TO THE READER. IT is confessed that there are already many books published on the present subject, two or three of which are in our own tongue; and those, without doubt, will by some men, be thought enough. But since this can be the opinion but of a few, and those unexperienced people, it has been judged more proper to regard the advice of many grave persons of known skill in the art of teaching; who, though they must acknowledge that Goodwin, in his Antiquities, has done very well in the whole, yet cannot but own that he has been too short in this point; that Rosse also, though he deserves commendation for his Mythology, is yet very tedious, and as much too large; and that Galtruchius as D'signy has translated and dished him out to us, is so confused and artless in his method, as well as unfortunate in his corrections, that it in nowise answers the purpose it was designed for; and hereupon this work was recommended to be translated, being first well approved by learned gentlemen, as is above mentioned, for its easy method and agreeable plainness. Besides, it having been written by so learned a person, and that for the use of so great a prince, and so universally received in our neighbour nations, as to have sold several impressions in a short time, there was no room to doubt of its being well received here. As for the quotations out of the Latin poets, it was considered awhile, whether they should be translated or not; but it was, at last, judged proper to print them in English, either from those who already rendered them well, or, where they could not be had, to give a new translation of them, that so nothing of the whole work might be out of the reach of the young scholar's understanding, for whose benefit chiefly this version was intended. In this impression, care has been taken, not only to move the citations to the ends of the pages, sections, or chapters, which before lying in the body of the discourse, and making part of it, the sense was greatly TO THE READER. interrupted, the connexion disturbed, and thereby a confusion often created in the understandings of some of those younger scholars, into whose hands it was put, by such an undue and improper mixture of English and Latin, of prose and verse; but further, to make it still more plain and familiar, and thereby better suited to their capacity, and more proper for their use, such ambiguous expressions and obscure phrases have been removed, and such perplexed periods rectified, as had been found either to cause misunderstanding of the author's meaning, or to lead the scholar into barbarism in rendering any part of it into Latin, when such translations have been imposed as a task. And lastly, a complete and significant Index, instead of a verbal one before, has been added to this impression, whereby any thing material in the whole book may be readily found out; the usefulness of which need not be mentioned here, since the want of it, in all former editions, has been much complained of by most of those many masters who have made use hereof in their schools. ANDREW TOOKE. CHARTERHOUSE, JUNE 30, 1713. tt In this thirty-second edition, the citations are all placed at the bottom of the pages, and several errors and omissions rectified, by referring to the different authors. The text also has undergone a revisal, and received some material emendations. [Note of the London Publisher. |
