Hieroglyphic Tales: Preface

Preface

As the invaluable present I am making to the world may not please all
tastes, from the gravity of the matter, the solidity of the reasoning,
and the deep learning contained in the ensuing sheets, it is necessary
to make some apology for producing this work in so trifling an age, when
nothing will go down but temporary politics, personal satire, and idle
romances. The true reason then for my surmounting all these objections
was singly this: I was apprehensive lest the work should be lost to
posterity; and though it may be condemned at present, I can have no
doubt but it will be treated with due reverence some hundred ages hence,
when wisdom and learning shall have gained their proper ascendant over
mankind, and when men shall only read for instruction and improvement of
their minds. As I shall print an hundred thousand copies, some, it may
be hoped, will escape the havoc that is made of moral works, and then
this jewel will shine forth in its genuine lustre. I was in the greater
hurry to consign this work to the press, as I foresee that the art of
printing will ere long be totally lost, like other useful discoveries
well known to the ancients. Such were the art of dissolving rocks with
hot vinegar, of teaching elephants to dance on the slack rope, of making
malleable glass, of writing epic poems that any body would read after
they had been published a month, and the stupendous invention of new
religions, a secret of which illiterate Mahomet was the last person
possessed.

Notwithstanding this my zeal for good letters, and the ardour of my
universal citizenship, (for I declare I design this present for all
nations) there are some small difficulties in the way, that prevent my
conferring this my great benefaction on the world compleatly and all at
once. I am obliged to produce it in small portions, and therefore beg
the prayers of all good and wise men that my life may be prolonged to
me, till I shall be able to publish the whole work, no man else being
capable of executing the charge so well as myself, for reasons that my
modesty will not permit me to specify. In the mean time, as it is the
duty of an editor to acquaint the world with what relates to himself as
well as his author, I think it right to mention the causes that compel
me to publish this work in numbers. The common reason of such proceeding
is to make a book dearer for the ease of the purchasers, it being
supposed that most people had rather give twenty shillings by sixpence a
fortnight, than pay ten shillings once for all. Public spirited as this
proceeding is, I must confess my reasons are more and merely personal.
As my circumstances are very moderate, and barely sufficient to maintain
decently a gentleman of my abilities and learning, I cannot afford to
print at once an hundred thousand copies of two volumes in folio, for
that will be the whole mass of Hieroglyphic Tales when the work is
perfected. In the next place, being very asthmatic, and requiring a free
communication of air, I lodge in the uppermost story of a house in an
alley not far from St. Mary Axe; and as a great deal of good company
lodges in the same mansion, it was by a considerable favour that I could
obtain a single chamber to myself; which chamber is by no means large
enough to contain the whole impression, for I design to vend the copies
myself, and, according to the practice of other great men, shall sign
the first sheet my self with my own hand.

Desirous as I am of acquainting the world with many more circumstances
relative to myself, some private considerations prevent my indulging
their curiosity any farther at present; but I shall take care to leave
so minute an account of myself to some public library, that the future
commentators and editors of this work shall not be deprived of all
necessary lights. In the mean time I beg the reader to accept the
temporary compensation of an account of the author whose work I am
publishing.

The Hieroglyphic Tales were undoubtedly written a little before the
creation of the world, and have ever since been preserved, by oral
tradition, in the mountains of Crampcraggiri, an uninhabited island,
not yet discovered. Of these few facts we could have the most authentic
attestations of several clergymen, who remember to have heard them
repeated by old men long before they, the said clergymen, were born.
We do not trouble the reader with these attestations, as we are sure
every body will believe them as much as if they had seen them. It is more
difficult to ascertain the true author. We might ascribe them with great
probability to Kemanrlegorpikos, son of Quat; but besides that we are
not certain that any such person ever existed, it is not clear that he
ever wrote any thing but a book of cookery, and that in heroic verse.
Others give them to Quat's nurse, and a few to Hermes Trismegistus,
though there is a passage in the latter's treatise on the harpsichord
which directly contradicts the account of the first volcano in the
114th. of the Hieroglyphic Tales. As Trismegistus's work is lost, it
is impossible to decide now whether the discordance mentioned is so
positive as has been asserted by many learned men, who only guess at the
opinion of Hermes from other passages in his writings, and who indeed
are not sure whether he was speaking of volcanoes or cheesecakes, for
he drew so ill, that his hieroglyphics may often be taken for the most
opposite things in nature; and as there is no subject which he has not
treated, it is not precisely known what he was discussing in any one
of them.

This is the nearest we can come to any certainty with regard to the
author. But whether he wrote the Tales six thousand years ago, as we
believe, or whether they were written for him within these ten years,
they are incontestably the most ancient work in the world; and though
there is little imagination, and still less invention in them; yet there
are so many passages in them exactly resembling Homer, that any man
living would conclude they were imitated from that great poet, if it was
not certain that Homer borrowed from them, which I shall prove two ways:
first, by giving Homer's parallel passages at the bottom of the page;
and secondly, by translating Homer himself into prose, which shall make
him so unlike himself, that nobody will think he could be an original
writer: and when he is become totally lifeless and insipid, it will be
impossible but these Tales should be preferred to the Iliad; especially
as I design to put them into a kind of style that shall be neither verse
nor prose; a diction lately much used in tragedies and heroic poems, the
former of which are really heroic poems from want of probability, as an
antico-moderno epic poem is in fact a meer tragedy, having little or no
change of scene, no incidents but a ghost and a storm, and no events but
the deaths of the principal actors.

I will not detain the reader longer from the perusal of this invaluable
work; but I must beseech the public to be expeditious in taking off the
whole impression, as fast as I can get it printed; because I must inform
them that I have a more precious work in contemplation; namely, a new
Roman history, in which I mean to ridicule, detect and expose, all
ancient virtue, and patriotism, and shew from original papers which
I am going to write, and which I shall afterwards bury in the ruins of
Carthage and then dig up, that it appears by the letters of Hanno the
Punic embassador at Rome, that Scipio was in the pay of Hannibal, and
that the dilatoriness of Fabius proceeded from his being a pensioner
of the Same general. I own this discovery will pierce my heart; but as
morality is best taught by shewing how little effect it had on the best
of men, I will sacrifice the most virtuous names for the instruction of
the present wicked generation; and I cannot doubt but when once they
have learnt to detest the favourite heroes of antiquity, they will
become good subjects of the most pious king that ever lived since David,
who expelled the established royal family, and then sung psalms to the
memory of Jonathan, to whose prejudice he had succeeded to the throne.

Back to chapter list of: Hieroglyphic Tales