partment are so glaring, that we are left in doubt, after all, if we
may congratulate ourselves on possessing all these sacred blunders
of the Elizabethan typesetters in their integrity and without any
debasement of modern alloy. If it be gratifying to know that there lived
stupid men before our contemporary Agamemnons in that kind, yet we
demand absolute 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 number. Had his emancipated theories
of grammar prevailed, how much easier would that part of boys which
cherubs want have found the school-room benches! How would birchen bark,
as an educational tonic, have fallen in repute! How white would have
been the (now black-and-blue) memories of Dr. Busby and so many other
educational _lictors_, who, with their bundles of rods, heralded not
alone the consuls, but all other Roman antiquities to us! We dare not,
however, indulge in the grateful vision, since there are circumstances
which lead us to infer that Mr. Halliwell himself (member though he be
of so many learned societies) has those vague notions of the speech of
ancient Rome which are apt to prevail in regions which count not the
_betula_ in their _Flora_. On page xv. of his Preface, he makes
Drummond say that Ben Jonson "was dilated" (_delated_,--Gifford gives it
in English, _accused_) "to the king by Sir James Murray,"--Ben, whose
corpulent person stood in so little need of that malicious increment!

What is Mr. Halliwell's conception of editorial duty? As we read along,
and the once fair complexion of the margin grew more and more pimply
with pencil-marks, like that of a bad proof-sheet, we began to think
that he was acting on the principle of every man his own washerwoman,
--that he was making blunders of set purpose, (as teachers of languages
do in their exercises,) in order that we might correct them for
ourselves, and so fit us in time to be editors also, and members of
various learned societies, even as Mr. Halliwell himself is. We fancied,
that, magnanimously waving aside the laurel with which a grateful
posterity crowned Gener