First Book had opened with the admission: “The reader will doubtless take up this little work with an incredulous smile, supposing that he is about to peruse the impracticable schemes of some good citizen of Utopia.” (Or, as a charming early translation into English had it: “The reader will doubtless take with mistrust this opuscule in hand, deeming that he has it here to do with some irrealizable utopy.”)
