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PREFACE
All nations have been
delighted with fictitious story, for it suits all men. Real history,
which exhibits the general events of the world, teaches us less real
wisdom, for it seldom or never concerns us individually; it may instruct
the warrior and the statesman, but we are not all warriors and
statesmen; it may explain the art of managing empires, but, thank
heaven, we are not ail born to the management of empires: amidst all its
instruction it teaches us little of the human lieart, for those who make
the greatest display in history are generally performing their parts in
a mask; their actions are perfectly open to the world, but their hearts,
if they have any, are mostly kept to themselves. It is for this reason
that history is inferior to biography; the latter instructs us more
particularly in the cause and origin of human actions: the knowledge of
private life is the foundation of wisdom, that of public life is the
superstructure: let us study ourselves first as men, and we may study
ourselves afterwards as public characters.
But Biography is generally confined to the lives of those whose talents
have rendered them conspicuous in the world; if we never hear of a mans
existence from his own talents, we shall not easily be persuaded to hear
of him by the talents of his biographer; and after all his biographer
may know nothing of his subject, but what he gathers from his writings,
his traditional sayings, or his parish register. Thus neither History
nor Biography can instruct us sufficiently in that class of mankind who
compose the greatest part of what is called the world; yet it is as
necessary to a complete knowledge of mankind to understand the little
passions and adventures of private life, as it is to a complete botanist
to understand the thorn that creeps through a hedge, or the nettle that
hides itself in a ditch.
To supply this deficiency the instructors of mankind produced the Tale
and the Novel, a species of literature which like all others has been
abused, and abused most because it is most adapted to please us. The
wisest of the ancients delivered their conceptions of the Deity and
their lessons of morality in fables and parables; if the ignorant
mistook their intentions, if they mistook the fable for the moral, and
worshipped the vial that contained the truth for the pure essence
within, it argues nothing but their own folly; if in our own times, the
Tales of celebrated novelists have been wretchedly copied by those who
could not apply them to human life, it argues nothing but the ignorance
of the copyists: such writers we, shall gladly let alone; we do not wish
to disturb them in their marble-covered monuments; we shall attend
rather to the living dead than to the dead living. In short, our title
page, if it speaks the truth, will speak best for our intentions: we
will not hazard the incredulity of our readers by promising much;
perhaps we shall perform but little, but at any rate we shall act with
caution, and with our best taste, and our little may probably be good.
Let us not be deceived by names; the titles of Biographer and Historian
are nobler sounds than those of Novelist and Writer of Tales, but let it
be recollected that there is more real wisdom in the Fables of Ęsop than
in all the Histories of Europe put together. L. H.
Volume 1
MacKenzie, Goldsmith, Brooke
Volume 2
Voltaire
Volume 3
Johnson, Marmontel
Volume 4
Marmontel, Hawkesworth |
