Notes and Queries/Series 1/Volume 1/Number 1/A Bibliographic Project
A Bibliographic Project.
Of the various sections into which the history of English literature is divisible, there is no one in which the absence of collective materials is more seriously felt—no one in which we are more in need of authentic notes, or which is more apt to raise perplexing queries—than that which relates to the authorship of anonymous and pseudonymous works.
The importance of the inquiry is not inferior to the ardour with which it has sometimes been pursued, or the curiosity which it has excited. On all questions of testimony, whether historical or scientific, it is a consideration of the position and character of the writer which chiefly enables us to decide on the credibility of his statements, to account for the bias of his opinions, and to estimate his entire evidence at its just value. The remark also applies, in a qualified sense, to productions of an imaginative nature.
On the number of the works in this class, I can only hazard a conjecture. In French literature, it amounts to about one-third part of the whole mass. In English literature, it cannot be less than one-sixth part—perhaps more. Be as it may the systematic arrangement of all that has been revealed in that way, and of all that is discoverable, is essential to the perfection of literary history, of literary biography, and of bibliography.
At the present moment, I can only announce the project as a stimulus to unemployed aspirants, and as a hint to fortunate collectors, to prepare for an exhibition of their cryptic treasures.—On a future occasion I shall describe the plan of construction which seems most eligible—shall briefly notice the scattered materials which it may be expedient to consult, whether in public depositories, or in private hands—and shall make an appeal to whose assistance may be required, to enable a competent editor to carry out the plan with credit and success.
On the prevalence of anonymous writing, on its occasional convenience, and on its pernicious consequences, I shall make no remarks. Facts, rather than arguments, should be the stable commodity of an instructive miscellany.
Barnes Terrace, Surrey,
29th Oct. 1849.