the reader into good humour, as a good prologue is to a play, or a
fine symphony to an opera, containing something analogous to the work
itself; so that we may feel its want as a desire not elsewhere to be
gratified. The Italians call the preface _La salsa del libra_, the sauce
of the book, and if well seasoned it creates an appetite in the reader
to devour the book itself. A preface badly composed prejudices the
reader against the work. Authors are not equally fortunate in these
little introductions; some can compose volumes more skilfully than
prefaces, and others can finish a preface who could never be capable of
finishing a book.

On a very elegant preface prefixed to an ill-written book, it was
observed that they ought never to have _come together_; but a sarcastic
wit remarked that he considered such _marriages_ were allowable, for
they were _not of kin_.

In prefaces an affected haughtiness or an affected humility are alike
despicable. There is a deficient dignity in Robertson's; but the
haughtiness is now to our purpose. This is called by the French, "_la
morgue litteraire_," the surly pomposity of literature. It is sometimes
used by writers who have succeeded in their first work, while the
failure of their subsequent productions appears to have given them a
literary hypochondriasm. Dr. Armstrong, after his classical poem, never
shook hands cordially with the public for not relishing his barren
labours. In the _preface_ to his lively "Sketches" he tells us, "he
could give them much bolder strokes as well as more delicate touches,
but that he _dreads the danger of writing too well_, and feels the value
of his own labour too sensibly to bestow it upon the _mobility_." This
is pure milk compared to the gall in the _preface_ to his poems. There
he tells us, "that at last he has taken the _trouble to collect them_!
What he has destroyed would, probably enough, have been better received
by the _great majority of readers_. But he has always _most heartily
despised their opinion_." These prefaces remind one of the _prologi
galeati_, prefaces with a helmet! as St. Jerome entitles the one to his
Version of the Scriptures. These _armed prefaces_ were formerly very
common in the age of literary controversy; for half the business of an
author consisted then, either in replying, or anticipating a reply, to
the attacks of his opponent.

Prefaces ought to be dated; as these become, after a series of editions,
leading and us