But the direct inference from your
correspondent's remarks (although it is fully my persuasion he neither
designed nor observed it) is, that my difficulties are no difficulties
at all, but mistakes. To these we are all liable, and none more so than
the individual who is now addressing you, though, it is to be hoped, not
quite in the awful proportion which has been imputed to him. And let it
stand as my apology for what has been said, that I owe it no less to my
own credit, than perhaps to that of others, my kind encouragers and
abettors in these inquiries, to vindicate myself from the charge of one
general and overwhelming error, that of having any thing to do with the
editing of a MS. of which my actual knowledge should be so small, that
out of _three_ difficulties propounded from it contents, _two_ should be
capable of being shown to have arisen from nothing else but my inability
to read it. I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,
W.
Trin. Coll. Oxon. Dec. 5, 1849.
[We have inserted the foregoing letter in compliance with the
writer's wishes, but under a protest; because no one can
entertain a doubt as to his ability to edit in a most
satisfactory manner the work he has undertaken; and because also
we can bear testimony to the labour and conscientious
painstaking which he is employing to clear up the various
obscure points in that very curious document.
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