LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 303 



the Royal Irish Academy, perhaps it would be unfair to 

 demand that he should write clear English. As one of 

 Mr. Smith's editors, it was to be expected that he should 

 not write it idiomatically. Some malign constellation 

 (Taurus, perhaps, whose infaust aspect may be supposed 

 to preside over the makers of bulls and blunders) seems 

 to have been in conjunction with heavy Saturn when the 

 Library was projected. At the top of the same page 

 from which we have made our quotation, Mr. Halliwell 

 speaks of " conveying a favorable impression on modern 

 readers." It was surely to no such phrase as this that 

 Ensign Pistol alluded when he said, " Convey the wise it 

 call." 



A literal reprint of an old author may be of value in 

 two ways : the orthography may in certain cases indicate 

 the ancient pronunciation, or it may put us on a scent 

 which shall lead us to the burrow of a word among the 

 roots of language. But in order to this, it surely is not 

 needful to undertake the reproduction of all the original 

 errors of the press ; and even were it so, the proofs of 

 carelessness in the editorial department are so glaring, 

 that we are left in doubt, after all, if we may congratu- 

 late ourselves on possessing all these sacred blunders of 

 the Elizabethan type-setters in their integrity, and with- 

 out any debasement of modern alloy. If it be gratifying 

 to know that there lived stupid men before our contem- 

 porary Agamemnons in that kind, yet we demand abso- 

 lute accuracy in the report of the phenomena in order to 

 arrive at anything like safe statistics. For instance, we 

 find (Vol. I. p. 89) " ACTUS SECUNDUS, SCENA PRIMUS," 

 and (Vol. III. p. 174) " exit ambo" and we are interested 

 to know that in a London printing-house, two centuries 

 and a half ago, there was a philanthropist who wished 

 to simplify the study of the Latin language by reducing 

 all the nouns to one gender and all the verbs to one 



