Instead of making his editorial comments on his transcribed documents in paginal foot-notes, it was Hogg's most objectionable and dangerous practice to insert them in the body of the transcripts. Of course, in doing so, it was his rule to put his initials after each editorial note, and to place each 'initialed' note between brackets. Thus exhibited between brackets, with the biographer's initials put immediately before the second bracket, an editorial note is recognized at a glance by the most careless reader, as no part of the transcribed document, but a mere editorial elucidation of the preceding passage. Printed as Hogg intended them to be, no one of these editorial notes could have been mistaken, even momentarily, for a part and parcel of the writing, in whose body it was inserted. But, unfortunately, for the biographer's reputation, these notes were not always printed as he intended them to be printed. In some cases the first bracket, in some cases both brackets, are omitted, though the initials are inserted. There are also cases where a scrap of editorial explanation is found without either brackets or initials. As Hogg was no regular author, but a slap-dash rough-and-ready legal draughtsman (plying his pen, in his proper vocation, with perfect confidence in the ability of solicitors and law-stationers to correct the literal slips of his compositions), he wrote copy for the press just as he slapt and dashed copy off for his ordinary clients. A careless writer, he was also a careless corrector of proofs. Hence it came to pass that editorial notes, which he meant to bracket and initial (notes, which, of course, should have been made at the foot, instead of in the body of his pages), came under the public eye without the brackets and initials, that should, and would, have distinguished them at a glance from the printed matter they were intended to elucidate. That this is the explanation of the interpolations in Hogg's transcripts, appears from--(1), the biographer's practice of peppering his transcripts with initialed and bracketed scraps of editorial comment; (2), the grammatical construction that distinguishes the interpolations from the text in which they are set; (3), the absolute inefficacy of the inserted passages for any end a dishonest interpolator could have in view; and (4), the conclusive fact, that, whilst it is a mere perplexing disturbance to the narrative, so long as it is taken for part of the transcript, each of the interpolations becomes an intelligible and more or less serviceable comment on the context, as soon as the reader puts it into brackets, and deals with it as an editorial note. In respect to these interpolations, and also in respect to all the other errors which the biographer's enemies are pleased to regard as deliberate misstatements, Hogg must be acquitted wholly of dishonest purpose. Had he been duly mindful for brackets and initials, the interpolations, of which