Among the many periodicals which issue from the press, daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly, there is not one especially intended to assist Men of Letters and of research in their pursuits. Literary Journals there are in abundance, many of them of the highest degree of merit, which in their Reviews and Announcements show the current sayings and doings of the literary world. There is not, however, one among them in which the reading many may note, for the use of himself and his fellow-labourers in the wide field of Literature, the minute facts which he meets with from time to time, and the value of which he so well knows, or insert his _Queries_, in the hope of receiving satisfactory answers from some of his literary brethren.
NOTES AND QUERIES, A MEDIUM OF INTER-COMMUNICATION FOR LITERARY MEN, is, as its name implies, intended to supply this deficiency. Those who meet with facts worthy of preservation, may record them in its columns; while those, again, who are pursuing literary inquiries, may, through this MEDIUM, ask for information on points which have baffled their own individual researches. How often is even the best informed writer stopped by an inability to solve some doubt or understand some obscure allusion which suddenly starts up before him! How often does a reading man stumble upon some elucidation of a doubtful phrase, or disputed passage;--some illustration of an obsolete custom hitherto unnoticed;--some biographical anecdote or precise date hitherto unrecorded;--some book, or some edition, hitherto unknown or imperfectly described.
This Publication, as everybody's common-place book, will be a depository for those who find such materials, and a resource for those who are in search of them; and if the Editor is enabled by the inter-communication of his literary friends, to realise his expectations, it will form a most useful supplement to works already in existence,--a treasury for enriching future editions of them,--and an important contribution towards a more perfect history than we yet possess of our Language, our Literature, and those to whom we owe them.
NOTES AND QUERIES will be published every Saturday, price 3d., or stamped, 4d., and may be had, by order, of all Booksellers and Newsmen, and will also be issued in Parts at the end of each Month.