Page:Notes and Queries - Series 1 - Volume 1.djvu/13

Rh stiff drawing-room into the nursery, snubbed to be sure by the act, but joyful in the freedom of banishment. We were going to say (but it might sound vain-glorious), where do things read so well as in notes? but we will put the question in another form:—Where do you so well test an author's learning and knowledge of his subject?—where do you find the pith of his most elaborate researches?—where do his most original suggestions escape?—where do you meet with the details that fix your attention at the time and cling to your memory for ever?—where do both writer and reader luxuriate so much at their ease, and feel that they are wisely discursive?——But if we pursue this idea, it will be scarcely possible to avoid something which might look like self-praise; and we content ourselves for the present with expressing our humble conviction that we are doing a service to writers and readers, by calling forth materials which they have themselves thought worth notice, but which, for want of elaboration, and the "little leisure" that has not yet come, are lying, and may lie for ever, unnoticed by others, and presenting them in an unadorned multum-in-parvo form. To our readers therefore who are seeking for Truth, we repeat "When found make a of;" and we must add, "till then make a ."

 20th October, 1849.

Mr. Editor,—Mr. Macaulay's account of the Battle of Sedgemoor is rendered singularly picturesque and understandable by the personal observation and local tradition which he has brought to bear upon it. Might not his account of the capture of Monmouth derive some few additional life-giving touches, from the same invaluable sources of information? It is extremely interesting, as every thing adorned by Mr. Macaulay's luminous style must necessarily be, but it lacks a little of that bright and living reality, which, in the account of Sedgemoor, and in many other parts of the book, are imparted by minute particularity and precise local knowledge. It runs as follows:—

