writer: and when he is become totally lifeless and insipid, it will be
impossible but these Tales should be preferred to the Iliad; especially
as I design to put them into a kind of style that shall be neither verse
nor prose; a diction lately much used in tragedies and heroic poems, the
former of which are really heroic poems from want of probability, as an
antico-moderno epic poem is in fact a meer tragedy, having little or no
change of scene, no incidents but a ghost and a storm, and no events but
the deaths of the principal actors.

I will not detain the reader longer from the perusal of this invaluable
work; but I must beseech the public to be expeditious in taking off the
whole impression, as fast as I can get it printed; because I must inform
them that I have a more precious work in contemplation; namely, a new
Roman history, in which I mean to ridicule, detect and expose, all
ancient virtue, and patriotism, and shew from original papers which
I am going to write, and which I shall afterwards bury in the ruins of
Carthage and then dig up, that it appears by the letters of Hanno the
Punic embassador at Rome, that Scipio was in the pay of Hannibal, and
that the dilatoriness of Fabius proceeded from his being a pensioner
of the Same general. I own this discovery will pierce my heart; but as
morality is best taught by shewing how little effect it had on the best
of men, I will sacrifice the most virtuous names for the instruction of
the present wicked generation; and I cannot doubt but when once they
have learnt to detest the favourite heroes of antiquity, they will
become good subjects of the most pious king that ever lived since David,
who expelled the established royal family, and then sung psalms to the
memory of Jonathan, to whose prejudice he had succeeded to the throne.