was drawn from a note on the title-page written by Serassi himself.  To satisfy the urgent curiosity of the literati, these annotations on Tasso by Galileo were published in 1793.  Here is a work, which, from its earliest stage, much pains had been taken to suppress; but Serassi’s collecting passion inducing him to preserve what he himself so much wished should never appear, finally occasioned its publication!  It adds one evidence to the many which prove that such sinister practices have been frequently used by the historians of a party, poetic or politic.

Unquestionably this entire suppression of manuscripts has been too frequently practised.  It is suspected that our historical antiquary, Speed, owed many obligations to the learned Hugh Broughton, for he possessed a vast number of his MSS. which he burnt.  Why did he burn?  If persons place themselves in suspicions situations, they must not complain if they be suspected.  We have had historians who, whenever they met with information which has not suited their historical system, or their inveterate prejudices, have employed interpolations, castrations, and forgeries, and in some cases have annihilated the entire document.  Leland’s invaluable manuscripts were left at his death in the confused state in which the mind of the writer had sunk, overcome by his incessant labours, when this royal antiquary was employed by Henry the Eighth to write our national antiquities.  His scattered manuscripts were long a common prey to many who never acknowledged their fountain head; among these suppressors and dilapidators pre-eminently stands the crafty Italian Polydore Vergil, who not only drew largely from this source, but, to cover the robbery, did not omit to depreciate the father of our antiquities—­an act of a piece with the character of the man, who is said to have collected and burnt a greater number of historical MSS. than would have loaded a wagon, to prevent the detection of the numerous fabrications in his history of England, which was composed to gratify Mary and the Catholic cause.

The Harleian manuscript, 7379, is a collection of state-letters.  This MS. has four leaves entirely torn out, and is accompanied by this extraordinary memorandum, signed by the principal librarian.

“Upon examination of this book, Nov. 12, 1764, these
four last leaves were torn out. 
“C.  MORTON. 
“Mem.  Nov. 12, sent down to Mrs. Macaulay.”

As no memorandum of the name of any student to whom a manuscript is delivered for his researches was ever made, before or since, or in the nature of things will ever be, this memorandum must involve our female historian in the obloquy of this dilapidation.[288] Such dishonest practices of party feeling, indeed, are not peculiar to any party.  In Roscoe’s “Illustrations” of his Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici, we discover that Fabroni, whose character scarcely admits of suspicion, appears to have known of the existence of an unpublished letter