And many have been perfuaded, that knowledge, delivered in this our short and miscellaneous way, will strike more forci bly; yea, will make clearer as well as stronger impressions, than in a tedious, formal, didactic stile and manner. "Con"cise sentences, like darts, fly abroad, and " make impression; while long discourses " are flat things, and not regarded." So says Bacon, in one of his Essays; and another writer of deep and strong sense, who is also laid aside for the trash of the day, hath delivered himself on this wife. "As " St. Austin faith of short and holy ejaculations, that they pierce heaven as "foon, if not quicker, than more tedious prayers; so I have reaped greater bene" fit from concise and cafual meditations on feveral topics, than from long and "voluminous treatifes, relating merely to " one and the same thing*." or what you will have we not quarto piled upon quarto, till the heap grows as huge as Pelion upon Offa? * The works of Francis Osborn, Esq. p. 454. 1701, 8vo. a 3 Com i Complaints will doubtless be preferred against us for the numerous quotations we have made, those especially from learned or foreign languages: but it must be noted, that quotations are effential to our plan, which is to instruct and amuse by story and anecdote, not by deduction or chains of argument; by example chiefly, not by reasoning. We have, however, generally given the substance, and often a tranflation, of the passages we quote.Mean while, it need not be dissembled, that this work is not so much intended for the mere illiterate English reader, as for men who have been liberally trained, and are not unacquainted with languages; men, who may wish to have fome pabulum mentis, or mental fodder, always at hand, but whose profeffions and fituations in life do not permit leifure to turn over volumes. As for those, whose literary nourishment is chiefly drawn from the daily prints and periodical publications-to whom, as one writes, "reading is nothing better than a dozing kind of idleness, and the " book a mere opiate, that makes them ८८ : "sleep with their eyes open," - for such, (and various are the forts of them) there are works better suited to their capacities and taste. Those of a graver and more fedate cast will find much self-complacency and comfort in histories of England, biographical dictionaries, bodies of divinity, and the like. For those of universal knowledge, (and such we meet with, out of coffee-houses as well as in them) there are Magazines of various kinds, which will fupply verbiage, or matter of talk and harangue, de omni fcibili et non fcibili. For the more gay and lively, novels and romances; and, lastly, for the critical or rather hypercritical tribe, who are ambitious to figure with airs of higher importance, there are journals and reviews, which will furnish the titles of all publications, with observations and strictures to defcant upon them. Such afpirants will hence be enabled to pronounce upon all subjects and all authors, without having • Effays of Pope Blount: a writer of great good sense and wit, laid afide for the trash of the day, and now become obsolete and almost forgotten. read or examined any"; to appear learned, without being so; in short, to be admired as critics and scholars, by those who are not critics and scholars: for this, surely, is as much as can in reason be defired. But we need not detain our reader here; these and other fimilar points being occafionally touched in the course of our work. ** Lord Bacon speaks of certain persons, who thought it no mean thing, if, by compendious extracts from other men's wits, they could figure and parade with some shew of learning: magnum certè quiddam præftare videntur, fi delibantes aliorum ingenia, ex compendio fapiant, aut in cortice doctrinæ aliquatenus hæreant. De. Augm. Scient. 1. 1. CON |