PREFACE.

of discretion and resistance to the squalls and storms of common and erroneous opinions. This is why, in order to omit nothing that you might desire for your enlightenment, it is only necessary to deduce and explain two words in good faith, and this with the brevity that is required for a Preface.

The first of these will notify you and perhaps make you marvel at the fact that I have taken the occasion to compose such a laborious ApologyA formal written defense of a person or idea, from the Greek 'apologia'. over an encounter of almost no consequence. You know, as I believe, that toward the end of last Lentoriginal: "Caresme"; the forty-day period of fasting and penitence before Easter., a small book was published entitled, New judgment of what has been said and written for and against the book of the Curious Doctrine of the wits of this time: at the end of which, he who was the Author had inserted two very short and succinct invectives against Homer and Virgil. For what purpose and with how little reason, this is not the place to discourse upon; but it remains that in the one regarding Virgil, he accuses him of having been a notorious Enchanter and Necromanceroriginal: "Necromantien"; one who practices magic involving communication with the dead., and of having done an infinity of marvelous things by means of his Magic. This which I recog-