ury--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 pain