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| Volume 4, Page 469
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of the two were first struck off, came both from the press BEF. the
delusive publicat. of the same work under the title of "Antinomians,"
&c. WITHOUT the malignant preface. The testimony is indubita. it
appeals to the eye; and tho. the form of ea. of the 66 pages in all the
copies is unchanged, slight correct. of errors in the earlier ones are
traced clearly in the later. For instance, the sig. of p. 1 of Short Story,
in the copies of Aspinwall and Choules, is C. 2; -- of p. 3 is C. 3, and
so onward to p. 65 wh. is L. 2, whereas the two copies of Coll. and
Choules of the same work, under the NEW title without Preface, begin.
(as does the Athenaeum copy with the Preface and old title) with B. for
sig. of p. 1, and so proced. to p. 65 wh. is K. Will any sagacious observer
doubt about priority? Each of the copies, of so great rarity, has
worth of its own; and that of our Athenaeum, tho. wanting the four last
pages, derives high value from the notes in sev. places, writ. by Thomas
Prince above one hundred and twenty yrs. since, especially his testimon.
on the title-page, "Preface and conclusion by Thomas Welde." This is
the well-kn. handwrit. of the Annalist. My presumpt. is that this identical
tract was once his, for in his own catal. he inserts, in its proper
place, "T. Welde's Short Story, &c. London 1644," and it is not now
found in his N. E. library.
A very valua. copy of the unmutilat. work, own. by Charles Deane,
concurs with the Coll. copy depriv. of its Preface, and issued under the
new name, in every word and letter, monk or friar, or other irregularity,
like the imperfect copy of the Athenaeum, exc. as bef. explain. in the
changed place of a single word, slighted, on p. 62, that requir. no editorial
cunning, but must have been done by a compositor. Will any one
doubt that Mr. Deane's copy (after the Preface, wh. is not seen in the
Coll. copy) was struck off from the same forms as that, when he compares
not pages merely, but words, and even letters in each, as on p. 12,
the remarkab. first letter of Error 65, unlike any other in the long enumeration,
or p. 4, the strange initial of Confutation 19, or asks, without
expecting answers, why the letter C. should have different shapes,
proudly beginning Confutat. 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 13, 15, 18, 20 to 40 inclus.
42-56 inclus. 61-65 inclus. 68-75 inclus. 81 and 82, in ITALIC TYPE in
each of the books, while it subsides into the modest Roman in 4, 5, 8, 9,
and all the others? Similar exact conformity as to the spelling of the
word, according to the then established usage, Errour, is found in both,
and similar, also, is the use or non-use of the double e in be, he, me, she.
For instance "Antinomians and Familists" of the Coll. Libr.has the
important word, for the first twenty times that it heads a parag. p.
1-4 spelled without u; but the next nineteen times, the u creeps in; the
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