B. FELLOWES ; F. AND J. RIVINGTON; DUNCAN AND MALCOLM; SUTTABY AND CO.; E. HODGSON; J. DOWDING;
G. LAWFORD; J. M. RICHARDSON; J. BOHN; T. ALLMAN; J. BAIN; S. HODGSON; F. C. WESTLEY; L. A. LEWIS;
T. HODGES; AND H. WASHBOURNE; ALSO J. H. PARKER, AND T. LAYCOCK, OXFORD;
AND J. AND J. J. DEIGHTON, CAMBRIDGE.

LONDON-PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET.

CONTENTS TO VOL. I.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION. A PRELIMINARY TREATISE ON METHOD. By S. T. COLERIDGE, Esq.

PREFACE

TO THE

ENCYCLOPEDIA METROPOLITANA.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.

As the Encyclopædia Metropolitana is now placed before the public as a complete work, it appears essential to offer a few remarks on the objects proposed in this great undertaking, and the manner in which its early professions have been realized. The Prospectus, written by the late eminent poet and philosopher, S. T. Coleridge, and Dr. Stoddart, and the Introductory Essay on the Principles of Method, which accompanied the first part of the work, sufficiently explain the plan on which it was intended to conduct the Encyclopædia. The scheme put forth in those two remarkable productions certainly proceeded on a more enlarged and philosophical view, both of the general relations existing between different branches of human knowledge, and of the proper mode of exhibiting those relations and the principles of each science in an Encyclopædia, than had ever formed the basis of any similar work. A very brief historical notice respecting Encyclopædias will confirm this assertion.

With the Ancients," it was remarked in the Prospectus, "the term ENCYCLOPÆDIA explained itself. It was really Instruction in a Cycle, i. e., the cycle of the seven liberal Arts and Sciences that constituted the course of education for the higher class of citizens; grammar being the first, and each of the others having its particular place in the cycle determined by its dependency on the preceding." No work of this nature, however, has descended to us from ancient times, although the name of Encyclopædia has sometimes been applied to the Antiquities of Varro and the Historia Naturalis of Pliny. Speusippus, the Academic, and Aristotle, in his last work on the Sciences (Tepi TIσтýμv), are referred to by Krug* as having been amongst the earliest compilers of similar works. But in the Middle Ages they were not uncommon under the title of Summa, Specula, &c. One of

*In his Philosophical Lexicon.

b