Academic unity Author:George Dyer Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PREFACE. MOST readers, agreeably to modern practice, look for a preface to all printed books ; though, perhaps, some may think, none should be printed, which ... more »require an apology: an opinion, however, which can only be partially true. An apology will certainly be expected for a publication like the present: I feel myself, and very sensibly, thatit is become necessary, though when presented, I fear it will be reckoned a somewhat singular one. For the original itself being a sort of preface to another work, "The Privileges of the University of Cambridge," and though, in the form of a General Dissertation, exhibiting, amidst a variety of other particulars., an apology for printing it,?the present prefatory Address must appear as a preface to a preface, as an apology for an apology. There might, indeed, have existed, in former times, those who would have insisted, that no apology could beadmittedfor such a publication: the " Privileges of the University," with this " General Dissertation," appertaining to it, and here presented in an English dress, contains some matters, which, they might have thought, should not be made public. Both the work itself, and this appendage, might have appeared to them,?though much too hastily,?to border on a violation of some Statute, and, intermeddling with established usages, to savour of indiscretion and arrogance: they might even have thought it a crime, and entitled to punishment. But such are not the opinions of these times. The transactions of an English University can have nothing mysterious in them; and an acquaintance with them may answer many purposes of public and private utility. Under all circumstances, however, an apology must be made ; and the best, the only one, which offers itself, must arise from a statement of the proper o...« less