To insure correctness, without which the 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 concocted.  Heeren, in doing full justice to the biographical talent of the Chaeronean, has yet observed, “We may easily see that in his Lives he only occasionally indicates his authorities, because his own head was so often the source.”  It is in the life of Demosthenes that the story of his flight is told, but briefly; and for that part which relates to the inscription on the shield of Demosthenes, he says, [Greek:  hos elege Putheas].  The other life among those of the Ten Orators, the best critics think not to be Plutarch’s; and the relation in it is too ridiculous for credit; yet it is repeated by Photius.