en various
versions of the Roxburghe list of toasts, and a corresponding amount of
critical discussion, which leaves the impression common to such
disputes, that this important manifesto was altered and enlarged from
time to time. The version which bears the strongest marks of
completeness and authenticity, was found among the papers of Mr
Hazlewood, of whom hereafter. It is here set down as nearly in its
original shape as the printer can give it:--

The Order of y^e Tostes.

The Immortal Memory of
John Duke of Roxburghe.
Christopher Valdarfer, Printer of the Decameron of
1471.
Gutemberg, Fust, and Schoeffher, the Inventors of
the Art of Printing.
William Caxton, the Father of the British Press.
Dame Juliana Berners, and the St Albans Press.
Wynkyn de Worde, and Richard Pynson, the Illustrious
Successors of William Caxton.
The Aldine Family, at Venice.
The Giunta Family, at Florence.
The Society of the Bibliophiles at Paris.
The Prosperity of the Roxburghe Club.
The Cause of Bibliomania all over the World.

It will be seen that this accomplished black-letterer must have been
under a common delusion, that our ancestors not only wrote but
pronounced the definite article "the" as "ye." Every blunderer ambitious
of success in fabricating old writings is sure to have recourse to this
trick, which serves for his immediate detection. The Gothic alphabet, in
fact, as used in this country, had a Theta for expressing in one letter
our present t and h conjoined. When it was abandoned, some printers
substituted for it the letter y as most nearly resembling it in shape,
hence the "ye" which occurs sometimes in old books, but much more
frequently in modern imitations of them.

The primitive Roxburgheians used to sport these toasts as a symbol of
knowingness and high caste in book-hunting freemasonry. Their
representative man happening, in a tour in the Highlands, to open his
refreshment wallet on the top of Ben Lomond, pledged his guide in the
potent _vin du pays_ to Christopher Valdarfer, John Gutemberg, and the
others. The Celt had no objection in the world to pledge successive
glasses to these names, which he had no doubt belonged "to fery
respectaple persons," probably to t