If you desire an antidote to all this, you may find it in the editor in
true blue who so largely refers to the Book of the Universal Kirk, The
Hynd Let Loose, The Cloud of Witnesses, Naphtali, and Faithful
Witness-Bearing Exemplified, and is great in his observations on the
Auchinshauch Testimony, the Sanquhar Declaration, and that fine
amalgamation of humility and dogmatism, the Informatory Vindication.[78]

[Footnote 78: "An Informatory Vindication of a poor, wasted,
misrepresented remnant of the suffering anti-popish, anti-prelatic,
anti-erastian, anti-sectarian, _only true_ church of Christ in
Scotland."]

There is no occasion for quarrelling with these specialties. They are
typical of a zeal often prolific both in amusement and instruction; and
when a man has gone through the labour of rendering many hundreds of
pages from a crabbed old manuscript, or of translating as much from a
nearly unknown tongue, it would be hard to deny him the recreation of a
few capers on his own hobby. Keep in mind that everything of this kind
is outside the substance of the book. The editor has his swing in the
introduction and appendix, and the notes; perhaps also in the title and
index, if he can make anything of them. But it is a principle of honour
throughout the clubs that the purity of the text shall not be tampered
with; and so, whether dark or light, faint or strong, it is a true
impression of the times, as the reader will perhaps find in the few
specimens I propose to show him. As touching the literary value of what
is thus restored, there are some who will say, and get applause for
doing so, that there are too many bad or second-rate books in existence
already; that every work of great genius finds its way to the world at
once; and that the very fact of its long obscurity proves a piece of
literature to be of little value. For all this, and all that can be
added to it, there are those who love these recovered relics of
ancestral literature, and are prepared to give reasons for their
attachment. In the first place, and apart from their purely literary
merits, they are records of the intellect and manners of their age.
Whoever desires to be really acquainted with the condition of a nation
at any particular time--say with that of England during Elizabeth's
reign, or the Commonwealth--will not attain his object by merely reading
the most approved histories of the period. He must endeavour as far as
he can to live back into th