Page:WorksOfRobertBoyleVol1.pdf/4

The general reſons for collecting into one body the works of the honourable Robert Boyle are as obvious, as the excellence of the ſeveral parts of them is univerſally acknowledged. It may ſuffice therefore to acquaint the reader, that as a complete ſet of thoſe before publiſhed is not perhaps to be found any where, except in the vaſt library of his learned friend Sir Hans Sloane, Bart. and as the whole contains a very large collection of philoſophical eſſays on a great variety of ſubjects, full of curious experiments and obſervations, with ſeveral valuable diſcourſes upon the mosſt important ſubjects of religion; ſuch a collection had been long deſired, both for the public benefit, and as a juſtice due to the memory of that great reſtorer of the mechanical philoſophy; and is now executed in the following manner:

I. The ſeveral tracts formerly printed are taken from the mosſt improved editions with the utmoſt correctneſs, and diſpoſed in the order of time in which they were firſt publiſhed. This diſpoſition of them was determined upon, as well from the reaſon of the thing, and with a view of ſheing the riſe, progreſs, and dependencies of the Author's diſcoveries; as in conformity to his own judgment: who, upon occaſion of a Latin edition of his works at Geneva in 1677, complained publickly by his friend Mr. Oldenburg, ſecretary of the Royal Society, in the Philoſophical Tranſactions, No. CXXX. p. 766, 767.

That the year in the frontiſpiece of that edition is one and the ſame, as if the ſeveral books contained in this Latin volume had been publiſhed in one year; and the enumeration of the ſeveral treatiſes, made in the catalogue of this Latin edition, is not according to the time wherein they were firſt printed. For the firſt of the books mentioned in the ſaid catalogue was publiſhed in Enliſh A. 1660, the fifth and ſixth A. 1661, the ſecond A. 1662, the ſeventh A. 1664, the fourth A. 1666, the third A. 1670, the eighth A. 1671, the tenth A. 1672, the ninth A. 1673. So prepoſterouſly are thoſe books ranged in this catalogue and volume: which the reader was to be