I must first ask your pardon for troubling you with this digression, but the facts and the theories are so many and curious and the whole subject is of such vital importance, that I dared not trust to my memory alone. It must be admitted that most of the facts recorded are obviously untrue and that most of the theories are unsupported by evidence and highly improbable; though the facts are guaranteed by the highest authorities of the most ancient religions and the theories upheld by the most eminent modern scientists. Whence it is evident that I, like Sir John Mandeville, “have taken pains to ascertain the exact truth”; and yet I think that from this jumble of superstitions and fables and conjectures and absurdities there does emerge something that may repay you for the weariness of an hour, and throw some light upon the hopes and fears with which the unconquerable spirit of man has progressed through the ages to the crowning triumphs of this twentieth century. Indeed, as Sir Thomas Browne finely says in his Preface: “A work of this nature is not to be performed upon one legg: and should smell of oyl, if duly and deservedly handled.” And, on second thoughts, I fully and unreservedly withdraw my apology.

I shall begin with some attempt to define our subject, and then take you through the dragons of classical antiquity and early Christendom down to the twilight uncertainty of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the blank incredulity of our modern age. I shall then go back to the earliest legends of all—the Egyptian, and close with an attempt to harmonize the whole, and with a critical estimate of the place of the dragon in human thought and experience.