328 Notes of the Month on AJ'airs in General, QSept. 



The science of humbug is prodigiously vigorous among all that infi- 

 nitely ingenious race who possess " collections of rare and valuable 

 books, with original autographs, and all the erroures." — The " editiones 

 principes" men who offer the primal copy of " Tom Thumb," for fifty 

 pounds, and are lucky enough to find pudding-headed pretenders to 

 " book learninge," who will rejoice in carrying home the invaluable 

 treasure. 



But there remains a class deserving of no slight honours in the science 

 of humbug. And among those we should take a rule to show cause 

 vfhy the managers of the State Paper Office should not claim especial 

 rank. Every six months the world is electrified with the discovery 

 of some " prodigiously magnificent" nonsense, dug up among the dusty 

 ruins of the State Paper Office. People, at a distance, must naturally con- 

 clude that this State Paper Office is some dreary Colossus of a building, 

 which it would take a century, and a battalion of spectacled sages to 

 overhaul — a sort of Mrs. RadclifFe cloister of boundless extent, hiding 

 in its subterranean bosom, some hundreds of miles towards the centre of 

 the earth, the recondite literature of the whole world dead and gone ! 

 What a relief must it be to their despair, to know that this more than 

 labyrinth is a spruce modern house, in a spruce modern street, with not 

 a room in it larger than a decent breakfast parlour ; and where a smart 

 housemaid, ^vith a brush in her hand, would put the spiders to the 

 rout, exterminate the cobwebs, and expose the whole treasure of manu- 

 scripts to the garish eye of day, as an easy morning's work. But then, 

 to be sure, we should not have such fine periodical announcements of 

 " Interesting Discoveries." 



" An interesting discovery has just been made at the State Paper 

 Office, of a translation of Boethius De Consoladone Philosophice, nearly 

 the whole of which is in the hand-MTiting of Queen Elizabeth ; and 

 from another document, which has also been found, it appears that this 

 translation was made by the queen at Windsor, during five weeks of the 

 winter season." 



Now who on earth is the better for such a discovery as this ? Or why 

 was it not made at any time during the long term of years in which the 

 present people concerned in keeping this office in the dust, have been 

 receiving their salaries? We say, that the whole business is paltry, 

 childish, and humbug ; and insist on the housemaid and her broom 

 being employed, without loss of time, if it were merely to relieve the 

 world from being bored with the pretence of any more such foolish 

 discoveries. 



