SIR WILLIAM STIRLING-MAXWELL, Bart., PRESIDENT. HENRY YATES THOMPSON, VICE-PRESIDENT. ALFRED BROTHERS, F.R.A.S. JAMES CROSTON, HONORARY SECRETARY. REV. HENRY GREEN, M. A., EDITOR. WILLIAM LANGTON. G. W. NAPIER. Το The Rev. Thomas Corser, M.A. F.S.A. &c. Vicar of Stand, Lancashire, IN ADMIRATION Of his high Scholarship in the old English Literature, and Of the marvellous Liberality with which he has communicated of his skilfully gathered Treasures: FROM THE EDITORS of the Mirrovr of Maiestie. M. DCCC.LXX. this work, as well as the letter-press, were, at first, in 1618, of defective execution, without finish in the woodcuts, and without sharpness or shapeliness in the type. Such faults might be urged as reasons for not reproducing the volume; but then its extreme rarity and the nature of its contents plead in b behalf of making the possession of a copy attainable at a moderate price.* Shall the work be sent out honestly in its original homeliness? or shall meretricious graces be imparted to it by the hands of skilled engravers and typefounders? Let those who prefer it adopt the latter course, and as Pope did with Chaucer, let them modernize a WIFE OF BATH, and, despoiling her of her old-fashioned simplicity, bring to a too prurient fancy the questionable aid of a more mellifluous versification. Chaucer in his ancient roughness is far better than Pope in his modern polish. The function of the photographer is not to coax natural blemishes into artificial beauties, nor to touch up antiquity and bestow an adventitious, value on works of old; but with all exactness and care to set forth those works as they existed in the former days. He is indeed to seek out the, best possible exemplars, and to bestow his highest skill on the fac-simile copy, occasionally concealing gross delineation. by the transference of a more *The copy from which our fac-simile was taken obtained by auction the high price of £36. |