It occurs to me that some of my readers may perhaps desire to be informed in what consists the difference between a Chapter and an Inter Chapter; for that there is a difference no considerate person would be disposed to deny, though he may not be able to discover it. Gentle readers,—readers after my own heart, you for whom this _opus_ was designed long before it was an _opus_, when as Dryden has said concerning one of his own plays, “it was only a confused mass of thoughts, tumbling over one another in the dark; when the fancy was yet in its first work, moving the sleeping images of things towards the light, there to be distinguished, and then either chosen or rejected by the judgement,”—good-natured readers, you who are willing to be pleased, and whom therefore it is worth pleasing,—for your sakes, And for because you shall not think that I Do use the same without a reason why,[1] I will explain the distinction. [Footnote 1: ROBERT GREEN.] It is not like the difference between a Baptist and an Anabaptist, which Sir John Danvers said, is much the same as that between a Whiskey and a Tim-Whiskey, that is to say no difference at all. Nor is it like that between Dryads and Hamadryads, which Benserade once explained to the satisfaction of a learned lady by saying _qu'il avait autant de difference qu'entre les Evêques et les Archevêques_. Nor is it like the distinction taken by him who divided bread into white bread, brown bread, and French rolls. A panegyrical poet said of the aforesaid Benserade that he possessed three talents which posterity would hardly be persuaded to believe; _De plaisanter les Grands il ne fit point scrupule, Sans qu'ils le prissent de travers; Il fut vieux et galant sans être ridicule, Et s'enrichit à composer des vers._ He used to say, that he was descended and derived his name from the Abencerrages. Upon a similar presumption of etymological genealogy it has been said that Aulus Gellius was the progenitor of all the Gells. An Englishman may doubt this, a Welshman would disbelieve, and a Jew might despise it. So might a Mahommedan, because it is a special prerogative of his prophet to be perfectly acquainted with his whole pedigree; the Mussulmen hold that no other human being ever possessed the same knowledge, and that after the resurrection, when all other pedigrees will be utterly destroyed, this alone will be preserved in the archives of Eternity. Leaving however Sir William Gell to genealogize, if he pleases, as elaborately as he has topographized, and to maintain the authenticity and dignity of his Roman descent against all who may impugn it, whether Turk, Jew, or Christian, I proceed with my promised explanation.