This work may be justly divided into two parts: that dealing mainly with Shakespeare, and that with single minor authors whose complete or partial work he has reprinted. In Shakespeare he has, of course, the highest theme to dwell on, but also that in which he has been preceded by a vast series of workmen. In these his function has not been so much that of original and individual criticism as of judiciously compiling the work of predecessors, this last fact being especially true since the printing of the Furness edition. It is in dealing with the minor authors that he has been led to the discovery, at first seeming almost incredible, that the poems which most claimed the attention of the world have for that very reason been gradually most changed and perverted in printing. Gray’s “Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” for instance, has appeared in polyglot editions; it has been translated fifteen times into French, thirteen into Italian, twelve times into Latin, and so on down through Greek, German, Portuguese, and Hebrew. No one poem in the English language, even by Longfellow, equals it in this respect. The editions which appeared in Gray’s own time were kept correct through his own careful supervision; and the changes in successive editions were at first those made by himself, usually improvements, as where he changed “some village Cato” to “some village Hampden,” and substituted in the same verse “Milton” for “Tully” and “Cromwell” for “Cæsar.” But there are many errors in Pickering’s edition, and these have been followed by most American copies. It may perhaps be doubted whether Dr. Rolfe is quite correct in his opinion where he says in his preface to this ode, “No vicissitudes of taste or fashion have affected its popularity”; it is pretty certain that young people do not know it by heart so generally as they once did, and Wordsworth pronounced its dialect often “unintelligible”; but we are all under obligation to Dr. Rolfe for his careful revision of this text. Turning now to Scott’s “Lady of the Lake,” which would seem next in familiarity to Gray’s “Elegy,” we find scores of corrections, made in Rolfe’s, of errors that have crept gradually in since the edition of 1821. For instance, in Canto II, l. 685, every edition since 1821 has had “I meant not all my _heart_ would say,” the correct reading being “my _heat_ would say.” In Canto VI, l. 396, the Scottish “_boune_” has been changed to “_bound_” and eight lines below, the old word “_barded_” has become “_barbed_”; and these are but a few among many examples.