jo UNIVERSAL ERUDITION.' 



offers fo many fources of inftruction, that it 

 cannot proceed but from negligence or idlcnefs. 

 Even among the leaft civilized people, hiftory 

 has been at all times held in efteem. Before 

 the ufe of letters were known to mankind, they 

 tranfmitted to their pofterity the actions of their 

 anccftors, their heroes, and the founders of their 

 nations, by hymns or fongs, in which poetry, ig- 

 norant as it then was, conflantly mixed fable 

 with truth. It is for. this reafon, doubtlefs, that 

 the moft ancient people, and even the Greeks, 

 confounded thefe two terms, calling hiftory 

 fometimes fable, and fable, hiilory. For the word 

 biftory is derived from the Greek verb iroftTv, 

 which fignifies to contemplate or confider. Un- 

 der this collective term, therefore, they compre- 

 hended not only the knowledge of things paft, 

 but alfo mythology, Efopean and Milefian fables, 

 romances, tragedy, comedy, pantomimes, &c. 

 But words like thefe, which are too univerfal, 

 "conftanftly difcover the indigence of a language; 

 for, by comprehending too many objects, they 

 fcrve only to create confufion in our ideas, ;u 

 v/ell as in the fciences. It is for this reafon 

 that the moft fagacious of modern literati endea- 

 vour to difpel the chaos of erudition, and to 

 give to each word, each term of art, a fixed and 

 determinate fignification, and not to compre- 

 hend, under the denomination of a fcience, any 

 objects that do not abfglutely and neceflarily re- 

 late thereto. 



HI. Ac- 



