tious.

[146] This was Harper, a bookseller, who had undertaken a
republication of the _Ecclesia Vindicata_, and other tracts by
Heylin, to which the Life was to be prefixed.

[147] The author had "desired Mr. Harper to communicate the papers
to whom he pleases, and cross out or add what is thought
convenient." A leave very few literary men would give!

[148] The most curious part of the story remains yet to be told. Dr.
Barnard was mistaken in his imputations, and Vernon was not the
really blamable party. We tell the tale in Mr. Robertson's words in
the work already alluded to.--"Who was the party guilty of these
outrages? Barnard assumed that it could be no other than Vernon; but
the truth seems to be that the Rector of Bourton had nothing
whatever to do with the matter. The publisher had called in a more
important adviser--Dr. Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln (Ath. Oxon. iii.
567; iv. 606); the mutilations of Barnard's MS. were really the
work, not of the obscure Gloucestershire clergyman, but of the
indignant author's own diocesan; and we need not hesitate to ascribe
the abruptness of the conclusion, and the smallness of the type in
which it is printed, to Mr. Harper's economical desire to save the
expense of an additional sheet." Thus "Bishop Barlow and the
bookseller had made the mischief between the parties, who, instead
of attempting a private explanation, attacked each other in print."

OF LENGLET DU FRESNOY.

The "_Methode pour etudier l' Histoire_," by the Abbe Lenglet du
Fresnoy, is a master-key to all the locked-up treasures of ancient and
modern history, and to the more secret stores of the obscurer
memorialists of every nation. The history of this work and its author
are equally remarkable. The man was a sort of curiosity in human nature,
as his works are in literature. Lenglet du Fresnoy is not a writer
merely laborious; without genius, he still has a hardy originality in
his manner of writing and of thinking; and his vast and restless
curiosity fermenting his immense book-knowledge, with a freedom verging
on cynical causticity, led to the pursuit of uncommon topics. Even the
prefaces to the works which he edited are singularly curious, and he
has usually added _bibliotheques_, or critical catalogues of authors,
which we may still consult for notices on the writers of romances--of
those on literary subjects--on alchym