Crime and Defoe

The Brother argued, That, as the End and Use of every Fable was in the Moral, so a Fiction, or what they call'd a Romance, told only with Design to deceive the Reader … that the Fact related was true must be … criminal and wicked, and making a Lye …. But on the contrary, when the Moral of the Tale is duly annex'd, and the End directed right … Fables, feigned Histories, invented Tales, and even such as we call Romances, have always been allow'd as the most pungent Way of writing or speaking; the most apt to make Impressions on the Mind, and open the Door to the just Inferences and Improvement which was to be made of them.

The pretended Abridgement of this Book … consists only of some scatter'd Passages incoherently tacked together; wherein the Author's Sense throughout is wholly mistaken, the Matters of Fact misrepresented, and the Moral Reflections misapplied.

This work is chiefly recommended to those who know how to Read it, and how to make the good Uses of it, which the Story all along recommends to them … it is to be hop'd that such Readers will be much more pleas'd with the Moral, than the Fable; with the Application, than the Relation, and with the End of the Writer, than with the Life of the Person written of.