ous speculations, and planted
trees, or cultivated flowers.

Those that have exalted their thoughts above the minuter parts of the
creation, who have observed the motions of the heavenly bodies, and
attempted systems of the universe, have not been denied the honour which
they deserved by so great an attempt, whatever has been their success.
Nor have those mathematicians been rejected, who have applied their
science to the common purposes of life; or those that have deviated into
the kindred arts of tacticks, architecture, and fortification.

Even arts of far less importance have found their authors, nor have
these authors been despised by the boundless curiosity of the
proprietors of the Harleian library. The writers on horsemanship and
fencing are more numerous and more bulky than could be expected by those
who reflect, how seldom those excel in either, whom their education has
qualified to compose books.

The admirer of Greek and Roman literature will meet, in this collection,
with editions little known to the most inquisitive criticks, and which
have escaped the observation of those whose great employment has been
the collation of copies; nor will he find only the most ancient editions
of Faustus, Jenson, Spira, Sweynheim and Pannartz, but the most
accurate, likewise, and beautiful of Colinaeus, the Juntae, Plantin,
Aldus, the Stephens, and Elzevir, with the commentaries and observations
of the most learned editors.

Nor are they accompanied only with the illustrations of those who have
confined their attempts to particular writers, but of those, likewise,
who have treated on any part of the Greek or Roman antiquities, their
laws, their customs, their dress, their buildings, their wars, their
revenues, or the rites and ceremonies of their worship, and those that
have endeavoured to explain any of their authors from their statues or
their coins.

Next to the ancients, those writers deserve to be mentioned, who, at the
restoration of literature, imitated their language and their style with
so great success, or who laboured with so much industry to make them
understood: such were Philelphus and Politian, Scaliger and Buchanan,
and the poets of the age of Leo the tenth; these are, likewise, to be
found in this library, together with the Deliciae, or collections of all
nations.

Painting is so nearly allied to poetry, that it cannot be wondered that
those who have so much esteemed the one, have paid an equal regard