tampered with, and should be justly restored--the first
volume to 1739, the second to 1745.

(2.) We must admit that a bookseller gifted with mature sapience will very
rarely, or never, be such an amateur in expensive methods of bamboozling,
as to prefer having recourse to the title-page expedient, if he could
flatter himself that his purpose would be likely to be effected simply by
_doctoring the date_; and thus a question springs up, akin to the former
one, How great is the antiquity of this timeserving device? At this moment,
trusting only to memory, I am not able to adduce an instance of the
depravation anterior to the year 1606, when Dr. James's _Bellum Papale_ was
put forth in London as a new book, though in reality there was no novelty
connected with it, except that the last 0 in 1600 (the authentic date) had
been compelled by penmanship to cease to be a dead letter, and to germinate
into a 6.

(3.) If neither the judicious naturalisation of a title-page, nor the
dexterous corruption of the year in which a work was honestly produced,
should avail to eliminate "the stock in hand," _res ad Triarios
rediit_--there is but one contrivance left. This is, to give to the
ill-fated hoard _another name_; in the hope that a proverb properly
belonging to a rose may be superabundantly verified in the case of an old
book. What Anglo-Saxon scholar has not studied "_Divers Ancient
Monuments_," revived in 1638? and yet perhaps scarcely any one is aware
that the appellation is entirely deceptive, and that no such collection was
printed at that period. The inestimable remains of AElfric, edited by L'Isle
in 1623, and then entitled, "_A Saxon Treatise concerning the Old and New
Testament_," together with a reprint of the "_Testimonie of Antiquitie_,"
(sanctioned by Archbishop Parker in 1567,) had merely submitted to
substitutes for the first two leaves with which they had been ushered into
the world, and after fifteen years the unsuspecting public were beguiled.
When was this system of misnomers introduced? and can a more signal
specimen of this kind of shamelessness be mentioned than that which is
afforded by the fate of Thorndike's _De ratione ac jure finiendi
Controversias Ecclesiae Disputatio_? So this small folio in fours was
designated when it was published, Lond. 1670; but in 1674 it became
_Origines_ _Ecclesiasticae_; and it was metamorphosed into _Restauratio
Ecclesiae_ in 1677.

(50.) Dr. Dibdin (_Typ. Antiq._ iii. 350.)