Note 129 — The Cabinet.

The first, and, what Hearne over and over again calls the genuine edition of the Athenæ Oxoniensis, was published in two folio volumes, 1691, 1692. That a third volume was intended by the author himself may be seen from Hearne's remarks in his Thom. Caii. Vind. Antiq. Oxon., vol. i., p. xliii. For the character of the work consult his Rob. de Avesb., pp. xxvi, xxxiii. After the lapse of nearly half a century, it was judged expedient to give a new edition of these valuable biographical memoirs; and Dr. Tanner, afterwards bishop of St. Asaph, was selected to be the editor of it. It was well known that Wood had not only made large corrections to his own printed text, but had written nearly 500 new lives—his MS. of both being preserved in the Ashmolean Museum. This new edition, therefore, had every claim to public notice. When it appeared, it was soon discovered to be a corrupt and garbled performance; and that the genuine text of Wood, as well in his correctness of the old, as in his compositions of the new, lives, had been most capriciously copied. Dr. Tanner, to defend himself, declared that Tonson "would never let him see one sheet as they printed it." This was sufficiently infamous for the bookseller; but the editor ought surely to have abandoned a publication thus faithlessly conducted, or to have entered his caveat in the preface, when it did appear, that he would not be answerable for the authenticity of the materials: neither of which were done. He wrote, however, an exculpatory letter to Archbishop Wake, which the reader may see at length in Mr. Beloe's Anecdotes of Literature, vol. ii., p. 304. Consult the life of the author in Mr. Gutch's valuable reprint of Wood's "History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford," 1792, 4to., 2 vols.: also, Freytag's Analect. Literar., vol. ii., 1105. I have great pleasure in closing this note, by observing that Mr. Philip Bliss, of St. John's College, Oxford, is busily engaged in giving us, what we shall all be glad to hail, a new and faithful edition of Wood's text of the Athenæ Oxoniensis, in five or six quarto volumes.