The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 6, April, 1858 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 311 pages of information about The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 6, April, 1858.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 6, April, 1858 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 311 pages of information about The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 6, April, 1858.
poets of the latter half of the sixteenth century—­for that was the period when the Reformation was fully established—­and the whole of the seventeenth century were sacred poets,” and that “even Shakspeare and the contemporary dramatists of his age sometimes attuned their well-strung harps to the songs of Zion.”  Comment on statements like these would be as useless as the assertions themselves are absurd.

We have quoted these examples only to justify us in saying, that Mr. Smith must select his editors with more care, if he wishes that his “Library of Old Authors” should deserve the confidence and thereby gain the good word of intelligent readers,—­without which such a series can neither win nor keep the patronage of the public.  It is impossible that men who cannot construct an English sentence correctly, and who do not know the value of clearness in writing, should be able to disentangle the knots which slovenly printers have tied in the thread of an old author’s meaning; and it is more than doubtful whether they who assert carelessly, cite inaccurately, and write loosely are not by nature disqualified for doing thoroughly what they undertake to do.  If it were unreasonable to demand of every one who assumes to edit one of our early poets the critical acumen, the genial sense, the illimitable reading, the philological scholarship, which in combination would alone make the ideal editor, it is not presumptuous to expect some one of these qualifications singly, and we have the right to insist upon patience and accuracy, which are within the reach of every one, and without which all the others are wellnigh vain.  Now to this virtue of accuracy Mr. Offor specifically lays claim in one of his remarkable sentences:  “We are bound to admire,” he says, “the accuracy and beauty of this specimen of typography.  Following in the path of my late friend William Pickering, our publisher rivals the Aldine and Elzevir presses, which have been so universally admired.”  We should think that it was the product of those presses which had been admired, and that Mr. Smith presents a still worthier object of admiration when he contrives to follow a path and rival a press at the same time.  But let that pass;—­it is the claim to accuracy which we dispute; and we deliberately affirm, that, as far as we are able to judge by the volumes we have examined, no claim more unfounded was ever set up.  In some cases, as we shall show presently, the blunders of the original work have been followed with painful accuracy in the reprint; but many others have been added by the carelessness of Mr. Smith’s printers or editors.  In the thirteen pages of Mr. Offor’s own Introduction we have found as many as seven typographical errors,—­unless some of them are to be excused on the ground that Mr. Offor’s studies have not yet led him into those arcana where we are taught such recondite mysteries of language as that verbs agree with their nominatives.  In Mr. Farr’s Introduction to the “Hymns

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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 6, April, 1858 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.