they are called, as you have women's tailors,—You may sound these wits and find the depth of them with your middle finger. They are cream-bowl-(or but puddle-) deep.'
An amusing anticipation of the peculiar genius for elaborate mendacity which distinguishes and connects the names of De Quincey and Mérimée will be found in Jonson's words of stern and indignant censure on 'some who, after they have got authority, or, which is less, opinion, by their writings, to have read much, dare presently to feign whole books and authors, and lie safely. For what never was will not easily be found; not by the most curious,' Certainly it was not by the innocent readers whose research into the original authorities for the history of the revolt of the Tartars, or whose interest in the original text of Clara Gazul's plays and the Illyrian ballads of La Guzla, must have given such keen delight to those two frontless and matchless charlatans of genius.
The keen and scornful intelligence of Jonson finds no less admirable expression in the two succeeding notes; of which the first sets a brand on such cunning plagiarists as protest against all reading, and so 'think to divert the sagacity of
