Taking his quotations in due order—
1. The certificate of Dr. Farmer's character for learning and ability is unnecessary, because neither was impugned; nor does an allegation of atrocity in taste and judgment necessarily imply deficiency in mere book-learning.
2. As for Isaac Reed's opinion in favour of Farmer's Essay, it might be met by many of directly opposite tendency, and of at least equal weight.
3. In the only point really in question, BOLTON CORNEY "cannot deny that Farmer related the anecdote of the wool-man" (that being the reputed trade of Shakspeare's father); but to what end was it related, if not to suggest an application of which Steevens was only the interpreter?
But BOLTON CORNEY thinks the character of the witness suspicious; he forgets that only just before he had stated that the anecdote and its application had been repeated in three editions, extending over thirteen years, all within the lifetime of Dr. Farmer!
A. E. B.
Leeds.
Earwig (Vol. iv., pp. 274. 411.).
—The correspondent who asserts the curious fact that Johnson, Richardson, and Webster do not notice the word earwig must have consulted some expurgated editions of the works of those celebrated lexicographers—or else we must consider his assertion as a curious fact in the history of literary oversights.
BOLTON CORNEY.