HERALDIC ANOMALIES. Nares Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. SECOND EDITION. LONDON: G. AND W. B. WHITTAKER, AVE-MARIA-LANE. 1824. PREFACE. I APPREHEND that Prefaces, wherever they may be placed in a book, are for the most part, with respect to the works themselves, Postscripts; that is to say, written after the completion of the undertaking, whatever it may be as to this, my own Preface, I freely acknowledge it to be a postscript, and am indeed, anxious that it should be received as such, though I venture, according to custom, to place it where it is. For I had much rather have it supposed, that what I now put into the hands of my readers, was written without any settled plan or design, and has imperceptibly swelled to the size it has attained, than that I did deliberately sit down to compose any such medley of strange things, with views and intentions admitting of preliminary explanation; indeed, I hope my readers will have, all of them, sagacity enough to discover this, from the faulty arrangement of my work; for I have no hesitation to declare, that if I had had it all ready when the first sheets were sent to the press, I should probably have made the middle the beginning, the beginning the end, and the end the middle; but it is too late now to remedy such blunders. I have in my title-page adopted two lines from Horace, which must not be mistaken for any compliment to myself, though I hope they will be judged to express pretty fairly the nature of my performance, which is decidedly a mixture of the grave and the gay-of advice, and entertainment. But so very much, both of the " delectando" and "monendo" parts, will be found to be borrowed from other authors, that the compliment, if any be suspected, must belong to them rather than to me. I may be allowed, I trust, to fancy my readers divided into the two classes mentioned by the Spectator, the Mercurial and Saturnine; and upon this supposition, to express a hope, that when candidly considered, the most mercurial will not think my book too grave, nor the most saturnine, too gay-that the serious parts of it will not be found to be insufferably stupid, nor the ludicrous parts altogether impertinent. It has been usual to compare the labours of such a miscellaneous writer as myself, to the toils and wanderings of the bee, flying about, "To gather honey all the day, |