y, explanation of
coins or inscriptions, disquisitions on controverted history,
conjectures on doubtful geography, or any other of those petty works
upon which learned ingenuity is sometimes employed.

To these accounts of temporary transactions and fugitive performances,
we shall add some dissertations on things more permanent and stable;
some inquiries into the history of nature, which has hitherto been
treated, as if mankind were afraid of exhausting it. There are, in our
own country, many things and places worthy of note that are yet little
known, and every day gives opportunities of new observations which are
made and forgotten. We hope to find means of extending and perpetuating
physiological discoveries; and with regard to this article, and all
others, entreat the assistance of curious and candid correspondents.

We shall labour to attain as much exactness as can be expected in such
variety, and shall give as much variety as can consist with reasonable
exactness; for this purpose, a selection has been made of men qualified
for the different parts of the work, and each has the employment
assigned him, which he is supposed most able to discharge.

A DISSERTATION UPON THE GREEK COMEDY,
TRANSLATED FROM BRUMOY[1].

ADVERTISEMENT.

I conclude this work, according to my promise, with an account of the
comick theatre, and entreat the reader, whether a favourer or an enemy
of the ancient drama, not to pass his censure upon the authors or upon
me, without a regular perusal of this whole work. For, though it seems
to be composed of pieces of which each may precede or follow without
dependence upon the other, yet all the parts, taken together, form a
system which would be destroyed by their disjunction. Which way shall we
come at the knowledge of the ancients' shows, but by comparing together
all that is left of them? The value and necessity of this comparison
determined me to publish all, or to publish nothing. Besides, the
reflections on each piece, and on the general taste of antiquity, which,
in my opinion, are not without importance, have a kind of obscure
gradation, which I have carefully endeavoured to preserve, and of which
the thread would be lost by him who should slightly glance sometimes
upon one piece, and sometimes upon another. It is a structure which I
have endeavoured to make as near to regularity as I could, and which
must be seen in its full extent, and in proper succession. The reader
who skip