PREFACE. IX 



tween it and the subject which had led me to it. All 

 this was done without confederacy, consultation, or the 

 least reference either to becoming scientific or to the 

 writing of a book; for I knew not then, and I know 

 not now, whether all who have had the same oppor- 

 tunities may not know much more of the matter in all 

 its bearings than I do. 



I mention these circumstances for no ostentatious 

 purpose, and they are indeed nothing to boast of, but 

 rather the reverse. I mention them merely to ground 

 upon them a claim to originality, such originality as 

 there can be upon a subject, upon which so many have 

 written, or to speak more correctly, upon which the 

 same writing has appeared in so many different forms. 

 Though I have laboured to avoid them all, yet I would 

 rather stand convicted of dullness, vanity, and error 

 jointly, than have it said that I had appropriated, in 

 any way, the labours of another man, how strongly 

 soever I may have felt their value and superiority. An 

 original book, be it ever so faulty in the plan, or feeble 

 in the execution, always adds something to the mass of 

 knowledge. A compilation always debases that which 

 is already known ; and therefore, both the principle and 

 the practice, by whomsoever they may be held, exercised 

 and encouraged, are to me equally revolting as a robbery 

 upon the parties from whom they are purloined, and a 

 fraud upon the public, always the more mischievous, 

 and therefore the more base and contemptible, the more 

 influential the party under whose sanction it is per- 

 petrated. 



We are all debtors for knowledge to those who have 

 preceded us, and it is one of the advantages of that most 



