# The Annual Register/1758/Preface

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## PREFACE.

Some of the Learned have been very severe upon such works as we now lay before the Public. Their severity would have been just, if such works had been recommended or used to the exclusion of more important studies. Those who aspire to a solid erudition, must undoubtedly take other methods to acquire it. They have their labour and their merit. But there are readers of another order, who must not be left wholly unprovided: For such readers, it is our province to collect matters of a lighter nature; but pleasing even by their levity; by their variety; and their aptitude to enter into common conversation. Things of this sort often gradually and imperceptibly insinuate a taste of knowledge, and in some ​measure gratify that taste. They steal some moments from the round of dissipation and pleasure. They relieve the minds of men of business, who cannot pass from severe labour to severe study, with an elegant relaxation. They preserve the strenuous idleness of many from a worse employment.
These pretensions we have in common with all the other periodical compilers; and the same apology serves us all. But it will be expected, that in offering a new performance to the Public, we should mention some new and peculiar advantage which we pretend to have over our fellow-labourers. Some such advantages we flatter ourselves we possess, partly arising from our scheme of an annual rather than a monthly publication; partly from our own attention and industry.
Not confined to a monthly publication, we have an opportunity of examining with care the products of the year, and of ​selecting what may appear most particularly deserving of notice. We have from the same cause the advantage of order; we are better able to rank the several kinds under their proper heads; at least with as much exactness as the nature of a miscellany will admit.
But, besides this advantage derived from our general scheme, we derive something from our own labour. We have not in our first article confined ourselves to the history of the year. We have taken the war from its commencement. It is a subject which requires all the pains which we could bestow upon it, and deserves much more skilful workmen. None was ever more formed to interest curiosity; from the importance of the events, the dignity of the persons concerned, the greatness of the actions performed, and the amazing revolutions of fortune. The reader will find the events of this war, which has been carried on in the four quarters of the world, and which he has hitherto seen ​in a scattered manner, united into one connected narrative, and continued to the end of the campaign of seventeen hundred and fifty-eight. To effect this from the broken and unconnected materials, has been a work of more labour than may at first appear; and if we have performed what we intended in any sort to the reader's satisfaction, we may lay claim to some merit.
We have made an article of State Papers. They serve to illustrate and confirm the facts advanced in the historical part; and our readers will not be displeased to see so many curious and important pieces together.
Endeavouring to be as extensively useful as possible, we aimed at uniting the plan of the Magazines with that of the Reviews. We have given abstracts of some of the best books published within the year, with remarks upon them. We have observed upon none which we could not praise; not that we ​pretend to have observed on all that are praise-worthy. Those that do not deserve to be well spoken of, do not deserve to be spoken of at all.
Though we think our plan tolerably well calculated for a literary amusement, we do not pretend that the public will not have something to excuse, as well as to applaud. Our acquaintance with their sentiments in that respect will increase our employment for the ensuing year, and excite us to amend the faults which we may have committed in this.