( xi )
A LETTER
FROM
CAPTAIN GULLIVER
TO HIS
COUSIN SYMPSON.
WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1727.
I HOPE you will be ready to own publickly, whenever you shall be called to it, that by your great and frequent urgency you prevailed on me to publish a very loose and uncorrect account of my travels, with direction to hire some young gentleman of either university to put them in order, and correct the style, as my cousin Dampier did by my advice in his book called, "A Voyage round the World." But I do not remember I gave you power to consent, that any thing should be omitted, and much less that any thing should be inserted: therefore, as to the latter, I do here renounce every thing of that kind; particularly a paragraph about her majesty queen Anne of most pious and glorious memory; although I did reverence and esteem her more than any of human species. But you, or your interpolator, ought to have considered, that as it was not my inclination, so was it not decent to praise any animal of our compo-
sition
