Note (return) — NEW WORKS

This is but the "Companion to the Map." The Voyage to the several Islands of the Great World, "is in a frame-work of the adventures of Sir Heedless Headlong, who neither reaches the Great World by a balloon, nor Perkins's steam-gun. He cruises about St. James's Straits, makes for Idler's Harbour, in Alba; is repulsed, but with a friend, Jack Rashleigh, journeys to Society Island, lands at Small Talk Bay, and makes for the capital, Flirtington. He first visits a general assembly of the leaders of the isle. At the house of assembly the rush of charioteers was so great, that it is impossible to say what might have been the consequence of the general confusion, or how many lives might have been lost, but for the interference of a little man in a flaxen wig, and broad-brimmed hat, with a cane in his hand, whose authority is said to extend equally over ladies and pickpockets of all degrees."18 Then comes an exquisite bit of badinage on that most stupid of all stupidities, a fashionable rout.