The difficulty would not be obviated were I, like Horace Walpole, (though Heaven knows for no such motives as influenced that posthumous libeller,—) to leave a box containing the holograph manuscript of this Opus in safe custody, with an injunction that the seals should not be broken till the year of our Lord, 2000. Nothing more than what has been here stated would appear in that inestimable manuscript. Whether I shall leave it as an heir-loom in my family, or have it deposited either in the public library of my Alma Mater, or that of my own College, or bequeath it as a last mark of affection to the town of Doncaster, concerns not the present reader. Nor does it concern him to know whether the till-then-undiscoverable name of the author will be disclosed at the opening of the seals. An adequate motive for placing the manuscript in safe custody is, that a standard would thus be secured for posterity whereby the always accumulating errors of the press might be corrected. For modern printers make more and greater blunders than the copyists of old. In any of those works which posterity will not be “willing to let perish,” how greatly would the interest be enhanced, if the whole history of its rise and progress were known, and amid what circumstances, and with what views, and in what state of mind, certain parts were composed. Sir Walter, than whom no man ever took more accurate measure of the public taste, knew this well; and posterity will always be grateful to him for having employed his declining years in communicating so much of the history of those works which obtained a wider and more rapid celebrity than any that ever preceded them, and perhaps than any that ever may follow them. An author of the last generation, (I cannot call to mind who,) treated such an opinion with contempt, saying in his preface that “there his work was, and that as the Public were concerned with it only as it appeared before them, he should say nothing that would recal the blandishments of its childhood:” whether the book was one of which the maturity might just as well be forgotten as the nonage, I do not remember. But he must be little versed in bibliology who has not learnt that such reminiscences are not more agreeable to an author himself, than they are to his readers, (if he obtain any,) in after times; for every trifle that relates to the history of a favourite author, and of his works, then becomes precious.