VI PREFACE. 



&quot; we should therefore make a slight judgment, 

 &quot; upon them : but contrariwise because it is clear, 

 &quot; that the writings which recite those fables, of all 

 &quot; the writings of men, next to sacred writ, are the 

 &quot; most ancient ; and that the fables themselves are 

 &quot; far more ancient than they (being they are alleged 

 &quot; by those writers, not as excogitated by them, but 

 &quot; as credited and recepted before) seem to be, 

 &quot; like a thin rarified air, which from the traditions 

 &quot; of more ancient nations, fell into the flutes of the 

 &quot; Grecians.&quot; 



This tract seems, in former times, to have been 

 much valued, for the same reason, perhaps, which 

 Bacon assigns* for the currency of the Essays ; &quot; be 

 cause they are like the late new half- pence, which, 

 though the silver is good, yet the pieces are small.&quot; 

 Of this tract, Archbishop Tenison in his Baconiana, 

 says, &quot; In the seventh place, I may reckon his book 

 &quot; De Sapientia Veterum, written by him in Latin, 

 &quot; and set forth a second time with enlargement ;f and 

 &quot; translated into English by Sir Arthur Georges : a 

 &quot; book in which the sages of former times are ren- 

 &quot; dered more wise than it may be they were, by so 

 &quot; dextrous an interpreter of their fables. It is this 

 &quot; book which Mr. Sandys means, in those words which 

 &quot; he hath put before his notes, on the Metamor- 

 &quot; phosis of Ovid. Of modern writers, I have 



* See page vii of preface to Vol. I. 



f In the year 1617, in Latin. It was published 

 in 1618 in French in 1619. 



in Italian 



