roglyphic Tales were undoubtedly written a little before the
creation of the world, and have ever since been preserved, by oral
tradition, in the mountains of Crampcraggiri, an uninhabited island,
not yet discovered. Of these few facts we could have the most authentic
attestations of several clergymen, who remember to have heard them
repeated by old men long before they, the said clergymen, were born.
We do not trouble the reader with these attestations, as we are sure
every body will believe them as much as if they had seen them. It is more
difficult to ascertain the true author. We might ascribe them with great
probability to Kemanrlegorpikos, son of Quat; but besides that we are
not certain that any such person ever existed, it is not clear that he
ever wrote any thing but a book of cookery, and that in heroic verse.
Others give them to Quat's nurse, and a few to Hermes Trismegistus,
though there is a passage in the latter's treatise on the harpsichord
which directly contradicts the account of the first volcano in the
114th. of the Hieroglyphic Tales. As Trismegistus's work is lost, it
is impossible to decide now whether the discordance mentioned is so
positive as has been asserted by many learned men, who only guess at the
opinion of Hermes from other passages in his writings, and who indeed
are not sure whether he was speaking of volcanoes or cheesecakes, for
he drew so ill, that his hieroglyphics may often be taken for the most
opposite things in nature; and as there is no subject which he has not
treated, it is not precisely known what he was discussing in any one
of them.

This is the nearest we can come to any certainty with regard to the
author. But whether he wrote the Tales six thousand years ago, as we
believe, or whether they were written for him within these ten years,
they are incontestably the most ancient work in the world; and though
there is little imagination, and still less invention in them; yet there
are so many passages in them exactly resembling Homer, that any man
living would conclude they were imitated from that great poet, if it was
not certain that Homer borrowed from them, which I shall prove two ways:
first, by giving Homer's parallel passages at the bottom of the page;
and secondly, by translating Homer himself into prose, which shall make
him so unlike himself, that nobody will think he could be an original
writer: and when he is become totally lifeless and insipid, it will be
impossib