The PREFACE.

ivi i

firms persons, fence neither Hermogenes, Callimachus, Philo, Cleft-phon, Metagenes, Vitruvius, Palladio nor Scamozzi, with all theirgreat Ability, could obtain such Approbation as to haVe their Precepts rekceiVd for the Pules of the Proportions of ArchiteBure. If it be objeBedthat the Method 1 propose, should it even be approVd , was not any thingdifficult to be found out ; that I make little or no Alteration in the Propor-tions ; and that there is scarce any of them but what is found in some of theWorks of the Ancients and Moderns 3 I freely own I haVe invented nonew Proportions ■ but this is my SatisfaBion, that I have no other “Design,In this Work, than to [hew, that, without Offence to the Idea ArchiteBs haveof the Proportions of each Member, they may all be reducd to Measures easi-ly commensurable, which I call probable, there being great Peas on to think,that the first Inventors of the Proportions of each Order, did not make themsuch as we find in the Antique, where they only come near these Measureseasily commensurable ; but that they made them aBually jufi, and that, forInstance, they gave not the Corinthian Column nine Diameters and an half •sixteen Minutes and an half, as it is in the Porch of the Pantheon ; norten Diameters eleven Minutes, as it is in the three Columns of the ForumRomanum: but that they made them exaBly sometimes nine Diametersmid an half, sometimes ten ; and that the Negligence of the Workmen of theAntique Remains, is the only real Cause of the DefeB in these Proportionsthat they are not exaBly according to the true ones, which, it s reasonable tobelieve were establish’d by the first Inventors of ArchiteBure.

I do not fee what can be said against this Opinion, because 1 neither know,nor believe it possible for any One to discover, the Reasons which indued Ar-chiteBs to use broken and difficult Proportions, without any Neceffity, andto affeB the changing of the Ancient ones, which were eafie, confifiing ofentire Numbers. Why, for Example, the Ancients, before Vitruvius,having always given to the Plinth of the Attic Base, the third of the wholeBase, the ArchiteB of the Theatre of Marcellus, should add one Minuteand a quarter to this Third, which is of ten Minutes ; and why, the Ancientshaving always made the Doric Architrave equal to the Semi-diameter of theColumn, the ArchiteB of the Baths of Diocletian, should think fit to adda fifth Part more, and Scamozzi a sixth, and in fine, upon what myste-rious Account it is, that, in the Porch of the Pantheon, there are scarcelyfound two Columns of the fame Dimeter. Nor do I believe it possible to

C e ) guest