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41 G APPENDIX. resemblance, or a want of resemblance, between the book and its likenesses ; but knowing that the charge has been brought, I see it to be right that all those who are called upon to judge the question should have before their eyes the very text of a book which is the subject of the alleged misdescriptions — the very text with all its sins and wicked- nesses, not having one single word added, nor one single word withdrawn But, besides his reasons for the course he is taking, a man may have his motive ; and I acknowledge that, with me, a chief motive for declining to alter the text is this : — I wish to keep a check upon those who might like to be able to say that I had materially altered the book. If any- body shall try to say such a thing in defiance of the plan I have adopted, he will find himself painfully tethered ; for, the words of the text standing fast, he will be unable to range beyond the circle of those little matters — matters chiefly minute, and of detail — which are dealt with in a few corrective foot-notes. Either he must say what is not true under circumstances which make his exposure a simple task, or else he will have to browse upon such scant herb- age as is afforded by notes of this sort : — ' No [not a squa- ' dron] ; only one troop.' ' No [not sixty-six years old] ; ' only sixty-four.' ' Here the words " Laurence and " should ' be inserted.' 'Instead of "a wing," read "the whole." 1 The first of the commentators who found himself checked in this way was thrown into so angry a state, that when I stood observing his struggles, I was glad to think of the prudence which had led me to keep him tied up. I said just now that some of the writings which pur- ported to give the tenor of these volumes had been put forward as instances of unfaithful description. I have not enabled myself to assist this inquiry by comparing the accounts of things contained in the book with the book itself; and it is not desirable for me to do so, because an