Artificial Fire-Works

Excerpt: 'I shall not pretend to say any thing here concerning the origin of Fireworks; those who are willing to be better informed of that point, may have recourse to the treatise of M. F***, on that subject, who has handled this point in a most elaborate manner; and perhaps it may be no displeasing surprise to the reader, to find that, while he imagines himself only concerned about an invention which, he could not have thought to have subsisted above 422 years, he is carried gradually back to the age of Augustus, and from thence to the time of the Trojan war. It is sufficient for me that Fireworks have subsisted a long time, and still continue to do so among the politest nations of both Europe and Asia. I am very well aware that it may here be objected, there are already treatises published on this subject, and some of those voluminous ones; but then those are either translations from the French and Italian authors, &c. which in themselves are both imperfect and erroneous; or else they are very small abridgements, and those little, not of the art itself, only on some particular branches of it.'