Poor Smedley speaks thus of the project in one of his letters. “I am making the Faery Queen a poem which may be admitted into _family_ reading, by certain omissions, by modernizing the spelling and by appending, where necessary, brief glossarial foot-notes. I read Spenser so very early and made him so much a part of the furniture of my mind, that until I had my attention drawn to him afresh, I had utterly forgotten how much he required the pruning-knife, how utterly impossible it is that he should be read aloud: and I cannot but think that when fitted for general perusal, he will become more attractive by a new coat and waistcoat. If we were to print Shakespeare, and Beaumont and Fletcher, or even Milton, _literatim_ from the first editions, the spelling would deter many readers. Strange to say, when Southey was asked some time ago whether he would undertake the task, he said, ‘No, I shall print every word of him!’ and he has done so, in a single volume. Can he have daughters? Or any who, like my Mary, delight in such portions as they are permitted to open?” Did Southey say so?—Why then, well said Southey! And it is very like him; for he is not given to speak, as his friends the Portugueze say, _enfarinhadamente_—which is being interpreted, mealy-mouthedly. Indeed his moral and intellectual constitution must be much feebler than I suppose it to be, if his daughters are not ‘permitted to open’ any book in his library. He must have been as much astonished to hear that the Faery Queen was unfit for their perusal as he could have been when he saw it gravely asserted by an American Professor, Critic and Doctor of Divinity, that his Life of Wesley was composed in imitation of the Iliad!