CLASSIFICATION OF LITERARY DIFFICULTIES.

Whatever may be the utility of your publication as a source of information to individuals, each on his own point of difficulty, there is a purpose, and one of its greatest ultimate purposes, which it must one day answer, though not immediately—I mean the furnishing of materials for general conclusions on the difficulties of literature. The queries which are sent to you are those which an author must put to himself in his closet; the manner in which others help him shows the manner in which he ought, if he could, to help himself. Occasionally, the querist betrays a want of power to reduce his own difficulty to its proper category; occasionally, also, the respondent fails to grapple with the real point. All this is instructive, and reconciles those who are instructed by it to the presence of many things which seem trivial or out of place to those who do not consider the nature of the whole undertaking. But the instruction I speak of will be much augmented in quantity and elevated in character, if ever the time should come when the mass of materials collected finds an architect to arrange it. The classification of the obstacles which an inquirer meets with, so treated as to give a view of the causes of difficulty as they arise, both from the state of our books, and of our modes of using them, must surely one day suggest itself as a practicable result of the "NOTES AND QUERIES." The more this result is insisted on the more likely is it to be realised; and though it may need twenty volumes of the work to be completed, or even more, before anything can be done, the mere suggestion may induce some of your readers to keep an eye upon your pages with a view to something beyond current matter.