Ture is often a good deal in the thoughtful' articles for which the Spectator is famous, which is not a little exasperating. The Spectator is apparently so anxious to keep up its reputation for thoughtfulness, that it delights in taking the most perversely one-sided vi of subjects for the sake of writing thoughtful' articles upon them, and this with the implication that if the reader adopts the popular or obvious opinion he forfeits all right to be considered thoughtful' himself. Some of the essays we have now in mind are nothing more than tours de force of a very transparent natare indeed, and afford amusement instances of special pleading with no particular object to be gained; while others remind one of Don Quixote's battle with the windmills, the writer appearing to run a tilt against some monstrosity of his own imagination, which he has conjured up for the exproce purpose of knocking down.
In a recent number of the paper referred to we find an article headed 'Bad Handwriting and Stupid Readers' The theory it contains may be a very thoughtful' one; it is at any rate new to us. A good deal of it reads very much like an apology for illegible handwriting, and a tendency to lay the blame of misconceptions upon the stupidity of those who try to make it out, is a matter upon which we as journalists may be permitted to feel rather deeply; and we wholly disagree with the writer of the article before us. "The very worst manuscript," says the, may be made out by a reader who can and will analyse, but those who can and will analyse are few." What next, may we ask, is to be demanded of a reader? The very worst manuscript, it may be said with equal justice, may be made out with the assistance of a powerful microscope, Roget's Thesaurus, a calonl based on the Theory of Probabili and the suggestions of two or three experts; but we submit that very few persousbave sufficient time for these interesting experiments in speculative palwography, The object of a manu. script is that it may be read at a glance, and it should certainly not need being subjected to an nualytioal or any other process. So much a reader has aright to demand. But our contemporary proceeds to exemplify his meaning. "Take the case of a badly-written manuscript," he says. "You find a whole group of people fumbling ata sentence, and reaking as to one particular obscure word, guesses upon guesses, all of which are simply absurd, When it is demonatrably clear that the missing link must be an adverb, you may hear six sane men trying nouns or verbs, Ib may be clear that the dark word must be one of strong praise of a given kind, the dictionary possibilities of the case lying within narrow compensa; but scores of false shots will be made, because nobody has the brains or the will to say to himself, whatever this word may be, we can positively determine what it is not, and so limit our range of guessing'" This is a most excellent and clever suggestion; but there are cases of perpetual occurrence in which it will be found absolutely valueless, It is clear that for the method to be of any value at all, the contezt of the dark word" should be distinct. Now this is just what it very often is not. Instances come before us constantly in which entire sentences of respectable length contain only four, perhaps, or at the most six, decipherable words. The farcical blunders of compositors have been made the subject of many entertaining articles ere now; but no one has ever written the tragedy of the puzzled proof-render, as he pores with dazed eyes over the cramped, twisted, blotted, scratched-out, interpolated, and generally bedevilled scrawl before him. We have no hesitation in acknowledging that in much of the correspondence that reaches us we are compelled to leave out whole paragraphs, by reason of the hopeless illegibility of some one sentence, without which the passage would be incapable of conveying any sense whatever. The Spectator lays. it down that there is much egotism in the man who writes a bad haud which never strives to pick itself up. We should be inclined rather to say that the defect in question springs more from either constitutional laziness, or a habit of flurry, associated in either case with an utter disregard for the convenience of other people, Deciphering a manuscript in which the letters m, n, 7, ¢, 6,8, % nand others are one and all composed of straggling potshooks without any idiosyncrasy of curve, or division tween the component parts of each, is, in fact, a waste of time which no busy mau can afford. It ought to be clearly understood that if a writer cannot write distinctly, he should not expect tobe read. We have even had to out out the signature from a letter, evi written by " cordial friend, it on an envelope, in order to send a reply; beginning the return-letter "My door and explaining that we had not the most remote we were addressing. Ib i tribution when the offender is unable to read his own writing, and suffers actual inconvenience thereby. Nor is indistinctness of formation the only defeat that tends to obscure the meaning manuscript. Many persons appear to have no idea of the proper division of phrases and sentences by means of punctuation, and a terrible amount of confusion in the result, A well-known tance was brought forward some time ago in an American periodical, in which the omission of two commas in a short sentence Jed to an editor running @ very narrow chance of an action for libel. The sentence stood thus, "The prisoner said the witness was a notorious liar." It ought to have read, "The prisoner, said the witness, was a notorious liar"—which means the very opposite of the one above. Generally, Lowever, it is a ro-dun dant uso of commas, to the rigid exclusion of fall-stops or semi-colons, that is the most glaring defect of the un practised writer, and a mysterious defect it is. OF this we append a remarkable example, which we take from the recently published Municipal Report Under the head of murder, there are two cases; one occurred on the 10th of July when a native soldier took a revolver to a shop in the Sunkeang Road, for the purpose of getting some cartridges which would fit it, while fitting some cartridges one was accidentally fired off by the shopman, the bullet struck the counter, glanced off, and lodged in the throat of 'a soldier who was standing near, the wounded man was at once taken to the hospital Shantung Road, where his wound was dressed, but
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.