Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

This sentence serves as the opening address to the reader in Samuel Johnson’s philosophical tale *The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia* (commonly *Rasselas*), first published in 1759. Johnson wrote the work rapidly in London, and it is closely associated with a period of personal strain and financial need, including the costs surrounding his mother’s final illness and death. Framed as a moral and reflective narrative rather than a conventional adventure, *Rasselas* follows a young prince who leaves a sheltered “Happy Valley” to test the world’s promises. The quoted passage functions as a preface-like summons, positioning the story as a corrective to youthful illusions and habitual procrastination.

Johnson addresses readers who are prone to self-deception: trusting “fancy,” chasing “phantoms of hope,” and postponing fulfillment by imagining that time will repair life’s lacks. The rhetoric compresses a central Johnsonian theme—human beings repeatedly project happiness into the future, expecting age, circumstance, or “the morrow” to deliver what the present withholds. By inviting such readers to “attend” to Rasselas’s history, Johnson signals that the narrative will test these consoling expectations against experience. The line sets a sober, moral-philosophical tone: the story is offered as an antidote to credulity and as an inquiry into whether any condition of life reliably satisfies human desire.