The first part of the Designe.

For the easier exercise of Imagination, I shall acquaint you with a method that will appeare very naturall, by which insteed of considering the Languages precisely in themselves (as hitherto hath been usuall) they may be compar’d one with the other without much difficultie, and at the same time their accord, dependance, and mutuall relation, discover’d either from the resemblance of words, the proportion of their scope or compasse, and the conformity of their expressions.  Tis true that this agreement, and relation is not a little obscur’d by the severall od constitutions of mens minds, that checque at, and satisfie themselves with the first, and naked appearance without any farther inquirie, but withall its presently, and easily perceiv’d by those who are happy enough, in a genius for such kind of Learning.  Its something like the paradoxes Geometry proposeth upon the relation, and proportion of figures, where we are mus’d at the first draught, and there appeares so little likelihood in them that the unexperienc’t would take them only for the tricks and whims of a melancholique brain; whereas an ingenuous Artist, from the most naturall, and simple notions gradually conducts the mind to a kind of insensible discovery of truth, and makes it see on a suddain what it could not expect, and that with such open assurances as quit that from all suspicion, which but now had scarce any face of truth.

Knowing no other method then this, that may be proper to make new discoveries in the sciences I endeavour’d to make what use I could of it, so farr as my subject permitted; And since amidst the severall resemblances of the Languages, there are some so evident, as necessarily grance upon the most unobserving eye, I have so order’d my reflections, that by a reference to these, as models, I might by degrees arrive at the knowledge of the others, which although reserv’d, and sometimes more distanc’t, yet are neither less certain, nor reall:  not unlike the subalternate conclusions in speculation, which are not a jot the lesse true for being farther remov’d from their first principle.

Thus tis that a Language with which we are already acquainted, either by the assistance of Art, or Conversation, leads us to an intimacy with those that were altogether unknown to us before, and that their relation redresseth the treachery of the memory in the close and juncture of one with the other.

But that I may compasse this my designe with lesse trouble, my greatest care is to make choise of one Language as a rule to measure by, and a principle to reduce all the rest too:  for to pretend to compare them immediately one with another, as some would have it, is to cherish confusion among those things that demand the most of order.