals. Thirdly To take-in not only some English Travellers omitted by Purchas, but also several others published since Purchas, and omitted in Harris. Fourthly, To add the Travellers of any Note, which have appeared in our Language since 1705 when Dr Harris's Collection was published. Fifthly, To enrich this Collection with a considerable Number of foreign Itineraries, which were never made English before.

IT would be Time enough perhaps, when the whole Work was finished, to shew that be bad performed his Engagements, and yet the Collector is of Opinion, that this Volume affords abundant Proof, that he has fulfilled his Proposal.
WITH respect to the first Article, he refers to the Voyages of Stephens and Raymond to East India, Windham, Lok, &c to Guinea. He conceives, that the second is already made good by every Author inserted from Hakluyt and Purchas, for they are all carefully abridged without omitting any material Circumstance, or adding Fancies of his own, which alter the Sense as has been done by the Compilers of Harris's Collection: That the third Condition is executed in Part by the Voyages of Captain Covert to the East Indies, those of Windham, Vennor &c to Guinea, omitted by Purchas: That the Journies up the Pike of Teneriffe, and the Voyages of Captain Roberts to the Cape de Verde Islands, make-good the fourth Condition, and that the fifth is performed by the Voyages of Soleyman Basha, Cada Mosto, Pedro de Sintra, and several other Translations.

THE better to succeed in this last Article, we have been careful to procure the best Authors to be met with, and to search not only the great foreign Collections already mentioned for curious Tracts as have not yet been translated from them, but also the smaller: Such as those