Page:Essays in librarianship and bibliography.djvu/337

 so large an increase in the annual grant. In 1849 he prepared for the Royal Commission that crushing exposure of Mr. J. P. Collier's notions of short and easy methods of cataloguing which should be especially valued by librarians, as it is perhaps the best practical illustration to be found anywhere of the difficulties attaching to the correct bibliographical description of a book. He was also enabled to devote some attention to literature. About 1842 he wrote a large number of articles for the Dictionary of Universal Biography, edited by Mr. George Long for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, a great and meritorious undertaking, unfortunately not carried beyond letter A, although the continuation as far as BE was actually in type. Mr. Jones's articles chiefly treated of obscure or forgotten writers, and required much research. He also contributed to the Quarterly and North British Reviews; his article in the latter on the British Museum Library (1851) is the best account of its administration to be found anywhere. He carried on an extensive correspondence with Mr. Wilson Croker, who continually had recourse to him for information on literary subjects. In 1847 he contributed to the Archæologia "Observations on the Division of Man's Life into Stages," with especial reference to Shakespeare's descriptions of the seven ages of man, and about this time wrote several other papers. In 1850 he edited for the Hakluyt Society "Divers Voyages touching the Discovery of America"; and in 1856, "The Travels of Nicolo Conti in the East," translated from the