21 8 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 



majestic prose of the Prophets, which has the glow and wide- 

 orbited metre of constellations, may be a useful occupation to 

 keep country gentlemen out of litigation, or retired clergymen 

 from polemics ; but to regard these metrical mechanics as sacred 

 because nobody wishes to touch them, as meritorious because 

 no one can be merry in their company to rank them in the 

 same class with those ancient songs of the Church, sweet with 

 the breath of saints, sparkling with the tears of forgiven peni 

 tents, and warm with the fervour of martyrs nay, to set them 

 up beside such poems as those of Herbert, composed in the 

 upper chambers of the soul that open toward the sun s rising, is 

 to confound piety with dulness, and the manna of heaven with 

 its sickening namesake from the apothecary s drawer. The 

 * Enchiridion of Ouarles is hardly worthy of the author of the 

 Emblems, and is by no means an unattainable book in other 

 editions nor a matter of heartbreak, if it were. Of the dra 

 matic works of Marston and Lilly it is enough to say that they 

 are truly works to the reader, but in no sense dramatic, nor, as 

 literature, worth the paper they blot. They seem to have been 

 deemed worthy of republication because they were the contem 

 poraries of true poets ; and if all the Tuppers of the nineteenth 

 century will buy their plays on the same principle, the sale will 

 be a remunerative one. It was worth while, perhaps, to reprint 

 Lovelace, if only to show what dull verses may be written by a 

 man who has made one lucky hit. Of the Early English 

 Poetry/ nine-tenths had better never have been printed at all, 

 and the other tenth reprinted by an editor who had some vague 

 suspicion, at least, of what they meant. The Homer of Chap 

 man is so precious a gift, that we are ready to forgive all Mr. 

 Smith s shortcomings in consideration of it. It is a vast//tfo?r, 

 full of nuggets for the philologist and the lover of poetry. 



Having now run cursorily through the series of Mr. Smith s 

 reprints, we come to the closer question of How are they edited? 

 Whatever the merit of the original works, the editors, whether 

 self-elected or chosen by the publisher, should be accurate and 

 scholarly. The editing of the Homer we can heartily com 

 mend; and Dr. Rimbault, who carried the works of Overbury 

 through the press, has done his work well; but the other 

 volumes of the Library are very creditable neither to English 

 scholarship nor to English typography. The Introductions to 

 some of them are enough to make us think that we are fallen to 

 the necessity of reprinting our old authors because the art of 

 writing correct and graceful English has been lost. William 



