PROSPECTUS OF THE KEY TO ALL MYTHOLOGIES

A single leaf of four pages, printed on one sheet and folded, with a manuscript list of subscribers pasted inside the second and third pages. Bodleian Library, printed ephemera. The printer is not named. The leaf bears no date; the year 1833 is supplied by the receipt that was laid in volume A with it.¹ It is given here in full, in the order of its pages.

PROPOSALS

FOR PRINTING BY SUBSCRIPTION, IN TWO VOLUMES QUARTO,

THE KEY TO ALL MYTHOLOGIES,

BY THE LATE REV. EDWARD CASAUBON, RECTOR OF LOWICK.

The labour of thirty years, left unfinished at the death of its author, and now to be prepared for the press from his papers, by his friend and well-wisher,

J. SPANNING, M. D.

It is known to those who enjoyed Mr. Casaubon's acquaintance that he had for many years in hand a work upon the traditions of the ancient nations, which he proposed to call by the name here given; that he was withheld from publishing it by an exactness which would suffer nothing to go out before it was complete; and that he died in the early part of 1831 before the last of his Books was written. It is known also that he left a great store of notes, arranged in volumes, from which the work was to be composed, and a volume of contents, by which the rest may be found.

Those papers are now, by the kindness of the proprietors of the Lowick estate, in the hands of the present proposer. He has examined them. He is not able to say that the work is ready to be printed, for it is not; but he is able to say that the whole of what the author had collected is in existence, and that from it the substance of the argument may be set before the public. It is the opinion of those who have seen the papers that to let them lie unread would be a loss to learning, and that the one just course is to give them to the world, with such arrangement as the author's own contents allow, and with an account of what is wanting.

The proposer has been encouraged in this by an example of the last century. The Dissertationes in Librum Jobi of the Rev. Samuel Wesley, Rector of Epworth in Lincolnshire, were the labour of many years; their author died before they were ready; and they were published after his death, by subscription, with the names of the subscribers set before them.² The proposer ventures to hope that a work of a like kind may be received in the like manner.

CONDITIONS

I. The work will be printed in two volumes quarto, on a good paper and a clear type, and will contain the Introduction, the five Books, and an Index of the passages cited.

II. The price to subscribers will be three guineas the set in boards; for copies upon large paper, marked in the list L. P., five guineas.

III. Half the price is to be paid at subscribing, and the remainder on delivery of the volumes. Subscriptions will be received by the proposer at his residence in the county, and by a bookseller of the county.

IV. The names of the subscribers will be printed before the first volume.

V. The work will go to press when the subscriptions are sufficient to meet the cost; and the money of any subscriber will be returned if it does not.

The list of subscribers follows, pasted in. It is in one hand, and the hand is not that of the printed leaf. Of fourteen names, eight have the mark L. P. No sum is entered against any name. The names are as written.

SUBSCRIBERS.

The Rev. Mr. Abbott, of Brasenose College, Oxford. · The Rev. Dr. Barlow, Master of the Grammar School. · John Beddoes, Esq.; L. P. · The Rev. Mr. Cartwright, Rector of Tipton. · Thomas Dunstable, Esq.; L. P. · The Rev. Mr. Foxley. · Mr. Goldsmith, Bookseller. · The Rev. Dr. Harcourt; L. P. · Henry Lacey, Esq.; L. P. · Sir Richard Mallory, Bart.; L. P. · The Rev. Mr. Penrose, Fellow of Oriel College. · William Rowley, Esq.; L. P. · The Rev. Mr. Tarrant; L. P. · Mr. Underhill, Surgeon; L. P.

The printed leaf ends here. Nothing further was printed, and no volume followed.