This great work was entered upon some years ago by one of our most eminent members. He began with the “History of Reynard the Fox,” but neither lived to publish his essay nor to proceed farther in so useful an attempt, which is very much to be lamented, because the discovery he made and communicated to his friends is now universally received; nor do I think any of the learned will dispute that famous treatise to be a complete body of civil knowledge, and the revelation, or rather the apocalypse, of all state arcana. But the progress I have made is much greater, having already finished my annotations upon several dozens from some of which I shall impart a few hints to the candid reader, as far as will be necessary to the conclusion at which I aim. The first piece I have handled is that of “Tom Thumb,” whose author was a Pythagorean philosopher. This dark treatise contains the whole scheme of the metempsychosis, deducing the progress of the soul through all her stages. The next is “Dr. Faustus,” penned by Artephius, an author _bonæ notæ_ and an adeptus; he published it in the nine hundred and eighty-fourth year {67a} of his age; this writer proceeds wholly by reincrudation, or in the _via humida_; and the marriage between Faustus and Helen does most conspicuously dilucidate the fermenting of the male and female dragon. “Whittington and his Cat” is the work of that mysterious Rabbi, Jehuda Hannasi, containing a defence of the Gemara of the Jerusalem Misna, and its just preference to that of Babylon, contrary to the vulgar opinion. “The Hind and Panther.” This is the masterpiece of a famous writer now living {67b}, intended for a complete abstract of sixteen thousand schoolmen from Scotus to Bellarmine. “Tommy Potts.” Another piece, supposed by the same hand, by way of supplement to the former. The “Wise Men of Gotham,” _cum_ Appendice. This is a treatise of immense erudition, being the great original and fountain of those arguments bandied about both in France and England, for a just defence of modern learning and wit, against the presumption, the pride, and the ignorance of the ancients. This unknown author hath so exhausted the subject, that a penetrating reader will easily discover whatever has been written since upon that dispute to be little more than repetition. An abstract of this treatise has been lately published by a worthy member of our society.