A preface, being the entrance to a book, should invite by its beauty. An
elegant porch announces the splendour of the interior. I have observed
that ordinary readers skip over these little elaborate compositions. The
ladies consider them as so many pages lost, which might better be
employed in the addition of a picturesque scene, or a tender letter to
their novels. For my part I always gather amusement from a preface, be
it awkwardly or skilfully written; for dulness, or impertinence, may
raise a laugh for a page or two. A preface is frequently a superior
composition to the work itself: for, long before the days of Johnson, it
had been a custom for many authors to solicit for this department of
their work the ornamental contribution of a man of genius. Cicero tells
his friend Atticus, that he had a volume of prefaces or introductions
always ready by him to be used as circumstances required. These must
have been like our periodical essays. A good preface is as essential to
put 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 littéraire_," 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 useful circumstances in literary history.
Fuller with quaint humour observes on INDEXES--"An INDEX is a necessary
implement, and no impediment of a book, except in the same sense wherein
the carriages of an army are termed _Impedimenta_. Without this, a large
author is but a labyrinth without a clue to direct the reader therein. I
confess there is a lazy kind of learning which is _only Indical_; when
scholars (like adders which only bite the horse's heels) nibble but at
the tables, which are _calces librorum_, neglecting the body of the
book. But though the idle deserve no crutches (let not a staff be used
by them, but on them), pity it is the weary should be denied the benefit
thereof, and industrious scholars prohibited the accommodation of an
index, most used by those who most pretend to contemn it."