was often vexed in his days by a parallel
with Homer, and the _Homerians_ combated with the _Virgilians_. Modern
Italy was long divided into such literary sects: a perpetual skirmishing
is carried on between the _Ariostoists_ and the _Tassoists_; and feuds
as dire as those between two Highland clans were raised concerning the
_Petrarchists_, and the _Chiabrerists_. Old _Corneille_ lived to bow his
venerable genius before a parallel with _Racine_; and no one has
suffered more unjustly by such arbitrary criticisms than _Pope_, for a
strange unnatural civil war has often been renewed between the
_Drydenists_ and the _Popeists_. Two men of great genius should never be
depreciated by the misapplied ingenuity of a parallel; on such occasions
we ought to conclude _magis pares quam similes_.

FOOTNOTE:

[269] It is noticed by Jortin in his Life of Erasmus, vol. i. p. 160.

THE PEARL BIBLES AND SIX THOUSAND ERRATA.

As a literary curiosity, I notice a subject which might rather enter
into the history of religion. It relates to the extraordinary state of
our English Bibles, which were for some time suffered to be so corrupted
that no books ever yet swarmed with such innumerable errata!

These errata unquestionably were in great part voluntary commissions,
passages interpolated, and meanings forged for certain purposes;
sometimes to sanction the new creed of a half-hatched sect, and
sometimes with an intention to destroy all scriptural authority by a
confusion, or an omission of texts--the whole was left open to the
option or the malignity of the editors, who, probably, like certain
ingenious wine-merchants, contrived to accommodate "the waters of life"
to their customers' peculiar taste. They had also a project of printing
Bibles as cheaply and in a form as contracted as they possibly could for
the common people; and they proceeded till it nearly ended with having
no Bible at all: and, as Fuller, in his "Mixt Contemplations on Better
Times," alluding to this circumstance, with not one of his lucky
quibbles, observes, "The _small price_ of the Bible has caused the
_small prizing_ of the Bible."

This extraordinary attempt on the English Bible began even before
Charles the First's dethronement, and probably arose from an unusual
demand for Bibles, as the sectarian fanaticism was increasing. Printing
of English Bibles was an article of open trade; every one printed at the
lowest price, and as fast as their presses