predecessors.

However, that neither the world nor ourselves may any longer suffer
by such misunderstandings, I have been prevailed on, after much
importunity from my friends, to travail in a complete and laborious
dissertation upon the prime productions of our society, which,
besides their beautiful externals for the gratification of
superficial readers, have darkly and deeply couched under them the
most finished and refined systems of all sciences and arts, as I do
not doubt to lay open by untwisting or unwinding, and either to draw
up by exantlation or display by incision.

This great work was entered upon some years ago by one of our most
eminent members. He began with the "History of Reynard the Fox,"
but neither lived to publish his essay nor to proceed farther in so
useful an attempt, which is very much to be lamented, because the
discovery he made and communicated to his friends is now universally
received; nor do I think any of the learned will dispute that famous
treatise to be a complete body of civil knowledge, and the
revelation, or rather the apocalypse, of all state arcana. But the
progress I have made is much greater, having already finished my
annotations upon several dozens from some of which I shall impart a
few hints to the candid reader, as far as will be necessary to the
conclusion at which I aim.

The first piece I have handled is that of "Tom Thumb," whose author
was a Pythagorean philosopher. This dark treatise contains the
whole scheme of the metempsychosis, deducing the progress of the
soul through all her stages.