Finally, we entreat of you to read this book in the temper which a certain English worthy recommends for his own.
“One or two things yet I was desirous to have amended, if I could, concerning the manner of handling this my subject, for which I must apologize, deprecari, and upon better advice give the friendly reader notice. I neglect phrases, and labour wholly to inform my reader’s understanding, not to please his ear. ’Tis my study to express myself readily and plainly as it happens: so that, as a river runs, sometimes precipitate and swift, then dull and slow: now direct, then per ambages: now deep, then shallow: now muddy, then clear: now broad, then narrow; doth my style flow now serious, then light, as the present subject required, or as at the time I was affected. And if thou vouchsafe to read this Treatise, it shall seem to thee no otherwise than the way to an ordinary traveller, sometimes fair, sometimes foul; here champion, there enclosed; barren in one place, better soil in another. By woods, groves, hills, dales, plains, and lead thee per ardua montium et lubrica vallium et roscida cespitum et glebosa camporum, through variety of objects, to that which thou shalt like or haply dislike.”
If thou art scholarly, Gentle Reader, running to and fro on Old or New Roads may do thee good. It will afford thee time to rest eye and hand, and furnish thee with more glimpses of this working world than are to be seen from a library-window. But if it chance that thou be not clerkly, then mayest thou both ‘run to and fro’ and ‘increase thy knowledge’ even with the aid of so poor a guide as he who now bids thee “Heartily Farewell.”
Footnotes:
[9] The appellation of this, the earliest Roman road, affords another instructive example of the connection between the necessary wants of man and civilization. Salt, among the first needs of the city of Romulus, produced the path from the Salt-works; and the convenience of the Salt-work Road led ultimately to the construction of the Appian, Flaminian, and Æmilian.
[10] The first introduction of stirrups was probably not earlier than the end of the sixth century, a.d. See Beckmann’s ‘History of Inventions and Discoveries,’ Eng. Trans., 1817, vol. ii. pp. 255–270.
[18] It is acknowledged on all hands that no people talk so much about weather as the English. It is also true that no literature contains so many descriptions of the sensations dependent on the seasons. A French or Italian poet generally goes to Arcadia to fetch images proper for “a fine day.” We, on the contrary, paint from the life. Chaucer luxuriates, in his opening lines of the ‘Canterbury Tales,’ on the blessings and virtues of “April shoures.” Our modern novelists are always very diffuse meteorologists. In lands where the seasons are unhappily uniform, the natives are debarred from this unfailing topic of conversation. Hajji Baba, in Mr. Morier’s pleasant tale, is amazed at being told at Ispahan, by the surgeon of the English Embassy, that “it was a fine day.” On the banks of the South American rivers, mosquitoes afford a useful substitute for meteorological remarks.—“How did you sleep last night?” “Sleep! not a wink. I was hitting at the mosquitoes all night, and am, you see, bitten like a roach notwithstanding.”
[21a] The historian might have added to this description of Roman carriages an allusion to the sumptuousness of Roman harness. Apuleius informs us that “necklaces of gold and silver thread embroidered with pearls encircled the necks of the horses; that the head-bands glittered with gems; and the saddles, traces, and reins were cased in bright ribbons.”
[21b] Not always, on horseback: for while the knight, as his Latin designation eques implied, was always mounted on a charger, his lady sometimes rode beside him on an ass:—
“A loyely ladie rode him faire beside,
Upon a lowly asse, more white than snow;
Yet she much whiter; but the same did hide
Under a vele, that wimpled was full low;
And over all a black stole did she throw:
As one that inly mourned so was she sad,
And heavie sate upon her palfrey slow.”