Notwithstanding all this evidence, I have some good reasons for admiring prefaces; and barren as the investigation may appear, some literary amusement can be gathered.

In the first place, I observe that a prefacer is generally a most accomplished liar.  Is an author to be introduced to the public? the preface is as genuine a panegyric, and nearly as long a one, as that of Pliny’s on the Emperor Trajan.  Such a preface is ringing an alarum bell for an author.  If we look closer into the characters of these masters of ceremony, who thus sport with and defy the judgment of their reader, and who, by their extravagant panegyric, do considerable injury to the cause of taste, we discover that some accidental occurrence has occasioned this vehement affection for the author, and which, like that of another kind of love, makes one commit so many extravagances.

Prefaces are indeed rarely sincere.  It is justly observed by Shenstone, in his prefatory Essay to the “Elegies,” that “discourses prefixed to poetry inculcate such tenets as may exhibit the performance to the greatest advantage.  The fabric is first raised, and the measures by which we are to judge of it are afterwards adjusted.”  This observation might be exemplified by more instances than some readers might choose to read.  It will be sufficient to observe with what art both Pope and Fontenelle have drawn up their Essays on the nature of Pastoral Poetry, that the rules they wished to establish might be adapted to their own pastorals.  Has accident made some ingenious student apply himself to a subordinate branch of literature, or to some science which is not highly esteemed—­look in the preface for its sublime panegyric.  Collectors of coins, dresses, and butterflies, have astonished the world with eulogiums which would raise their particular studies into the first ranks of philosophy.

It would appear that there is no lie to which a prefacer is not tempted.  I pass over the commodious prefaces of Dryden, which were ever adapted to the poem and not to poetry, to the author and not to literature.

The boldest preface-liar was Aldus Manutius, who, having printed an edition of Aristophanes, first published in the preface that Saint Chrysostom was accustomed to place this comic poet under his pillow, that he might always have his works at hand.  As, in that age, a saint was supposed to possess every human talent, good taste not excepted, Aristophanes thus recommended became a general favourite.  The anecdote lasted for nearly two centuries; and what was of greater consequence to Aldus, quickened the sale of his Aristophanes.  This ingenious invention of the prefacer of Aristophanes at length was detected by Menage.