[In novels] the Author sits down and invents Characters that never were in Nature: He frames a long Story or Intrigue full of Events and Incidents, like the Turns in a Comedy; and if he can but surprise and delight you enough to lead you on to the End of his Book, he is not so unreasonable to expect you should believe it to be true.

The way I have taken … is entirely new, and at first perhaps it may appear as something odd, and the method may be contemned; but let such blame their own more irregular tempers, that must have everything turned into new models; must be touched with novelty, and have their fancies humoured with the dress of a thing; so that if it be what has been said over and over a thousand times, yet if it has but a different coloured coat, or a new feather in its cap, it pleases and wins upon them.

The success the former part of this work has met with in the world … is acknowledged to be due to the surprising variety of the subject and to the agreeable manner of the performance.