THE BOX OF PANDORA.

409

ough the wizard Frescoes and monastic Corridors of sa, at Page 151, and thou wilt, in more than one sense,

r there thou wilt discover The Campo Santo, that honoured eight of the Mitred Ubaldo's fifty well manned barks, s completely "unsexed" as Lady Macbeth herself could ave wished to be; and, in fact, as Fanny Squeers says Nicholas Nickleby, "A disgrace to his Gender!" see! they have printed it Campo Santa !!!

66

By this time I perceive that my Tale of Horrors (for Horrors" read “ Errors,”) has produced a due impression, for

66 Thy canonized and inhearsed Bones
Have burst their cearments;"

and, at Page 158, thou art clambering up The Superga, just in time to find thy ci-devant Brethren of the Cowl and Cell comfortably settled in the category of Nonentities by the omission of the single word "but."

Thence pass we on to the Münsterthal at Page 193; that Valley of Nature's Architecture, where Church, and Castle, and Tower, and Portico, and Terraces of pillared Arcades, have been modelled from the Mountains by Time and Tempest; and thy sardonic smile will point out the word "stream" repeated thrice in twelve lines : "Insatiate Archer!* could not one suffice;

Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain." But this error was perfectly suicidal; 'twas " an aspersion on my parts of speech,” which my own grey Goosequill alone could have perpetrated.

but

Enough! I tremble beneath thy supercilious sternness; spare me this once :

* Young's Night Thoughts.

"Must it be so? And must I ravel out

My weaved-up Follies? Gentle Northumberland,
If thy Offences were upon Record,

Would it not shame thee, in so fair a Troop,
To read a Lecture on them?"

KING RICHARD II.

HEAR, O illustrious Desiderius! from thy grass-grown

Sepulchre, among the red Cloister-arches and Ar

morial Monuments of BASILIA;* hear me beneath the mighty Woodlands and Manorial Palaces of Kent, desirous to cleanse my pages of much perilous stuff by an Interview with thy venerable Shade.

And to whom should I so reasonably appeal, in my present predicament, as to thyself, seeing thou wert the Great Coeval of The Press, the Bosom Friend and Household Guest of Aldus Manutius at Venice, the Agamemnon of the Reformation, as Luther was its Achilles, the dread Antagonist of Error, and so intolerant of Errata, that thou art known to have protested thou wouldst rather have given a Pursefull of Golden Crowns, than have overlooked a grievous Typographical Misdemeanour which tarnished the lustre of a Treatise dedicated to a certain Dame of Quality, thy munificent and honoured Patroness.

True, I cannot carry my predilection so far as to cry, "Mallem ERRARE cum Erasmo !"

406

THE BOX OF PANDORA.

but thus much I may say, without hazarding the imputation of Sycophancy, that

"Since to my share some Printed' Errors fall,"

I would infinitely prefer the shelter of thy great Name for the unlucky Changelings, to exposing them before the invidious scrutiny of the public, unprotected by such a Telamonian shield.

Exposed, somehow or another, they inevitably must be; and I have always profoundly revered that Machiavellian Maxim,

"EVER BE THE FIRST TO AVOW SUCH FAULTS IN YOURSELF, AS MUST BE Detected, whethER YOU AVOW THEM OR NOT;" the Confession itself gives an air of charming Candour to your character, disarms the surliness of criticism, and drops a coquettish veil over the very Defects it professes to divulge.

Nevertheless I cannot endure the nauseous practice of placarding the poor things upon a loose slip, like the Label on the Apothecary's Phial, more distasteful than the Draught which it indicates within.

No! let me rather communicate to thee, O sublime Shadow! what I cannot ultimately conceal from the world; so that the humiliating disclosures emerging, as it were, from the solemn sanctuary of thy Cathedral Home, and, in a manner, enmantled with thy majestic Shroud, may experience a degree of compassionate respect, which, under a less illusory guise, they could scarcely anticipate.

"To err is human," singeth the Poet; ah, would it were not also diabolical! as, in reference to the Ministering Angels of Faust and Güttemberg, it too often is.

"But this eternal Blazon must not be

To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O list!"