in the exclusion from his
edition of the rinsings of his author's desk, we side with Mr. Ainger,
and think more nobly of the editor than to deny him such a discretion. An
editor is not a sweep, and, by the love he bears the author whose fame he
seeks to spread abroad, it is his duty to exclude what he believes does
not bear the due impress of the author's mind. No doubt as a rule
editors have no discretion to be trusted; but happily Mr. Ainger has
plenty, and most sincerely do we thank him for withholding from us _A
Vision of Horns_ and _The Pawnbroker's Daughter_. Boldly to assert, as
some are found to do, that the editor of a master of style has no choice
but to reprint the scraps or notelets that a misdirected energy may
succeed in disinterring from the grave the writer had dug for them, is to
fail to grasp the distinction between a collector of _curios_ and a lover
of books. But this policy of exclusion is no doubt a perilous one. Like
the Irish members, or Mark Antony's wife--the 'shrill-toned Fulvia'--the
missing essays are 'good, being gone.' Surely, so we are inclined to
grumble, the taste was severe that led Mr. Ainger to dismiss _Juke
Judkins_. We are not, indeed, prepared to say that Judkins has been
wrongfully dismissed, or that he has any right of action against Mr.
Ainger, but we could have put up better with his presence than his
absence.

Mr. Ainger's introduction to the _Essays of Elia_ is admirable; here is a
bit of it:

'Another feature of Lamb's style is its allusiveness. He is rich in
quotations, and in my notes I have succeeded in tracing most of them
to their source, a matter of some difficulty in Lamb's case, for his
inaccuracy is all but perverse. But besides those avowedly introduced
as such, his style is full of quotations held, if the expression may
be allowed, in solution. One feels, rather than recognises, that a
phrase or idiom or turn of expression is an echo of something that one
has heard or read before. Yet such is the use made of the material,
that a charm is added by the very fact that we are thus continually
renewing our experience of an older day. This style becomes aromatic,
like the perfume of faded rose-leaves in a china jar. With such
allusiveness as this I need not say that I have not meddled in my
notes; its whole charm lies in recognising it for ourselves. The
"prosperity" of an allusion, as of a jest, "lies in the ea