Scribleriana

Fifty Years and Counting

This autumn 2017 issue finds the Scriblerian entering its fiftieth year of scholarly reviewing. The founding editors, Peter A. Tasch, Arthur J. Weitzman, and Roy S. Wolper, recognized the value of a periodic overview of scholarship covering the Scriblerian circle, much as the Scriblerians themselves engaged in public critique, most importantly with an eye toward "educing good from ill." Over time, with the recruitment of contributing editors and reviewers, the journal's purview has grown to include reviews of scholarship on many other literary figures, stretching all the way to the fictions of Smollett and Sterne. Further expansion in small steps is now under consideration.

Looking ahead to the next fifty years, the editors' chief goal remains the same: to offer insightful, readable, and entertaining reviews with an honest, independent voice. We are immensely thankful to our readers and our sponsors for their staunch support, and to our editors and reviewers for the rich and informed opinions they bring to these pages. The purview of the Scriblerian may grow further, but we will always remain conscious of the "Dedication to Our Readers" that the editors offered with a smile in the Autumn 1968 issue: For thee we dim the eyes, and stuff the head With all such reading as was never read: For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it, And write about it, … and about it.…

Dunciad, IV, 249–252

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This issue is especially indebted to our four senior editors, Kellye Corcoran, Tim Parnell, David Venturo, and Donald Wehrs, for their hard work to maintain the journal's readability, as well as for their help with the innumerable tasks that inevitably arise on the long road to print, and to Derek Taylor for his superb organizational and diplomatic efforts. Our editorial assistants, C. Blake Binford, Matthew Shoemaker, and Amy D. Locklar, have proven themselves invaluable, keeping the wheels of progress rolling. We also wish to thank Kevin Garner and Jennifer LyAnne Peacock for repairing and revitalizing the Scriblerian's website, our electronic face to the world. And last, our thanks to Mel New, for his thoughtful advice and intrepid sourcing of book reviewers.

We salute Susan Paterson Glover and Claudia Thomas Kairoff, Contributing Editors who have been important voices in the pages of the Scriblerian over the years. Their perceptive, cogent reviews will be missed.

Gabriel Hornstein, 1935–2017

The president of AMS Press, Gabriel Hornstein, died in February 2017. The output of his publishing house included numerous eighteenth-century serials such as 1650–1850, Eighteenth-Century Thought, Eighteenth-Century Women, ECCB, and the Age of Johnson, as well as books and journals covering many other periods and disciplines. We will miss Mr. Hornstein and his long-standing interest in, contributions to, and enthusiasm for eighteenth-century studies.

A Note Regarding Citation of Online Journals

This issue includes several reviews of articles that appear in online journals. With the proliferation of these sites, some refereed, some not, some requiring payment for publication, some not, we believe it important for the Scriblerian to offer coverage of the better of them without opening itself to the impossible lengths and breadths (we will avoid, in the spirit of the Dunciad, the depths) of online writing. We will cite these journals as we do other journals, and indicate "Web," in lieu of page numbers. We will not provide the web address, since that is equivalent to providing LC/shelf numbers for print journals; scholars have learned to navigate libraries and will become equally adept, we are certain, at navigating the Web.

A Bawdy Legacy

One of the two cruces in Ford Madox Ford's Some Do Not … discussed in a recent note (N&Q, 64 [March 2017], 161–164) exhibits a Scriblerian heritage. One character disputes another's translation from Petronius, calling it lamentably antiquated: "It's just like Oxford to use an eighteenth-century crib. I suppose that's Whiston and Ditton? Something like that." Ford's recent editor is puzzled by the reference, and tells us unhelpfully that neither Whiston nor Ditton was a classicist. But Ford surely meant at least...