PllEFACE. 



book, he has taken up his pen with the deter- 

 mination of neither borrowing, without proper 

 acknowledgment, from other works, nor trust- 

 ing to any thing from the experiments of 

 other persons. 



From having thus declined all assistance, 

 and wholly confined himself to the limits of 

 his own humble experience, he will have to 

 apologize perhaps for some errors, and no 

 doubt for many deficiencies. But even this, 

 it is hoped, will make the work less objec- 

 tionable than swelling its dimensions to an 

 unreasonable size, by relating incidents that 

 possibly never occurred, or commencing a 

 system of piracy on other authors, which no- 

 thing should induce him to do, after the very 

 flattering manner in which his former editions 

 have been received by the Reviewers and the 

 Public. 



He now offers to their notice the sixth 

 edition of this work, which has, of late, been 

 in many parts materially altered and en- 

 larged. The improvements here added have 



