I believe that if the reader will bear in mind the twofold, serious and
ironical, character of Buffon's work he will understand it, and feel an
admiration for it which will grow continually greater and greater the
more he studies it, otherwise he will miss the whole point.
Buffon on one of the early pages of his first volume protested against
the introduction of either "_plaisanterie_" or "_equivoque_" (p. 25) into
a serious work. But I have observed that there is an unconscious irony
in most disclaimers of this nature. When a writer begins by saying that
he has "an ineradicable tendency to make things clear," we may infer that
we are going to be puzzled; so when he shows that he is haunted by a
sense of the impropriety of allowing humour to intrude into his work, we
may hope to be amused as well as interested. As showing how far the
objection to humour which he expressed upon his twenty-fifth page
succeeded in carrying him safely over his twenty-sixth and
twenty-seventh, I will quote the following, which begins on page twenty-
six:--
"Aldrovandus is the most learned and laborious of all naturalists;
after sixty years of work he has left an immense number of volumes
behind him, which have been printed at various times, the greater
number of them after his death. It would be possible to reduce them
to a tenth part if we could rid them of all useless and foreign
matter, and of a prolixity which I find almost overwhelming; were this
only done, his books should be regarded as among the best we have on
the subject of natural history in its entirety.
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