Читать книгу Notes and Queries, Number 04, November 24, 1849 - Various - Страница 1

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 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.