[From Manx Soc vol 1 Sacheverell's Survey c.1692]

PREFACE TO THE READER.

CUSTOM has made some sort of address to the reader thought so necessary, that it is looked on as a breach of good manners not to offer an excuse for the errors of the press, or our own. For the first I must refer 'him to the table of Erratas,⁽⁴⁾ which by reason of my great distance from town, are more numerous than I could have wished. As for the second, I have nothing to add by way of excuse; but as the whole is the effect of mere idleness, so if it chance to amuse any person as idle as myself, I have all I dare pretend to, and yet even in this I almost despair of success; for the place is so obscure, and the matter so narrow, that it is incapable of those curious transitions, those admirable reflections, and those refined characters which at once serve to adorn and to instruct; though by taking the looser way of essay, I have endeavoured to render the whole as diverting as I could. I know the want of a Natural History has been objected, and an account of the House of Derby ; but as I have endeavoured to supply the first in my letter to my ingenious friend, Mr.⁽⁵⁾ Addison of Magdalen College, so the second may be the subject of another essay, if these find acceptance in the world; if not, I have said too much already.