holograph manuscript of this Opus in safe custody, with an injunction that the seals should not be broken till the year of our Lord, 2000. Nothing more than what has been here stated would appear in that inestimable manuscript. Whether I shall leave it as an heir-loom in my family, or have it deposited either in the public library of my Alma Mater, or that of my own College, or bequeath it as a last mark of affection to the town of Doncaster, concerns not the present reader. Nor does it concern him to know whether the till-then-undiscoverable name of the author will be disclosed at the opening of the seals. An adequate motive for placing the manuscript in safe custody is, that a standard would thus be secured for posterity whereby the always accumulating errors of the press might be corrected. For modern printers make more and greater blunders than the copyists of old.

In any of those works which posterity will not be "willing to let perish," how greatly would the interest be enhanced, if the whole history of its rise and progress were known,

and amid what circumstances, and with what views, and in what state of mind, certain parts were composed. Sir Walter, than whom no man ever took more accurate measure of the public taste, knew this well; and posterity will always be grateful to him for having employed his declining years in communicating so much of the history of those works which obtained a wider and more rapid celebrity than any that ever preceded them, and perhaps than any that follow them.

ever may

An author of the last generation, (I cannot call to mind who,) treated such an opinion with contempt, saying in his preface that "there his work was, and that as the Public were concerned with it only as it appeared before them, he should say nothing that would recal the blandishments of its childhood:" whether the book was one of which the maturity might just as well be forgotten as the nonage, I do not remember. But he must be little versed in bibliology who has not learnt that such reminiscences are not more agreeable to an author himself, than they are to his readers, (if he

obtain any, in after times; for every trifle that relates to the history of a favourite author, and of his works, then becomes precious.

Far be it for me to despise the relic-mongers of literature, or to condemn them, except when they bring to light things which ought to have been buried with the dead; like the Dumfries craniologists, who, when the grave of Burns was opened to receive the corpse of his wife, took that opportunity of abstracting the poet's skull that they might make a cast from it! Had these men forgotten the malediction which Shakespeare utters from his monument? And had they never read what Wordsworth says to such men in his Poet's epitaph

Art thou one all eyes,

Philospher! a fingering slave,

One that would peep and botanize

Upon his mother's grave?

Wrapt closely in thy sensual fleece,
O turn aside, and take, I pray,

That he below may rest in peace,

Thy pin-point of a soul away!

O for an hour of Burns' for these men's sake!

Were there a Witch of Endor in Scotland it would be an act of comparative piety in her to bring up his spirit; to stigmatize them in verses that would burn for ever would be a gratification for which he might think it worth while to be thus brought again upon earth.

But to the harmless relic-mongers we owe much; much to the Thomas Hearnes and John Nichols, the Isaac Reids and the Malones, the Haslewoods and Sir Egertons. Individually, I owe them much, and willingly take this opportunity of acknowledging the obligation. And let no one suppose that Sir Egerton is disparaged by being thus classed among the pioneers of literature. It is no disparagement for any man of letters, however great his endowments, and however extensive his erudition, to take part in those patient and humble labours by which honour is rendered to his predecessors, and information preserved for those who come after him.

But in every original work which lives and deserves to live there must have been some charms which no editorial diligence can pre

serve, no critical sagacity recover. The pictures of the old masters, suffer much when removed from the places for which they (and in which, many of them,) were painted. It may happen that one which has been conveyed from a Spanish palace or monastery to the collection of Marshal Soult, or any other Plunder-MasterGeneral in Napoleon's armies, and have past from thence, honestly as regards the purchaser, to the hands of an English owner, may be hung at the same elevation as in its proper place, and in the same light. Still it loses much. The accompaniments are all of a different character; the air and odour of the place are different. There is not here the locality that consecrated it,—no longer the religio loci. Wealth cannot purchase these; power may violate and destroy, but it cannot transplant them. The picture in its new situation is seen with a different feeling, by those who have any true feeling for such things.

Literary works of imagination, fancy or feeling, are liable to no injury of this kind; but in common with pictures they suffer a partial de