it
be an original composition of my own, or not, provided they are but
pleased with it.

I cannot determine the exact number of volumes which this Work will make;
but am persuaded there will be no less than ten or twelve.(47) Students,
with a very moderate application, may easily go through this course of
history in a year, without interrupting their other studies. According to
my plan, my Work should be given to the highest form but one. Youths in
this class are capable of pleasure and improvement from this history; and
I would not have them enter upon that of the Romans till they study
rhetoric.

It would have been useful, and even necessary, to have given some idea of
the ancient authors from whence I have extracted the facts which I here
relate. But the course itself of the history will naturally give me an
opportunity of mentioning them.

In the mean time, it may not be improper to take notice of the
superstitious credulity with which most of these authors are reproached,
on the subject of auguries, auspices, prodigies, dreams, and oracles. And
indeed, we are shocked to see writers, so judicious in all other respects,
lay it down as a kind of law, to relate these particulars with a
scrupulous accuracy; and to dwell gravely on a tedious detail of trifling
and ridiculous ceremonies, such as the flight of birds to the right or
left hand, signs discovered in the smoking entrails of beasts, the greater
or less greediness of chickens in pecking corn, and a thousand similar
absurdities.

It must be confessed, that a sensible reader cannot, without astonishment,
see persons among the ancients in the highest repute for wisdom and
knowledge; generals who were the least liable to be influenced by popular
opinions, and most sensible how necessary it is to take advantage of
auspicious moments; the wisest councils of princes perfectly well skilled
in the arts of government; the most august assemblies of grave senators;
in a word, the most powerful and most learned nations in all ages; to see,
I say, all these so unaccountably weak, as to make to depend on these
trifling practices and absurd observances, the decision of the greatest
affairs, such as the declaring of war, the giving battle, or pursuing a
victory, deliberations that were of the utmost importance, and on which
the fate and welfare of kingdoms frequently depended.

But, at the same time, we must be so just as to own, that their manners,
customs, and laws, woul