Sangrado, who used his Patients as a Vintner doth his Wine-Vessels, by letting
out their Blood, and filling them up with Water. Doth not every one, who is the
least versed in Physical History, know that Spain was not the Country in which
this Doctor lived? The same Writer hath likewise erred in the Country of his
Archbishop, as well as that of those great Personages whose Understandings were
too sublime to taste any thing but Tragedy, and in many others. The same
Mistakes may likewise be observed in Scarron, the Arabian Nights, the History of
Marianne and Le Paisan Parvenu, and perhaps some few other Writers of this
Class, whom I have not read, or do not at present recollect; for I would by no
means be thought to comprehend those Persons of surprising Genius, the Authors
of immense Romances, or the modern Novel and Atalantis Writers; who without any
Assistance from Nature or History, record Persons who never were, or will be,
and Facts which never did nor possibly can happen: Whose Heroes are of their own
Creation, and their Brains the Chaos whence all their Materials are collected.
Not that such Writers deserve no Honour; so far otherwise, that perhaps they
merit the highest: for what can be nobler than to be as an Example of the
wonderful Extent of human Genius. One may apply to them what Balzac says of
Aristotle, that they are a second Nature; for they have no Communication with
the first; by which Authors of an inferiour Class, who can not stand alone, are
obliged to support themselves as with Crutches; but these of whom I am now
speaking, seem to be possessed of those Stilts, which the excellent Voltaire
tells us in his Letters carry the Genius far off, but with an irregular Pace.
Indeed far out of the sight of the Reader,
 
                    Beyond the Realm of Chaos and old Night.
 
But, to return to the former Class, who are contented to copy Nature, instead of
forming Originals from the confused heap of Matter in their own Brains; is not
such a Book as that which records the Atchievements of the renowned Don
Quixotte, more worthy the Name of a History than even Mariana's; for whereas the
latter is confined to a particular Period of Time, and to a particular Nation;
the former is the History of the World in general, at least that Part which is
polished by Laws, Arts and Sciences; and of that from the time it was first
polished to this day; nay and forwards, as long as it shall so remain.
    I shall now proceed to apply