DEDICATION* TO THE KING. SIRE, YOUR MAJESTY'S gracious patronage of this Volume, while it impresses me with the deepest gratitude, excites in me a desire that the Work were more worthy of the Royal favour. If it should appear that, instead of displaying new doctrines, or furnishing novel ideas, it serves rather, by a new method, to elucidate old established principles, and to confirm long received opinions, I can only plead in my excuse, that true taste, in every art, consists more in adapting tried expedients to peculiar circumstances, than in that inordinate thirst after novelty, the characteristic of uncultivated minds, which, from the facility of inventing wild theories, without experience, are apt to suppose, that taste is displayed by novelty, genius by innovation, and that every change must necessarily tend to improvement. That Your Majesty may long continue to be the Patron of liberal arts, the encourager of polite literature, and the great arbiter of true taste in this country, must ever be the prayer of those who delight in contemplating the genius and industry of Great Britain, fostered by our glorious constitution, under the benign protection of Your Majesty.
Permit me, SIRE, to subscribe myself, with the most profound humility,
YOUR MAJESTY'S most dutiful Subject and Servant,
H. REPTON Harestreet, near Romford, Dec. 6, 1794.
*[We have reprinted this Dedication, because it contains what, it appears, Mr. Repton considered as principles: viz., 1. that true taste, in every art, consists more in adapting tried expedients to peculiar circumstances, than in an inordinate thirst after novelty, &c.; and, 2. that this inordinate thirst after novelty, is a characteristic of uncultivated minds.-J. C. L.]
