TO THE
READER.
It may perhaps be expected by some, that I should give an account of my ingaging in a Work of this nature so unsuitable to my Calling and Eusiness.
For the satisfaction of such, they may please to take notice, that this Work was first undertaken, during that vacancy and leasure which I formerly enjoyed in an Academicall station, to which the endeavours of promoting all kind of usefull knowledge, whereby Leaning may be improved, is a very suitable imployment. In the time of that daily and intimate converse which I then injoyed, with that most Learned and excellent Person Dr. Seth Ward, the present Bishop of Salisbury. I had frequent occasion of conferring with him, concerning the various Desiderata, proposed by Learned men, or such things as were conceived yet wanting to the advancement of several parts of Leaning; amongst which, this of the Universal Character, was one of the principal, most of which he had more deeply considered, than any other Person that I knew. And in reference to this particular, he would say, That as it was one of the most usefull, so he judged it to be one of the most feasible, amongst all the rest, if prosecuted in a regular way. But for all such attemps to this purpose, which he had either seen of heard of, the Authors of them did generally mistake in their first foundations; whilst they did propose to themselves the framing of such a Character, from a Dictionary of Words, according to some particular Language, without reference to the nature of things, and that common Notion of them, wherein Mankind does agree, which must chiefly be respected, before any attempt of this nature could signifie any thing, as to the main end of it.
It was from this suggestion of his, that I first had any distinct apprehension of the proper course to be observed, in such an undertaking; having in a Treatise I had published some years before, proposed the Hebrew Tongue as consisting of fewest Radicals, to be the fittest ground work for such a design.
