XVII. But the capital offence is in the lists of Actors and Playwrights (Chapters XV. and XXIII.), particularly the latter, where the waste of time involved in turning over the leaves in search of a particular author is a constant source of irritation. It is a real misfortune that this invaluable book should be rendered unnecessarily difficult of use by the lack of a little editorial imagination. For this failure I think the Press must share the blame, but taken in conjunction with some signs of hasty revision, to which I shall allude in a moment, and a rather heavy sprinkling of misprints, it cannot but raise a suspicion that the relief of getting so considerable a work off his hands may have betrayed the author into blemishing the labours of twenty years by an undue anxiety to celebrate the tercentenary of the Shakespeare Folio.
The misprints do not, of course, seriously matter, though they are occasionally a little disconcerting. Even on Dr. Chambers’ authority I hesitate to believe that one Thomas Vaughan kept the King’s Jewels for well over a century and was then only removed from office by the favourite method of the Queen of Hearts (i. 57); that the Jonson Folio really appeared ten years before the date on the title (ii. 203); that legend was already crystallising round the Fat Knight in the middle of the sixteenth century (ii. 443); that the scene of Romeo and Juliet is laid mostly at Venice (iii. 123); that Dyce was editing Beaumont and Fletcher at the age of fourteen (iii. 232); or Malone visiting the Audit Office in 1591 (iv. 137); and I cannot help suspecting that when Dr. Chambers says that a certain society issues “text-facsimile reprints” (iii. 206) he means “type-facsimile.”
But there are also a number of misstatements which a more thorough revision would no doubt have removed. I would say that I do not think I have found a single error which vitiates Dr. Chambers’ own argument or is of very serious consequence in itself, and unless my reading has been a good deal more perfunctory than I imagine, I am inclined to think this a pretty high compliment. But what has not mislead Dr. Chambers may mislead others in a work which students will consult with implicit confidence for generations to come, and I feel bound to enter a warning that if they rely on the present volumes to the exclusion of the original authorities they will be at times—perhaps deservedly—deceived. Space forbids my giving more than a few examples in different categories, but I will mention what seem to me the more serious
