ABSTRACT
THE best Account I can give of the following Work, will be to laybefore you in a short View what it contains, wherein it differsfrom other Books which may seem to be of the same Nature, and from whence I have collected the Substance of it. That which I
have aimed at, is to make it a Dictionary not only of bare Words but Things', and that the Reader may not only find here an Explication of the Technical Words, or the Terms of Art made use of in all the Liberal Sciences, and such as border nearly upon them, but also those Arts themselves\ and especially such, and such Parts of them as are most Useful and Advantageous to Mankind. In this, which was the chief of my Design, I found much less help from Dictionaries already published, then one would have expected from their Titles: Chauvin's Lexicon Rationale, or Thesaurus Philosophicus, is a well Printed Book, and the Figures are finely Graved; but 'tis too much filled with the School Terms, to be usefully instructive; and is as defective in the Modern Improvements of Mathematical and Physical Learning, as it abounds with a Cant which was once mistaken for Science.
