jections of unbelievers: and he durst not,
"seeing the nature of this book, venture it abroad in so wanton and lewd
an age" (Preface to the Life of Mahomet, p. 10).

In the fifth and sixth volumes the revolutions of the empire and the
world are most rapid, various, and instructive; and the Greek or Roman
historians are checked by the hostile narratives of the barbarians of
the East and the West. [Note: I have followed the judicious precept of
the Abbe de Mably, (Maniere d'ecrire l'Hist., p. 110,) who advises the
historian not to dwell too minutely on the decay of the eastern empire;
but to consider the barbarian conquerors as a more worthy subject of his
narrative. "Fas est et ab hoste doceri."]

It was not till after many designs, and many trials, that I preferred,
as I still prefer, the method of grouping my picture by nations; and
the seeming neglect of chronological order is surely compensated by
the superior merits of interest and perspicuity. The style of the first
volume is, in my opinion, somewhat crude and elaborate; in the second
and third it is ripened into ease, correctness, and numbers; but in the
three last I may have been seduced by the facility of my pen, and the
constant habit of speaking one language and writing another may have
infused some mixture of Gallic idioms. Happily for my eyes, I have
always closed my studies with the day, and commonly with the morning;
and a long, but temperate, labour has been accomplished, without
fatiguing either the mind or body; but when I computed the remainder of
my time and my task, it was apparent that, according to the season of
publication, the delay of a month would be productive of that of a year.
I was now straining for the goal, and in the last winter many evenings
were borrowed from the social pleasures of Lausanne. I could now wish
that a pause, an interval, had been allowed for a serious revisal.

I have presumed to mark the moment of conception: I shall now
commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or
rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and
twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer
house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in
a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the
country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was
serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and
all nature was