How must the unlearned reader be surprised, when he shall be told that
Mr. Blackwell has neither digged in the ruins of any demolished city,
nor found out the way to the library of Fez; nor had a single book in
his hands, that has not been in the possession of every man that was
inclined to read it, for years and ages; and that his book relates to a
people, who, above all others, have furnished employment to the
studious, and amusements to the idle; who have scarcely left behind them
a coin or a stone, which has not been examined and explained a thousand
times; and whose dress, and food, and household stuff, it has been the
pride of learning to understand.
A man need not fear to incur the imputation of vicious diffidence or
affected humility, who should have forborne to promise many novelties,
when he perceived such multitudes of writers possessed of the same
materials, and intent upon the same purpose. Mr. Blackwell knows well
the opinion of Horace, concerning those that open their undertakings
with magnificent promises; and he knows, likewise, the dictates of
common sense and common honesty, names of greater authority than that of
Horace, who direct, that no man should promise what he cannot perform.
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