LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 221 



was the period when the Reformation was fully established 

 and the whole of the seventeenth century were sacred poets/ 

 and that even Shakspeare and the contemporary dramatists of 

 his age sometimes attuned their well-strung harps to the songs 

 of Zion. Comment on statements like these would be as useless 

 as the assertions themselves are absurd. 



We have quoted these examples only to justify us in saying 

 that Mr. Smith must select his editors with more care if he 

 wishes that his Library of Old Authors should deserve the 

 confidence and thereby gain the good word of intelligent readers 

 without which such a series can neither win nor keep the 

 patronage of the public. It is impossible that men who cannot 

 construct an English sentence correctly, and who do not know 

 the value of clearness in writing, should be able to disentangle 

 the knots which slovenly printers have tied in the thread of an 

 old author s meaning ; and it is more than doubtful whether 

 they who assert carelessly, cite inaccurately, and write loosely 

 are not by nature disqualified for doing thoroughly what they 

 undertake to do. If it were unreasonable to demand of every 

 one who assumes to edit one of our early poets the critical 

 acumen, the genial sense, the illimitable reading, the philological 

 scholarship, which in combination would alone make the ideal 

 editor, it is not presumptuous to expect some one of these quali 

 fications singly, and we have the right to insist upon patience 

 and accuracy, which are within the reach of every one, and 

 without which all the others are wellnigh vain. Now to this 

 virtue of accuracy Mr. Offer specifically lays claim in one of his 

 remarkable sentences : We are bound to admire/ he says, 

 * the accuracy and beauty of this specimen of typography. 

 Following in the path of my late friend William Pickering, our 

 publisher rivals the Aldine and Elzevir presses, which have been 

 so universally admired. We should think that it was the pro 

 duct of those presses which had been admired, and that Mr. 

 Smith presents a still worthier object of admiration when he 

 contrives to follow a path and rival a press at the same time. 

 But let that pass ; it is the claim to accuracy which we dispute ; 

 and we deliberately affirm that, so far as we are able to judge 

 by the volumes we have examined, no claim more unfounded 

 was ever set up. In some cases, as we shall show presently, the 

 blunders of the original work have been followed with painful 

 accuracy in the reprint ; but many others have been added by 

 the carelessness of Mr. Smith s printers or editors. In the 

 thirteen pages of Mr. Offer s own Introduction we have found 



