emselves, on the
understanding that the articles should simply set forth the accounts which
the sects themselves give of their own doctrines. Thus the article on the
Roman Church was written by Dr. Wiseman.[474] But the Unitarians were not
allowed to come within the rule: as in other quarters, they were treated as
the gypsies of Christianity. Under the head "Socinians"--a name repudiated
by themselves--an opponent was allowed not merely to state their alleged
doctrines in his own way, but to apply strong terms, such as "audacious
unfairness," to some of their doings. The protests which were made against
this invasion of the understanding produced, in due time, the article
"Unitarians," written by one of that persuasion. We need not say that these
errors have been amended in the English Cyclopaedia: and our chief purpose
in mentioning them is to remark, that this is all we can find on the points
in question against twenty-eight large volumes produced by an editor whose
task was monthly, and whose issue was never delayed a single hour. How much
was arrested before publication none but himself can say. We have not
alluded to one or two remonstrances on questions of absolute fact, which
are beside the present purpose.

Both kinds of encyclopaedic works have been fashioned upon predecessors,
from the very earliest which had a predecessor to be founded upon; and the
undertakings before us will be themselves the ancestors of a line of
successors. Those who write in such collections should be {295} careful
what they say, for no one can tell how long a mis-statement may live. On
this point we will give the history of a pair of epithets. When the
historian De Thou[475] died, and left the splendid library which was
catalogued by Bouillaud[476] and the brothers Dupuis[477] (Bullialdus and
Puteanus), there was a manuscript of De Thou's friend Vieta,[478] the
_Harmonicon Coeleste_, of which it is on record, under Bouillaud's hand,
that he himself lent it to Cosmo de' Medici,[479] to which must be added
that M. Libri[480] found it in the Magliabecchi Library at Florence in our
own day. Bouillaud, it seems, entirely forgot what he had done. Something,
probably, that Peter Dupuis said to Bouillaud, while they were at work on
the catalogue, remained on his memory, and was published by him in 1645,
long after; to the effect that Dupuis lent the manuscript to Mersenne,[481]
from whom it was procured by some intending plagiarist, who would no