Notices respecting New Books. 149 
_.We shall close this article with a short extract from the 
preface, explaining the commentator’s object in producing 
this edition, 
“¢ Tt cannot be wondered,” says he, °¢ if doctrines entirely 
new should require a language in many respects new also. 
What appeared, however, a new language was for the 
most part only the introduction of precise terms instead of 
figurative expressions. If it should seem strange that any 
difficulty should attend describing a plain matter of fact, 
or in understanding such a description, let us recollect, 
that in eyery art or science the great difficulty is to deli- 
neate nature, and that few but adepts are alive to the nicer 
and most accurate parts of such delineations. 
« Mr. Hunter found himself so frequently ill understood, 
that at last he was prevailed on to believe there must be 
some incapacity about him in the use of common language. 
That he was totally unacquainted with those ornaments in 
writing or speaking, which serve to illustrate a subject, or 
to awaken the attention, cannot be questioned; but his 
language was always as perspicuous as might be expected 
from the clearness of his conceptions. This language, 
however, was not popular; and I believe, if we except 
his posthumous production, every thing he wrote for the 
public was revised by his friends. 
“* The Treatise on the Venereal Disease was the work 
which he was particularly anxious should come before the 
world in the most perfect form: ‘I am resolved,’ said 
he to his Commentator, * that it shall not be a mere books. 
seller’s job, every subsequent edition rendering the former 
useless. The truth of the doctrines IT have proved so long 
as to reduce them to conviction; and, in order to render 
the language intelligible, I meet a committee of three gen- 
tlemen, to whose correction every page is submitted.’ Ags 
all this was very generally known, never were expectations 
raised higher of any work, nor in some respects more ge- 
neraily disappointed. . 
_ £* To. compliment Mr. Hunter’s coadjutors would be su- 
perfluous, Two of them, being authors, have convinced 
the world of their abilities in producing original composi- 
tions. Of the third, itis enough to say he was Dr. David 
Pitcairn. But these gentlemen, accustomed to the best 
company, that is, to each other, and to a circle as en- 
lightened as themselves, were not aware of the difficulties 
that attended their undertaking, To make Mr. Hunter in- 
telligible by the short introduction prefixed to this work, 
never could have entered the conception of men who were 
K 3 not 
