Mr. Peacock (antè., p. 117.) has already wisely suggested, that "in time a copy of every inscription in every church in England might be ready for reference in our National Library," and we have as little doubt that the MS. department of the British Museum is the proper place of deposit for such records, as that the trustees would willingly accept the charge of them on the recommendation of their present able and active Keeper of the Manuscripts. What he, and what the trustees would require, would be some security that the documents were what they professed to be; and this might very properly be accomplished through the agency of such a Society as Mr. Taylor proposes, if there did not already exist a Society upon whom such a duty might very safely be devolved:—and have we not, in the greater energy which that Society has lately displayed, evidence that it would undertake a duty for which it seems pre-eminently fitted? We allude to the Society of Antiquaries. The anxiety of Lord Mahon, its president, to promote the efficiency of that Society, has recently been made evident in many ways; and we cannot doubt that he would sanction the formation of a sub-committee for the purpose of assisting in collecting and preserving a record of all existing monuments, or that he would find a lack of able men to serve on such a committee, when he numbers among the official or active Fellows of the Society gentlemen so peculiarly fitted to carry out this important national object, as Mr. Hunter, Sir Charles Young, Mr. J. Payne Collier, and Mr. Bruce.
Notes.
ON THE WORD "RACK" IN SHAKSPEARE'S TEMPEST.
As another illustration of the careless or superficial manner in which the meaning of Shakspeare has been sought, allow me to call attention to the celebrated passage in the Tempest in which the word "rack" occurs. The passage really presents no difficulty; and the meaning of the word, as it appears to me, might as well be settled at once and for ever. I make this assertion, not dogmatically, but with the view of testing the correctness of my opinion, that this is not at all a question of etymology, but entirely one of construction. The passage reads as follows:—
"These, our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabrick of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,