since i am assured that this book requires a preface i must attempt to write one, but i cannot conceive upon what lines it should run unless they be an apology for writing of so many things, and in very many different moods, and in so many different ways.

a preface is intended to introduce to the reader the air in which the book that follows must be taken, but what air attaches in common to historical reconstructions, to abstract vagaries, to stories, to jests, to the impression of a storm, and to annoyance with a dead scientist?

the sort of introduction which a book like this needs is like that which a man might find to say who should have to deliver at a house a ton of coals, some second-hand books, a warrant, several weather forecasts and a great quantity of dust. i do not know how such a man would make himself pleasant to the homestead,[pg viii] or prepare for the reception of so mixed a load.

but now i come to think of it the parallel is not quite just. for the man with that heap of rubbish in his cart would be bound to deliver the same, and proportionately to annoy the recipient. but you are not bound to buy, to borrow, or even to pick up this book. and even if you do you are not bound to read it. if you do read it i advise you to read the essay beginning on page forty-five; the history beginning on page one hundred and forty-three; the denunciation of the very wickedest sort of men, which i have begun on page one hundred and three; the sort of thing which shakespeare suffered, which you will find on page one hundred and eighty-six. when you have waded through all that you can console yourself by reading the last essay, which is intended to console you. i hope it will. farewell.

h. belloc.

p.s. i have never read a preface in my life, and i suppose you will not read this.