uld have passed for his work in more modern times,
but for the accidental preservation of a single copy of a handbill
Prynne published disclaiming the whole thing. His style is most
amusingly imitated throughout, and his great love for quoting
authorities in his margin. He is made to complain that "this wicked
and tyrannical army did lately in a most inhumane, cruell, rough,
and barbarous manner, take away the poor players from their houses,
being met there to discharge the duty of their callings: as if this
army were fully bent, and most trayterously and maliciously set, to
put down and depresse all the King's friends, not only in the
parliament but in the very theatres; they have no care of covenant
or any thing else." And he is further made to declare, in spite of
"what the malicious, clamorous, and obstreperous people" may object,
that he once wrote against stage-plays,--that it was "when I had not
so clear a light as now I have." We can fancy the amusement this
pamphlet must have been to many readers during the great Civil War.

OF LITERARY FILCHERS.

An honest historian at times will have to inflict severe stroke on his
favourites. This has fallen to my lot, for in the course of my
researches, I have to record that we have both forgers and purloiners,
as well as other more obvious impostors, in the republic of letters! The
present article descends to relate anecdotes of some contrivances to
possess our literary curiosities by other means than by purchase; and
the only apology which can be alleged for the _splendida peccata_, as
St. Austin calls the virtues of the heathen, of the present innocent
criminals, is their excessive passion for literature, and otherwise the
respectability of their names. According to Grose's "Classical
Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," we have had celebrated _collectors_,
both in the learned and vulgar idioms. But one of them, who had some
reasons too to be tender on this point, distinguished this mode of
completing his collections, not by _book-stealing_, but by
_book-coveting_. On some occasions, in mercy, we must allow of softening
names. Were not the Spartans allowed to steal from one another, and the
bunglers only punished?

It is said that Pinelli made occasional additions to his literary
treasures sometimes by his skill in an art which lay much more in the
hand than in the head: however, as Pinelli never stirred