Page:The parochial history of Cornwall.djvu/11

Rh although I have to a considerahle extent relieved myself from the most irksome duty of correcting the press, by obtaining the assistance of Messrs. Nichols and Son, on the condition of their taking, what is very unlikely to accrue, any profit arising from the publication, and my sustaining, the more probable alternative, all the loss.

Mr. Hals' work is given without alteration, except considerable omissions of long histories, from the Bollandists and other writers of legends, relative to obscure Saints, little known, or deserving of being known; and in many cases owing their supposed connection with Cornwall, entirely to the writer's imagination; and in the opposite extreme, of the lives of personages most worthy of being preserved and studied in general history, of Apostles, of Emperors of Rome, and Kings, but quite as irrelevant as the former, to a History of Cornwall.

I have been also unable to retain the greater part of the derivations assigned to the names of manors, families, or places; they are generally referred to some word of a similar sound in modern English, after a manner scarcely less ludicrous than the mock etymologies of Dr. Swift.

Lastly, I have omitted various anecdotes, containing simple scandal, without any thing illustrative of the age or country. Other anecdotes of a public nature are retained; on a conviction that events long passed by, and incapable from their very nature of being suppressed, neither will, nor ought to excite any un-