To these accounts of temporary transactions and fugitive performances, we shall add some dissertations on things more permanent and stable; some inquiries into the history of nature, which has hitherto been treated, as if mankind were afraid of exhausting it.  There are, in our own country, many things and places worthy of note that are yet little known, and every day gives opportunities of new observations which are made and forgotten.  We hope to find means of extending and perpetuating physiological discoveries; and with regard to this article, and all others, entreat the assistance of curious and candid correspondents.

We shall labour to attain as much exactness as can be expected in such variety, and shall give as much variety as can consist with reasonable exactness; for this purpose, a selection has been made of men qualified for the different parts of the work, and each has the employment assigned him, which he is supposed most able to discharge.

A DISSERTATION UPON THE GREEK COMEDY, TRANSLATED FROM BRUMOY[1].

ADVERTISEMENT.

I conclude this work, according to my promise, with an account of the comick theatre, and entreat the reader, whether a favourer or an enemy of the ancient drama, not to pass his censure upon the authors or upon me, without a regular perusal of this whole work.  For, though it seems to be composed of pieces of which each may precede or follow without dependence upon the other, yet all the parts, taken together, form a system which would be destroyed by their disjunction.  Which way shall we come at the knowledge of the ancients’ shows, but by comparing together all that is left of them?  The value and necessity of this comparison determined me to publish all, or to publish nothing.  Besides, the reflections on each piece, and on the general taste of antiquity, which, in my opinion, are not without importance, have a kind of obscure gradation, which I have carefully endeavoured to preserve, and of which the thread would be lost by him who should slightly glance sometimes upon one piece, and sometimes upon another.  It is a structure which I have endeavoured to make as near to regularity as I could, and which must be seen in its full extent, and in proper succession.  The reader who skips here and there over the book, might make a hundred objections which are either anticipated, or answered in those pieces which he might have overlooked.  I have laid such stress upon the connexion of the parts of this work, that I have declined to exhaust the subject, and have suppressed many of my notions, that I might leave the judicious reader to please himself by forming such conclusions as I supposed him like to discover, as well as myself.  I am not here attempting to prejudice the reader by an apology either for the ancients, or my own manner.  I have not claimed a right of obliging others to determine, by my opinion, the degrees of esteem which I think due to the authors of the Athenian stage; nor do I think that their reputation, in the present time, ought to depend upon my mode of thinking or expressing my thoughts, which I leave entirely to the judgment of the publick.