scheme would be utterly valueless,
I would propose that a certain number of competent transcribers be
appointed for each county, either at a given salary, or at a remuneration
of so much per entry, to copy the registers of those parishes the ministers
of which are unwilling to do it, or feel themselves unequal to the task.
The option, however, should always, in the first instance, be given to the
minister, as the natural custos of the registers, and as one, from local
knowledge, likely to do the work correctly. To each county there should
also be appointed one or more competent persons as collators, to correct
the errors of the transcribers.

I throw out these rough hints in the hope that some of your correspondents
will furnish their ideas on the subject, till we at last arrive at a fully
practicable plan of carrying out Mr. Wyatt Edgell's suggestions, and, at
all events, obtain transcripts, if not printed copies, of every register in
the kingdom.

L.B.L.

[1] To obviate the difficulties arising from capricious spelling,
I assumed that which I thought to be the correct one, and entered
all of the name under that one, placing, however, in parenthesis,
the actual mode of spelling adopted in the instance in question,
and also entering the name, as actually spelt, in its proper place,
with reference to the place where the searcher would find it; e.g.
In my register, the name of "Caiser" appears under more than twenty
varieties of form. I enter them all under "Cayser". In the _margin_,
opposite the first of these entries, I write consecutively the
different modes of spelling the name--"Caisar", "Caiser", "Casiar",
"Kayser", &c. &c. &c. In the table itself, I write,

Cayser, John.
[Casiar] John.
[Kaysar] John, &c. &c. &c.

Then, "Casiar", "Kaysar", &c., appear in their respective places
_sic_, "Casiar", _v_. "Cayser", "Kaysar", _v_. "Cayser", &c., nearly
on the plan adopted by Mr. Duffus Hardy in his admirable indices to
the _Close Rolls_.

* * * * *

THE HUDIBRASTIC VERSE.

_"He that fights and runs away," &c._--Your correspondent MELANION may be
assured that the orations of Demosthenes do not afford any trace of the
proverbial senarius, [Greek: anaer d pheugon kai palin machaesetai]; and it
does not appear quite clear how the apophthegm containing it (which has
been so generally attributed to Plutarch) has been