PREFACE.Ishallnot pretend to say any thing here concerning the origin of Fireworks; those who are willing to be better informed of that point, may have recourse to the treatise of M. F***, on that subject, who has handled this point in a most elaborate manner; and perhaps it may be no displeasing surprize to the reader, to find that, while he imagines himself only concerned about an invention which, he could not have thought to have subsisted above 422 years, he is carried gradually back to the age of Augustus, and from thence to the time of the Trojan war.It is sufficient for me that Fireworks have subsisted a long time, and still continue to do so among the politest nations of both Europeand Asia. I am very well aware that it may here be objected, there are already treatises published on this subject, and some of those voluminous ones; but then those are either translations from the French and Italian authors,&c.which in themselves are both imperfect and erroneous; or else they are very small abridgments, and those little, not of the art itself, only on some particular branches of it.I have endeavoured, in the following treatise, to avoid prolixity as much as possible without being obscure; the rules I have laid down, are as plain as was in my power to make them, and I have endeavoured to carry the reader in by the most gradual manner, from the minutest circumstances to the highest, and have been careful tokeep to the subject I first proposed, only as an Essay on Artificial Fire-works. I own I cannot help reflecting with some kind of chagrin, that, whenever we have had occasion for any of these sort of diversions to be exhibited in England, we have almost always had recourse to foreigners to execute them; if this has been owing to the ignorance of our own people on this subject, I shall be very happy if it is in my power to correct it; if it is only owing to that prevailing fondness we entertain for every thing that is foreign, I know no remedy for that evil but time and experience.June 20, 1765.
Ishallnot pretend to say any thing here concerning the origin of Fireworks; those who are willing to be better informed of that point, may have recourse to the treatise of M. F***, on that subject, who has handled this point in a most elaborate manner; and perhaps it may be no displeasing surprize to the reader, to find that, while he imagines himself only concerned about an invention which, he could not have thought to have subsisted above 422 years, he is carried gradually back to the age of Augustus, and from thence to the time of the Trojan war.
It is sufficient for me that Fireworks have subsisted a long time, and still continue to do so among the politest nations of both Europeand Asia. I am very well aware that it may here be objected, there are already treatises published on this subject, and some of those voluminous ones; but then those are either translations from the French and Italian authors,&c.which in themselves are both imperfect and erroneous; or else they are very small abridgments, and those little, not of the art itself, only on some particular branches of it.
I have endeavoured, in the following treatise, to avoid prolixity as much as possible without being obscure; the rules I have laid down, are as plain as was in my power to make them, and I have endeavoured to carry the reader in by the most gradual manner, from the minutest circumstances to the highest, and have been careful tokeep to the subject I first proposed, only as an Essay on Artificial Fire-works. I own I cannot help reflecting with some kind of chagrin, that, whenever we have had occasion for any of these sort of diversions to be exhibited in England, we have almost always had recourse to foreigners to execute them; if this has been owing to the ignorance of our own people on this subject, I shall be very happy if it is in my power to correct it; if it is only owing to that prevailing fondness we entertain for every thing that is foreign, I know no remedy for that evil but time and experience.
June 20, 1765.