I shall not pretend to say any thing here concerning the origin of
Fireworks; those who are willing to be better informed of that point,
may have recourse to the treatise of M. F***, on that subject, who has
handled this point in a most elaborate manner; and perhaps it may be
no displeasing surprize to the reader, to find that, while he imagines
himself only concerned about an invention which, he could not have
thought to have subsisted above 422 years, he is carried gradually
back to the age of Augustus, and from thence to the time of the Trojan
war.
It is sufficient for me that Fireworks have subsisted a long time, and
still continue to do so among the politest nations of both Europe and
Asia. I am very well aware that it may here be objected, there are
already treatises published on this subject, and some of those
voluminous ones; but then those are either translations from the
French and Italian authors, &c. which in themselves are both imperfect
and erroneous; or else they are very small abridgments, and those
little, not of the art itself, only on some particular branches of it.
I have endeavoured, in the following treatise, to avoid prolixity as
much as possible without being obscure; the rules I have laid down,
are as plain as was in my power to make them, and I have endeavoured
to carry the reader in by the most gradual manner, from the minutest
circumstances to the highest, and have been careful to keep to the
subject I first proposed, only as an Essay on Artificial Fire-works. I
own I cannot help reflecting with some kind of chagrin, that, whenever
we have had occasion for any of these sort of diversions to be
exhibited in England, we have almost always had recourse to foreigners
to execute them; if this has been owing to the ignorance of our own
people on this subject, I shall be very happy if it is in my power to
correct it; if it is only owing to that prevailing fondness we
entertain for every thing that is foreign, I know no remedy for that
evil but time and experience.
June 20, 1765.