Antient Authors (when they are translated) suffer in nothing more, than in having the Manners and Customs, to which they allude, transformed into the Manners and Customs of the present Age. By this Liberty, or rather Licenciousness of Translators, Authors not only appear in a different Dress, but they become unlike themselves, by losing that peculiar and distinctive Character in which they excel. This is most palpable in those Authors, whose Character consists in _Humour_. Let any one read _Terence_, as he is translated by Mr. _Echard_, and he will take him to have been a Buffoon: Whereas _Terence_ never dealt in such a Kind of low Mirth. His true Character is, to have afforded to his Spectators and Readers the gravest, and, at the same Time, the most agreeable, most polite Entertainment of any antient Author now extant. This is, in some Measure, the Case of _Theophrastus:_ He has been transformed; and he has suffer’d in the Transformation. What I have endeavoured is, to do him that Justice which, I think, he has not hitherto met with, by preserving the native Simplicity of his Characters, by retaining those antient Manners and Customs which he alludes to, and keeping up the peculiar _Humour_ of the Original as nearly, as the Difference of Language wou’d allow. This is the Attempt; how far I have succeeded, must be let to the judicious and curious Reader to determine. Thus much I thought necessary to say concerning former Translations, in order to justify my own Undertaking, which will not acquire an intrinsic Merit from the Censures, that I have pass’d upon others. No: The Faults of others cannot extenuate our own; and that Stamp, which every Work carries along with it, can only determine of what Kind it really is. The Reader will expect that I shou’d here say a Word or two concerning the _Notes_ which follow the _Characters_. Some Authors or Commentators (call them which you will) out of a vain Ostentation of Literature, lay hold of the slightest of Opportunities to expose all their Learning to the World, without ever knowing when they have said enough: Insomuch, that in most Commentaries upon antient Authors, one may sooner meet with a System of Antiquities, than with Solutions of the real Difficulties of the Text. Consider’d barely as a Translator, I lay under no immediate Necessity of writing _Notes_, but then as I was highly concern’d, even in that Capacity, to lay before the _English_ Reader, what I took to be the true Sense of the _Greek_, and as I farther propos’d to preserve that particular _Humour_ of the Original, which depends on those Manners and Customs which are alluded to, I found, my self necessitated to add some _Notes_; but yet I have endeavoured to shun that Fault, which I have already censur’d, by saying no more, but what was immediately necessary, to illustrate the Text, to vindicate a received Sense, or to propose a new one.