Whatever may be the utility of your publication as a source of
information to individuals, each on his own point of difficulty, there
is a purpose, and one of its greatest ultimate purposes, which it must
one day answer, though not immediately--I mean the furnishing of
materials for general conclusions on the _difficulties of literature_.
The queries which are sent to you are those which an author must put to
himself in his closet; the manner in which others help him shows the
manner in which he ought, if he could, to help himself. Occasionally,
the querist betrays a want of power to reduce his own difficulty to its
proper category; occasionally, also, the respondent fails to grapple
with the real point. All this is instructive, and reconciles those who
are instructed by it to the presence of many things which seem trivial
or out of place to those who do not consider the nature of the whole
undertaking. But the instruction I speak of will be much augmented in
quantity and elevated in character, if ever the time should come when
the mass of materials collected finds an architect to arrange it. The
classification of the obstacles which an inquirer meets with, so treated
as to give a view of the _causes_ of difficulty as they arise, both from
the state of our books, and of our modes of using them, must surely one
day suggest itself as a practicable result of the "NOTES AND QUERIES."
The more this result is insisted on the more likely is it to be
realised; and though it may need twenty volumes of the work to be
completed, or even more, before anything can be done, the mere
suggestion may induce some of your readers to keep an eye upon your
pages with a view to something beyond current matter.