_Amongst my many Faults, I know none which had a lesse Disputed Assendent over me, then a Detestation to Readeing and Studdy, in which vast unhappinesse I continued ’till I went to see the VVorld, and makeing some Residence in France, I assotiated my selfe with Persons of my owne Age, where I soone found, that he who was Ignorant of the Romances of these Times, was as fitt an Object for VVonder, as a Phylosopher would be, who had never heard of Aristotle, or a Methematician of Euclyd. This inforc’t me to reade, Necessity performing what should have sprunge from a handsomer Principle. In the Perusall of those Bookes, I mett with the names, & some of the Actions, of those Hero’s, whome I had heard off, in the Scoole; This gave me a passionate desire to seperate the Truth from the Fixion, in the effecting whereof, I became as much a Freind to readeing, as I had bin an Enemy to it. This experiment I esteem’d an ingratitude to Conceale; & I have cause to beleiue since Romances Acted a Cure upom me, thy cannot fayle of doeing the Like upon any other; & by the knowledge I haue of my selfe & according to a Proportionate Degree of operation, much more upon Any other, then they have done upon me._ _All the Readers of Parthenissa may wonder at my makeing of Spartacus and Perolla contemporaries, & that Artabbanes & Spartacus should be the same Person &c. But I hope they will noe Longer doe so, when I Minde them, that I write a Romance, not a History, and that therfore though all I Relate be not the Truth, yet if a Part be, I performe more then what the Title of my Booke does confyne me to. The Latter of these they will finde I doe, in the warre of Spartacus; In the warre betweene Rome and Carthage called the second Punick warre; In the warre betweene the Romans, and the Parthians, and in the warre termed the Metrydatick; In the Relations whereof I have punctualy followed those Authors, who have most celebratedly bestowed the History of those Times to Posterrity, and where I have found any contradictions (as in most Historyes I have found some) I have gon according to the seeming’st Truth. Only in the second Punick warre, I have followed exactly Polibius, & the Excellent Sir VValter Rawly in who’s Generall History of the VVorld, I finde more Harmony then ever I did in any perticuler History, of any Part of it. But to Evidence Chronologie is not essentiall in Romances, Virgill (who writes a Romance in Numbers, & who is as Famous now, as he was in Augustus Times) makes Æneas and Dido Lovers, when according to most Chronologers the Troian Preceaded her, at lest two Centuries and a Halfe of Yeares; The Former Living in the Yeare of the VVorld 2771; and the Latter in the Yeare of the VVorld 3058, or as Alsted an Excellent Modern Chronologer will haue it, in the Yeare 3077. I Instance this for my Iustification, or at least to evidence I Err by a Famous and Authentique Example. Neither doe I thinke