critical translator: and the stream of intelligence in the text might
have been diverted, or rendered unpalatable, by the observations, in
the way of controversy, in the notes. If M. Licquet considers this
avowal as the proclaiming of his triumph, he is welcome to the laurels
of a Conqueror; but if he can persuade any COMMON FRIENDS that, in the
translation here referred to, he has defeated the original author in
one essential position--or corrected him in one flagrant inaccuracy--I
shall be as prompt to thank him for his labours, as I am now to
express my astonishment and pity at his undertaking. When M. Licquet
put forth the brochure in question--(so splendidly executed in the
press of M. Crapelet--to harmonise, in all respects, with the large
paper copies of the original English text) he had but recently
occupied the seat of his Predecessor. I can commend the zeal of the
newly-appointed Librarian in Chief; but must be permitted to question
alike his judgment and his motives.

One more brief remark in this place. My translator should seem to
commend what is only laudatory, in the original author, respecting his
countrymen. Sensitively alive to the notice of their smallest defects,
he has the most unbounded powers of digestion for that of their
excellences. Thus, at the foot of the ABOVE PASSAGE, in the text,
Mons. Licquet is pleased to add as follows--in a note: "Si M. Dibdin
ne s'était livré qu'à des digressions de cette nature, il aurait
trouvé en France un chorus universel, un concert de voeux unanimes:"
vol. i. p. 239. And yet few travellers have experienced a more cordial
reception, and maintained a more _harmonious_ intercourse, than
HE, who, from the foregoing quotation, is more than indirectly
supposed to have provoked opposition and _discord!_]