When we consulted our literary friends as to the form and manner in
which it would be most expedient to put forth our "NOTES AND QUERIES,"
more than one suggested to us that our paper should appear only once a
month, or at all events not more frequently than once a fortnight, on
the ground that a difficulty would be experienced in procuring materials
for more frequent publication. We felt, however, that if such a medium
of Inter-communication, as we proposed to establish was, as we believed,
really wanted, frequency of publication was indispensable. Nothing but a
weekly publication would meet what we believed to be the requirements of
literary men. We determined, therefore, to publish a Number every
Saturday; and the result has so far justified our decision, that the
object of our now addressing our readers is to apologise to the many
friends whose communications we are again unavoidably compelled to
postpone; and to explain that we are preparing to carry out such further
improvements in our arrangements as will enable us to find earlier
admission for all the communications with which we are favoured.
One other word. It has been suggested to us that in inviting Notes,
Comments, and Emendations upon the works of Macaulay, Hallam, and other
living authors, we may possibly run a risk of offending those eminent
men. We hope not. We are sure that this outght not to be the case. Had
we not recognised the merits of such works, and the influence they were
destined to exercise over men's minds, we should not have opened our
pages for the purpose of receiving, much less have invited, corrections
of the mistakes into which the most honest and the most able of literary
inquirers must sometimes fall. Only those who have meddled in historical
research can be aware of the extreme difficulty, the all but
impossibility, of ascertaining the exact or the whole truth, amidst the
numerous minute and often apparently contradictory facts which present
themselves to the notice of all inquirers. In this very number a
correspondent comments upon an inference drawn by Mr. Hallam from a
passage in Mabillon. In inserting such a communication we show the
respect we feel for Mr. Hallam, and our {50} sense of the services which
he has rendered to historical knowledge. Had we believed that if he has
fallen into a mistake in this instance, it had been not merely a
mistake, but a deliberate perversion of the truth, we should have
regarded both book and writer with indifference, not to say with
contempt. It is in the endeavour to furnish corrections of little
unavoidable slips in such good honest books--albeit imperfect as all
books must be--that we hope at once to render good service to our
national literature, and to show our sense of genius, learning, and
research which have combined to enrich it by the production of works of
such high character and last influence.
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