about 20° N. and 224° E. from the meridian of Ferro, and, of course, almost exactly in the situation of Owhyhee. That this large and lofty group may have been seen by some other voyager long before, is far from improbable; but, beyond a question, Cook was the first to visit, describe, and lay them down correctly in our maps. Professor Meyen, however, as quoted in Johnston's Physical Atlas, mentions these islands in terms which would almost lead one to suppose that he, the Professor, considered them to have been known to the Spaniards in Anson's time or earlier, and that they had been regular calling places for the galleons in those days! It is difficult to conceive such a man capable of such a mistake; but if he did not suppose them to have been discovered before Cook's voyage in 1778, his words are singularly calculated to deceive the reader on that point. J. S. WARDen. SUPERSTITION OF THE CORNISH MINERS. MR. KINGSLEY records a superstition of the Cornish miners, which I have not seen noted elsewhere. In reply to the question, "What are the Knockers?" Tregarva answers: "They are the ghosts, the miners hold, of the Old Jews that crucified our Lord, and were sent for slaves by the Roman emperors to work the mines: and we find their old smelting-houses, which we call Jews' houses, and their blocks of the bottom of the great bogs, which we call Jews' tin: and then, a town among us, too, which we call Market Jew, but the old name was Marazion, that means the Bitterness of Zion, they tell me ; and bitter work it was for them no doubt, poor souls! We used to break into the old shafts and adits which they had made, and find old stags-horn pickaxes, that crumbled to pieces when we brought them to grass. And they say that if a man will listen of a still night about those old shafts, he may hear the ghosts of them at working, knocking, and picking, as clear as if there was a man at work in the next level." - Yeast; a Problem: Lond. 1851, p. 255. Miners, as a class, are peculiarly susceptible of impressions of the unseen world, and the superstitions entertained by them in different parts of the world would form a curious volume. Is there any work on Cornish folk lore which alludes to this superstition respecting the Jews? It would be useless, I dare say, to consult Carew, or Borlase; besides, I have not them by me. Apropos to Cornish matters, a dictionary with a very tempting title was advertised for publication two or three years ago: "Geslevar Cernewac, a Dictionary of the Cornish Dialect of the Cymraeg or ancient British Language, in which the words are elucidated by numerous examples from the Cornish works now remaining, with translations in English: and the synonyms in Welsh, Armoric, Irish, Gaelic, and Manx, so as to form a Celtic Lexicon. By the Rev. Robert Williams, M.A., Oxon., to be published in one vol. 4to., price 31s. 6d." When shall we see this desirable lexicon? I was reminded of it the other day by hearing of the subscriptions on foot for the publication of the great Irish dictionary, which the eminent Irish scholars Messrs. O'Donovan and Curry have had in hand for many years. EIRIONNACH. Minor Queries. Clerical Duel. — I shall be obliged to any correspondent who will supply the name of the courtier referred to in the following anecdote, which is to be found in Burckhardt's KirchenGeschichte der Deutschen Gemeinden in London, Tub. 1798, p. 77. Anton Wilhelm Böhme, who came over as chaplain with Prince George of Denmark, officiated at the German Chapel, St. James's, from the year 1705 to 1722. He was a favourite of Queen Anne, and a friend of Isaac Watts. On one occasion he preached against adultery in a way which gave great offence to one of the courtiers present, who conceived that a personal attack on himself was intended. He accordingly sent a challenge to the preacher, which was without hesitation accepted; and at the time and place appointed the chaplain made his appearance in full canonicals, with his Bible in his hand, and gave the challenger a lecture which led to their reconciliation and friendship. I should like also to know whether there is any other authority for the story than that which I have quoted. S. R. MAITLAND. Gloucester. Pistol. What is the date of the original introduction of this word into our vocabulary in either of the senses in which it is equivocally used by Falstaff in 1 Henry IV., Act V. Sc. 3.? In the sense of fire-arms, pistols seem to have been unknown by that name as late as the year 1541; for the stat. 33 Hen. VIII. c. 6., after reciting the murders, &c. committed "with cross-bows, little short hand-guns, and little hagbuts," prohibits the possession of "any hand-gun other than such as shall be in the stock and gun of the length of one whole yard, or any hagbut or demihake other than such as shall be in the stock and gun of the length of three quarters of one yard." But throughout the act there is no mention of the word "pistol." J. F. M. Council of Laodicea, Canon 35. Can any of your readers inform me whether, in any early work on the Councils, the word angelos is in the text, without having angulos in the margin? If so, oblige me by stating the editions: CLERICUS (D). Pennycomequick, adjoining Plymouth.-The Bath and West of England Agricultural Society held their recent annual meeting here. Will any of your correspondents oblige me with the derivation of this remarkable word? R. H. B. Park the Antiquary. In a note to the third volume (p. lxxiii.) of the Grenville Correspondence is the following passage: "Barker has printed a second note, which Junius is supposed to have written to Garrick, upon the authority of Park the antiquary, who states that he found it in a cotemporary newspaper," &c. This is not strictly correct. Barker says (p. 190.), "The letter was found in a copy of Junius belonging to [Query, which had belonged to?] T. Park, &c. He had [Query, it is presumed?] cut it out of a newspaper; but unfortunately has omitted to furnish the date of the newspaper." [Query, How then known to be cotemporary ?] The difference is important; but where is the copy containing this letter? By whom has it been seen? By whom and when first discovered? Where did Barker find the story recorded? When and where first printed? P. T. A. Honorary D. C. L.'s. It was mentioned in a report of proceedings at the late Installation, that the two royal personages honoured with degrees, having been doctored by diploma, would be entitled to vote in Convocation, - -a privilege not possessed by the common tribe of honorary D.C. L.'s. Can you inform me whether Dr. Johnson had, or ever exercised, the right referred to in virtue of his M.A. degree (conferred on the publication of the Dictionary), or of the higher academical dignity to which his name has given such a worldwide celebrity? CANTABRIGIENSIS. Battle of Villers en Couché.-Some of your correspondents, better versed than myself in military matters, will doubtless render me assistance by replying to this Query. Where can I find a copious and accurate account of the battle, or perhaps I should rather say skirmish, of Villers en Couché? If I am rightly informed, it must be one of the most remarkable actions on record, when the comparative numbers of the troops engaged are taken into consideration. We have, as an heirloom in our family, a medal worn by an officer on that occasion: it is suspended from a red and white ribbon, and is inscribed thus: "FORTITUDINE VILLERS EN COUCHÉ. 24TH APRIL, I do not remember to have read any account of the battle; but, as I have heard from the lips of one who gained his information from the officer before alluded to, the particulars were these:General Mansell, with a force consisting of two squadrons of the 15th Hussars, and one squadron of the German Legion, two hundred and seventytwo in all, charged a body of the French army, ten thousand strong. The French were formed in a hollow square: but five times, as I am informed, did our gallant troops charge into and out of the square, till the French, struck with a sudden panic, retreated with a loss of twelve hundred men. I am desirous of authenticating this almost incredible account, and shall be thankful for such information as may guide me to an authoritative record of the action in question. W. SPARROW SIMPSON, B.A. Dr. Misaubin. -Will any of your numerous correspondents give me any information, or refer me to any work where I can find it, respecting Dr. Misaubin, who appears to have practised in London during the first half of the last century? What was the peculiarity of his practice? GRIFFIN. Kemble, Willet, and Forbes.- What are the two concluding lines of an epigram published tem or twelve years ago, beginning, "The case of Kemble, Willet, and Forbes, 66 P. A. O. Carefully examined and well-authenticated.”– I agree with MR. CRAMP (Vol. vii., p. 569.) that "the undecided question of the authorship of Junius requires that every statement should be carefully examined, and (as far as possible) only well-authenticated facts be admitted as evidence." I take leave, therefore, to remind him that my question (Vol. iii., p. 262.) remains unanswered; that I am anxious that he should authenticate his statement (p. 63.), and name some of the “many” persons in whose libraries vellum-bound copies of Junius have been found. V. B. Sir Heister Ryley.-Who was the author of the Visions of Sir Heister Ryley, and whence did it derive its name? It was published in 1710, and consists of papers periodically published on serious subjects. It was one of the many short-lived periodicals that sprung up in imitation of the Tatler, and appears to have died a natural death at the end of the so-called first volume. H. T. RILEY. Effigies with folded Hands.-On the south side of Llangathen Church, Carmarthenshire, is a huge monument (of the style well designated as bedstead) for Dr. Anthony Rudd, Bishop of St. David's, and Anne Dalton, his wife, 1616, with their recumbent effigies, and those of four sons kneeling at their head and feet. From all these figures the iconoclasts bad smitten the hands upraised in prayer, and they have been replaced by plaister hands folded on the bosom. The effect is singular. Is there any other instance of such restoration? E. D. Minor Queries with Answers. Passage in Bishop Horsley.-In the Introduction to Utrum Horum, a rather curious work by Henry Care, being a comparison of the Thirty-nine Articles with the doctrines of Presbyterians on the one hand, and the tenets of the Church of Rome on the other, is an extract from Dr. Hakewill's Answer (1616) to Dr. Carier, "an apostate to Popery." In it occurs the following passage: "And so, through Calvin's sides, you strike at the throat and heart of our religion." Will allow you me to ask if a similar expression is not used by Bishop Horsley in some one of his Charges? S. S. S. [The following passage occurs in the bishop's Charge to the clergy of St. Asaph in 1806, p. 26.: "Take especial care, before you aim your shafts at Calvinism, that you know what is Calvinism, and what is not: that in that mass of doctrine, which it is of late be come the fashion to abuse under the name of Calvinism, you can distinguish with certainty that part of it which is nothing better than Calvinism, and that which be out, interjections given by Brockett. Marry and shall, that I will! Marry come up, my dirty cousin, a saying addressed to any one who'affects excessive delicacy.] Dover Court.-What is the origin of the expression of a "Dover Court, where all are talkers and none are hearers?" There is a place called by this name in the vicinity of Harwich? H. T. RILEY. [There is a legend, that Dover-Court Church in Essex once possessed a miraculous cross which spoke, thus noticed in the Collier of Croydon : "And how the rood of Dovercot did speak, So that it is possible, as Nares suggests, that this church was the scene of confusion alluded to in the proverb: "Dover Court; all speakers and no hearers." Fox, in his Martyrology, vol. ii. p. 302., states, that "a rumour was spread that no man could shut the door, which therefore stood open night and day; and that the resort of people to it was much and very great."] Porter. In what book is the word porter, meaning the malt liquor so called, first found? I have an impression that the earliest use of it that I have seen is in Nicholas Amherst's Terra Filius, about 1726. H. T. RILEY. [We doubt whether an earlier use of this word, as descriptive of a malt liquor, will be found than the one noticed by our correspondent; for it was only about 1722 that Harwood, a London brewer, commenced brewing this liquor, which he called "entire," or "entire butt," implying that it was drawn from one cask or butt. It subsequently obtained the name of porter, from its consumption by porters and labourers.] Dr. Whitaker's Ingenious Earl.— "To our equal surprise and vexation at times, we find the ancients possessed of degrees of physical knowledge with which we were mostly or entirely unacquainted ourselves. I need not appeal in proof of this to that extraordinary operation of chemistry, by which Moses reduced the golden calf to powder, and then give it mingled with water as a drink to the Israelites; an operation the most difficult in all the processes of chemistry, and concerning which it is a sufficient honour for the moderns to say, that they have once or twice practised it. I need not appeal to the mummies of Egypt, in which the art of embalming bodies is so longs to our common Christianity, and the general eminently displayed, that all attempts at imitation have faith of the Reformed Churches; lest, when you mean only to fall foul of Calvinism, you should unwarily attack something more sacred and of higher origin."] only showed the infinite superiority of the original to the copy. I need not appeal to the gilding upon those mummies so fresh in its lustre; to the stained silk of them, so vivid in its colours after a lapse of 3000 years; to the ductility and malleability of glass, discovered by an artist of Rome in the days of Tiberius, but instantly lost by the immediate murder of the man under the orders of the emperor, and just now boasted vainly to be re-discovered by the wildly excentric, yet vividly vigorous, genius of that earl who professes to teach law to my lord chancellor, and divinity to my lords the bishops, who proposes to send a ship, by the force of steam, with all the velocity of a ball from the mouth of a cannon, and who pretends by the power of his steamimpelled oars to beat the waters of the ocean into the hardness of adamant; or to the burning-glasses of Archimedes, recorded in their effects by credible writers, actually imitated by Proclus at the siege of Constantinople with Archimedes' own success, yet boldly pronounced by some of our best judges, demonstrably impracticable in themselves, and lately demonstrated by some faint experiments to be very practicable, the skill of the moderns only going so far as to render credible the practices of the ancients.". The Course of Hannibal, by John Whitaker, B. D., 1794, vol. ii. p. 142. Who was the earl whose universality of genius is described above by this "laudator temporis acti ?" H. J. [Charles Earl Stanhope, whose versatility of talent succeeded in abolishing the old wooden printing-press, with its double pulls, and substituting in its place the beautiful iron one, called after him the " Stanhope Press." His lordship's inventive genius, however, failed in the composing-room; for his transmogrified letter-cases, with his eight logotypes, once attempted at The Times' office, were soon abandoned, and the old process of single letters preferred.] Dissimulate. Where is the earliest use of this word to be found? It is to be met with in Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, 1723; but is not to be found, I think, in any dictionary. I was once heavily censured at school for using it in my theme; but I have more than once of late seen it used in a leading article of The Times. H. T. RILEY. [Dissimulate occurs in Richardson's Dictionary, with the two following examples: Under smiling she was dissimulate, Prouocatiue with blinkes amorous.' Chaucer, The Testament of Creseide. "We commaunde as kynges, and pray as men, that al thyng be forgiuen to theim that be olde and broken, and to theim that be yonge and lusty, to dissimulate for a time, and nothyng to be forgiuen to very yong children."-Golden Boke, c. ix.] Replies. BISHOP KEN. (Vol. vii., p. 526.) By converting a noun into a surname, Dodsley has led J. J. J. into a natural, but somewhat amusing mistake. The lines quoted are in Horace Walpole's well-known epistle, from Florence, addressed to his college friend Thomas] A[shton,] tutor of the Earl of P[lymouth]. In Walpole's Fugitive Pieces, printed at Strawberry Hill, 1758 (the copy of which, now before It is strange that the mistake was not corrected, at the instance of Walpole himself, during this long interval. Turning to Bishop Ken, I would observe that in his excellent Life of this prelate, Mr. Anderdon has given the three well-known hymns "word for word," as first penned. These, Mr. A. tells us, are found, for the first time, in a copy of the Manual of Prayers for the Use of the Winchester Scholars, printed in 1700. The bishop's versions vary so very materially from those to which we have been accustomed from childhood, that these original copies are very interesting. Indeed, within five years after their first appearance, and during the author's life, material changes were made, several of which are retained to the present hour. It must be admitted that some of the stanzas, as they first came from the bishop's pen, are singularly rugged and inharmonious, almost justifying the request made by the lady to Byrom (as I have stated elsewhere *), "to revise and polish the bishop's poems." How came these hymns, so far the most popular of his poetical works, to be omitted by Hawkins in the collected edition of the poems, printed in 4 vols., 1721 ? My present object is, to call your attention to a "Midnight Hymn," by Sir Thomas Browne, which will be found in his works (vol. ii. p. 113., edit. Wilkin). Can there be a question that to it Ken is indebted for some of the thoughts and expressions in two of his own hymns? The good bishop's fame will not be lessened by his adopting what was good in the works of the learned physician. He doubtless thought far more of the benefit which he could render to the youthful Wykehamists, than of either the originality or smoothness of his own verses. Sir Thomas Browne. "While I do rest, my soul advance; *Sketch of Bishop Ken's Life, p. 107. And as gently lay my head O come that hour when I shall never "Awake, my soul, and with the sun "O when shall I in endless day For ever chase dark sleep away, And endless praise with th' Heavenly choir, Incessant sing and never tire. "You, my blest Guardian, whilst I sleep, Close to my bed your vigils keep; Divine love into me instil, Stop all the avenues of ill. "Thought to thought, with my soul converse Celestial joys to me rehearse; And in my stead, all the night long, one of the most In the work referred to valuable and best edited of modern days - Mr. Wilkin, when speaking of a fine passage on music in the Religio Medici (vol. ii. p. 106.), asks whether it may not have suggested to Addison the beautiful conclusion of his Hymn on the Glories of Creation : "What tho' in solemn silence, all," &c. This passage in Sir Thomas Browne appears forcibly to have struck the gifted author of Confessions of an English Opium-eater (see p. 106. of that work). J. H. MARKLAND. BOHN'S EDITION OF HOVEDEN. (Vol. vii., p. 579.) MR. RILEY mistakes my purpose if he thinks that my object was to make a personal attack on him; and for anything in my last communication which may have appeared to possess that tendency, I hereby freely express my regret. Still I cannot allow that he has explained away the mistakes of which I complained, and of which I still have to complain. The kingdom of Cork never "extended to within a short distance of Waterford;" and the territory of Desmond was never co-extensive with Cork, having been always confined to the county of Kerry. MR. RILEY, therefore, is in error when he uses "Cork" and "Desmond synonymous. Again, he falls into the same mis as take by assuming "Crook, Hook Point, or The Crook," to be synonyms. I never heard that Henry II. landed at Hook Point, which is in the county of Wexford, and from which a land journey to Waterford would be very circuitous. At Crook, however, on the opposite side of Waterford Harbour, and within the shelter of Creden Head, he is said to have done so; and as that point answers pretty exactly to the Crock of Hoveden, why assume some indefinite point of the " Kingdom of Cork" as the locality, even supposing that its boundary did approach Waterford city? Really MR. RILEY'S explanations but make matters worse. With regard to Erupolensis" being an alias of Ossoriensis, I may quote the authority of the learned De Burgo, who, speaking of the diocese of Ossory, observes: 66 It is difficult to believe that the third part of Christabel, published in Blackwood for June, 1819, vol. v. p. 286., could have either "perplexed the public," or "pleased Coleridge." In the first place, it was avowedly written by "Morgan Odoherty; and in the next, it is too palpable a parody to have pleased the original author, who could hardly have been satisfied with the raving rhapsodies put into his mouth, or with the treatment of his innocent and virtuous heroine. This will readily be supposed when it is known that the Lady Geraldine is made out to have been a man in woman's attire, and that "the mark of Christabel's shame, the seal of her sorrow," is neither more nor less than the natural consequence of her having shared her chamber with such a visitor. Is your correspondent A. B. R. correct in stating this parody to have been the composition of Dr. Maginn? In the biography of this brilliant writer in the twenty-third volume of the Dublin University Magazine, Dr. Moir, who had undoubtedly good opportunities of knowing, mentions that his first contribution to Blackwood was the Latin translation of "Chevy Chase," in the number for November 1819; if this be correct, many of the cleverest papers that appeared under the name of Odoherty, and which are all popularly attributed |