only, it is a legend, if not of Mr. Paine's own invention, of no
better authority whatever." And so on with further castigation of the
author for what he never wrote, and which he himself (Priestley) was
the unconscious means of introducing into the text within the year of
Paine's publication.

If this could be done, unintentionally by a conscientious and exact
man, and one not unfriendly to Paine, if such a writer as Priestley
could make four mistakes in citing half a page, it will appear not
very wonderful when I state that in a modern popular edition of "The
Age of Reason," including both parts, I have noted about five hundred
deviations from the original. These were mainly the accumulated
efforts of friendly editors to improve Paine's grammar or spelling;
some were misprints, or developed out of such; and some resulted from
the sale in London of a copy of Part Second surreptitiously made from
the manuscript. These facts add significance to Paine's footnote
(itself altered in some editions!), in which he says: "If this has
happened within such a short space of time, notwithstanding the aid
of printing, which prevents the alteration of copies individually;
what may not have happened in a much greater length of time, when
there was no printing, and when any man who could write, could make a
written copy, and call it an original, by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or
John."

Nothing appears to me more striking, as an illustration of the
far-reaching effects of traditional prejudice, than the errors into
which some of our ablest contemporary scholars have fallen by reason
of their not having studied Paine. Professor Huxley, for instance,
speaking of the freethinkers of the eighteenth century, admires the
acuteness, common sense, wit, and the broad humanity of the best of