Note (return) — Introductory material

Now, it is on this matter that we think some improvement may be made. We would not on any account diminish our number of Queries, and would wish even our Notes to be notes of interrogation as well as information. But between Queries and Replies, notwithstanding their family connexion, there is an essential difference. In every case the Query, in order to its answering the end for which it is proposed, must be public; but in a great many cases the Reply need not be so. The Query may be a very proper and curious one, and interesting in a high degree to the proposer and several other persons, but the Reply to it may involve details not generally interesting.[1] We shall not be thought to discourage such inquiries (while we consider the opportunity which we afford for making them one of the most valuable features of our work) if we illustrate this by suggesting that A. wishes for genealogical or family history; B. wants to know what the author of such or such a book which he is editing means by such or such a reference; C., who is editing another, wants a collation of this or that edition; D., who is writing a third book, in order to correct and enrich it, wants as many things (and heartily glad should we be to help him to get them) as would occupy half-a-dozen of our Numbers; and so we might go on, were it not quite unnecessary to pursue in detail the illustration of what is so plain. Now it has occurred to us, that if Correspondents who wish to make inquiries, the answers to which would obviously be of no general interest, would, with their Query, enclose a stamped envelope, directed in any way which they may think proper, it would often be in our power not only to transmit to them answers to their inquiries, but to put them in direct communication with those who could give them further information; and who would in many cases communicate with individuals of whose respectability and capacity they were satisfied, more freely than they would through a public channel. We shall be glad to know how far such a plan would be approved of. We must add, that it would enable us to make use of many Replies which it is impossible, under present circumstances, to insert; and we believe that many Answerers would not only be as well pleased to learn that their Replies had been transmitted to the Querist, but that, with a knowledge that they would be so transmitted, they would write with more freedom and fulness than if they expected the Reply to be published. One thing only we should bargain for—and, having cut ourselves off from all hope of gain by desiring to have the envelopes directed, we think we have a right to ask it—it is, that if in this correspondence, of which we are the medium, they come to any curious and generally interesting results, they will send them to us, pro bono publico.