Notes and Queries/Series 1/Volume 1/Number 1/Value of a Repository For "Notes"
Value of a Repository for "Notes."—New Edition of Herbert's "Ames."
[The suggestions in the following Paper are so extremely valuable, that we are not only pleased to give it insertion, but hope that our readers will take advantage of our columns to carry out Dr. Maitland's recommendations.]
Sir,—My attention has been particularly engaged by one suggestion in your Prospectus, because it seems to hold out a hope that your intended work will furnish what has long been a desideratum in literature. We really do want something that may form a "supplement to works already in existence a treasury for enriching future editions of them;" while it may also receive (as I have no doubt you meant to include,) such contributions of moderate extent, as may tend to render fuller and more correct some works which have little or no chance of future editions. In this way you may be of great use in every department of literature; and especially in works of reference. With them, indeed, correctness is everything; perfect accuracy is not to be attained, and the nearest possible approximation to it can be made only by many little careful steps, backwards as well as forwards.
By works of reference, however, I do not mean Dictionaries, though I would include them, as a class of works for which I have a singular respect, and to which my remark particularly applies. There are many other books, and some which very properly aspire to the title of History, which are, in fact and practically, books of reference, and of little value if they have not the completeness and accuracy which should characterise that class of works. Now it frequently happens to people whose reading is at all discursive, that they incidentally fall upon small matters of correction or criticism, which are of little value to themselves, but would be very useful to those who are otherwise engaged, if they knew of their existence.
I might perhaps illustrate this matter by referring to various works; but it happens to be more in my way to mention Herbert's edition of Ames's Typographical Antiquities. It may be hoped that, some day or other, the valuable matter of which it consists will be reduced to a better form and method; for it seems hardly too much to say, that he appears to have adopted the very worst that could have been selected. I need not tell you that I have no idea of undertaking such a thing, and I really have no suspicion (I wish I had) that anybody else is thinking of doing it:—or, in other words, I am not attempting to make use of your columns by insinuating a preparatory puff for a work in progress, or even in contemplation. I only mention the book as one of a class which may be essentially benefited by your offering a receptacle for illustrations, additions, and corrections, such as individually, or in small collections, are of little or no value, and are frequently almost in the very opposite condition to those things which are of no value to any body but the owner. For instance, when I was in the habit of seeing many of the books noted by Herbert, and had his volumes lying beside me, I made hundreds, perhaps thousands, of petty corrections, and many from books which he had not had an opportunity of seeing, and of which he could only reprint incorrect descriptions. All of these, though trifling in themselves, are things which should be noticed in case of a reprint; but how much time and trouble would it cost an editor to find and collate the necessary books? That, to be sure, is his business; but the question for the public is, Would it be done at all? and could it in such cases be done so well in any other way, as by appointing some place of rendezvous for the casual and incidental materials for improvement which may fall in the way of readers pursuing different lines of inquiry, and rewarded, as men in pursuit of truth always are, whatever may be their success as to their immediate object, by finding more than they are looking for things, too, which when they get into their right places, show that they were worth finding and, perhaps, unknown to those more conversant with the subject to which they belong, just because they were in the out-of-the-way place where they were found by somebody who was looking for something else.